She glared at each of them in turn, trying to slow down her breathing, to stay calm. Trying and failing.

Pyrre narrowed her eyes. “A lot like Valyn,” she said again. “Same conviction. Same intensity.” She turned to Annick. “Do you see it?” The sniper ignored the question, testing the sinew of her bow instead. The assassin smiled slyly. “You and Valyn would make a sweet pair, Gwenna. Well, maybe sweet’s not quite the right word, but . . .”

“Leave it,” Gwenna growled.

The Skullsworn raised her hands. “Didn’t mean to touch a nerve. All right,” she said, sitting up, “enough gossip. We’re planning. We’re working together. Annick shoots a whole boatload of people, lays down a veritable plague of destruction. Good. Then what?”

“Horses,” the sniper said. “We get to the horses. Then the trees.”

Gwenna grimaced. It was madness, the whole thing. Unfortunately, she couldn’t come up with anything better. They needed to warn Annur. Which meant escaping. There was just no way around it. Unfortunately, escaping probably meant dying in the attempt. “And when someone notices three non-Urghul women strolling through the camp?”

Pyrre smiled. “Then we begin our offering to the god.”

Gwenna shook her head again. “You know we’re going to die,” she said. “This is a shit plan, and it’s going to kill us all.”

Annick eyed her with that icy stare. “Do you have another suggestion?”

“No,” Gwenna replied helplessly.

“Be comforted,” Pyrre said, her smile sharp as a knife. “Ananshael is not particular. Our lives, or theirs, the god will be pleased.”

The Lord of the Grave must be pretty fucking pleased, Gwenna thought, wiping blood from her face with the back of her hand, trying to see through the cloud-shrouded murk, hoping to Hull that she’d dragged the last body far enough behind the tent that no one would notice it right away. Ananshael. Hull. Meshkent. She was starting to think she’d picked the wrong bloody lot of gods, but, with gore smeared across her blacks and half a million Urghul spread around her, there was no going back now.