“What in the hells is this, Shrike?”

“Grímarr is preparing a rite,” I say above the din. “I’m his guest of honor. Where’s Septimus?”

A tall Karkaun rushes me. “You dare wield steel, Martial whore!” he screams, scim held high. Too high. I run him through and then take off his head.

“Outside picking them off.” Faris kicks the Karkaun’s head to the side, his scims flying at the enemies still pouring into the hallway and down the stairs. “They have us surrounded.”

“We need to get up there,” I say. “He’s just biding his time until he’s done with this skies-forsaken chant.”

We fight our way back toward the stairs. But the barbarians keep coming, slipping on the blood-slicked ground, the deaths of their fellows only feeding their furor.

“Front door, Faris,” I scream at him. “Break a bleeding path!”

He barrels through the Karkauns and I follow in his wake, stabbing and slashing until we spill out into a street littered with bodies—Septimus’s handiwork. Through the open window above, Grímarr’s chanting reaches a fever pitch. “IK TACHK MORT FID INIQANT FI!”

“Tell me you have a grappling hook.”

Faris shakes his head, gasping for breath. I hope to the skies that his clothes are sticking to him because of all the Karkauns he’s killed, and not because he’s about to die on me.

“We’ll have to jump.” Faris nods to a pale stone building behind the brothel, with a balcony a dozen feet from the brothel’s roof.

“Go, Shrike!” Septimus calls from a sniper’s nest somewhere above us. An arrow whizzes past, thudding into the chest of a Karkaun creeping up on me. “I’ll cover you!”

I bolt away from the brothel and double back down an alley. As I do, I get an impression of faces—watching us. Women and children mostly, for the men have been gone for months. The only boys left are those who will grow up to be sacrificed by the Karkauns.

Unless I stop them.

Yells echo behind us, and a band of Karkauns appears. Three of them fall upon Faris, and one leaps at me, knocking me off my feet. My scim clatters to the ground and my attacker pins my body, his weight and stench stealing my breath. His meaty hands close about my throat. I twist and claw at him, but he just laughs, spittle dribbling into his pale beard.

Suddenly, his hands loosen and blood spurts from his mouth. He topples over, and a dark-skinned, curly-haired Martial woman steps forward and yanks her kitchen knife from the Karkaun’s throat.

“Blood Shrike.” She offers me a hand. “I’m Neera. How can I help?”

“Get us to that balcony.” I point, and Neera is off and running.

Faris and I both grab shields from the fallen Karkauns, and in half a minute, we have reached the balcony across from the brothel.

The distance between the buildings seems greater now—looking down makes me ill. Don’t think about it. I back up, run, and leap, landing so heavily on the brothel’s roof that, to my horror, I slip off. But then Faris is there, pulling me up with a grunt. More Karkauns approach, and we skitter across the roof until we are directly above an open window that rattles from the force of Grímarr’s chant.

“Ready?” I ask Faris.

He swings down from the roof through the open window, and bowls over a pair of guards. I follow to find myself in a sprawling room cleared of furniture with a door at one end. Grímarr stands over a larger brazier that emits clouds of choking white smoke. He is stripped to the waist and painted in woad, his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

A line of Grímarr’s guards, all armed with crossbows, stand in front of him, facing the window. All at once, bolt after bolt hits my shield and Faris’s.

“Bleeding hells!” Faris lurches back, his shield cracking. Mine splits down the middle, and he flings me behind him, covering me until the Karkauns run out of bolts.

The crossbows drop—and the guards have no time to reload before we are upon them.

As I take out one Karkaun, and another, and another, bootsteps sound from outside Heera’s quarters.

“The door, Faris!”

He gets there just as it bursts open, and falls beneath a wave of fresh attackers.

“I was wrong about you, Blood Shrike.” Grímarr does not appear at all alarmed that the men protecting him lie dead. He grins, blood in his teeth. “I thought you were but a woman, but you—”

He barely ducks the throwing knife I fling at his throat. I shake my head. Men and their skies-forsaken bleating. They think words matter in a fight when really, they’re just a distraction.

“Fight, then, girl, fight!” He roars and beckons me toward him. “The heat of your fresh-spilled blood will be as ambrosia on my lips.”

Would that I could issue a Karkaun blood challenge. From what Dex told me, they are not complex. One must spill one’s own blood, cast all blades aside, and fight without weaponry to the death. The loser’s body is desecrated, their name, deeds, and history obliterated. It would be a just end for Grímarr.

But right now, I just need to kill the bastard. Quickly.

Faris is on his feet, beating back the onslaught of Karkauns at the door, and I cut through the three who stand between me and Grímarr. As they fall, I ram into the warlock, knocking him to his knees. But he bats away the blade I try to shove into his heart, and wraps an arm around me, pulling me into a choking embrace. I cannot breathe, only claw at him as he rips my armor back and bites into my neck like a rabid wolf.

I draw a dagger from my belt and stab him in the thigh. His arm loosens and I punch him, the first blow breaking his nose, the second sending blood and teeth flying. He reels back but rolls to his feet immediately, and I draw my scim. Blood pours down my neck, making my fury burn hotter.

Grímarr is too fast to leave himself exposed to a mortal blow, but I open up his milky skin with a half dozen quick slashes, just deep enough to slow him down.

“Shrike!” Faris is on one knee, still fighting, but fading quickly. Now or never, Shrike.

“You cannot kill me—” Grímarr advances, a shield on one arm. “Ik tachk mort fid iniqant fi. Your blood is the conduit by which—”

“Again with the talking!” I pivot a half step back and feint with the dagger in my right hand. He comes within range of my scim, and I whip it up, intending to take off his head.

But one of his lackeys bull-rushes me. I drive the dagger into the bastard’s guts and slash up with my scim, cutting clean through Grímarr’s arm.

He screams, a brief, high-pitched sound. Then his men are abandoning the fight with Faris, surrounding Grímarr and dragging him away from us, out the door, and down the stairs.