Roh choked. He clutched at his stomach and pulled away from Abas. He wouldn’t vomit. Not here. He looked back under the table and saw a way through. It was three feet from the top of the dais to the floor. He was too small to drag Abas. He had to wake him up or leave him. He lay on his belly beneath the table. The dying sanisi was whispering now, something that sounded like a prayer.

Someone cried out. Blades burst and hissed.

A man grabbed hold of Roh’s ankle. Dragged him out from under the table.

Roh gurgled a cry. He clawed at the stone with his bloody hands, kicked out.

The grip relaxed. Roh tried to hop away, too late. One of the strange men gripped Roh’s shoulder and brought one hand back. A blue blade flashed – it sprouted from the man’s wrist like a living thing. Roh crossed his arms. The air around him grew heavy, condensed. He recited the Litany of the Gale.

He tensed. Not himself but the blue particles of Para’s breath. The air around him pulsed, contracted. He expelled the breath from his lungs and pushed the wall of condensed air outward.

His attacker shivered. His blue bonsa weapon lodged in the coagulated air.

Roh parted the air and caught the man’s hand in a deceptively simple grip. He twisted. The weapon wrenched free.

The misty blue breath around him dissipated. The man reached through the broken defense and jabbed toward him, impossibly fast, a kill strike. Roh saw the strike just as the man formed it. Roh pivoted. He still gripped the man’s hand in a crippling hold.

Roh stumbled over one of Abas’s arms. He fell to his knees and pulled his attacker down with him.

He saw something moving at the corner of his eye. A blue weapon flashed. The length of a sanisi’s infused blade arced across Roh’s field of vision, neatly splitting the man in two. For one still moment, the man grinned at Roh. A thin line of blood appeared across his face. Half of his head slid away.

Roh still held the man’s warm hand, his grip welded to the flesh like a vise, terrified to let go, his body still telling him that to let go meant death.

Blood gushed. The body tottered, balanced upright only by Roh’s grip.

A figure bent over the leaning body. Clad in black, spattered in glistening blood. A lean face, an ugly scar. For a long moment, Roh did not recognize him.

“You can let him go,” Kadaan said.

Roh’s fingers were numb. The dead man’s hand felt cool. Roh let his grip relax. The corpse fell to the floor.

Kadaan’s infused blade hovered over the still body, black with blood. As Roh watched, the blood seeped into the branch. A single drop escaped from the tip, dripped to the floor.