“Larkin will come at dawn and take Angel back with him,” she told him, returning to sit beside him in the gathering dark. “It would have been better to put down on the south bank, but too risky with the storm coming in and the winds blowing so hard.”

In the distance, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed against the northern horizon. The storm was gathering strength and moving closer, clouds rolling out of the darkness in massive banks.

“I can’t remember the last time we had a storm with thunder and lightning,” Kirisin said quietly. “Do you think it will rain hard?”

His sister nodded. “I do.”

“Maybe it means something,” he murmured.

“Maybe it means we will be getting wet before this night’s over. Better keep your cloak close at hand, Little K.”

They were silent for a time, listening to the peals of thunder, blinking against the sharp flashes of lightning, waiting for the storm to reach them. Kirisin realized all at once how sleepy he was and then remembered that there hadn’t been much time for sleep in almost two days.

“Angel will be furious when she finds out we’ve left her behind,” he said.

“Angel might be furious, but she will also be alive.” His sister gave a small sigh. “I don’t like leaving her, either. She’s a lot better equipped than we are to fight off what we are likely to come up against. But not like she is. She has to be well enough to stand on her own first. And we can’t wait on that. We can’t wait on anything if we’re going to help our people. We just don’t have a choice.”

“I know,” he said.

The rain began to fall, a steady downpour that quickly turned into a deluge. They huddled back against the cliff, doing what they could to stay dry. Everything more than ten feet away disappeared in shimmering wet curtains of water, swallowed as if it had vanished entirely. It was an unsettling feeling. Kirisin wondered what would happen if the river rose another foot or two, but decided the chances of that were small. Even a storm as strong as this one shouldn’t be able to swell the river that much. Redonnelin Deep had been ten feet higher twenty years ago, he had been told. But the weather patterns had changed, and rain was a rarity these days, even here in the northwest part of the country, where it had always rained regularly in the past.

“How are we going to do this, Sim?” Kirisin asked her suddenly.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. It was so dark by now that he could barely make out her face. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

“Will they even give us a chance to tell them what might happen? Will they listen to anything we have to say?”