Page 27 of Last of Her Name

“Alexandrine.”

“Really? I was just—” I cut short when I spot a pair of local Green Knight peacekeepers strolling our way. The sight of those uniforms is so achingly familiar, reminding me of all my friends on the force back home. But these knights are no friends of mine.

“Something wrong?” asks the stranger.

“No, nothing …” I turn around, hiding my face in case the knights look this way.

The eeda notices my evasive behavior and narrows her eyes. Panicking, I slip away before she can put two and two together, hoping my violet hair is enough to fool her. The stranger calls out, but his voice is lost in the noise of the street.

I spot a man walking with a pole across his shoulders. Wriggling eels hanging along its length create a useful curtain. I duck in front of him, letting him shield me from the knights until I can dart into the junk shop where Pol is still digging through piles of parts.

“Nothing,” Pol growls when I tug at him. “Not a single blazing—”

“We’ve got trouble,” I say.

“Maybe if we got aboard a ship, even just a fishing trawler with an old radio. We could—”

“Pol!”

I drag him out of the stall just as the knights at the fare booth look our way. The eeda is leaning across her counter, pointing right at me.

Pol curses.

We break into a run, pelting along the barge and leaping to the first quay we see, which crooks across the water to an aquaculture farm. We bust through glass doors into a massive floating greenhouse, past startled botanists bent above rows of plants.

“Sorry!” I shout over my shoulder as we trample over their soil beds. They curse at us, then make way for the knights. We break through the back door and onto another quay, this one taking us into a residential area. Rusty metal apartments are stacked five and six blocks high, their walls seeming to dance where wind turbines spin, drawing power from the air. The creaking, whirring sound fills our ears as we run. Children shriek and laugh as we fly past, jeering at the knights.

My lungs burn from the salt air, but Pol pulls me relentlessly onward. His hat has flown off; his horns glint in the sunlight. This quay seems endless, leaving us exposed for too long. We have no choice but to keep running. I can only hope that their guns aren’t set to kill.

We finally reach the next platform—a junkyard, by the look of it, with scrap metal in heaping mounds all around us. Pol turns the first corner, but we only find ourselves in a dead end.

“Back, back!” he shouts, and we spin, only to see it’s too late. The knights have us pinned.

Pol draws his gun. “Don’t come any closer!” he warns.

“Stacia Androva! Appollo Androsthenes! You are wanted on charges of terrorism, murder, and illegally entering Sapphine. Come quietly, and you’ll have a chance at trial. Resist, and we’ll bring in your bodies.”

Pol and I stand shoulder to shoulder, completely out of options. His free hand finds mine and squeezes it.

Never in a million light-years would I have thought I’d die in some stinking Sapphine junkyard with Pol Androsthenes. It’s so ludicrous that I find myself, absurdly, wanting to laugh. But fear twists in me like a cold eel.

He glances at me. “Stay here.”

“What—”

He raises his gun and fires while running headlong at the pack of knights and yelling at the top of his lungs. They shoot back, a barrage of Prismic energy rays slicing the air. I duck behind a rusty generator for cover, and when I look up again, the gunfire has stopped—thanks to Pol.

He’s in their midst, ducking and grabbing, twisting and kicking. I’ve trained with Pol and his dad most of my life, learning self-defense techniques, but I’ve never seen him like this. He’s unstoppable. He knocks a knight’s gun away, then pulls the man’s arm, using him as a shield to take the pulse from another weapon. Then he drops the unconscious peacekeeper and lunges at the shooter, while managing to kick the legs out from another. The knights shout to cease fire so they don’t hit more of their own, and I spot one activating the comm on his helmet to call for backup.

I sprint for him.

“—suspects in Gamma Sector, Karn’s Junk Barge—” He cuts short when the blade of my hand chops his throat. Choking, he drops to his knees, and with my good leg, I plant a roundhouse kick to his temple, laying him out cold.

When I look up, fists still on guard, Pol is standing surrounded by the rest of the knights, all unconscious or groaning.

“Nice hit,” he says. “You all right?”

I nod, hiding the pain shooting through my wounded leg. He’s breathing hard, but he’s unhurt. Something warm and strange spreads through me as I look at Pol, standing there with his hair wild around his horns and his foot still pressing an unconscious knight to the ground. I realize—with a shock—that it’s a feeling ofawe.