Anji blinked her dry eyes. Heavy clouds crawled across the sky. The smell of the sea to the east rode lightly on the breeze, kissing her nose, wafting through her blood-matted scalp. She looked down at her manacled hands. Blood had caked under her fingernails once more. She pushed down a wave of nausea.

“The inn with the red roof,” said Kit, her voice so quiet Anji had to ask her to repeat herself. Kit pointed down the lane with a shaking hand to a lumbering brick-and-timber inn sitting in the shadow of Kiva’s wall. Its dusty latticed windows were dark, the sagging shingled roof in desperate need of repair.

“Come on,” said Kit, jerking the reins.

The inn stood three stories overhead, silent and grimed with mud and dirt where the walls had once been whitewashed. Kit fixed the horses’ reins to a vacant hitching post, lifted the blue bag over one shoulder, then turned and unfastened the rope from Anji’s manacles and tossed it to the ground. A ragged, rasping breath issued from behind the mask, and Anji realized she’d hardly heard a word out of the woman since they’d entered Kiva. Kit leaned slowly to one side, then righted herself with a shuddering step.

A shout echoed down the street from some unseen source, followed by the crack of breaking glass. Kit grabbed Anji’s manacles in one gloved fist and pulled her toward the inn stairs. She swayed on her feet on the first step, shoulders rolling with a rumbling cough as she took the next.

“You’re taking too much of that stuff, Kit—”

“I’m fine, girl, stop your chattering,” said Kit, though her words slurred, like she’d drunk a barrel of wine. She took the last step, gave Anji’s chain a final yank, and spewed a thin trickle of thick black fluid from beneath the mask onto her leathers.

“What the fuck!” Anji jumped aside as the Hawk rocked away, then slumped into Anji with so much momentum they both nearly tumbled down the steps. Anji held the woman in quivering arms, her hand flaring with pain. She sputtered and scanned the cluttered mass of run-down houses, sloping roofs of thatch and broken tile—some windows were either broken out or boarded up. The street was nearly empty now.

Anji grunted, “Wake up!”

Kit didn’t stir—she could have been dead for all Anji knew. The blue bag dropped with a clatter from her limp hand. She thought she would drop Kit there on the ground, wounded hand screaming as she propped up her dead weight. The Hawk was small, to be sure, but so was Anji, and she was at the last of her strength now. Her knees quivered, and she almost dumped Kit’s lifeless form to the wooden steps when the inn’s door creaked open.