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“I haven’t seen them.”

“But I sent them here.”

Kato pushed her forward. “Worry less about them, more about yourself. Now get—”

Shouts rose from the distant edge of the crowd. Kato’s gaze shot towards the sound. “Shit.”

The Weave shuddered. Taly felt it like an imperceptible rumble beneath her feet.

“Okay, listen to me, furball,” Kato snapped to Calcifer. “Go get help. Find the old man, my brother, the fucking pyro. I don’t care—just get them here.”

Calcifer chirped his acknowledgement, then vanished, fading effortlessly between the shifting threads of the Weave.

Kato turned to Taly next, grabbing her as he rushed for the door. “Hide her,” he hissed, shoving her toward someone in the crowd.

Hands pulled at her—hundreds of hands all working as one to drag her back through the doors of the Swap and deeper into the room.

Don’t worry, they said as they passed her. Around her, Fey and Shardless stood shoulder to shoulder. When Taly looked into their faces, she saw no hatred, no fear. Just solid, unyielding determination.

She’d protected them. Now, they were doing the same.

She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat and couldn’t.

Over the din of the crowd, the metallic clank of armor cut through from outside. Everyone around her went still, eyes dropping.

There was only one thing that could instill such fear in the span of a heartbeat. Just one.

At the front of the room, Kato shouted for people to move aside as he and others tried to close the doors. Beyond them, gold bled into the horizon as the sun continued to rise over the city. The blown apart, half-melted corpses of harpies littered the courtyard, a garish tableau of death. But marching through the swarming and buzzing of flies, invisible save for the telltale ripple of the glamour…

The tip of a sword appeared out of nothing to press against Kato’s throat. He went very, very still.

“Away from the doors,” said a smooth, masculine voice. Kato raised his hands and took a step back, the crowd moving with him.

The glamour dissolved, revealing a man in polished black armor. Beneath a crimson hood, red eyes peered from within the glamoured shadows obscuring his face. “I have no interest in starting a war with Ghislain, princeling.”

Kato smirked despite the blade at his throat. “You certainly have an odd way of showing it.”

“Give us the time mage.”

Kato drawled, “That’s going to be a little hard considering they’re all dead.”

People pressed in closer around her. The air felt muggy and warm and smelled of unwashed bodies. Taly kept her eyes down as the Sanctifier scanned the crowd.

“I know she’s here,” he said. “We saw her when she fell. She would’ve landed nearby.”

Kato smirked. “So, let me get this straight—you see a time mage save your sorry ass, and your first instinct is to run overhere and try to kill her? You sure have a funny way of saying thank-you.”

“Gratitude is irrelevant. Time mages are a blight, and my job is to rid the world of them.”

Kato swallowed against the blade, a drip of blood escaping from beneath it. “This is a shelter. A place of safety. The rules of Aegis apply.”

Five more Sanctifiers stood behind the first, weapons drawn, formation tight. The one in front wasn’t the biggest, but the others gave him space.

“We have a duty,” he said, quiet and smug—the way weak men always were when they had a weapon and an audience.

“Your duty ends at the line of this door,” Kato said firmly. “Go. Or I swear to you I will use every resource at my disposal, the full might of Ghislain, to make you suffer.”

The Sanctifier laughed. “Your family is worlds away, and so is theirmight, princeling. You have no power here. Move aside.”