“Hey,” I said, getting Temur’s attention while the guard circled us, and more poured in from behind sliding doors and secret compartments and bastion-only-knew where else. Six guards, my mother’s left tit. The Emperor’d known we felt cornered, and he was throwing everything he had at us just to show us how futile it was to try to fight back. “You know where the prisoners are being kept, right?”
My only answer was the sharp screech of metal against metal and a shout that turned into a wet kind of gurgling.
“I beg your pardon,” said Temur, “but there was a situation I may have resolved too hastily. I did not hear your question.”
“Prisoners,” I grunted, keeping my eye on the son of a bitch who’d wounded me.
“Ah,” said Temur.
“I’m thinking you go and get them,” I elaborated. “I’ll hold ’em off here at Tiger Tail Pass or whichever one it was where we beat your sorry asses all the way back to the dome.”
“I do not think that I recall that battle,” Temur said. “I must not have been a part of the defense.”
I huffed and stepped in quick to attack before that guard got a taste for stabbing me again. The room we were in was built more simply than the others, no furniture save for the benches lining the walls and three lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There was a corridor just past where Temur and I had made our stand, even worse-lit than the room. That was probably the way to the prisoners.
Would’ve been nice if the secret passageways had led us straight to where we needed to be. Would’ve been all kinds of considerate that the Ke-Han didn’t believe in.
This time, the guard squaring off with me moved too slow and I grabbed his arm, wrenching it back so that he had to drop his sword.
“Good night,” I said and clocked him in the head.
I shook my arm out again, which was a mistake, since instead of being numb it just hurt like crazy. There were more guards in the room, too, shouting and breaking formation and coming in through the walls like they were actors in that play Caius had taken me to see. Except there wasn’t anything make-believe about those swords or the duty driving the men who wielded them.
There were more guards in the room than when we’d started, now I was sure of it. If there hadn’t been bodies on the floor, unconscious or dead, I would’ve started to get really disheartened.
“Look,” I said, taking a chance on talking to Temur over my shoulder, “this is a waste of time. They’re just going to tire us out here until they can overwhelm us with sheer numbers, and then this whole thing will have been for nothing. You get it?”
“You should be the one to go on ahead since your men will trust you better,” said Temur, calm as you please.
Bastard had a point, too, but I wasn’t about to give in that easily.
“You’re the one who knows the way, remember?” I told him, before I broke a man’s jaw—and maybe my own knuckles, too, it felt like. “That’s the whole reason we brought you in the first place, so don’t go getting all useless on me now.”
I kicked a guard back, and when he fell, he broke through the wooden-framed screens and tore through the paper wall.
“Get going,” I said, “or I’ll break your head too and you’ll have to explain to Greylace and Josette what you were doing sleeping in the middle of a battle.”
“I do not know that I like the idea of explaining to Margrave Josette that I left you to fend for yourself, either,” Temur retorted. He was leaning against me a little more heavily than he had been when we’d started, and I didn’t think it was because he was preparing for a nap.
“Who’s by themselves?” I asked, insulted by the very idea. “I’m not cutting you loose, mind. I’m sending you to get the reinforcements! If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m bringing down the palace, and if you’re not sure whether I’m exaggerating or not, well then, it’s probably a good idea just to come back right away, isn’t it?”
Temur hesitated, which was his fatal error as far as I was concerned. It meant he agreed with me.
“Okay,” I said, lowering my voice, and wishing not for the first time that the walls were built of something slightly