four steps of his attack when he came in sight of his own sleeping space.
Badger was lying on his back in the darkness, a thin line drawn across his neck, black on white skin. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t moving.
Doll Girl’s space was empty. She was gone, and so was Rat.
9
H e lay in the darkness, too stunned to weep. Even in his sudden blind shock, Azoth knew that Rat’s bigs couldn’t be asleep. This was what they had been waiting for. Azoth had left for the barest minute, and they had taken Doll Girl. It wouldn’t even do him any good to wake the whole guild. In the darkness and confusion, he’d never know just which of Rat’s bigs was gone. And what would he do even if he knew? Even if he knew who was gone, he wouldn’t know where they’d gone. Even if he knew where they’d gone, what would he do?
He lay in the darkness, stumbling over thoughts, staring at the sagging ceiling. He’d heard them. Damn him forever. He’d heard the sound and didn’t even go look.
He lay in the darkness, finished. The watch changed. The sun rose. The guild rats stirred, and he stared at the sagging ceiling, waiting for it to collapse on him like everything else. He couldn’t have moved if he wanted to.
He lay in the light. Children were shrieking, littles pulling at him, shouting something. Something about Badger. Questions. It was all words. Words were wind. Someone shook him, but he was far away.
It wasn’t until long after that that he woke. There was only one sound that could have brought him out of his trance: Rat, laughing.
Tingles shot across his skin and he sat upright. He still had the shiv. There was dried blood on the floor, but Azoth barely saw it. He stood and started walking toward the door.
That terrible laugh rang out again, and Azoth ran.
The moment he stepped through the door, out of the corner of his eye he saw the shadow of the doorframe elongate and snap forward. It was as fast as a trapdoor spider he’d once seen, and just as effective. He slammed into the shadow like he’d run into a wall. His head rang as he was pulled back into the deep shadows between the guild building and the ruin next to it.
“So eager for death, little one?”
Azoth couldn’t shake his head, couldn’t shake loose. The shadow had a hand like iron over his face. Slowly, he realized it was Master Blint.
“Five days, kid. Five days you had to kill him.” He was whispering in Azoth’s ear, the faintest hint of garlic and onions laced through his breath. In front of them, Rat was talking with the guild, laughing and making them laugh with him. Some of Azoth’s lizards were there, laughing too, hoping to escape Rat’s notice.
So it begins already. Whatever Azoth had accomplished was already coming apart. The rest of the lizards were gone. Doubtless they’d come crawling back later to see what had happened. Azoth couldn’t even be mad at them for it. In the Warrens, you did what you had to to survive. It wasn’t their failure; it was his. Blint was right: the bigs on either side of Rat were ready. Rat himself was ready. If Azoth had charged out there, he would have died. Or worse. All the time he’d had to plan, and he’d done nothing. He would have deserved that death.
“Calm now, kid?” Blint asked. “Good. Because I’m going to show you what your hesitation cost.”
Solon was ushered in to dinner by an old man with a stooped back and a smartly pressed uniform adorned with gold braid and the Gyre’s soaring white falcon on a field sable, which over the centuries had become barely recognizable as the gyrfalcon it was. A northern falcon. And not Khalidoran or even Lodricari, gyrfalcons were only found in the Freeze. So the Gyres are hardly more native to Cenaria than I am.
Dinner was set in the great hall, a strange choice to Solon’s mind. It wasn’t that the great hall wasn’t impressive— it was too much so. It must have been almost as large as Castle Cenaria’s own great hall, adorned with tapestries, banners, shields of long-dead enemies, enormous canvasses, statuary in marble and gold leaf, and a ceiling mural depicting a scene from the Alkestia. In the midst of such grandeur, the table was dwarfed to insignificance, though it was fifteen paces long.