Night Spinner (Night Spinner #1) - Addie Thorley Page 0,85

truth about the Protected Territories and the Imperial Army. Afraid of my own shadow.”

Across the field, a light winks on and off, ordinary enough to look like a gust of wind or a clumsy hand—but we know better.

Our approach at this camp is much different than the first; with the high fortress walls, I can’t simply slip into the encampment and dodge from tent to tent. Thankfully, Kartok devised a different plan.

I wrap the darkness around us like a thick wool shawl and we creep across the barren field to the wall. Kartok reaches into his cloak and extracts a handful of long steel bolts and a tiny crossbow that he straps to his wrist. When the bells in the watchtower toll the hour, Kartok shoots a bolt into the wood at knee level and then another slightly higher. Deft as an acrobat, and, in perfect rhythm with the clanging bells, he drives handholds and footholds into the wall and pulls himself up, higher and higher until he settles into the valley between two sharp parapets, just as the bells fall silent.

My mouth drops open as he lashes coils of rope to the parapets. I no longer have any trouble picturing him climbing out of the Zemyan prison pit.

He squints down at me expectantly, which is when I remember I’m more than just a spectator on this mission. Using his handholds and footholds, I carefully pull myself up to the top of the wall. It takes me five times longer than Kartok, and I don’t even have to place the bolts.

Shaky and out of breath, I swing into the parapet beside him and whisper a quick prayer to the Lady of the Sky, partly in thanks, but mostly for additional help; the treacherous climb was the easy part.

Below, in the fort, there are rows and rows of barracks surrounding a stone watchtower in the center. At the top of the tower, alongside the bells, is a massive rotating lamp that illuminates sections of the camp at random. “You failed to mention there was a spotlight,” I snap at Kartok.

“I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

“Of course it’s a problem! My darkness only blends in if it’s dark.”

Our plan seemed simple enough when Kartok suggested it. We would climb to the top of the wall, where I would create a long tunnel of darkness that extended to the ground and into the center of camp. Inside the tunnel, Kartok would secure ropes to the wall for the recruits to climb out of the fort. Then, at our signal, which the recruits would know thanks to coded instructions Kartok hid in a ration shipment the day before, they would sneak from their beds, slip into the tunnel, follow it to the wall, and scale the ropes, completely unseen.

Unless that skies-forsaken light ruins everything.

“Arranging the threads of night into a tunnel large enough, and stable enough, for people to pass through will take all of my strength and concentration,” I murmur. “But now I also have to avoid and deflect the spotlight.”

“You’ll find a way,” Kartok says, watching the swinging beam of light.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then the warriors we’ve been sent to rescue will perish like the rest.” He nods to a dark heap in the far corner of the compound. At first it looks like a trash mound or manure pile, but the longer I study it, the more details come into focus: limp hands and twisted arms, blank faces and bloody hair.

A scream burns up my throat, and I slap my hand over my lips to contain it. There are so many bodies, the empire isn’t even attempting to bury them.

“No pressure.” Kartok claps me on the back.

I want to jab my elbow into his side. In addition to the spotlight, guards pace back and forth between the barracks, like they did at the first encampment. I’m so nauseous and dizzy, I nearly tumble from my perch. This was supposed to be simpler than leading a long, unruly line of recruits. And safer.

Help me, I beg the Lady of the Sky again. Then I suck in three deep breaths, form my hands into a circle, and bring them to my lips. When I blow, whorls of night funnel out from my hands, forming a long, spiraling tube that I nudge down the wall. Once it reaches the ground, I ease the tunnel forward one excruciating foot-length at a time so I can quickly halt or change directions when the skies-forsaken