Atiana couldn’t see the newcomers well enough, even by the lanterns they held, but when the first of them spoke, she knew immediately who it was.
It was Bahett.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
“T he Princess Atiana is missing,” Bahett shouted into the muddy, pattering courtyard below.
Atiana’s heart pounded in her ears. She was painfully aware of the soldiers standing just next to her. The nearest of them watched the scene play out in the courtyard below, but he was close enough to reach out and touch her.
“She’s most likely gone to the cemetery,” Bahett continued. “Ten have been sent already. Gather twenty more and join them. The rest will watch the walls.”
The soldier Bahett was speaking to bowed his head. “ Evet, Kaymakam.”
Bahett turned and strode away, his tall boots slurping in the slush and the mud. The men that had accompanied him followed, leaving only the two who had come down from the wall. The heavyset one spoke low to the other. He’d guessed her identity. Atiana was sure of it.
As they finished speaking and trudged toward the stairs, Atiana shifted her stance so that she was incrementally closer to Irkadiy. “I won’t return,” she said loudly enough for Irkadiy to hear. She didn’t care if the guardsmen heard. The only reason they didn’t already know was that their commander thought they could be caught with little or no bloodshed.
Irkadiy looked into her eyes. He was asking-for her sake-to reconsider.
She shook her head.
After one more pause, and a brief nod of his head, Irkadiy grabbed the lantern from her hand, swung it high over his head in a blur of movement. It came crashing down on the rampart. Fire blossomed across the stones, spreading quickly and engulfing the walkway.
Seeing Irkadiy’s intent, Atiana turned and ran, Irkadiy close on her heels.
“Stop them!” the commander called.
Upon passing a turret in the wall, Irkadiy called to her. “This is far enough.”
Atiana stopped and turned as Irkadiy unbuttoned his heavy canvas coat. He undid his cherkesska next, and finally he began unwinding the length of rope he had hidden there.
Far behind them, the flames were already beginning to subside. One of the guardsmen removed his coat and threw it down against the oil, creating a bridge for them to pass over. Three of them did, with ease. The fourth caught fire.
Irkadiy had finished unwinding the rope and was looping it around a battlement. He moved with quick hands. Sure hands. He was so calm, where her heart was beating so madly she thought it would burst.
“Quickly,” he said, taking her hands and forcing her to grab the rope.
The soldiers were nearing. “Halt!” they called.
Atiana would be able to make it down, but Irkadiy wouldn’t. There wasn’t enough time.
“Go!” he cried.
Atiana stepped up between the battlements-realizing only then she’d forgotten to wear gloves-and swung over the side. As she began to slide down, the sense of vertigo she’d experienced earlier returned. It was all she could do to hold on. She knew if she loosened her grip on the rope, she would fall to her death. She could do nothing but hold tight.
Above her, Irkadiy turned and drew his shashka.
Just as he was about to engage, a low, ragged caw cut through the night. By the light of the dying flames Atiana saw black wings streak between the two soldiers.
Both paused.
The feeling of dizziness intensified. The air filled with the sound of wings. Dark figures cut above the curtain wall. A dozen. A hundred. A thousand black, fluttering forms.
They chattered, their myriad voices collecting in a cacophony that forced Atiana to duck her head and hide her face against her shoulder.
She thought it would end quickly, a freak passage of birds over the kasir, but it did not. She felt them against her face, against her hands. They flew about her legs, some of them thudding against her coat before flying off again.
“Come, Irkadiy!” she managed to yell, though whether he heard her she wasn’t sure. “Irkadiy, follow me!”
She allowed herself to slip downward. She moved slowly at first, but then, blessedly, she felt the rope above her shift. Irkadiy was coming.
Hand over hand she moved as the wings beat around her and the birds continued to screech.
At last, bless the ancients, she found herself below the cloud of wings, and soon after that, her feet touched ground.
Her nausea began to ebb. Finally the effect brought on by the gallows crow was starting to pass.
As soon as Irkadiy slid down beside her, they moved away from the wall and slid down the steep slope. Standing in their way were an army of thickets and scrub trees and tall stands of wiry grass, making the going arduously slow. They hadn’t gone twenty paces when the sound of the birds faded into the distance.
“There’s a path ahead,” Irkadiy whispered.
They came to it as the sound of pursuit heightened. Again the bells were ringing among the kasir, but this time at a different pace and rhythm- clang, clang, CLANG… clang, clang, CLANG — no doubt calling help to this section of the curtain wall.
The path for a time seemed no less dangerous. They struck as many clawing branches as they had during the slide down from the wall, but they were more sure on their feet. They were adding distance between themselves and the guardsmen, but the location of this path was no secret. Their only hope was to reach the bottom of the hill and lose themselves in the city before Bahett’s men could find them.
Lights shone against the wall as the slope leveled off at last. They took one last look up as they reached a dirt road that continued downhill, but as they did they heard the first sound of approaching hooves.
She and Irkadiy ran, but they could already tell that dozens of ponies had been dispatched from the kasir. Bahett’s men knew where this path emptied into the streets of Baressa, and they would start their search there.
The sounds of hoofbeats echoed through the streets. The air was so cold it numbed Atiana’s fingers. It sapped her warmth through the dampness of her coat.
In an alley running between two rows of tall stone buildings, they huddled in a deep, arched doorway. The clop of ponies approached, and soon three men wearing Galaheshi uniforms-red coats with white turbans-came abreast of the mouth of the alley. They rode tall brown stallions, and each carried a lantern.
While Atiana and Irkadiy pressed themselves against the door and made themselves as small as possible, the guardsmen swung their lanterns along the alley.
The light had just fallen upon their archway when a cawing sound came. It was distant, and it echoed in the cramped spaces of the city, so Atiana could not tell the direction from which it had come.
“There!” one of the guardsmen called. A moment later, the ponies clopped further up the street.
As the sounds died away, punctuated by the cough of a pistol being fired, fluttering wings fell through the night and landed in the street. A low caw, loud enough for only them to hear, beckoned them. They approached, and the old gallows crow took flight, heading southwest over the nearest buildings.
They followed the course the crow had set for them. The sound of hooves approached, but each time they did a caw would come again, drawing the soldiers away from their trail. As they made their way toward the poorer sections of the city, the caws came again and again, steadily further away from their current location.
They heard it once more as they came to a large circle where six streets met.
“We should not go through here,” Irkadiy said.
Atiana, taking the circle in again, agreed-there were too many windows, too many eyes-but just as they were preparing to head back, the sound of ponies came again, this time from the west, the direction of the kasir.
The rain had finally stopped and the moon shone down through thin clouds. The wings of the gallows crow flapped from the west. It cawed twice and then landed on the edge of the fountain at the center of the circle.