It was as if someone had just cut off his arm, and he hadn’t yet felt it. It was going to hurt; he knew it was going to hurt. But at the moment, he could only stare at the bleeding stump in a mingling of despair and disbelief. . . .

Except that instead of a bleeding stump of a limb, he knew that it was Aket-ten who had been amputated out of his life. He knew when he felt what had happened, it would be worse than any physical wound.

With leaden feet, he forced himself to go to Bethlan’s pen. There, they were all gathered, all those who were still awake and eager to hear how the message drop had gone. And he did not say a word, could not manage a single syllable, as he listened to Menet-ka stammer out the tale, while someone else unsaddled Bethlan. Both of them looked terrible. Menet-ka must have pushed Bethlan to new speeds to get here as quickly as he had.

“There was fog,” he said, exhaustion dulling his eyes and blurring his voice, as he leaned heavily against the wall. “We hadn’t expected fog. We couldn’t tell where we were. Except that we could see a ring of torches and bonfires, and I figured that was where the soldiers that the Magi had set to watch had put up a line of guards. I thought we should just drop our messages in the center of all of that and hope that some of them landed in courtyards instead of on the roof. But she wouldn’t hear of it, and before I could say or do anything, she took Re-eth-ke down. And that was when the fog just—cleared away. It practically melted out of sight; she wasn’t more than halfway down when it was all gone, and by then, it was too late to pull up.”

“It was magic, then?” Gan managed, his eyes gone round and horrified.

“A trap,” said Ari flatly, and closed his eyes. “Curse it all, Kiron was right. At least half of this business with going after the Healers was a trap meant to take Jousters. They set a trap for you, Menet-ka. They knew we’d send Jousters if they did to another group what they’d done to the Winged Ones, at least to scout, and they set it all up as a trap and used the Healers as bait.”

I was right, he thought dully, with no sense of triumph. He had never wished to have been wrong more.

“They used war javelins and throwing sticks, they didn’t use bows and arrows,” Menet-ka said trying to control the quaver in his voice. “And they weren’t wasting time trying to hit the rider or me; they aimed for Re-eth-ke.”

“They hit her?” Orest gulped, and Kiron choked back a sob.