move enough stone-smothered air to take her into the open sky. The center of the plaza would have been a better location for a takeoff, but she could not possibly approach it through the ring of enormous furies still crouched there. Instead, trapped at the edge of the plaza, she lifted from the ground too slowly and was forced to stop trying to gain altitude before she struck the side of the building that was her goal.
She grabbed a windowsill with one hand, drove the toes of her left foot against another, and, bolstered still by Cirrus, began to ascend the side of the building in an almost-spiderlike fashion.
The presence of so much stone, which had limited Cirrus, would also have afflicted Macio's wind furies - and the young man must have weighed nearly a hundred pounds more than she did. A quick glance over her shoulder showed her Macio sprinting toward her - but instead of employing windcrafting to pursue her, he let out a grunt and leapt explosively, drawing upon an earthcrafter's strength to send himself hurtling up nearly three stories in a single bound. Eyes locked on Amara, he sank his fingertips into the stone as if it had been soft clay, and with earthcrafted power, he began scaling the building even more quickly than she could.
Amara reached the top barely a breath ahead of Macio, caught her belly on its edge, and struggled desperately to haul herself fully onto the roof.
An iron grip settled on her ankle.
She looked down, desperate, helpless against the power in Macio's clutching hand - and prayed that she had correctly guessed from which building the earlier shots had come. Macio found purchase for one of his feet, and Amara knew that his next move would be simply to swing her by the ankle and smash her against the building's side like an oversized porcelain doll.
The wall three feet from the top of the building exploded outward with a resounding crack of shattering stone. A broad-knuckled hand snared the neck of Macio's chitin-armor in an iron grip, and heaved back, smashing the young Citizen's head against the side of the building. Macio let out a single, choking sound, then the hand gripping him slammed him to the stone again and again and again. Macio's fingers slipped loosely from Amara's ankle, and his blood spattered the wall. His neck snapped during the second or third impact. On the fifth, the wall actually gave way, and Macio's body vanished into the interior of the tower. There were a few more ugly, heavy sounds of impact, of tearing flesh and breaking bone.
Amara hauled herself wearily back onto the roof and lay there gasping with pain, exertion, and sheer terror. The horrible things she had seen that night came rushing back into her thoughts, and she found herself sobbing silently, clutching her belly as if to keep it from rupturing.
Bernard's hand touched her shoulder a moment later, and she opened her eyes to stare up at him. Her husband was covered in smoke stains, his face all but completely black. There was a fresh cut on one of his cheeks. Fresh blood, Macio's blood, had splattered over his tunic, face, and neck. The dust and flakes of shattered stone, mixed to a paste with more blood, covered his right arm to the elbow. His Legion-issue gladius was at his side, opposite a wide-mouthed war quiver, and he held his heavy-limbed bow in his left hand.
He gathered her up with his left arm and all but crushed her to his chest. Amara clutched him back, feeling the warmth and strength of him against her. "It's about time," she whispered.
"I leave you alone for an hour, woman," he said, his voice shaking. "And I find you running around with a younger man."
She let out a choking little laugh that threatened to bring out more sobs and held him for another few heartbeats. Then she pushed gently at him, and he rose, lifting her to her feet. "We c-can't," she said. "There are more of them around."
The dull cough of a nearby firecrafting thudded through the air in punctuation. There was an extended roaring sound, and a cloud of dust began to emerge from farther in the city, joining the smoke and fire.
"More of the crafters the vord took?" Bernard said. "Why are they here?"
"They came for the Citizens," Amara said. "At least one of them was nearby under a veil. He hit me hard enough to let the