“We need a way through this mess!” I shouted over the rain and screams. “While they’re distracted.”
“But which way?” Kumi asked.
She had a point. The only visible way out was still through the enemy throng. And going through them now meant fighting a mass of whirling and slicing leaves along with the guards and initiates.
“I’ve got this,” Vesma said.
She raised her arms and cupped her hands together. Fire formed between them as she summoned the power of the Untamed Torch. She held onto it as long as she could, until it was a large, fiercely glowing ball of flames. Then she projected it straight toward the gates.
There was a whoosh as the leaves Faryn had summoned ignited from Vesma’s fireball. Fire flashed back through the chaos of fighters. Guardsmen yelled in panic as their clothes ignited, while initiates cast whatever water techniques they knew to quench the flames. Heaps of ash fluttered down, mingling with the rain and forming a black mud.
“Go!” Vesma gestured down the leafless corridor that she had blown through the middle of the maelstrom. Enemies lingered, but they were scorched, tangled, and too busy trying to survive to fight back.
“Get Kumi to safety,” Kegohr said. “We’ll follow.”
Kumi and I ran for the gate. The wind buffeted us, and stray leaves blew into our faces, but we mercifully avoided the deadly chaos engulfing the people around us.
I opened the wicket gate within the larger gate that we’d entered when we’d first arrived at the guild house. Vesma and Kegohr fought off a few stragglers who’d managed to break clear of the Smothering Leaves and tried to follow us.
I wanted to go back and help my friends, but the same logic still held that we’d followed from the start. We needed to keep Kumi from the hands of the guild. Otherwise, the guild would use her against her father. I trusted my friends to look after themselves.
“The trident!” Kumi cried as she pulled me to a stop.
“We can’t get it now. Later. We need to leave here.”
“Do you promise to retrieve it?” she asked.
“As soon as you’re safe.”
Kumi stared at me for a full second before she nodded.
We ran toward the docks. The storm had whipped up the sea, and great waves crashed against the quays. Boats were tossed back and forth, and one smashed into planks as it slammed into a dock.
Two figures stood out on the docks ahead of us. They hauled at the ropes of one of the boats and tried to bring it in close enough to get in.
The rain made it almost impossible to make them out, but I saw them clearly as I drew closer.
Labu and Cadrin.
“Where the fuck do you two think you’re going?” I yelled.
The wind snatched my words and carried them away, but some fragment must have got through because Labu turned to gaze at us across the dock. He tugged on his companion’s sleeve, and Cadrin also turned.
“The outsider and the dirty Wild,” Cadrin shouted as he walked slowly toward us, his efforts to retrieve the boat forgotten. “Just like cockroaches, you keep coming back.”
Cadrin’s hair still had the perfect side-parting of a backup dancer in a boy band despite how the rain had plastered it across his forehead. His sword hung by his side, and two glowing cages were thrust through his belt—beast lures that had not yet been activated.
“We’re not going to rest until we’ve stopped you,” I said. “Whatever your plan is, we’ll find a way to thwart it. Give me the lures and surrender.”
“Oh, no.” Cadrin slapped his hands to his cheeks in mock horror. “How will I cope with the might of you two turned against me? All is surely lost.”
“Why are you wasting words?” Labu said to Cadrin as he came to stand by him. “We should fight or go.”
I was surprised to see that Labu had recovered from a thorn through his stomach. His tunic had a hole through it, but the skin beneath was barely scared from the wound I’d given him.
“You’re right, Labu,” Cadrin said. “Destiny awaits, and it’s our job to make sure that it’s the right one. You see, things have turned against you, outsider. With Guildmaster Horix wielding the Depthless Dream, our guild will be more powerful than anything ever seen. We’ll bring the locals into line, end the blight of Wild magic, and turn this into a place where real people can live. Under the supervision of their betters, of course.”
He placed a hand on his chest and smiled mockingly.
“Why’d you even come after me if all you wanted was the trident?” Kumi demanded.
“You were prying. And it was a useful smokescreen,” Cadrin laughed. “You’re nothing to us. You should know when you’re outclassed, lo Pashat. You really should.”
“If you’re my better, then I really must be slumming it,” I said. “All I’ve seen you do so far is thieve, kidnap, and run away. It even looks like you’re repeating that last trick.”
“Oh, I’m not running away.” Cadrin patted the lures in his belt. “I’m on a mission. I’m going to go back into your beloved Qihin City, all the way to the palace, and drop these into the lap of King Beqai. He won’t even notice what I’m doing, he’s so lost to the world. The monsters will come rushing in and finish off the senile old bastard, like they were meant to do last time.”
Labu looked away for a moment but didn’t say anything. Did he truly care so little for his father? It seemed he was conflicted.
“Though, this time,” Cadrin continued, “Labu won’t need to make a show of defending the king. I can’t risk him succeeding and ruining all my plans.”
I raised the Sundered Heart Sword. Fire flared along the blade, and raindrops hissed as they evaporated against it.
“Oh, yes,” Nydarth said, her
