I twisted in my saddle, looking frantically for a friendly flier, but all around us it was chaos. Zahhaks of every description were swirling together in the sky, and it was practically impossible to tell friend from foe. There was no one here to help us. We were completely alone.
Ahmed’s zahhak spat acid again. I pulled hard on the reins, praying that it would be enough. Sultana’s hood was fully extended, her tail feathers slamming up to tighten the turn as her wings twisted, rolling us into a dive that aimed her snout right at the glittering waters of the sea.
The acid streaked past us—another miss. But there wouldn’t be a third. We were diving now, and that made it dead easy for Ahmed to roll in right behind us. I pulled us into a right-hand turn, but it was too little, too late. He had the angle. He had the speed. His zahhak was fresh. There was nothing left to do.
Sultana’s head twisted slightly, and her wings pounded the air. She’d seen something, but what? I traced back a line from her pupil to a patch of sky above and behind Ahmed’s onrushing zahhak, and at first I saw nothing at all, but then, an instant later, there was a blur of blue and black and white, and a fork-tailed zahhak with her wings bent into sharp sickles streaked in behind Ahmed’s tail feathers, a brilliant bronze zahhak aimed right at him. Hina hadn’t abandoned us after all.
A burst of fire and smoke erupted from the cannon, and Ahmed Shah exploded in a shower of blood and bone, feathers and fragments of saddle. His beautiful acid zahhak went limp and fell away as Hina worked to reload her cannon, jerking out the smoking breechblock and replacing it with a fresh one.
She pulled up alongside us, grinning, and I could just make out her words across the roaring gulf of air between us. “It’s the same cannon!”
“What?” I shouted, looking behind us to make sure our tails were clear.
“It’s the same cannon that killed Asma! We killed both his parents with the same gun!” She was cackling with glee at that poetic justice, but I was mostly grateful to be alive.
“Thank you for not abandoning us,” I shouted back, because she could have. Tamara hadn’t been wrong about that.
“Never, your highness,” she replied, her smile hardening into an expression of grim determination. “We’re with you till the end.”
I looked around us, trying to make sense of the fight, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everywhere I looked, fork-tailed river zahhaks were blasting away at acid zahhaks and fire zahhaks with their cannons. More cannons were firing from the tails of Registani fire zahhaks. And there were ice zahhaks flying still, and thunder zahhaks too. We were winning!
“Come on, girl, let’s finish this,” I told Sultana, turning her back into the fight. She seemed to have the same sudden surge of joy that I did, recognizing the Zindhi zahhaks as our friends come to help us in our time of need. We raced at Hina’s side at a pair of Mahisagari acid zahhaks who had spotted us and were diving down to kill us. I recognized them at once—Karim and Jamshid.
“Thunder!” I screeched, making sure Sultana’s nose was pointing right at Karim and Amira. She seemed to know who it was, and what I wanted, because she spat her lightning bolt straightaway, the flash of light and roar of thunder filling the air between us.
But Karim had pitched up at the last second, rolling down to take us from above. I pulled up into him, expecting that we would pass one another by and start our turning fight, but at the last second I realized that Karim had no intention whatever of passing me by. He was aiming Amira straight for Sultana on a collision course.
I kicked up my legs, throwing myself back into my seat, giving Sultana the command to fight with feet and claws and teeth. At the last instant she pitched up, lashing out with her feet and her wing claws just as Amira slammed into us, the impact knocking every conscious thought from my mind. I saw emerald scales, teeth and claws, and then we were falling far too fast.
Something was wrong. Sultana wasn’t righting herself. Amira was tumbling beside me, out of control. Was she dead? We were spinning too fast. I lost track of her. The white line of foam separating the yellow sands of the beach from the blue waters of the ocean was spinning like the blades of a windmill in a gale. I lost track of what was sky and what was water and what was ground.
“Sultana!” I screamed her name. I pulled on the reins. But she wasn’t answering me. Her emerald eyes were lolled back in her head. Was she dead? God, it couldn’t be. “Sultana!”
It was too late. We hit the shore with a splash, but the water was only knee-deep and the impact was unlike anything I had ever felt before. I screamed from the pain. My saddle straps snapped like the thick leather was nothing more than tissue paper. My legs burned and my back ached, but it was my heart that hurt most of all. Because Sultana didn’t scream. She didn’t move. She just lay there, neck curled up,
