Page 65 of A Tribute of Fire

“Lia.” She’d never sounded so calm, so collected. “It’s time. Let me go.”

“Get a ladder!” someone beneath us said.

“We don’t have time for this. Give me your other hand, right now! Quynh, please! Don’t do this!” Hysteria and terror pushed out every pain, every other emotion. “I cannot lose you!”

“I was lost the moment my name was chosen. We have only been delaying fate.”

Grabbing her right wrist with both of my hands, I tried to pull her up, but she wasn’t helping me and had gone slack. “We’re so close. We can make it. Give me your other hand!”

My arm burned, and my shoulder felt like it was about to be ripped out.

“I love you,” she said, and there was a finality to it that exacerbated my frenzied dread.

Sweat broke out on my back and it took everything I had to hang on to her. My strength was waning.

“You promised me,” I said with a sob. “You promised me you wouldn’t give up.”

“I’m not giving up. I’m giving you a chance. Let me go.”

“I won’t!” I yelled the words back, my chest and throat aching.

There was a sharp tug. The crowd had torches and I blinked, realizing that I could see them clearly. They had found a ladder and a man had climbed it to pull at her feet. His skin was as pale as a ghost, his hair redder than flame. As if he were an apparition from the underworld, come to claim my sister.

“Quynh!” I pleaded. “Please!”

She had been holding on to my wrist, but she let go, unwrapping her fingers. “One for many,” she said.

I screamed as she was ripped away from me, her wrist sliding through my hands.

I rolled over, lying flat on my back while I listened to her scream. I couldn’t watch. I should have. I should have given her that honor, borne witness to her death, but I couldn’t.

That image would have immobilized me and this would have been over.

I put my hands over my ears, wanting to block out the sound, squeezing my eyes shut. The desire to give in, to let them take me so that I could join her, was overwhelming.

Stupid girl! Don’t let her sacrifice be for nothing!

We had both come too far for me to give up now. I had promised her I would go on.

I got up on shaky legs and began to run along the flat rooftops, looking for a way down. While being up here was currently better so that I could evade pursuers, it would also make me easier to find, up high, not able to run down alleys or dart through buildings to hide. I was too exposed.

Quynh’s name pounded in my heart. Every beat was for her.

I went north, the direction that the Locrian hetaera had told me to run. Not only was I being hunted on the streets, but there were men following me, a rooftop or two behind.

In the moonlight, I saw the temple with the stone carving. It wasn’t far.

We could have made it,my heart wept bitterly, but I knew it wasn’t true. There were too many hunters now. My only hope was to run as quickly as I could and outpace them.

I saw a tall white canvas just ahead. A sail merchant had one of his wares out on display. I took out my throwing knife and jumped toward the sail, reaching out to pierce the canvas so that I could safely travel down its entire length.

I landed a bit more abruptly than I’d anticipated and rolled into it, jumping up and continuing on. There were arrows, spears, rocks.

But I knew how to deal with those kinds of missiles.Just keep moving.

An arrow did manage to nick my shoulder, but what was one more scar?

A man crashed into me, shoving me back against a wall. I wasn’t stunned or surprised and tried to absorb the blow as best I could. He made the mistake of raising his arm to swing his axe at me, and I took the opening to stab him in the armpit.

---