answering her call. Nina was conscious of hands on her, chains being lashed around her wrists, but the cold was deeper now, a fast-flowing winter river, black rapids jagged with broken ice.
Nina heard screaming, the rattle of gunfire, and then the twist of metal. The hands on her loosened, and the chains hit the cobblestones with an almost musical jangle. Nina drew her arms toward her, plunging further into the cold of the river.
“What the hell,” said Eamon, turning toward the guardhouse. “What the hell.”
The Dime Lions were backing up now, mission forgotten, terror on their faces, and Nina could see exactly why. A line of people were pushing on the fence, rocking it on its posts. Some were old, some young, but all of them were beautiful—cheeks flushed, lips rosy, hair bright with shine and moving in waves around their faces with the gentle sway of something that grew underwater. They were lovely and they were horrible, because while some of them bore no signs of injury, one had brown blood and vomit splashed all over her dress, another bore a puncture wound gone black with decay. Two were naked and one had a deep, wide gash across her stomach, the plump pink skin falling forward in a flap. All of their eyes shone black, the glassy slate of winter water.
Nina felt a wave of nausea overtake her. She felt strange and a little shameful, as if she was looking into a window she had no right to peek through. But she was out of options. And the truth was, she did not want to stop. She flexed her fingers.
The fence crashed forward in a harsh screech of tearing metal. The Dime Lions opened fire, but the corpses kept coming, without interest or fear.
“It’s her!” Eamon screamed, stumbling backward, falling, dragging himself onto his knees as his men fled into the night. “They’re coming for the Grisha bitch!”
“Bet you’re wishing we’d had that talk now,” Nina growled. But she didn’t care about the Dime Lions.
She looked up. Inej was still on the wire, but the girl in white was on the roof of the second silo and was reaching for the clamp.
The net , she demanded. Now. The corpses moved in a blurry burst of speed, rushing forward, then suddenly halting, as if awaiting instruction. She gathered her concentration and willed them to obey, shoving all her strength and life into their bodies. In seconds they had the net in their hands, and they were running, so fast Nina could not track them.
The high wire went slack. Inej fell. Nina screamed.
Inej’s body struck the net, bounced high, struck the net again.
Nina ran to her. “Inej!”
Her body lay in the center of the net, pocked by wicked silver stars, blood oozing from the wounds.
Set her down , Nina commanded, and the corpses obeyed, lowering the net to the paving stones. Nina stumbled to Inej’s side and went to her knees. “Inej?”
Inej threw her arms around Nina.
“Never, ever do that again,” Nina sobbed.
“A net?” said a merry voice. “That seems unfair.”
Inej stiffened. The girl in white had reached the bottom of the second silo and was striding toward them.
Nina’s arms shot out and the corpses stepped in front of her and Inej. “You sure you want this fight, snowflake?”
The girl narrowed her beautiful eyes. “I bested you,” she said to Inej. “You know I did.”
“You had a good night,” Inej replied, but her voice sounded weak as worn thread.
The girl looked at the army of decaying bodies arrayed before her, appeared to assess her odds. She bowed. “We’ll meet again, Wraith.” She turned in the direction Eamon and the rest of the Dime Lions had fled, vaulted over the remnants of the fence, and was gone.
“Someone likes drama,” Nina said. “I mean really, who wears white to a knife fight?”
“Dunyasha, the White Blade of something or other. She really wants to kill me. Possibly everyone.”
“Can you walk?”
Inej nodded, though her face looked ashen. “Nina, are these people … are they dead?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds creepy.”
“But you didn’t use—”
“No. No parem . I don’t know what this is.”
“Can Grisha even—”
“I don’t know.” Now that the fear of the ambush and Inej’s fall were abating, she felt a kind of disgust. What had she just done? What had she tampered with?
Nina remembered asking one of her teachers at the Little Palace where Grisha power came from. She’d been little more than a child then, awed by the older Grisha