The bell at Hollow Crown rang before they reached the ravine.
Its first note came down the stone walls in a dull, uneven wave. By the second, guards were running from tower to tower, their torches streaking the morning darkness. Luvztospoon pictured Seven below those stones. The thought brought his hand to his sword, but Rashka had already stopped the patrol beneath the shelf where the rock broke their outline against the sky.
A horn sounded from the far side of the keep. Two warnings, from different directions. Whatever had gone wrong inside was larger than a missed roll call. Luvztospoon listened for a voice he knew and hated himself a little for expecting to hear it over all that distance. Then metal scraped above the postern, and somebody began pulling back its bolt.
Rashka stopped beneath a shelf of stone and lifted her hand. Above them, torchlight moved along the wall. Men shouted into the courtyard.
“They know,” Korr said.
Luvztospoon looked at the narrow stairs rising to the postern.
“Or Seven's fighting.”
Rashka listened to the bell. Then she drew her axe.
“Fen, take the ledge. Korr, with me. Torren, keep the stair clear.”
She looked at Luvztospoon.
“Find the kitchen passage. We'll hold their attention.”
“You can't open the postern from this side.”
Something scraped above them. The narrow door swung inward. A young woman in a gray tunic looked down the stairs.
“Are you Luvz?”
He was moving before she finished the question.
✦
Nessa had blood on her hands, but it was not hers. She had found a wounded guard in the service passage. He had caught her ankle as she crawled past. She had kicked until he let go, then climbed the last ladder with his blood on her sleeves. Luvztospoon put himself between her and the courtyard.
“Where is she?”
“Below. They took her below.”
“How many?”
“I couldn't count.”
He looked toward the kitchen door. Rashka reached the landing behind him.
“Go with Torren,” she told Nessa. “There's a priest at the shepherd's house.”
Nessa shook her head.
“The prisoners. They don't have keys.”
She held up Malrec's ring of plain iron keys. Rashka studied her face.
“Show Torren the cells. Then leave.”
Nessa nodded. Luvztospoon touched her shoulder very gently.
“Thank you.”
She looked at the ribbon around his wrist.
“She said you'd come.”
He had prepared so many answers to what Seven might have suffered that he was not prepared for this simple evidence of her faith. The girl had never met him. She had taken a frightening risk because Seven told her someone would come, and because she chose to believe it.
Nessa could not have been much older than some of the prisoners they had freed from the quarry. Blood had dried in a thin brown line along her knuckles. Rashka was asking whether she could climb the ravine path and still lead Torren to the cells. Nessa nodded before the question was finished. Luvztospoon wanted to tell her she had already done enough, but he could see that the keys in her hand meant something to her. He stepped aside and let her show the way.
✦
Sevenofknine had stopped fighting when Malrec ordered Nessa brought to the lower hall. He thought the threat had frightened her. It had. But it also meant he did not know Nessa had escaped. She let the guards drag her down the stairs. At the landing, she dropped to one knee and held the rail, forcing them to slow while she counted the doors. Two on the left. One barred door on the right.
Through its small window, she saw her sword standing among confiscated weapons. Malrec pulled her upright.
“You won't need that.”
She kept her eyes on the floor. In the lower hall, he pushed her toward the stone seat. She turned away from it.
“No.”
The clasp tightened against her throat. Pain traveled down her spine. Her knees struck the stone.
“Nessa will sit beside you if you refuse.”
“Then bring her.”
Malrec paused. Upstairs, a bell began ringing. Sevenofknine looked at his hand. Two fingers were swollen from where she had trapped them in the cell door. She rose as though giving in. Then she struck those fingers with her elbow and took his knife.
✦
Luvztospoon reached the kitchen passage through a cloud of smoke. Rashka had overturned an oil lamp beneath the covered walkway. Korr held the entrance with his shield while Fen's arrows kept the wall guards from reaching the bell. The cook ran past Luvztospoon carrying a sack of salt and a terrified expression. He let him go. At the lower stair, two guards blocked the way.
The first wore a blue-marked gorget. The second carried a hooked blade meant to catch an opponent's weapon. Luvztospoon let the hook catch his sword. Then he stepped forward and struck the man with his free hand. The hooked blade dropped. He turned it beneath his boot, snapping its thin neck, and met the first guard's descending cut with the sound part of his repaired sword.
The impact drove pain through his shoulder. He kept his elbow low. The next cut came across his ribs. He took it on his armor, trapped the man's arm against his side, and drove him into the stair rail. The gorget flashed blue. A voice rose from beneath them.
“She is waiting.”
Luvztospoon pulled the guard away from the rail and struck the marked metal until it split. The voice stopped. He descended.
✦
Sevenofknine cut the cord of a hanging lamp. It fell between her and the guards. Burning oil spread across the floor. She ran for the nearest channel. Its grille had been secured by two clamps. She drove Malrec's knife beneath the first and twisted until its handle broke. The clamp gave way. A guard caught her shoulder. She seized his wrist, turned beneath it, and sent him across the open grille.
His mailed arm struck the glowing channel. Blue light snapped up to his elbow. He screamed and dragged himself away. Sevenofknine took his sword and wedged it into the crack beneath the channel's carved facing. The stone shifted. From the arch, Veyr cried out in a hundred overlapping voices. She pushed again. The first channel broke. For a heartbeat, the clasp fell cold against her neck.
She staggered, suddenly able to feel the full weight of her own body. Malrec came through the smoke. He carried her runeblade.
✦
At the cell passage, Torren tried the keys one by one while Nessa called softly through each door.
“There's a way out. You have to walk.”
Some prisoners could not. Torren lifted the first over his shoulder. Another man took a woman who had lost both shoes. Nessa tied strips of cloth around the bare feet of two children before leading them toward the postern. Outside, Fen's bowstring snapped. He pulled a knife and ran down from the ledge. A guard caught him with an arrow before he reached Korr's shield.
Fen fell hard, rolled, and tried to rise. Rashka seized his armor and dragged him beneath the walkway. She saw the blood spreading along his side.
“Hold that,” she said, putting his hand over the wound.
Torren appeared with the first prisoners. Rashka looked toward the kitchen passage, then the open postern.
“Get them down. All of them.”
“Luvztospoon—”
“I'll find him.”
She took Fen's knife, pressed it into his free hand, and stood.
✦
Luvztospoon found the barred weapons room and tore the loose bolt from its frame. Sevenofknine's dagger lay on the shelf inside. He took it. Below him, steel struck steel. He ran down the last stair. Through the smoke, he saw Sevenofknine holding a guard's sword in both hands. Malrec drove her backward toward the stone seat with her own runeblade. Luvztospoon crossed the room.
Malrec turned at the sound. Luvztospoon's first blow knocked the runeblade aside. His second drove the keeper against a pillar. Sevenofknine caught his coat. For one impossible moment, he thought she was an echo too. Then her hand closed around his wrist, exactly where the ribbon lay.
“You kept it,” she said.
He looked down at her face. There was soot in her hair and a split in her lower lip. Her eyes were clear. He touched her cheek with his good hand.
“I told you I would.”
Behind them, the stone arch began to open.