There were no little cat feet here. It was boots on stone, loud, echoing, deadly. Like the arrow that passed on either side of my head, cleaved in half by one of my weapons. Like the energy bolt that sizzled through the air, dissipating one little knife like steam. Like the bola that wrapped around my legs, sending me hurtling painfully onto stone, and then staring behind me at the crowd that was launching weapons—
That went over my head, since they were aimed at the space where I’d just been, and hit a group of guards coming from the other direction.
Six of them fell around me as my remaining knife sliced through the strings on my ankles, before throwing itself, kamikaze-style, at the warriors behind me. Six of them, I thought, scrambling to my feet, nose running, terror pounding in my ears. Six of them, as I scampered down the hall, blood splattering the wall beside me, as someone reached for me and lost a limb. Six of them, like the number supposed to be around the princess’ cell, so that meant—
“Princess! Princess!” I was screaming, because there were doors, doors, so many doors, and I had no idea—
A heavy hand grabbed me, my knife cleaved it to the wall, I tore away, and someone yelled, “Here!”
But I was already slamming the key home, hands steady—and how the hell were they steady? And turning the lock and falling in, a wall of fey at my back, my last knife going up in smoke deflecting a vicious curse. But it bought a second for strong hands to grab me, for them to jerk me inside, for the door to slam in the fey’s faces—
And for a woman’s voice to say: “I hope you brought a better weapon than that” as I thrust my wrist in her general direction.
My hair was in my face, my breath was coming hard, the massive oak door was thud, thud, thudding behind me, to the point that I could barely think. Certainly not well enough to explain the situation, to introduce myself, to do anything but gasp: “There’s . . . a wand—”
“That’s no wand,” she said, her voice awed, before something was plucked off my bracelet.
And then the door gave up the ghost, slamming open with a crack like thunder, causing me to shriek and fall back. Unlike the woman. Who just stood there, a slim, dark-haired figure in a man’s tunic and leggings, facing an entire horde of furious fey warriors. Holding what looked suspiciously like—
A staff, I thought, my eyes widening, along with the fey’s.
Who were suddenly all trying to fit back through the door.
The woman helped them with that, laughing as she blew out the whole freaking wall. Huge boulders rained down, dust billowed everywhere, tiny shards of rock bit into my skin. And all the while, she laughed and laughed and laughed.
“Oh, Grandmother,” she all but sang, and stepped out into the hallway.
Or what was left of it.
I tried to stand up. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like I could help. But my brain had given up at this point and I was pretty much going on instinct. And instinct said to get gone before the rest of the roof fell in. But something was—
Oh.
A big rock had fallen on my skirt, large enough to have bashed my head in had it been a foot to the left. I looked at it, dazed and breathless, as what sounded like the apocalypse started up outside. And then I started coughing and swearing and hacking and tugging, for what seemed like only a minute.
But it might have been longer, because suddenly someone else was there, kneeling in the dust. And pulling my hand away. And lifting me up into arms, strong ones, familiar ones, ones that went with the heartbeat pounding under my ear. And the voice cursing as we ran down corridor after collapsing corridor, because this whole place was imploding.
Until we finally stepped through something that crackled painfully around us, and out—
Into something worse.
Rain slapped me in the face, cold and stinging, bringing me back to full awareness. And to the fact that the funny little house was all but gone, the roof having caved in. Or having been ripped off, because I didn’t see it anywhere.
I did see a sky, boiling overhead, laced with lightning. I saw rain slashing down, so thick it felt like a dam had burst. I saw wind throwing heavy tents around like they were made out of tissue paper, one flying at us too fast to duck. But it became snared on the front wall of the house at the last minute, covering the door and spreading out like a tarp overhead, cutting off the view.
But not the noise. Above the howling winds and drumming rain, above the flap, flap, flap of the heavy canvas, above the creaking sounds of a house about to come down around our ears, were screams. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands.
“What’s happening?” I yelled, practically in Pritkin’s ear, but he didn’t hear.
He did put me down, into ice-cold water that reached above my ankles. And I realized that I’d been so busy staring upward that I’d failed to notice the water pouring over the threshold, coming from what looked like a flood in the camp. A really big flood.
“Come on!” Pritkin yelled, and I could barely hear him. But I grabbed his hand, sloshing through the flooded house, while bits of the remaining roof and walls rained down around us, and the already waterlogged tent tried to collapse on our heads.
A moment later my question was answered, when we reached the door and he pushed the tent fabric up.
Revealing the burning hellscape beyond.
It looked like something out of a medieval vision of the underworld, with screaming people and leaping flames everywhere. The torches outside many of the tents must have been blown onto the canvas by the wind, or at least their sparks had, because a good number of the tents were ablaze. Like the blankets on a crazy-eyed horse that ran by, knocking over a man who slipped and then completely disappeared.