“The palace archers,” Triste said, lips drawn back in a smile or a snarl. Face and hair dripping blood, she might have been some figure from nightmare, but inside the vaniate Kaden was beyond all nightmare.

“We’re behind the gate now,” Kaden said, mind humming. “We’ll come out on the opposite side, putting the kenta between us and the palace guards. It’ll shield us.”

He glanced at Kiel, and the Csestriim nodded. “Until they adjust,” he murmured.

“They’re not taking me,” Triste said, eyeing the Ishien with something like hunger. “They will never take me.”

“Our odds on the other side of the gate are slim,” Kiel said.

“They’re slim either way,” Kaden said. “Right now, confusion is our friend.”

Before they could debate the matter further, Triste loosed a defiant scream, then hurled herself through the kenta.

Kaden hesitated, probing the boundary of the vaniate. It flexed beneath his mind’s touch, like the surface of a pool of water when a leaf settles upon it, but the trance held. He took one more look at the Ishien, then followed.

The stone chamber was in chaos. Men were shouting orders at one another, waving weapons, pointing bows. The sound redoubled as Kaden emerged through the gate, reverberating off of the walls and low ceiling, the cries of anger, fear, and confusion battering him from all directions. The crossbowmen loosed another volley that passed harmlessly into the kenta. Kiel lowered the blade of the naczal, leveling it inches from the gate.

“The Ishien have a hard choice,” he said, voice calm as though discussing the evening meal. “We’re waiting on this side, the guards on the other, and they know it.”

“There’s only three of us,” Kaden said.

“But we are here,” Kiel replied. “Which gives us an edge.”

For a few heartbeats, nothing happened. The palace soldiers struggled to reload and crank their weapons while their commander shouted pointless orders. Kaden scanned the tiny space for some escape, but there was nothing to find. The chamber was only ten paces across, and seemed to be far underground, the only exit a narrow corridor blocked by a line of soldiers and crossbowmen with swords at their hips.

The corridor or the kenta. The soldiers or the Ishien. There were no good choices. Kaden reached behind him, took a torch from its sconce on the wall. It was a foolish weapon, but felt better than facing all that steel with nothing in his hands.

“We wait for the Ishien,” he said. “They’ll absorb some of the attack. When they come through, we have to force our way back through the kenta, hope we can slip past whomever they left on the island.”