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CHAPTER

Seventy-Two

N EEMA WAS STARING at the Dragon in fear and wonder when she felt a sharp, insistent tug on her tunic.

Cain, right behind her. Flamboyant coat removed, eyepatch gone. Let’s go. Now.

Neema circled Tala’s wrist and they crept away, past the back of the throne, through the smashed remnants of the window, out into the courtyard.

No one saw them leave. They were too busy watching the Guardian of Death writhing and screaming and spewing golden flames above their heads. As distractions went, it was exceptional.

“I’m reviewing my belief in the Eight,” Cain said, and scissored neatly through the window.

Vabras had done him a favour, knocking the Fox out cold. Cain had come round almost immediately, back in control again. His training had warned him to lie still, until the right moment presented itself. The right moment turning out to be the Last Return of the Eight.

In the courtyard, Tala was looking back into the throne room, trying to make sense of what had just happened. From here she had a direct view of the Ox, sealed in its painting. “We have to warn people.”

“And tell them what, exactly?” Cain asked, but she was already running off.

“Ox palace,” Neema guessed. They were already moving in the opposite direction—northwards into the wilderness garden. In the day, this was a pleasing, shaded tangle of trees and bushes and winding, natural pathways. At night it was a hazard, with snatching brambles and exposed roots, and swarms of mosquitoes. It was almost pitch black, the moon struggling to reach through the thick weave of branches.

“We need to get off the island,” Neema said, stumbling and correcting herself. “I’ve hidden a pack near my old lodgings.”

“Commendably forward-thinking.”

She stopped and cupped his face. She could barely make him out. “I thought I’d lost you. It really is you , isn’t it?”

“As far as I can tell.”

They held each other in the dark. “We don’t have time for this,” Cain said, and held her a bit longer.

The wilderness garden straggled to an end, opening on to a wider path, which would lead them to the Hound palace. “There’s a service path—”

Cain stepped in front of her as three Hounds appeared, running straight at them. He punched the first one in the stomach, stole her dagger, slashed it along her friend’s calf, elbowed the third in the throat. A couple of sharp kicks and a rib-cracking punch and it was over.

He tucked the dagger in his belt. “You were saying?”

The service path followed a tree-lined ridge, along the eastern edge of the Hound palace. There was a lot of activity going on in the yard below, guards rushing back and forth, officers shouting commands under torchlight.

Neema tracked a young Samran recruit as he hurried out from the prison block and… “Shit!”

“What?” Cain had missed it.

The recruit had walked straight up behind one of the palace guards and slit his throat. No warning, nothing. “That man there, he—”

“ Shit! ” Cain hissed.

Because it wasn’t just one recruit, one victim. In the yard, people were falling to the ground. One here, one there. Then another. Senior commander. Young sergeant. A blade to the throat, a blade to the heart, and they were gone. Fifteen Hounds, bleeding out on the cobbled yard. Fast, cold-blooded, efficient.

Neema pressed a hand to her mouth. Vabras. He’d ordered this. On his own people.

“A purge,” Cain said. “Neema. If they’ll do this to the Hounds…”

A deep boom, far away. The ground trembled softly beneath their feet.

Cain stepped out from the tree line, to get a better view.

She grabbed his shirt, bundling it in her fist as she tried to drag him back, but he just stood there, frozen to the spot. Giving up, she joined him.

The island was ablaze with light. Lanterns and torches along the Grand Canal, beacons lit along the perimeter walls and main paths. Lights in the palace windows. The gleam of the storm-damaged temple dome in the moonlight.

And far in the distance, flames rising in the darkness.

A second boom. More flames. “The Fox palace,” she said.

Cain was already running.