Page 18 of Shadows of Winter

Mesmerized by the battle, by him, Kaylina almost missed movement to her left. Someone darted across the cobblestone street between the jail and the canal. Another shadowy figure. No, two of them. They carried small boxes instead of knives. The archer who’d been helping the rangers had disappeared. Or had he been killed?

One of the men stopped under the window of a cell near hers, placing a box against the wall. No, those weren’t boxes. They were kegs.

He ran to her cell and left another box. With the help of his allies, four more kegs were placed.

The screech of the yekizar rang out as it reached Vlerion. He dodged lightning-fast swipes from forelimbs ending in claws like daggers, then angled in from the side to slash his sword toward the beast.

Though Kaylina wanted to see the rest of his battle, the flame of a match flared, a man lighting a fuse on one of the kegs. He moved quickly to the others, including the one placed beneath her window.

“Back, back.” Kaylina jumped down and grabbed her brother, pulling him to his feet.

“What?”

With no time to explain, she yanked him to the far side of the cell. “Cover your head.”

A great explosion almost drowned out her last word.

Even closer than the thunderous boom that had started everything, it not only made the floor quake, but the cell wall blew inward. Stones tumbled from the ceiling and Kaylina cursed her decision to leave home as she wrapped her arms protectively over her head and knelt against the bench, wishing there were cover in the empty cell.

More explosions followed the first. Those guys were blowing open every cell in the jail. As more stone tumbled down, the entire ceiling threatening to cave in, Kaylina worried she and Frayvar would be buried.

She glanced toward the exterior wall, wondering if they could get out that way now, but thick smoke hid everything.

More clangs, another roar from the beast, and the firing of a blunderbuss promised the battle hadn’t ended, but she couldn’t see it. A shadow stirred in the smoke, and a cloaked woman peered into their cell.

“Hurry, hurry,” she whispered. “Everyone out.”

Frayvar looked at her and didn’t budge. “We’re not with you, thanks.”

Someone else appeared beside the woman, a man with blood dripping from his fingers, bruises mottling his face, and an arm gripped to his ribs. Those wounds hadn’t come from a sword fight—and the bruises were at least a day old. He had to be the prisoner who’d been tortured. Evdar Wedgewick.

“We saved you,” he rasped. “You owe us.”

The woman waved the words away. “You don’t owe us, but we’ll accept fresh blood for the cause if you’re game. Don’t stay and let the rangers round you up.”

A pained screech, the sound of a dying animal, filled the night. Had Vlerion gotten the best of the yekizar?

“You can come with us,” the woman added in a whisper. “We’ll hide you!”

She waved again before she and the man ran to the next cell.

The rubble stopped falling from the ceiling. Great cracks ran along it, and the night sky was visible through holes, but it hadn’t fallen completely. Not yet, anyway. Kaylina pushed herself to her feet, gripping Frayvar to help him up.

“Maybe we should go with them,” she whispered, not daring to speak loudly since the battle was dying down. Their opportunity to escape would be brief. But should they use it? A hint of a plan formed in her mind. “We could find out where their bases are and…”

And what? Report back to the rangers? Become spies for them? She didn’t even like them. But… if she and Frayvar helped the rangers, that could clear them of all suspicion of being tied in with the murder. Had her babbling under the root’s influence done that? She didn’t know. Mostly, she remembered ranting about her family life.

Frayvar grabbed her arm, making her realize she’d taken two steps toward the hole in the wall.

“They were about to let us go,” he said. “We don’t need to run. We absolutely do not need to join a rebellion or whatever is going on up here. We don’t know anything about it. And do you want that big brute chasing after us for real?”

He flung a finger toward the bridge, and she had no doubt which brute he meant. Frayvar might not have seen the battle, but he’d been flattened by Vlerion. He understood the ranger’s capabilities perfectly well.

“No.” Kaylina couldn’t see Vlerion and Targon, but the smoke was thinning, the sounds of chaos lessening. Nearby, snorts, chuffs, and whuffs meant the taybarri, and however many rangers were riding them, had arrived. “But if we have the opportunity to leave and don’t take it, we might regret it later.”

She glanced toward the door—the locked door.

“You gave them our names and the name of the eating house, Kay. If we disappear, the rangers could have the Kingdom Guard sent to Grandma and Grandpa’s door to question them.”

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