The Whistlers! Ren cursed hotly. “Get the door open! Get inside!”
The shooting continued as Cowley barked out orders and the second line crowded up beside the first, shoulders to the door. The drummer took up a beat to coordinate their efforts.
Come on! Come on!
A long sharp whistle from a nearby rooftop caught Ren’s attention. She glanced up and saw Eldest Whistler crouched beside a chimney. Eldest pointed down the street to the doors, shouting something unheard over the wind and the rattle of the drum. She made a hard chopping motion with her hand, made a fist, and let it fly open, then pointed urgently to the shop door beside Ren. She started to repeat the whole sequence when Ren recognized the first hand signal.
Trap!
But what kind of trap did you lay for an army? Ren gasped as the second signal became clear.
Grapeshot! The thieves had the cannons loaded with grapeshot and pointed them down the street.
“Ambush!” Ren shouted, throwing herself off her horse. “Get to cover!”
“Take cover!” Raven repeated, though it wasn’t clear if she had seen Eldest herself or just took up the cry. “Take cover!”
There was a muffled thud and a flash of fire from the mouth of the street. Out of the corner of her eye as she raced for the shop door, Ren saw the mill doors flying outward on a plume of fire, blown off by small explosives set at their hinges. Flame and smoke engulfed Cow-ley and the front line, as the great doors skipped and jumped down the street on the force of the explosion.
The tableau beyond the blasted doorway stamped itself on Ren’s vision. Two cannons, the cyclopean eyes of their barrels pointed straight down the street, sat in temporary cradles behind a wall of sandbags.
Like so many cornered river rats, twenty women in dirty ragged clothes crouched around the cannons, two already lowering the burning wand of a fuse lighter.
“Take cover!” Raven shouted again, somewhere behind Ren.
The cannons roared, spitting out flame and screaming grapeshot.
Ren flung herself through the shop door. She had an instant impression of heat and fresh bread-it was a bakery. Then, through the open door behind her, like a sharp hailstorm of death, the grapeshot blasted up the street, shredding everything in its path. Women shouted in horror and screamed in pain; some of their cries cutting off abruptly. The abandoned horses went down, great bloody slashes laying them open.
And then there was silence.
“Return fire!” Ren shouted, scrambling back to the shop door, hoping that someone was alive to hear her. “Stop the next volley! Return fire!”
The street reeked of blood and viscera. Her troops had tucked themselves into every alcove and doorway. Her yelled commands shook them out of their shell shock, and they returned fire in a thunderous volley.
Where the hell is Raven? Has she been killed?
Half the thieves were reloading the cannons, ignoring the rain of bullets, while the other half kept the royal troops at bay. If they managed to reload and fire, her troops would be cut to ribbons.
“Set bayonets and charge! Engage in hand-to-hand!” Ren shouted, working her way down the street from niche to niche, tearing her voice ragged in an attempt to be heard. “Charge!”
They heard her and obeyed, probably out of fear of facing the cannons once more. More than half her women lay dead in the street, but the remaining ones surged forward. Forty trained soldiers against fewer than twenty river trash. The fight was bloody but quick.
Silence fell again, broken only by the moans of the wounded.
“Take a horse,” Ren said to a private, a young girl who looked barely sixteen. “Return to the barracks.
Tell the commander we need wagons for the wounded, and more troops to clean up this mess.”
The girl nodded repeatedly, eyes wide, as if she had seen too much today.
Ren set the remaining survivors to searching for the cannons and thieves. She also gave them descriptions of the Whistlers and instructions that they shouldn’t be harmed. Raven still hadn’t made an appearance, so Ren stumbled back up the street, heartsick, looking for the captain’s body among the dead. Her other bodyguards had been from the palace guard, a rotating handful from nearly two hundred women. Raven, though, had been with her for over ten years, had been there on the night of the explosion, had been her captain since that night. To lose Raven would be like losing a sister.
She made it back to the bakery shop without a sign of her captain.
“Hoy! Princess.”
Ren looked up at the call and found Corelle Whistler, leaning against the doorway of the bakery, splattered with blood, looking pale but smug. “Corelle!” Ren cried. “Where’s Eldest? Have you seen Raven?”
“We found the captain out cold. Eldest is patching her up. I’m afraid that any others you’re missing are dead.”
Ren nodded, too relieved to care now. She’d mourn later. She brushed past Corelle, anxious to see Raven with her own eyes.
“You’re alive,” Eldest said, glancing up when Ren entered. Raven slumped in a wooden armchair, face pale under a stain of blood, eyes closed, coat off, and blood-soaked shirtsleeve cut away. A strip of white bandaging was wrapped about her temple, a spot of red growing on it as Ren watched with concern. “We thought with so many trigger-happy regulars, we should keep out from underfoot.”
“How is she?” Ren asked, torn between staying out of Eldest’s way and wanting to reassure herself with a touch.
“I’m not sure.” Eldest mummified Raven’s shoulder, her hands and the bandaging blood-tainted from Raven’s wound. “I don’t have my grandmothers’ experience with battle wounds. Head wounds always bleed a lot, and the shoulder looks shallow to me. You’ll want someone who knows what they’re doing to look at her, though.”
“I’m-I’m fine,” Raven muttered, her eyes fluttering open. She eyed the shop as if seeing it for the first time. “Ren, Your Highness, were you hit?”
“No.” Ren reached out to grip Raven’s unhurt shoulder. “I’m fine.” She thought then to inspect the Whistlers. They looked as if they had been dragged down a bloody street behind a wagon, but there were no visible bullet wounds. “Thanks for the warning. Are you two all right? What happened? We heard shots.”
“It’s why we came along.” Eldest shrugged, then looked sheepish. “We had worked our way into the mill. When we realized they were laying a trap for you and tried to pull out, they spotted us. It might have been trickier for us if your people hadn’t started beating on the doors. It kind of spooked them.”
“What happened with the cannons?” Raven asked.
“There were only the two to be seen,” Eldest explained. “But the others might still be in the city. They had coal wagons and buckets of coal. I think they were loading cannons on the wagons, then spreading coal on top of the cannons. It’s an old trick.”
Raven started to nod, and then winced. She reached up with trembling fingers to explore her bandage, but Eldest caught her hand before she could.
“Eh, eh,” Eldest scolded. “It’s almost stopped bleeding. Touch it, and you’ll start it going again.” After she was sure Raven listened to her, Eldest continued her story. “There were five door guards and fifteen more women inside playing cards, sleeping, and waiting. There were three women that seemed to be running things: walking rounds to the guards, keeping the others quiet, and such. Soon after we heard the drums start, two gentry rode up.”
“Gentry?” Ren asked.
“They were all spit and polish,” Corelle said. “High boots, tan leather riding britches, and broadcloth coats, neat as new. The three in charge all bowed and said ‘yes, madam’ to them.”
Eldest nodded. “As Corelle said, nothing flashy but good-quality riding clothes, both about five foot seven, maybe about fourteen stones. Same build, same walk, like they were sisters. They rode up on bloodstock, a trim bay mare with four white socks, and a black mare.”
“They wore executioner’s hoods,” Corelle added. “One in black silk and the other in red.”
“They were still adjusting the hoods, so they must have pulled them on just as they rode up, before we noticed them,” Eldest said. “They came in snapping orders, not like they were scared, just in a hurry. At first I didn’t see the rhyme and reason to what they were doing.” Eldest frowned, apparently angry at her own lack of understanding. “And then you were nearly on the street and we were hemmed in. We backed out quietly as we
