tree to tree. He got to within forty feet of the tall oak before he broke cover, stepping forward loudly.
“Crispin,” he shouted up at the platform. “Give the signal—tell Simon he’s got visitors.”
The watchman hid his surprise well, turning swiftly and notching an arrow to his bow.
“Stand where you are,” he shouted. From where we stood, looking up, his face was bisected by the bow, one eye squinting tight.
Piper gave him a wave, turning his back to the oak as he marched off toward the quarry’s mouth.
“Stand where you are,” called the man again. He drew back the arrow farther, the bowstring quivering. “You’re not in charge anymore.”
“If I was,” Piper said, “you’d be whipped for not spotting us earlier.”
Zoe had caught up with Piper now, the two of them striding toward the quarry with the same long gait. She called back to the sentry: “And tell your friend in the hay bale to pick a less flammable spot next time. If I were a Council soldier with an arrow and matches, he’d be nicely cooked by now.”
Crispin moved quickly, and my body tensed, braced for the whirr of the arrow, a sound that had impaled my dreams ever since the attack on the island. Instead, Crispin dropped the bow and brought both hands to his mouth, the better to amplify his whistle. Three long low notes, repeated—a rough approximation of a barred owl. An answering whistle came from the quarry below.
The path meandered between the clay pits and the mounds of earth, the collapsed walls on the southern side becoming more menacing as we walked deeper into the quarry. The moonlight barely penetrated here, and twice I slipped in the wet clay. The guards emerged one by one from among the pits and rubble heaps, and ran toward us. I recognized the three-armed silhouette of Simon in the lead, an ax in one of his hands. But as he drew close enough for me to see his face, he began to look less like the man I remembered. I could make out no obvious injury from the battle on the island, but something had happened to transform him. In the moonlight his face was gray and puffy. Where he used to move with a soldier’s vigor, now he walked with a slow determination, as if against a tide.
Whispering broke out among his guards as they assembled around us. Then they saluted. At first I thought they were saluting Piper, as they used to do on the island. But it wasn’t him they were looking at, as they all raised their hands to their foreheads. It was Sally, limping beside me, Xander leaning on her arm. If she noticed the guards’ response to her, she didn’t acknowledge it.
Simon stopped a few feet from where we stood. The others, six or seven of them, fanned around us. There were no more salutes now. They were all armed; the woman nearest to me had a short sword in her hand. She was close enough that I could see the dent on the blade, where another sword had left a snarl in the steel’s edge.
Simon stepped forward.
“It’s just the five of you?” He addressed Piper.
Piper nodded. “We have important information that you’ll need.”
“You’ve come to tell me what to do next?” Simon said.
Sally sighed. “I brought him here, Simon. Hear him out.”
“Does Sally know what you did?” Simon said to Piper. “Does she know about the island?” He was staring at me now. I had become a shorthand for a massacre. A single glance at me was loaded with meaning. Heavy with blood.
“She knows,” said Piper. He didn’t break his gaze, and his jaw didn’t retreat from its usual jut.
Sally spoke impatiently. “Don’t make this into a pissing contest. This fight’s going to need us all.”
Simon’s gaze was fixed on Piper. There was only a foot or two between them. I’d seen them together many times on the island, and seen them debating heatedly, but never like this. The space between them was stacked with the island’s dead. The air was thick with remembered screams, and the sound of arrows in flesh.
“He’s a traitor,” muttered one of the men beside Simon.
“Thinks he can walk back in here, after what he did?” added the woman beside him.
We were completely encircled. Zoe stood with her hands on her hips; it looked casual enough, but I knew how quickly she could dispatch death from the knives at her belt. We were outnumbered here, though. I looked