Surely they’ll go searching when two men turn up missing?”
“I’d agree with you, Your Highness,” Yaya said. “But General Sareen doesn’t keep close tabs on his men. He’s more likely to accuse them of desertion than assume any of us had anything to do with it.”
Aketo wasn’t so certain, but they were both more qualified to know Throllo’s habits. “Do you have a count of how many soldiers are stationed here?”
“Seven hundred,” Dthazi and Yaya said at once.
Dthazi’s father and Yayazi’s mother were siblings, and the three young cousins had been attached at the hip growing up. When Dthazi took over his father’s place training the khimaer who wanted to learn to fight, he made it into a more formal force and tapped Yaya to lead beside him. Her bone-white antlers were decorated with tarnished gold rings connected by a spidery golden chain. A piece, Aketo knew, she’d inherited, like most of the jewelry here. The only khimaer with trinkets of significant value had family outside the Enclosure to send for such things.
“And how many of them come on these inspections?” Eva asked.
“A good hundred at least. If there have been more . . . violations of Throllo’s rules than usual, he sends more.”
Anali, massaging her temples, groaned. “You two are right, then. It’s too great an advantage.”
“We need some sort of plan to keep everyone in the Aerie safe until then. Just in case you’re wrong about Throllo searching for his men. I agree with Aketo,” Eva said, “we should evacuate tonight.”
Isa, who hadn’t spoken since the meeting began, surprised Dthazi by asking, “What if your forces went to the caves today? That way you could keep an eye on the steps up to the Aerie. Wouldn’t that give you some warning if they move up the inspection? And everyone else can follow over the next days.”
Dthazi exchanged a glance with Yaya. “That . . . could work.” If they saw Throllo’s men going up to the Aerie, they could cut them off. If they forced the soldiers to fight on the steps, they could cut them down easily.
They sat there for another hour ironing out the details. Eva and Isa eventually retreated from the discussion. Daischa strong-armed Isa into grinding grain with a mortar and pestle, while Eva disappeared entirely.
When Dthazi, Yaya, and Daischa left to spread the news of what happened and their plan, Aketo climbed up to his house. He would have to make his way back down to the caves by nightfall to see if Falun and Mateen had returned, but until then, he needed to sleep.
His home wasn’t much larger than the great room at his mother’s. Just a stove at the back, a table he’d purloined from an abandoned house in town, a nubby rug that had seen better days, and a pallet of quilts in one corner.
He inched across the ledge that was technically the roof of his mother’s house, and stepped inside.
Eva was inside, standing with her wings outstretched. They spanned half the length of the room, fading from gold near her shoulders to a deep luminous brown. The longest feathers fanned out like throwing knives. In one hand she held her sword and in the other that slim journal she’d been carrying around since they left Nbaltir.
Whenever she had a spare moment, and truthfully they had few, he found her poring over it. She slowly lowered and lifted her wings, creating a torrent of wind swirling around her. Aketo’s eyes traced the line of her body, the proud horns and short curls at her brow twined around them.
“What in Khimaerani’s name are you doing?” Aketo asked, ducking one of her wings. His hand brushed against an outstretched feather, and she jumped.
She lowered her sword, but her wings remained outstretched. “Is this a mistake? We only have a few days to prepare.”
“It’s not ideal. Luckily most of the planning will be left to my brother and Yaya,” Aketo said.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just hid during the inspection? We can attack another day.”
He hesitated. He agreed, and yet Dthazi had been right. Aketo trusted their skill would outclass the soldiers. They were quicker, stronger, and had real belief in their freedom behind them. But seven hundred soldiers, compared with their paltry two hundred, was too great a deficit for skill to overcome without getting creative. “We risk Throllo’s laws and his whims if we wait. What if, in a week, someone is caught breaking the curfew?”
“We were fools to go