“Remove the messenger,” the Patron said.

The sanisi dragged Chali from the room screaming. Roh heard his screaming from the hall. Blood leaked across the room.

“This is not necessary,” Dasai said. “These are children–”

“Kill them,” the Patron said.

Roh pulled on Para, so much, so quickly, his head buzzed and his skin burned.

A wall of air thumped into his chest. He was flying. Roh smacked hard into the far wall. The breath left his body.

The blades came down quickly. They took Dasai’s head from his body. Roh saw a great gout of blood. Nioni and Aramey were run through by the sanisi flanking them.

Kihin bolted between them to the doors, toward Roh. Roh clawed toward him, gasping for air. The air around him trembled. He recited the Litany of the Palisade to create a shield of air to cut off the sanisi from him and Kihin.

Kihin slammed into another wall of air. Not Roh’s. Roh heard Kihin’s head crack on the floor. Saw blood. The sanisi descended on him. Black coats flapped. Blades flashed.

Roh yanked the doors open. Four more sanisi burst in. Roh scrambled away. It was like something from a terrible dream. He saw Kadaan at the head of them, blue blade drawn. He moved Roh out of his way with a broad motion of his hand, sending a gout of misty blue air his way. It knocked Roh to the floor.

The Patron’s sanisi met Kadaan’s group with a heavy whump of air and clash of blades and maelstrom of blue haze.

Kihin lay on the floor, bleeding out. The air in the room condensed. It was like swimming through honey.

Roh pulled Kihin into his arms. Blood pumped from multiple wounds in his chest. Roh remembered holding his own wounded belly, the way Kihin was grasping now at his.

“Don’t die,” Roh said. His voice sounded deep and syrupy in the thick air.

Kihin’s blood pooled across the floor. A dead sanisi thumped beside him. Roh flinched.

Kihin struggled. His mouth moved, like a gasping fish. “Please don’t die,” Roh said. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

Kihin went still.

Kadaan and two of his sanisi had cornered the Patron. Ten dead sanisi littered the room, more than Roh ever thought could die. They were speaking too fast for Roh to understand.

Roh looked across the bodies of his friends. Dasai, who had escaped this place and then died in it, Kihin, who was spared exile and then run through, and Aramey and Nioni mangled together in a twisted heap, their work cut short. All for nothing. They had achieved nothing.

Roh crawled over to the dead sanisi beside Aramey and Nioni. The man’s infused blade still lay in his hand, glowing with a faint blue light.

The voices of the sanisi thundered in his mind.