Page 272 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
“Why are we leaving?” her mother asked, her skirts billowing around her as she ran through the streets behind her daughter. Even in the face of a refugee camp, her mother refused to wear more practical trousers.
Clara couldn’t explain, not really. Her mother had been immensely helpful these last weeks while Clara searched for Jove or helped where needed, but that didn’t mean she would understand the fear and dread thrumming through Clara’s veins.
“I need to get Samuel out of the city—getyouout of the city. Jove says something dangerous is coming. We need to go to Father.”
Her words were true, but they still felt hollow.
“We won’t find a carriage to take us anywhere,” her mother pointed out, her breaths ragged. She’d been a proper lady before the attack on the capital. She wasn’t alone in that description; Clara’s lungs also burned with the effort of climbing toward the city gates, but at least she wasn’t tangled in her skirts. The doors hung open, unrepaired from the destruction wrought weeks ago.Just past them, a green valley riddled with cave-ins and detritus from the bombing awaited.
Would they even survive if they left the city? Who knew what waited for them out there? Her father and her family estate were far to the south, but they could find a carriage in one of the outlying villages. She hoped.
Yes.They had no choice. They would survive. Her son would survive.
“If we can make it to one of the outlying villages before nightfall, then…” Clara trailed off as a bedraggled soldier stumbled into view out of the gatehouse, one arm reaching up to shield Samuel, the other out to stop her mother. She sent up a quick prayer for favor, for mercy.
She hadn’t thought the gates would be manned. Not now. There was too much going on, and something was happening down in the Catacombs—something Jove had gone to fight.
She’d left him.
Clara breathed through her nose, trying to calm her racing heart. They had both made logical decisions. They would find a way. Clara put her trust in a higher power. He was in control—not her.
There wasn’t anything alarming about the man other than the state of his uniform, but she couldn’t blame him for that. It was a miracle enough she could recognize the emblem on his chest.
“No one’s to leave the city,” the man’s deteriorating voice ground out. It sounded as if he hadn’t drunk water in weeks. His leg dragged behind him as he hobbled closer. “Word went out not two hours ago.”
Clara tightened her hold on her son and blocked her mother from view best she could. She wasn’t a fighter, but she would do whatever was needed to make sure her son was safe, and at the moment, that meant getting him out of the city. Shewould talk this soldier into letting her out. And if she couldn’t talk, she’d fight—however she could.
She had no weapon.
Maybe she should find another way over the wall. She could certainly find her way back to the Catacombs and leave through another entrance or even one of the holes.
“Who gave those orders?” she asked.
It hadn’t been Harlan. He’d been busy with Kase’s attack and then interrogating Benjamin Reiss in the hospital ward. He’d been trying to solve the mystery of the sword in Hallie Walker’s sketchbook.
The man limped closer, and Clara stepped back, turning to protect Samuel. Her eyes darted to the right and left, looking for anything to defend herself with. She wasn’t sure if she should tell the man who she was. Using her husband’s name might allow her passage, but there was something abnormal about the man’s eyes. They seemed darker than they should be, but he was mostly shaded by the gatehouse.
His skin was too pale even for a white man. Possibly a byproduct of living underground the last few weeks, but something about the color reminded her of spoiled milk. Suspicion sent her stepping back as the man crept closer, his head tipped oddly.
“Orders from the top,” was all the man said.
Clara’s back met a wall. The brick pressed into her shoulder blades as the man approached, lurching like a drunkard. Her mother stepped in. “My name is Lady Miravel Davey, noble of this country, and my daughter is the wife of Jove Shackley, son of the Stradat Lord Kapitan. We have all the authority we need to leave this city.”
Brave woman, but Clara gritted her teeth against the fear now flowing freely through her body.
The man sneered, sticking a hand inside his jacket. “Don’t listen to him anymore.”
Clara slid herself across the wall. To the right, the lane was mostly clear. To the left, blocked. Whether this man was a deserter or a traitor or simply out of his mind, she didn’t know. All she knew was that they needed to either keep him talking long enough to distract him or run the other way, back to what semblance of civilization still existed. His leg injury would hinder any chase.
“Then who do you answer to, young sir?” her mother asked, not cowed one bit. “Because I don’t believe harassing women for simply trying to find safety is approved by any surviving members of the City Council. I’ve read the decrees myself.”
He didn’t answer. He lunged, whipping out a dagger from his jacket. Clara screamed.
Her mother gasped as the knife bit into her side. “Run, Clara!”
But all she could do was stare as the blood blossomed on her mother’s skirts. As she collapsed.
Then the man turned on her, his knife slick with blood. A spiderweb of blackened veins licked up and down his neck. One of the patients who’d encountered the Yalvar fuel. Clara’s chest caved in on itself. Samuel’s cries split the air. Blood pooled on the cracked cobblestones beneath her mother, whose eyes were shut tightly in pain, her hands holding in what life she had left.
