message delivered to us twelve hours early. He’s telling us in the hopes that we’ll escape while we can.”
“Escape? Where?” Adena says before the realization dawns in her eyes. She meets Jeran’s bleak gaze. “You don’t mean—”
The Firstblade is trying to give us a head start to the warfront, buy us a night to travel there and cross into the heart of the Federation before the Senate sends troops to arrest us. But there is more in his message. He knows, in doing this, that his letter may be his final words to Jeran.
Eyes forward, my Deathdancer. He is giving us his blessing and bidding him farewell.
I look at my mother. We exchange a silent, knowing gaze. As a Striker, I have had a hundred moments that might have been the last time we see each other, but this time, I’m not just heading out with my patrols to face the monsters. This time we are the hunted, by ally and enemy.
Something in my mother’s eyes reminds me of the way she’d looked on the night we’d fled into Mara, that light of panic and desperation. I wait for her to tell me not to go, for me to argue it with her, but it never comes. She doesn’t flinch. She can see that it will do no good, because my mind is already made up.
“We’re going on this mission,” I tell the others. “We are going into the heart of the Federation. But we have to leave now. Tonight. Before they come for us.”
The rest of the table watches in silence as the reality sinks in for each of us. Even Mr. Oyano, who moments earlier had sneered at Red, now says nothing. I know, without speaking, that these Basean refugees will protect us and pretend that we never received such a letter, that they never saw us here tonight.
Finally, Jeran speaks. “To honor Mara, then.”
“Honor is a thankless thing,” Adena mutters. “They’ll hunt us in the morning, like we’re criminals.”
“Sometimes a crime is an act of heroism,” my mother answers quietly. She looks at me as she says it, and I know she is telling me she loves me.
I force my breathing to steady in order to keep my tears from spilling out. Her words ring around the table, silencing us all, and Adena lowers her eyes for a moment at the truth of it. I look at my mother and suddenly wish I hadn’t decided to go, that I didn’t think this was the only way to save us.
Red stands first. The waning fire highlights his towering figure. He nods at me, ready. I’m grateful that at least we’ve come here directly from the training arena, that we are wearing our gear and weapons. And that Adena has been carrying a pouch with vials of Red’s blood since our demonstration.
“My shop,” Adena breathes. “They’ll ransack it. My tools. I need them.”
I shake my head. “No time.”
“They’ll send soldiers after us,” Jeran says. “We need to cover most of our ground tonight.”
“I’ll gather as many provisions as I can.” I stand up. The night is not cold, but my hands are trembling. “We need to leave within the hour.”
21
There’s no fanfare for us this time, no crowds gathered on the sides of the streets to see us go. There is no Striker coat streaming from my back, and I don’t ride tall on the back of a horse.
Instead, we steal out of the shanties like thieves in the night, in the back of a Basean wagon driven by Decaine, as if bound for one of Mara’s smaller cities to try our luck in the shanties of Spiderfang or Reedhollow. We’ve all stripped off our Striker coats and removed the harnesses looping around our shoulders, taken off our conspicuous weapons and strapped them inside canvas bags instead. I shiver in my inner shirt. The only blades I still wear are the daggers inside my boots. I find myself keenly aware of Red’s body hot beside me, his legs bumping into mine with every jostle. Jeran and Adena sit across from us, their figures outlined by faint slivers of light from a slit in the canvas.
I don’t like feeling this unequipped when threatened. But we’re all still the deadliest fighters in the country. If they want to capture us, they’ll have some of their blood spilled first.
The wagon itself is made out of rusted steel, full of holes, and as it goes, it creaks and groans, the faint metallic scrapping