When I looked up, I could just see James striding toward the edge of the balcony. I stepped beneath it where he couldn’t spot me. Not yet.
“Wil!” James leaned over the balcony, scanning the gardens.
If Melanie had stayed, she’d have covered for me. She’d have known just what to say to distract James and his guards while I slipped away.
“Ferris.” James’s tone was hard. “Get a small team together and search for Her Highness. Keep this quiet. Last thing we need is for everyone to know she’s broken out.”
“She’ll return soon!” added the wraith boy.
“Yes, Captain.” Ferris’s voice grew softer as he left the balcony.
“And where are you going?” James asked.
“Under the bed until my queen returns.”
I stretched my senses, straining to hear footfalls and breathing and the catch of clothes on buildings or brush. Carefully, quietly, I kept to the shadows and slipped around the perimeter of the palace. When patrols strode by, I held still and silent. The surge of adrenaline in my head felt real and right as I darted through the once-extravagant courtyards, leaving the palace for the first time since the Inundation.
There wasn’t much of a difference between the King’s Seat and Hawksbill; the two ran together and their boundaries weren’t marked. So there was no way to tell as I moved from one district to the other, but a rush of relief poured over me as I prowled around the wraith-twisted statues and trellises of nobles’ gardens, keeping beyond the glow of the gas lamps lining the streets.
Steadily, I moved westward, past the Chuter mansion and toward the Bome Boys’ Academy that sat along the Hawksbill wall. The school was four stories high, with a brick face and dozens of windows. Where there’d once been glass, now the holes were boarded up or covered with heavy wool blankets. Last I’d heard, the students had been sent home; during the Inundation, some of the doorways in the school had grown teeth and begun chewing.
Just past the school, I came to the wall.
It wasn’t impassible by any means, but without my grapple it would be a challenge to climb. The stone was smooth, even after the flood of wraith had changed the city.
Low voices sounded, and lanterns flared in the darkness between streetlamps.
I had to hurry, but without my tools, I had only one option.
“It’s for Black Knife,” I whispered, pressing my palm to the wall. “Wake up. Make a passage to the other side big enough for me to walk through.”
Under my hand, the stone warmed and began to ripple. Blackness paraded around the edges of my vision and I swayed. This was a mistake. I hadn’t awakened the entire wall, had I?
“There!” The soldier’s voice came from close by. “I see someone!”
“Is it the princess?”
“Hurry,” I whispered to the wall, and my vision blanked as the stone split open with a low rumble and groan. I struggled to breathe, to tell up from down. My groping hands fell on the edges of the new tunnel through the wall. Narrow. But I could squeeze through.
“Flasher! Saints, she’s using magic!” A light fell over me, too bright. “Get a patrol on the other side. Run!”
A pair of boots thumped off, leaving two men running for me.
But I was already in the tunnel, which was barely wide enough for me to move through sideways. I scooted as fast as I dared, jagged edges of stone catching on my clothes and hair.
An arm reached in. Fingers scraped my elbow. My stomach turned and I wanted to tell the wall to close after me, but I couldn’t with him reaching through. Shouldn’t. I’d have to leave it open.
“Go to sleep.” My hands scraped over the stone. “Go to sleep.”
Just as the soldier started to squeeze in after me, fingers twisting around my sleeve, I threw myself out the opposite side of the wall. He let out a frustrated growl.
“By Captain Rayner’s orders, you must return to the palace!” The guard shouted through the hole, but I was already sprinting into Thornton before the rest of the patrol caught up. “You won’t be harmed!”
I was gone, down a street and keeping close to the shadows, and finally behind a bakery where I leaned against a wall and let my breath squeeze from my lungs in silent gasps. Cold slithered into my chest.
That had been close.
And the magic. That had been stupid. Dangerous. Even if I’d animated only a section of the wall, it had still been too much. I should have found a trellis or something to climb.
But there hadn’t been time. And Black Knife was still dying.
I gave myself another long, silent breath as I listened for the patrols, and then I found a stack of crates by a fence where I could climb to the rooftops.
And I got my first look at the nighttime city since the Inundation.
The dark was overwhelming.
In Hawksbill and Thornton, streetlamps glowed like stars and hope, but in Greenstone and the Flags farther south, there was nothing. Just flat blackness.