Page 85

The window shuddered against my forehead.

I frowned at it, pressed my fingers to it as it shuddered again. It was minute. The smallest of disruptions. It wouldn’t have woken any who slept in their beds, or indeed, any who did not at that moment have their face mashed to the glass.

Over Main Street, the lamps on their wires trembled.

I opened the window, impervious to the icy draught, leaned my head out as far as I dared, looked one way, and then the other.

In my years of hiding, I’d learned this—war had an air to it. I felt it now. Tasted the copper on my tongue before the blood flowed. Birds fled their gutter perches, swarmed into the night.

Too late , I thought. Too fucking late.

My heart stuttered. Patrick… where was he?

I strained my sights to the hills as though I might find him there, his men preparing a defense as the army marched over them.

But the hills were shrouded in darkness. No firelight or sparks flashed in the dark. The hills did not shake.

But Kenton did. The lanterns swung precariously now, with no wind to blow them.

Then, there was a burst of sound.

Not from the hills.

Not from the outside of Kenton, but from within.

Between the rooftops, an exquisite cloud of fire unfurled. A burgeoning sun.

I felt its heat even from this distance, heard the first screams swallow the air.

My stomach revolted. “No.”

And then I ran. I flew down flights of stairs as the doors flung open, occupants within flooding out as I did, cascading down the landings and out the swinging door and through the pub.

I pushed out onto Main Street as a hundred others did. The men were half-dressed and armed with long-barreled guns, the women in nightgowns with children on both arms. Eyes wide with confusion swept to the dissipating cloud in the sky.

Finally, the siren whirred to life.

A large hand buckled my shoulder.

Gunner panted at my side, pulling a shirt over his head with one hand, a shotgun in his other. “Gas explosion,” he said. “Go back inside.” He yelled the same thing to those who stood gawking in the street.

“No,” I said. Stopping him with my hand on his wrist. “Listen.”

And then he heard what I did. The noises grew with alarming momentum. Eddies of glass breaking, a succession of short blasts, women screaming, the roar of fire.

And Gunner’s face went slack. “Lord almighty,” he breathed. His feet carried him forward as though of their own accord, toward all that glowing red. He gathered speed, and I chased him. “The Lords’ Army!” I shouted to him. And he stopped as though he’d been shot.

“GET TO THE TUNNELS! THE BUNKERS!” he bellowed, his voice racketing up the brick facades and shaking the windows.

“ALL THOSE ABLE WITH ME!” he roared. He threw the butt of his gun into every doorway he passed, barely pausing in his sprint.

He pointed the barrel to the sky and fired it twice.

Windows flew open all around, residents came screaming into the street.

“GET TO THE TUNNELS!” he shouted. “WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”

The following moments would become murky in my memory.

Just flashes of noise and frantic men and women with their wailing charges.

Crafters disappeared through grates in the ground and threw all manner of weaponry onto the cobbles.

Bullets rolled into the gutters. Red-faced men in their trunks and half-buttoned shirts sprinted to help.

Women emerged from the swarm with guns slung over their shoulders.

And I moved with the current, watching the sky turn blood red.

They didn’t stop until they reached a hidden alley to the square, the shadows protecting them. Gunner was at the spearhead. “Hold,” he called back to the rest, and the message was passed down the line.

The rooftops of the square burned. Every window had burst with the force of the flames that billowed out. Glass splintered underfoot.

Only a handful of establishments remained untouched, and one of them was Margarite’s Modern Ladies, Seamstress Extraordinaire.

Floods of army men spilled from its doors, tore toward the arch, filtering throughout the entire town.

Only three stood still in the square, wearing long, ink-blue robes.

A woman and two men, fire jumping from their hands into the air.

A man nearby lay on his back, his skin blackened, a pistol discarded on the cobbles.

Before him, a woman screamed. She wore a dressing robe.

Her hair was still pinned into coils. She knelt beside him and sobbed.

A passing soldier in Artisan blue stepped out of his line. He lifted his gun in the woman’s direction and fired.

Gunner turned. He found me with my back pressed to the brickwork and pushed men out of his way to approach me.

And then his hand closed around my throat, and my feet left the ground. His breath fogged my face and his eyes were wild.

I couldn’t breathe. His fingers curled into the sides of my neck.

“ Did you do this? ” he seethed.

I tried to shake my head. My feet kicked wildly. “No.”

“Where’s my brother?” he demanded, voice quaking. He loosened his grip enough to let me fall, to let air flood my lungs again. “He didn’t come back—”

A sudden volley of bullets. A racket of crumbling brick and clanging pipes. A man among the sea of infantrymen in the square pointed his rifle down into our shadows. He shouted for his comrades, gesturing wildly, eyes gleaming at the sight of us pressed between buildings.

“Fuck,” Gunner said, and he gave me one last fleeting, murderous glance. “GO!” he bellowed. “OPEN FIRE!”

And the Crafters in the shadows flooded out, throwing their grenades and pointing their rifles into that sea of ink.

And Gunner turned back to me. He cocked his pistol.

“Gunner, no.” My hands trembled as I rose them in surrender. “Let me help ,” I said. “I can stop this.”

“That ain’t for me to decide,” he grunted, something mournful in his eyes, and the butt of his pistol collided with my temple.

I heard the cap of a grate sliding, Gunner’s grunts as he lowered me into the bunker beneath. Felt the darkness surround me.

And then there was nothing at all.