“The hells!” She ran up the ramp, pushed past some idiot shrieking woman in blood-soaked merchant’s robes, and stopped at the threshold, slammed by the reek of blood and the stench of death. Gagging, she backed away, and bumped into a person crowding up behind. She turned and slugged; Pil caught her arm.

“Cursed demons slaughtered them all,” she said, voice breaking on the words. “Nothing we can do here. Let’s get back to the hall.”

Pil slung Volias’s corpse over his shoulder. Nallo took point, shoving down the ramp and through the crowd with vicious pleasure in seeing people flinch away. Tears washed her face. She wanted to rip someone’s cursed ugly face off just for all the gods-rotted useless nattering, no one taking charge, an assembly of weak-hearted fools.

No one guarded the gate to Clan Hall, but a swarm of reeves and fawkners were streaming in and out of the lofts and buzzing in the torch-lit parade ground like bees smoked out of their hive. Seeing her and Pil, Peddo ran over.

“Ah, the hells!” he cried, but he wasn’t surprised to find Volias dead.

“There’s been a massacre at the council hall, demons guised as Guardians from the tales,” said Nallo. “Then Volias just dropped dead. What’s going on?”

“Bring him to the lofts.”

Inside, she smelled blood enough to make her choke. Likard ran up. He’d been weeping. Others were still crying as they wriggled aimlessly here and there like so many decapitated eels.

“Are you just always that sloppy about fixing the cursed bird’s hood?” Likard shouted at her.

“What?”

Unlike the big, open barracks rooms, the lofts had separate sections and separate entrances, linked by corridors for the fawkners to move quickly from one cote to another. She ran ahead, but the side door to the loft where Tumna sheltered was already open. She staggered to a halt inside. Two young men sprawled on the floor, one headless. Tumna’s feathers were stuck out in a rage, and she was still swiping at them with her talons, rolling them over as if they were toys. Her hood was crumpled in a corner, as if it had hit the wall.

“Slow down,” wheezed Likard, behind her. “Cursed if those two hells-bitten bastards weren’t hopeful fawkner’s assistants at all, but agents for the cursed army, come up here to kill the eagles while everyone slept. They slaughtered Trouble and Surri in the first two lofts. When they snuck in here ready to stab Tumna and Sweet, I tell you that cursed ill-tempered raptor must have torn off her hood and skewered them. She ripped the head clean off that one. May he rot and roast and freeze in the hells.”

Tumna was alive. Exasperated, the huge raptor chirped, glaring at Nallo in the muzzy lamplight as if in complaint: Thugs disturbed my night’s rest! How like them!

Nallo began sobbing. Folk came up to touch her as if to make sure she wasn’t a ghost, while others ran up and down the corridors to see if anyone else was sneaking around, anyone not accounted for. Murderers!