As though summoned by the words, Newt crashed back into the room, reeling unsteadily, blood sheeting down his face from a vicious gash across his scalp. Valyn smashed him out of the way with the flats of his blades. The Flea was closing again, and from across the room, Laith was shouting and waving. He’d taken the doorway, he and Talal. Valyn lunged toward it, but halfway there a sharp, hot punch in the back of the shoulder slammed him forward into the floor. A flatbow bolt, he realized, as the pain erupted through his back, straight through the muscle, and lodged against the bone. He tried to push himself up, but his wounded shoulder buckled beneath his weight, and his chin smashed against the floor. Were they trying to kill him finally, or just slow him? There was no way to be sure.

Pain and confusion clamped a dark hand over his eyes, and Valyn fought against the beckoning oblivion. The bolt hadn’t killed him, but the sharp head ground against the bone every time he moved, each hot swell of agony threatening to drown him.

“Get up, you bastard!” Someone was shouting in his ear, hauling him forward by the armpits. Gwenna, he realized. “Get up!”

Valyn bit into the side of his cheek hard enough to draw blood, the bright new pain somehow balancing the old, holding it at bay. His arm should have been useless below the shoulder, but he could feel a knotted strength even in the mangled tissue, some sort of animal endurance. You can move, he growled to himself, or you can die.

He moved.

Annick and Talal were in the doorway, the leach grimacing with concentration. Both were bleeding from half a dozen minor wounds, but Valyn himself seemed to have the worst of it, and even with one arm, he could still fight. Annick had managed to get her shortbow restrung in the madness—he had no idea how—and she was laying down covering fire, hands moving so fast Valyn couldn’t track the motion. He shoved Gwenna through the doorway in front of him, then followed, crashing to the floor as another arrow whispered overhead.

“How the fuck did they get in?” Laith demanded, panting hard.

“I would be tempted to place more emphasis,” Pyrre said, stepping from the shadows, “on how we are going to get out.” The assassin held a slender knife loosely in each hand. A constellation of fresh blood—evidently not her own—flecked her face, but other than that she looked calm, relaxed, as though she’d just come from chopping carrots for the evening meal. With the back of her hand, she brushed a few stray strands of hair from her forehead.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Gwenna snapped. She was hunched over, fingers busy with some munitions Valyn couldn’t make out. “We’re fucking winning.”