Triste held him up, pulling him into her lips, her arms, her horrible embrace. The leg was gone. Both Matol and Triste were soaked in blood, and still she didn’t let him go. Matol writhed inside her arms, but it was no longer clear he was trying to escape, no longer clear that he could. As Kaden stared, shock scratching at the edge of the vaniate, Triste slammed the Ishien leader up against the post of the kenta, forcing her body against his, sliding a hand down his breeches even as she pivoted him against the stone once more, pivoted him into the hungry emptiness of the gate. Matol’s spine arched, his head craned back, his whole body convulsed, a series of awful, bone-wracking spasms, and then, finally, Triste let him fall. There was little left but the head and a sliver of torso. He looked more like a side of bloody beef than a man. Triste was drenched, as though she had stood for hours in a rain of blood, but she paid no attention to the red streaming down her face, dripping from her fingers. She stared at Matol, her face hard and unreadable, then licked the blood from her lips.

“Triste?” Kaden said, his mind still scrambling to make sense of what he’d seen.

She shook her head, eyes huge and blank. “What?”

Then, before he could respond, the Ishien were pouring through the gate on the far side of the island. There were at least a dozen, all in boiled wool and leather, all carrying blades and bows. A few faces Kaden recognized, others he did not. The numbers were what mattered. Triste could hardly yank all of them from the vaniate, could hardly drive all of them through the gates.

“Here,” Billick called, gesturing. “Ring them in.”

As the Ishien spread out, Kaden watched all chance of freedom slip away. No sorrow came with the realization of failure. No fear.

“Bring them down with bolts and arrows,” the Ishien went on. “To the legs only. I want them crippled, not dead.”

He glanced once at the mangled smear of flesh that had been Matol, then hefted his blade, as though testing its weight. They were taking their time, choosing their shots, but it wouldn’t be long before the arrows flew.

“Behind the kenta,” Kiel said, gesturing.

Kaden understood, retreating behind the gate with Triste just before the first hum of the bowstrings. A half-dozen arrows streaked toward them . . . then vanished into the emptiness of the kenta. The gate was a shield, but it was immobile. Even as he watched, the Ishien were spreading out, moving to the flanks. Over his shoulder, just a few paces behind, the island dropped away, cliffs plunging straight down into the shattered rocks and spray below. There would be no escape there.

“We have to go through,” he said.