to death.
Daemon stashed away his bo and shut out the feeling of tiny legs crawling all over him. He grabbed at the silk scarves on the racks near him and flung them like nets, taking swathes of wasps with them. Then he snatched a tarp from the top of a fallen stall and threw that at the wasps too. Finally, he hurled a pot full of simmering miso soup, dousing the insects’ wings so they could no longer fly.
“This way,” he yelled to the terrified marketplace. He waved his arms, directing them toward the space temporarily free of wasps.
The people closest heard him and began to run. The rest followed. The girl from the comb stall paused for a second before him, her face streaked with tears. She pecked him on the cheek, then fled out of the market.
Daemon stood a little taller. But he couldn’t bask in the pride of doing his job, not when Sora was fighting something as formidable and unknown as a ryuu.
He glanced over his shoulder to find her. He couldn’t see her. But there was no fear in their gemina bond, just intense focus as pointed as a hunter’s arrow, searching for her prey.
The stalls in the marketplace were in disarray. Tables broken down the middle. Scarves and dumplings and signs all trampled together in the mud. But the people were gone, and miraculously, no one lay dead on the ground. Daemon heaved a sigh of relief.
It was short-lived, however, because Sora was still out there. He had to find her to help against the insect ryuu.
Daemon crept as quietly as possible over broken bowls and smashed cockroach carcasses, weaving in and out of the collapsed stalls.
But there was no sign of the ryuu. Or of Sora.
His heart pounded and he quickened his pace through the market. “Sora!” he whispered loudly. He knew he shouldn’t. If she were hiding from the ryuu, it could give her away. But fear for her overrode Daemon’s intuition.
She burst through the eastern exit of the marketplace.
“Sora!” He leaped over the destruction around him and ran to her. “You’re all right!”
“I chased him,” she said, eyes darting back in the direction from which she’d come. Her words were ragged as she tried to catch her breath while talking. “I think the ryuu were tearing through the city, looking for taigas.” She gulped for more air. “But bug boy didn’t notice us, because we were dressed like ordinary shoppers. After he wreaked havoc here, he headed toward the harbor.”
“The Society command post,” Daemon said, understanding sinking in his stomach like an anchor.
“We have to help,” Sora said.
Daemon began to run. Sora matched him stride for stride.
Now he would get the chance to fight.
Chapter Twenty-One
The air at the port hung heavy with the tang of iron, snarled together with the brine of the sea. The ships creaked and pulled at their lines. Usually, there would be men all over the docks, cleaning ships, unloading whales for blubber, bringing sails down to patch their tears. But the harbor was empty now, except for the fifty-some taigas who stood on the black-tiled roof of the Society building, guarded by at least two dozen ryuu.
Sora lunged in the direction of the taigas’ building, but Daemon grabbed her arm and pulled her into the shadow of the harbormaster’s shanty.
“They’re prisoners. We have to do something,” Sora said, trying to step toward the outpost again.
He held her fast. “No. If we get caught, we’re no good to the Society or to Kichona.”
“So we just stand here and let the ryuu execute our own warriors?”
“I know you want to be the best taiga you can be, but do you think running in and getting yourself killed is the way to achieve that? Because that’s what will happen if we try to storm the roof, Sora.” He forced her to look him in the eyes. “There are close to thirty ryuu up there, and the rest are swarming around here somewhere. You saw what happened in the marketplace. The magic of one ryuu can take out at least twenty of us, probably a lot more.”
Sora didn’t like it, but Daemon had a point. Taigas were trained to give their lives for the greater good, and sometimes that meant allowing others to die. Yet Sora couldn’t stomach just watching the execution of the taigas on the roof.
“I won’t believe there’s nothing we can do,” she said. “We have to at least try to help.”
A grim smile caught the corner