He glanced over his shoulder to find her. He couldn’t see her. But there was no fear in their gemina bond, just intense focus as pointed as a hunter’s arrow, searching for her prey.
The stalls in the marketplace were in disarray. Tables broken down the middle. Scarves and dumplings and signs all trampled together in the mud. But the people were gone, and miraculously, no one lay dead on the ground. Daemon heaved a sigh of relief.
It was short-lived, however, because Sora was still out there. He had to find her to help against the insect ryuu.
Daemon crept as quietly as possible over broken bowls and smashed cockroach carcasses, weaving in and out of the collapsed stalls.
But there was no sign of the ryuu. Or of Sora.
His heart pounded and he quickened his pace through the market. “Sora!” he whispered loudly. He knew he shouldn’t. If she were hiding from the ryuu, it could give her away. But fear for her overrode Daemon’s intuition.
She burst through the eastern exit of the marketplace.
“Sora!” He leaped over the destruction around him and ran to her. “You’re all right!”
“I chased him,” she said, eyes darting back in the direction from which she’d come. Her words were ragged as she tried to catch her breath while talking. “I think the ryuu were tearing through the city, looking for taigas.” She gulped for more air. “But bug boy didn’t notice us, because we were dressed like ordinary shoppers. After he wreaked havoc here, he headed toward the harbor.”
“The Society command post,” Daemon said, understanding sinking in his stomach like an anchor.
“We have to help,” Sora said.
Daemon began to run. Sora matched him stride for stride.
Now he would get the chance to fight.
Chapter Twenty-One
The air at the port hung heavy with the tang of iron, snarled together with the brine of the sea. The ships creaked and pulled at their lines. Usually, there would be men all over the docks, cleaning ships, unloading whales for blubber, bringing sails down to patch their tears. But the harbor was empty now, except for the fifty-some taigas who stood on the black-tiled roof of the Society building, guarded by at least two dozen ryuu.
Sora lunged in the direction of the taigas’ building, but Daemon grabbed her arm and pulled her into the shadow of the harbormaster’s shanty.
“They’re prisoners. We have to do something,” Sora said, trying to step toward the outpost again.
He held her fast. “No. If we get caught, we’re no good to the Society or to Kichona.”
“So we just stand here and let the ryuu execute our own warriors?”
“I know you want to be the best taiga you can be, but do you think running in and getting yourself killed is the way to achieve that? Because that’s what will happen if we try to storm the roof, Sora.” He forced her to look him in the eyes. “There are close to thirty ryuu up there, and the rest are swarming around here somewhere. You saw what happened in the marketplace. The magic of one ryuu can take out at least twenty of us, probably a lot more.”
Sora didn’t like it, but Daemon had a point. Taigas were trained to give their lives for the greater good, and sometimes that meant allowing others to die. Yet Sora couldn’t stomach just watching the execution of the taigas on the roof.
“I won’t believe there’s nothing we can do,” she said. “We have to at least try to help.”
A grim smile caught the corner of Daemon’s mouth. “Stubbornness really does run through your veins. All right, then, what’s the plan?”
Sora heaved a sigh of relief that he was willing to do this with her. Of course, she’d known, mostly, that he would—Daemon would be loyal to the end.
I just hope this isn’t the end, she thought.
She pointed at the alley next to the taiga command building. “We dart in there and use gecko spells to scale the wall. We’ll coordinate our timing to spring onto the roof. If we surprise the ryuu, it will buy us a little time to take more of them out and allow the taiga warriors to also join the fight.”
Daemon looked from where they stood against the harbormaster’s shanty to the alley. They’d be exposed while they ran across the docks to the alley. A moment later, he said, “All right.”
She nodded. They checked their weapons, making sure they were where they were supposed to be and easily accessible, and cast moth spells to dampen their whispers. Then they prepared to cross the pier to the alley.
Daemon watched the ryuu on the roof. Most were turned toward the taigas in the center, but a few patrolled the edges of the building. Sora waited impatiently, itching to sprint.
Suddenly, the wind began to shriek. Dust and rocks and leaves kicked up from the ground. Sora and Daemon shielded their eyes as the wind blew harder.
“All hail Prince Gin,” a voice like a frigid breeze said. Goose bumps prickled on Sora’s skin.
A moment later, a violent tornado tore down the length of the pier, ripping up boards and tearing out posts. A ryuu spun in the center, powering the storm.
But at the top, Prince Gin sat as calmly as if riding in a palanquin.
The tornado paused right in front of the Society building, then shot upward to the roof.
“Now!” Daemon said, lunging out toward the alley, using the noise and chaos of the dust storm for cover.
Sora didn’t wait to follow. She darted out behind him, and a few seconds later, she plastered herself against the black-walled side of the alley, along the taigas’ building.
“What in Luna’s name was that tornado?” Daemon whispered.
“Another ryuu. Come on, we need to climb.”
Sora splayed her fingers into a gecko mudra, with precisely five-eighths of an inch between each finger. She quietly chanted the spell that would allow her to stick to the wall as she climbed.
Next to her, Daemon did the same thing, although it took him several attempts at spreading his fingers, whispering the spell, shaking out his hands when he’d failed, and starting again. He got it on the fourth attempt. His embarrassment at his magical shortcomings again manifested itself like a cringe through their gemina bond, their connection actually contracting.
“We can do this,” Sora whispered. “I believe in you. In us.”
He sighed in frustration but nodded.
They began to scale the wall, the tips of their fingers like suction cups.
Before they reached the top, the noise and wind from the tornado disappeared as violently as it had come, its fury replaced by a sudden vacuum of movement and sound.
The taiga warriors above gasped.
“It can’t be,” a woman said. “You died during the Blood Rift.”
Prince Gin laughed, but it was joyful, not condescending at all. “I’m alive and well, and grateful for it,” he said. “My taiga brothers and sisters, how I have missed you and Kichona. Not a day has passed in ten years when I didn’t think of you. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be home.”
“I’m not sure we are as happy as you,” the same woman who’d spoken up before said. “What is the meaning of terrorizing the city and rounding us up like cattle?”
Prince Gin sighed. “I apologize that it was a bit . . . rough. But I needed to show you how things are different from a decade ago. I still believe that Kichona is destined for greatness, and that you—the taigas—are destined for greatness as well. We didn’t have the means to achieve that in the past, but we do now.”