All in all, the drop went better than Valyn had dared to hope. The Urghul tending the campfire were just kids—the oldest maybe ten years old—preparing the morning meal while their elders enjoyed a few final moments of sleep and warmth inside the api. The oldest girl, a pale, blond child of nine or ten, hurled herself at them, screaming imprecations in her strange language and stabbing with her cooking knife until Laith knocked her unconscious with a carefully calibrated blow of his sword hilt. The two younger children glanced uncertainly from the massive bird to the api and back, but, aside from shouting a few vicious-sounding threats, they made no move to interfere.

The adults were a different story. As soon as the children stopped shrieking, a man barreled out of the entrance flap of the nearest tent, stark naked save for the spear in his hand, face twisted with confusion and rage. The sight of Suant’ra looming over his cook fire slowed him for a moment, but if he was frightened by six well-armed, black-clad figures materializing out of the predawn murk, he didn’t show it. With a bellow, he hurled the spear directly at Valyn. Valyn slid aside, letting the shaft glide harmlessly into the night, but then, before he could take a step forward, a knife sprouted from his assailant’s throat.

Valyn glanced over his shoulder at Pyrre.

The Skullsworn smiled at him, then winked.

“We’re not here to kill them,” he spat.

“Please stop using the first-person plural,” she replied, bouncing another knife on her palm. “I’m not a part of your Wing.”

“I am on the Wing,” Laith interjected, “and I’m all right with killing them. I remember those lectures on blood sacrifice and pain ritual, and I’m not all that eager—”

He broke off as a woman burst from the api, naked as the first man, a shorthorn bow in her hand. Her skin, like that of all the Urghul, was onion-pale, almost lambent in the firelight, and her hair, too, a great blond mane, might have been spun from white-hot fire. She took a step forward, then paused, eyeing the assembled Kettral. A chill, vicious wind sliced through the camp. She didn’t shiver.

“Go ahead and say it,” Pyrre remarked. “She’s a woman. And we don’t kill women. I don’t mind. Tell me how helpless she is.”

Valyn stared at the Urghul. Scars puckered the skin of her belly and legs—lance wounds and arrow punctures. Her hair whipped at her face, but she paid it no mind, focusing instead on Valyn. She hadn’t yet drawn the bow, but an arrow was nocked to the string, and, from the easy way she held it, he imagined she was familiar with the weapon.

“If she moves,” he said slowly, “kill her.”

“How barbaric,” Pyrre replied, amusement bright in her voice. “Triste would never have approved, poor girl.”