The remaining part of the bridge was a rolled-up length of planks strung together with wire. Kem secured one end to the two iron posts and began unrolling the bundle across the bottom pair of ropes, securing the planks at intervals as he went. He was fast, so sure of himself it left her breathless even as the wind pushed and tugged at his body. But he was in his element; he was young and brash because the world hadn’t hurt him. His mother had hurt him more with her sulks and outbursts and her initial, reflexive, frightened refusal to accept that he was the person he knew himself to be. Elen had never cared, no more than the empire did, so long as every newly fledged adult Declared a place for themselves within the imperial order and obeyed imperial law.

An arrow flew past, too close to his head! A second arrow drew a dark line toward Kem’s exposed figure, but spun away as the wind caught it. A line of archers stood at the rim, readying to pick him off.

They weren’t alone.

A shadow expanded behind the pursuers. All at once, without warning, a soldier went spinning off the rim, arms pinwheeling, screaming as he fell kicking and twisting past the ledge. A second body came head over heels, this one silent and limp. Then a third, shot by Xilsi as the body fell past, even though it was an arrow wasted because the fall would kill him. All this followed by an outbreak of shouting and a sound like the roar of thunder, booming and beating in waves against the air.

Kem reached the other side. She’d missed half his crossing, holding her breath while time had jumped ahead. He grabbed his gear and her gear and headed back without hesitation, not even holding the upper ropes as he made haste in a loose, bent-kneed, even stride that kept the plank walkway from rocking too hard. Once across, he waved to the others. Ipis came first, clutching at the upper ropes, sweating, ashen, jaw set, the planks rocking crazily because she was nervously jerky as she crossed. The instant Ipis reached the solidity of the pier, Luviara gamely set out.

Xilsi came down from her position in the rocks, unable to get a line on the skirmish above. Yet the pursuers retreated in confusion from the rim. They were being chased by a rumbling, swirling shadow that, from this angle, looked like a dragon made of smoke writhing through the sky. After they’d vanished from Elen’s sight, she heard shouts, a scream, a clatter of weapons; then silence.

Surely that had been the haunt who had tossed the bodies over the cliff. Yet how, and what was he, and how could a human body make such a beastly roar? Turn into smoke and still be flesh and bone?