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It is not a simple thing, to get across the temple, with fighting all around them.

Perl’s wings are gone. He cannot fly them there. When she asks he simply shakes his head. She does not ask more. She supposes the one with wings knows more of how they can be used than she.

But with Perl’s arm around her shoulder and Kerik cutting a path with his white sword they rush back up onto the stage. More have joined the battle. People of Attar who have found a way to climb down from the balcony and fight with fists and crude weapons fashioned from anything they can find, pieces of temple furniture, heavy statues and swords and blades taken from fallen guards.

On the dais, Damon and Lukas, their other two fighters and their war cat are holding off guards, but swiftly losing ground. She can only hope this works.

The jewelled panel is well oiled. She finds the hidden bolts and draws them back.

They stream through. Two dozen armed Mortingale fighters with axes and cudgels.

A woman with a scar on her face lifts her battered sword with a cry of, “Death to Emperor Atticul.”

A few yards away, Lukas looks up. He raises his own sword and grins at Inez, echoing the cry. “Death to Emperor Atticul!”

Beside Damon the man with the lycat repeats it too, in a very accurate mimicry of Lukas’s voice. “Death to Emperor Atticul!”

What follows is chaos. Inez is only aware of snatches of what is happening.

The Mortingales join Damon, Lukas and the others with them and drive back the guards. They manage to secure the stage as their territory and form a line of defence under Damon’s direction.

Behind them, are a group of terrified Brides of Zai, and a knot of people that include Princess Ferra, Prince Umbert and Princess Ullinor, equally terrified.

Before the condemned bench a man dressed as an Imperial soldier is holding the chained priest in his arms, fighting off any who come near him. The priest seems to be unconscious.

Inez looks at the open door behind her. If the Mortingales came in this way, it must also be a way out. Should they flee? She calls to Ferra. Ferra looks back with wide eyes, but seems to understand. After a moment she stands up, and walks toward Inez, bringing Umbert over. Inez beckons also to Princess Ullinor, who shakes her head, clearly refusing to move.

Before Inez can explain to Ferra that she ought to take Umbert out through the jewelled panel, she hears a voice, shouting, “Damon, let me through.”

It’s Doroth, pushing his way through the crowds.

“Doroth, this way?” Perl says beside her.

Damon breaks his defence line to step forward and offer Doroth a hand up onto the stage.

But as he does he glances up. He turns to all of them with a pale face and shouts, “Beware. Archers.”

Inez looks to the spectators’ balcony. A line of palace guards have assembled there, all nocking their bows. All aiming at the stage.

30

LUKAS

Lukas sees that Inez has done as she was charged, and the Mortingales are already fighting the guards, rousing more people to leap from the balcony to join the battle and taking the unrest out onto the streets.

And the additional fighters have drawn enough of the guards away from the stage that there is space to flee. He is torn for a moment, should he leave now, while he can, in triumph, or join his old outlaws and cause as much destruction as he can in the stews of Attar.

But then he sees the archers. And his decision is made. Any advance from the stage now would be doomed. “Take cover,” he yells out to the Mortingales on the temple floor. He snatches up a piece of broken board from the ruined stage as a shield and turning to the rest of the company on the dais, he calls, “Fall back. Retreat, now.”

Damon glances to him and nods.

Lukas races over to the open panel and sees as many people as he can safely out, as the arrows start to hail down, Inez leading with Ferra and Umbert.

The arrows hit with a clatter, most of them landing right where Damon and Lukas were fighting a moment ago.

“Lukas, go,” Damon shouts, as he races up behind him with his own broken plank, slamming him into the wall beside the panel as an arrow whistles down, far too close. “The whole point of this debacle was to get you out of this temple.”

But Lukas does not move. “Not yet. The Lordling, where is he?”