Fortunately for me, these mice have good aim. Two of the closest spearmen falter, giving me enough time to spin and break the lock with a swipe of my scim.
The door bursts open, and with a roar, the Scholars explode from the pen.
I swipe up a Serric steel dagger from one of the fallen spearmen and hand it to Araj, who barrels out with the rest. “Open the other pen!” I shout. “I have to get to Laia!”
A sea of Scholar prisoners now crowds the yard, but the Warden’s form pokes out above them. A small group of Scholar children, Tas among them, attack the old man. He lashes out with his scim to keep them at bay, but he’s loosened his hold on Laia, and she thrashes in an attempt to break free.
“Warden!” I bellow. He turns at my voice, and Laia kicks her heel straight back into his shin while biting the flesh of his arm. The Warden jerks up his scim, and one of the Scholar children slips close and bashes his knee with a heavy skillet. The Warden roars, and Laia tumbles away from him, reaching for the dagger at her waist.
But it’s not there. It gleams now in Tas’s hands. His small face twists with rage as he lunges for the Warden. His friends swarm all over the old man, biting, clawing, bringing him down, taking their revenge on the monster who has abused them since the day they were born.
Tas plunges the dagger into the Warden’s throat, flinching from the geyser of blood that erupts. The other children scurry away, surrounding Laia, who pulls Tas to her chest. I am beside them moments later.
“Elias,” Tas whispers. He cannot take his eyes off the Warden. “I—”
“You slew a demon, Tas of the north.” I kneel beside him. “I am proud to fight by your side. Get the other children out. We’re not free yet.” I look up at the gate, where the guards now battle a horde of crazed prisoners. “Meet us at the boats.”
“Darin!” Laia looks at me. “Where—”
“By the pens,” I say. “I can’t wait until he wakes up and I can give him hell. I’ve had to drag him all around this bleeding prison.”
The drums thud frenziedly, and over the chaos, I can just barely hear the answering drums of a distant garrison. “Even if we escape onto the boats,” Laia says as we race for the pens, “we’ll have to get out before we reach the Forest of Dusk. And the Martials will be waiting, won’t they?”
“They will,” I say. “But I have a plan.” Well, not exactly a plan. More like a hunch—and a possibly delusional hope that I can use my new occupation to do something quite mad. It’s a gamble that will depend on the Waiting Place and Shaeva and my power of persuasion.
With Darin slung over my shoulder, we head for Kauf’s entry gate, inundated with prisoners. The crowd is rabid— there are too many people fighting to get out, and too many Martials fighting to keep us in.
I hear a metallic groaning. “Elias!” Laia points at the portcullis. Slowly, ponderously, it begins to drop. The sound gives new heart to the Martials beating back the prisoners, and Laia and I are driven farther from the gate.
“Torches, Laia!” I shout. She snatches two off a nearby wall, and we wield them like scims. Those around us instinctively cringe from the fire, allowing us to force a path through.
The portcullis drops another few feet, almost at eye level now. Laia grabs my arm. “One push,” she shouts. “Together—now!”
We lock arms, lower the torches, and ram our way through the crowd. I shove her beneath the portcullis ahead of me, but she resists and whips around, forcing me to come with her.
And then we are beneath, through, running past the soldiers battling prisoners, making straight for the boathouse, where I see two barges already a quarter mile down the river and two more launching from the docks, Scholars hanging off the sides.
“She did it!” Laia shouts. “Afya did it!”
“Bowmen!” A line of soldiers appears atop Kauf’s wall. “Run!”
A hail of arrows rains down around us, and half the Scholars racing for the boathouse with us go down. Almost there. Almost.
“Elias! Laia!” I spot Afya’s red-black braids at the boathouse door. She waves us into the structure, her eyes on the bowmen. Her face is slashed, her hands covered in blood, but she quickly leads us to a small canoe.
“As