whom Sanjeet and Mayazatyl now barked commands. “Fall into cohorts! Man the war machines! Ammunition lines, up!”
Mayazatyl had recently designed the weapons outfitting the temple walls. The sleek cannons were powered by fire, but armed with balls of ice—frozen holy water, stored in chambers deep beneath the temple grounds. The Imperial Guard warriors, burly recruits from all over the empire, formed a chain, passing up ammunition to the warriors manning the cannons. With a crack, the first round ignited, and orbs of splintering ice collided with the flying beasts and hurled six to the ground.
Mayazatyl cheered and warriors roared in response, loading the second round. Then the ammunition line broke as clouds of flies dove for the warriors on the ground. My council tried to escort Dayo to safety, but crowds of screaming courtiers stampeded for the exits, creating a lethal jam. A Djbanti woman cried out in her native language as she was trampled on the ground, causing a Djbanti cannon warrior to turn and look. The cannon misfired, and the ball of ice sailed into a crowd of Nontish emissaries. One fell and did not get up.
“Fool,” screeched a Nontish cannon warrior, seizing the Djbanti warrior by the lapels. “You killed the ambassador!”
“I didn’t mean to,” hyperventilated the other. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Typical of you Djbanti! Lazy head in the clouds, never at your post—”
“Leave my people out of it,” another Djbanti warrior snarled, punching the Nontish man in the jaw.
“No,” Mayazatyl rasped. “No, no. This is not the time …”
“Man your stations,” Sanjeet boomed up at the fisticuffing warriors as they teetered precariously on the wall. “We’re in the middle of a battle! People are dying, you idiots; I said man your—”
Both warriors fell two stories to the ground. Then another swarm of beasts rose from the Breach.
The Imperial Guard warriors broke ranks. Instead of manning the cannons that might have saved us all, the panicked men and women scrambled to protect their own kinspeople. Warriors from Nyamba ignored shrieking wounded Spartians to help Nyamban courtiers. Moreyaoese warriors stepped over a bleeding child from Djabanti, ignoring him to help a woman dressed in Moreyao silks. Oluwani commoners, who had found cramped shelter behind upended chairs and tables, hissed away people from Nontes and Dhyrma seeking refuge. As the cannon fire stopped, the beasts wheeled overhead, and then dove.
I shrieked, adrenaline coursing through my veins as talons scooped up bodies and sunk into backs. Blood soaked through festival robes. I choked back bile, then spotted a small figure crouched beneath a stone table, flower crown drooping over eyes like forlorn moons.
Ye Eun.
“Leave me and find shelter,” Dayo hollered at our council, and then pointed at the mask on his chest. “For Am’s sake, I can’t die, remember? Protect yourselves!”
It was enough to break my trance. Pulling out of formation, I dove across the hellscape of bodies, beasts, and flies to join Ye Eun beneath her table. I pressed an arm around her trembling shoulders, and used the other to brandish my spear.
“It’s all right,” I rasped, trying to shield her from view of the Underworld beasts. “Don’t worry. We’re getting out of here.”
She did not move, limbs turned to stone as she watched a beast rip a man to pieces.
She said, “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”
“No,” I lied, gritting my teeth against the unfairness of it all. “Don’t think that, Ye Eun.”
Her tear-stained, intelligent features fixed slowly on mine. “You’re right,” she whispered. “None of this is my fault. It’s yours.”
My heart missed a beat.
“You were supposed to stop it.” Her bottom lip trembled, then hardened. “The Redemptors believed in you. You were supposed to change everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s no such thing as heroes, is there?” The girl spoke tonelessly to herself. She watched the teeming battleground, all at once, looking four times her years: innocence lost in the space of a breath. “Outcasts only have ourselves.”
Then she wrenched my arm off her shoulders and sprinted from beneath the table.
“Don’t—” I grabbed for her and missed, heart pounding with dread. “No. No. Ye Eun—”
But she had already cleared the length of the chamber, standing over the yawning blue mouth. The force of the miasma blew her hair around her face as she balled her small hands into fists. She looked back only once—a reproachful stare that shook my bones—before closing her eyes and stepping over the ledge.
The temple went quiet. A cry echoed across the stone, and I would later realize it was mine. The abiku beasts had