Gwenna suppressed a growl. This was why Wings had leaders. Between the three of them they had enough experience to come up with something resembling the ass end of a plan, but Annick was about as communicative as a brick, and there was no telling what was going on in Pyrre’s murderous brain. This was the kind of shit Valyn had been dealing with since the Wing was established, but where Valyn was good at it, quick to find the strings that would draw the group together, Gwenna just wanted to hit someone.

She muscled down the urge.

“All right,” she said slowly. “We agree that we need to get out.”

“Consensus,” Pyrre said. “I love consensus.” She frowned. “Although I distrust it.”

Gwenna ignored her. “Annick, what’s your thinking?”

The sniper pointed up, through the smoke hole of the api. “Climb the poles and out.”

“Out where?” Gwenna demanded.

Perching on top of the hide tent seemed about as useful as lying down in the ’Kent-kissing fire and hoping the smoke would carry her away.

“You know that Long Fist has people watching this tent, right?”

“I’m going to shoot them,” Annick said.

Gwenna stared. “With what?”

The sniper slid aside one of the skins to reveal a rough wooden bow and half a dozen arrows, the tips hardened in the fire.

Pyrre nodded appreciatively. “And the string?” she asked.

Annick gestured to the haunch she’d been butchering. “I used the tendon.”

Gwenna eyed the crude thing warily. She didn’t doubt Annick’s knowledge when it came to archery. The sniper had been making her own bows since before she arrived on the Islands, but she hardly had the required tools or the necessary time to do the job justice. “Can you hit anything with it?”

The sniper nodded. “At close range.”

“Define close range,” Pyrre said.

“Forty paces,” Annick said. “Fifty at the outside.”

Gwenna shook her head. At fifty paces, she herself wouldn’t be able to hit a house with the thing. On the other hand, she’d long ago learned to believe Annick when it came to sticking anything full of arrows.

“And you were going to tell us about the bow . . . when?”

All this time, the sniper had been working on her weapon and she hadn’t said a thing.

“When it was time,” Annick replied, meeting Gwenna’s glare with a flat, level look. “The fewer people who know about a thing, the safer.”

“We’re not just people,” Gwenna spat. “We’re your ’Kent-kissing Wing.”

Pyrre tsked from across the fire. “Just like Valyn,” she said. “Why is everyone so eager to recruit me for the Kettral?”

“Never mind,” Gwenna said. “The point is, we’re on the same side now, and if we don’t start acting like it, this is going to be the shortest breakout in the annals of the Eyrie, bow or no bow.”