“Can Drucians fly?” he yelled, and tossed her back down the rise to the sharp stones below.

His companion leapt on Kage’s cousin, stabbing again and again with his sword until her blood ran freely.

It was then that Kage’s children began to cry.

Let go. Fly.

Show them Drucians can fly.

Kage’s grip loosened.

If she had let go then, would things have been different?

“Hush, hush,” she had told her babies, but they had cried, and cried, and she wrapped them tightly and pulled them to her breast as the Ras Tiegans routed her people.

It was not until long after, when the valley was filled with corpses and the smoke began to dissipate, that she realized her babies had stopped moving.

Let go.

Kage opened her eyes. The sunlight hurt her eyes, and that was fine. Everything hurt. It meant she was alive. It was what she told herself when her kin discovered her dead babies, and she fled everything she ever knew to evade the formal ceremony that would have stripped her of everything she was.

She released her right hand from the Wall. Wondered what it was like to fly.

Then she gripped the next hold, and pulled herself up.

Three more moves, and she had both hands on the lip of the crevice.

She pulled herself up into the cool darkness and rolled onto her back. Beneath her, the interior of the Wall was warm and spongy. She stared at the moist ceiling. As she watched, it seemed to rise and fall with the pace of her breath. She sat up. Pressed her hand to the Wall. Recoiled. It was like putting her hand onto warm, still-living meat.

The Wall was… alive.

“Fuck me,” Nyx breathed. “Did she really get up there?”

“They’re a remarkable people,” Safiyah said, “for infidels.”

“Eshe, you ready to shift?” Nyx asked.

“Not until Isabet is pulled up safely,” he said.

“You make it sound like you don’t trust me with her,” Nyx said.

Eshe frowned. Nyx wasn’t quite sure when she started losing him. About the time Isabet started bedding next to him at night, she supposed. It was a dangerous time to play this game, when they were so close to the end.

The rope came down. Three hundred paces of it, braided into a ladder so flimsy that it turned Nyx’s stomach to see it. She wasn’t so sure she was going to get up it, let alone anybody else. Her plan with Isabet was just to tie her to the end of it, and pull her up last.

Ahmed went first, then Khatijah, then Safiyah. Nyx figured that put it at three against one in case Safiyah went turncoat.