She climbed, ignoring the pain in her hands and hoping against hope that the door wouldn’t be locked. When she reached the top, she shoved the door until it snapped open and she frantically pulled herself over the rim, rising from the dust and darkness into chaos.
She emerged into what had once been a cellar but now lay open to an abandoned alley, one wall sinking into the tunnels below. She climbed to her feet and stood at the darkened entrance to survey the damage. Her friends had done their job, even if she hadn’t. Iblia was burning because of the firewater, and collapsing because of the prince’s protection, the tunnels that ran beneath the city caving in. People screamed as they tripped, escaping the fire in the palace only to plunge into the underground maze. Even the sound of ringing bells was different now—raucous and panicked, mingling with screams as people ran and shoved and pushed. Rayne watched as a crack opened down the middle of the street to her left, swallowing a storefront and a whole mob of people. All Rayne saw was a mass of wide, white eyes as they plunged to the caverns below.
A cloaked figure appeared out of nowhere and wrapped its fingers around Rayne's hand. Rayne tried to jerk away but the grip was too tight.
“Stop it,” the figure said in a familiar, scolding voice.
Imeyna.
Somehow the older girl had found her in the midst of this madness. It was not the first time Imeyna had come to her rescue, and Rayne felt it wouldn't be the last. It seemed to be what she did best, on her first day in Shade and now today, on what would possibly be her last when they discovered her failure.
“We have to go,” Imeyna said from the deep shadow beneath her hood.
“Are we meeting the others somewhere?” Rayne asked, but Imeyna didn’t respond before pulling her into the street, where the noise made conversation impossible.
The flakes were falling in earnest now. Behind them, black smoke filled the sky, twisting and roiling against the white snow clouds. They went with the crowd, moving away from the market and the palace beyond. At one point, a squadron of iron-armored soldiers marched past them, but the girls made themselves as small as possible in the mob of citizens, pressing up against a stone wall to let the group pass. Her hood still hid her face, but Rayne's mouth went dry, and she was dismayed to feel her fingers tremble. She couldn’t fight anymore today. She balled her hands into fists until the soldiers passed and they could continue on their way.
The chaos of the inner city faded as they neared the outer gates. People were huddled together or searching frantically for loved ones. An old man with a wrinkled brow grabbed Rayne’s shoulders, trying to get a better look at her, but Imeyna shoved him away with one hand and glowered at him until he turned away. Rayne choked on a sob in her throat but didn’t look back at the man who was almost certainly looking for someone he would never see again. At one of the stables near the town gate, Imeyna tossed a young stable boy a bag of silver coins.
“We'll only need two,” she told him.
Two? Were they the only ones to escape? Her eyes searched Imeyna’s face but she looked away, her eyes on the boy instead. She wanted to ask but knew better, biting the inside of her cheek, running through the names of the lost. Giles. Rolf. Emma. Merek. It was her silent offering to Enos. She hoped that the smoke would carry them to Elanos, His realm beyond the sky where they would feast with other warriors for an eternity.
The stablehand opened the pack and withdrew one of the coins. He bit it hard between his teeth before pocketing them.
“You're lucky,” he said. “Everyone else left when the quakes started. But I knew you'd be back.”
“I think you're the lucky one,” Rayne said, eying the bag of coins he now kept for himself.
He smiled ruefully, then led out two horses—one Rayne recognized as Warrior, Imeyna's black gelding. The other was a small, nondescript brown mare. Both were tacked and ready to ride. Rayne dismissed the stableboy's attempt to help her onto the smaller horse's back, throwing herself up into the saddle in spite of the pain in her abdomen. The horse nickered at the smell of blood but Rayne kept a firm grip on its reins.
“Thank you, young man,” Imeyna said to the boy. Beneath her, Warrior huffed. With a twitch of her wrist, the horse marched out into the road, followed by the obedient mare that now belonged to Rayne.
Once they cleared the city gate, Imeyna looked back at Rayne for the first time since leaving the alley. “It will be a hard night's ride,” she said, “but we must go. We cannot stop or spend another night on your father's land. They will be looking for you if they aren't already.”
Rayne nodded, then spurred her horse forward and into the path through the trees where the two girls disappeared like shadows into the burning night.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sibba
The shovel’s long, wooden handle cracked as Sibba drove it into the frozen ground and she cursed, tossing it aside and wiping the frozen sweat from her brow. The curse felt good in her unused voice and she said it again, louder this time so that it echoed in the silence of the island.
“You frozen heap of shit!”
The trees called it back to her in her own voice.
She should have burned the body. It would have been a hundred times easier than digging through the ground that had been coated with snow and ice until this morning’s sunrise. But her mother hadn’t believed in the burning.
“We should bury our dead and honor their bodies.” This would be said with an obvious shudder whenever they attended a funeral pyre. Sibba didn’t know if burying her on what was soon to be an abandoned island was honoring her, but it was the best she could do.
She had been working on the grave all afternoon and was ready to be done with this ritual, and so decided the hole was deep enough to endure the weather and minor floods of the southern shore. It wasn’t easy to extract herself from the hole with it being nearly as deep as she was tall, but she was finally able to pull herself over the ledge. She dragged her mother’s shrouded body to the edge of the grave and lowered it gingerly inside, arranging it so Darcey was on her back, her closed eyes turned to the sky where the sun was just dipping low behind the bare branches of the trees to the west.