I was pretty sure Kemal’s skin darkened with a flush. “We are not like you. The strongest male proves he has the strength and therefore the right to crown. To crown means to become female. Thus will he enter the river and become she, and thus she will cross by water into the ocean of dreams, what you call the Great Smoke. The mothers live there. Now I have told you more than I ought,” he finished, with a glance at Bee. “You must leave at once.”

Bee had not given up. “Is there some other refuge? A boat? Horses? A hidden path?”

“No.” He hustled us back up the drive. The noise of feeding mercifully faded behind us.

Lamplight winked as the gatekeeper peeped out. “I can’t open up. Trapped inside and like to be crushed and spat out is what you get for demanding the right to go where you ought not. Fools!”

“Let them out,” said Kemal.

“You’re not even worm enough to make me,” said the gatekeeper, with a laugh.

Perhaps the night’s fraught events had worn Kemal’s mild temperament threadbare, but I thought it more likely that he responded as a young man might who feels he has been insulted in front of a woman he wants to impress. Kemal punched him up under the ribs with a strong undercut from his right, followed by a swift uppercut to the jaw from his left. The man went down.

“That was bruising!” said Rory, shaking out of his anxious slouch. “Have you studied the science of boxing?”

A horn shrilled from the road. Behind, the leviathan trumpeted in answer to its challenge. Heat grew at our back. The dragon was dragging itself closer.

“Hurry!” Kemal pushed us through the open door of the gatehouse. Even in such dire straits, I could not help but notice that the hearth fire burned unstintingly as Vai passed. We tumbled out on the other side of the gate as the gatekeeper skittered back into the safety of the gatehouse and slammed and locked the doors. The bellows breath of the dragon sucked in and out like the rhythm of the forge. It was definitely larger than it had been before it had eaten the last claimant.

Worst, the soldiers were closer than we had realized.

“There is the Diarisso mage!” In the aura of the gate lamp, soldiers clattered out of the night even as the cold fire guiding them vanished as though blown out.

The mage House troops spread into a semicircle that pinned us in front of the gate. We were caught between the claw and the teeth, as in the old tale of the slaves fleeing ancient Kemet who were trapped between the pharaoh’s army and an uncrossable sea.

“How could you abandon us like this!” Bee cried accusingly at Kemal.

Rory muttered, “Eaten or shot, which ought I prefer?”

Vai swore out of bitter frustration as his magic failed him.