Valyn cursed. The maneuver was going to be difficult enough for his own Wing, and they had thousands of hours of training. There was nothing to be done for it now, though. If they waited for ’Ra to settle, they were all dead.

“Just stay by me,” he said, “and you’ll be fine.”

Pyrre raised an eyebrow, ran a finger along the tiny slice Valyn left on her neck. “How reassuring.”

Valyn started to say something more, something about cueing in early on the trace strap and the importance of flexing with the takeoff, but an explosion ripped the words away, seemed to tear the very air itself in half, knocking the wind from his lungs and leaving him breathless. A moment later Gwenna staggered from the smoke, head gushing blood, one arm clutched at her side. Valyn seized her with his good arm, and a moment later Talal appeared on her other side.

“I’m fine,” she screamed, but he could feel her sagging against his grip.

“Let’s go,” he shouted, hauling on Gwenna, bulling his way down the hall. “Go!”

Pyrre glanced back toward the explosion, threw another knife, although Valyn couldn’t see that there was anyone to throw at, slipped two more from somewhere in her coat, and followed.

They burst from the building onto the broad ledge. After the dimness and smoke inside the orphanage, the pale rock seemed to positively glow in the moonlight, and Valyn sucked in the fresh air, feeling, for the first time, that they might just survive. He put the silver whistle to his lips, then blew a few short bursts, hoping to Hull he was thinking clearly through the chaos and the pain. His plan, which had seemed so sound before the Flea attacked, now looked like the most ludicrous fantasy. Not that there was any time to change it.

He looked up, scanning the windows above. Smoke poured out of them in great, gray billows. That, at least, would give them a little cover as they fled across the ledge. It was impossible to say just where the Flea’s Wing was, whether or not Gwenna’s starshatters had killed anyone, but once Valyn’s Wing ventured farther out onto that ledge they would be ducks for anyone with a bow and a clear shot.

“Where’s ’Ra?” Laith hissed at Valyn.

“It’s a whistle, not a ’Kent-kissing leash,” Valyn snapped, scanning the darkness for some sign of the bird. “And I’m not calling ’Ra.”

The flier stared. “Are you insane? How do you expect to get out of here?”

Valyn ignored the question.

“There,” he said after a moment. The bird was little more than a silent smudge on the darkness. She was coming in at a low angle—standard blind-grab posture—that would put her right over the center of the ledge.

“I’m waiting for the next instruction,” Pyrre said.