Gwenna slumped unconscious in her harness, having succumbed to her vicious head wound as soon as they were in the air. Annick had lashed her to ’Ra’s talon with a length of rope, which kept her from spinning free in the wind, but the slackness of her jaw and the way her eyes rolled back in her head had Valyn worried.

Talal was faring a bit better. An arrow had punched into his leg during the chaos of the grab, and though he was managing to stand on the far talon, Valyn could tell from the angle of the shaft that the steel head was buried close to the bone. Getting it out would prove both dangerous and time-consuming, and, in a best case, the wound would slow the leach.

Most worrisome of all, at least at the moment, was the fact that ’Ra herself was struggling, the normally effortless beating of her wings irregular and labored, her great body listing to port. Valyn had read about fights between wild kettral, but, aside from a few harmless skirmishes between hatchlings, he’d never witnessed one. How ’Ra could fly at all after trading blows with the Flea’s bird Valyn had no idea, but fly she did, albeit weakly. He couldn’t even guess where Sami Yurl’s bird had ended up in the chaos.

We’re alive, Valyn reminded himself. We got out.

At least, he hoped they had. There had been no sign of the Flea’s Wing since Assare. It was possible, more than possible, that Chi Hoai was dead, her kettral was crippled, and the rest of the Wing was stranded. On the other hand, the two birds hadn’t been out of sight for that long, not long enough to be certain of anything, and trusting to someone else’s failure made for shit strategy. And so, for hour after hour he stared east, vision blurred by his wind-whipped tears, searching in the stacked columns of cloud for some sign of pursuit. His eyes ached, but at least the effort took his mind off his own pain. Nerve-fraying as it was, staring into the empty darkness was better than looking at Gwenna’s limp form.

He’d managed to do his job—Kaden was clear, Valyn’s own Wing was alive—and yet all he felt, aside from the wracking pain in his shoulder, was a sick slosh of guilt and anger. Guilt for the injuries to Gwenna and Talal; anger at Pyrre for starting the fight and at himself for not stopping it; and yet more guilt for Blackfeather Finn.

They might be part of the plot, he reminded himself. They could have been keeping us alive for questioning, for torture. It was possible, but the possibility didn’t change the fact that a man Valyn had liked and admired was dead.