the roof. “Guards coming from every which way. Skrymir, you go and get Holden, Tallia and Ansen. Get back to the ship, best you can. I’ll meet you there. He’s not going to be able to keep up, not with the bond just off. Get the ship out into the delta, you know where.”
Skrymir hesitated, just a fraction, then nodded. “Aye.” His hand came down on Van’s good shoulder, threatening to turn it into the bad shoulder. “Glad you’re still breathing, Van. Come on, I’ll get you on your feet.”
Skrymir hauled him up and propped him against a chimney. “All right, Josie. I’ll make as much noise as I can, get them after me for a bit. You two be your sneaky selves.”
Tiles clattered farther along the roof—some of the more zealous guards had found the way from the loft of Oku’s temple onto the roof. They’d found the dead bodies of the guards that had been set there too. Skrymir leaped out in front of them, pistol ready and snarl twisting his face into a hideous mask.
The guards hesitated—Van Gast was fairly sure even Oku would have hesitated at the look on Skrymir’s face—but one of his fists sending a guard tumbling over the edge of the roof with a desperate, useless scrabble at the tiles got them going. Skrymir bulled through them and off the other side, and the chase was on.
Not that Van Gast and Josie had much time to even take breath before more guards came.
“Reckon you can run?”
“I can run faster than those bastards,” Van Gast said.
Together they slid into the nooks and crannies, the slim shadows of the daytime rooftops, their bells jingling their prayers.
* * *
Holden staggered back to his feet and looked around. Smoke choked everything, made people ghosts in the gloom. A blast from the top of the steps startled him. All the guards surged to the sound, and to the vast swearing and agonized screams from Rillen as he lay sprawled on the ground, one arm missing, the wound spouting blood, orders to “Get the fuck here now and kill that bastard!”
Holden grabbed Ansen as he drifted by in the gloom. “Tallia, have you seen her?”
Ansen grinned up at him, his hands full of purses and trinkets, his pockets overflowing. “She belted Ilsa one. Over on the steps. Cow deserved it too.” He glared at Holden as though waiting to be told he was wrong.
Holden resisted the urge to shake him. Who knew what might fall out? “Yes, but where is she now?”
“I don’t know, I’m not her keeper.”
“Come on. I think it’s high time we were out of here, before those guards stop milling around and realize they want to shoot us. You can help me find her.”
Ansen grumbled under his breath, but not all the guards were with Rillen. More than enough were still in the square, trying to arrest looters, trying to find some sort of order in the chaos.
Tallia wouldn’t have gone up the steps—their part in the plan meant staying in the square until it was time to get out. Where then? They ducked past two guards under siege from a phalanx of looters and coming off worst, into the shelter of Kyr’s temple.
Tallia was waiting for him, half hidden in an alcove, gun firmly in hand as she searched the crowds. Holden grabbed her, spun her round and set her down again, her hand in his.
All duty was gone, burned away in that single glimpse of Ilsa kissing Rillen, of her answer on the steps. Of knowing that he couldn’t make her happy, that they had only been bonded by mages, not by love. The last vestiges of his Master’s voice were scoured clean by his newfound freedom, now finally realized in his head, in his heart. Instead of rules, lines, order, comfort, he saw now clearly, for the first time ever, who he really was. Josie had called him a man who had dreamed dreams big enough for the world, once, long ago, when they’d loved. Before his dreams had been stripped away, and her with them. Now they were back and they danced around his head, full of life and color with Tallia at the center.
Her smile infected him, made him giddy with it, made him relish the fizz in his blood that they were all still alive, still free. He kissed her with a dizzy relish at still being alive and, her hand in his, scanned the square, looking to see