“I never knew you were so efficient,” said Bitterblue.

“You take this,” said Giddon, handing her the guard’s sword.

“Should we be leaving these men alive?”

“It’s a risk I’d prefer to take.”

“All right. I’m in no state to make important decisions. Let’s go,” she said, setting off through the trees toward the noise of distant voices.

Their route led them away from the cliff, toward a barn. Rounding it, they came upon what must until recently have been the storehouse. At its back end, broken walls rose from rubble and dust billowed like fog. Its front end was gone, transformed into hills of detritus that circled a massive hole in the earth. The air smelled strange, metallic.

Giddon spotted a guard near the hole, overturning pieces of wall and roof. Noticing Nev near the building’s broken walls, Giddon called, “Nev! How many guards are there?”

“At least six,” Nev called back.

“Two are dead,” came a voice, small and frightened, from somewhere inside.

“Lovisa?” said Nev, turning sharply at the sound. “Lovisa? Where are you?”

“I’m going to fall,” said the voice, “so listen to me. If anyone sees a metal thing shaped like an egg, do not touch it.”

“Lovisa!” cried Nev, trying to find a way over the broken walls.

“Nev, don’t!” said Lovisa. “You stay there! The floor is caving in!”

“Nev, see if there’s a back entrance!” shouted Bitterblue, and in that moment, the guard who was digging through the detritus cried out. His digging had unearthed the body of one of the dead guards. Looking around wildly, he spotted Giddon heading toward him with a sword. Unsheathing his own sword, the guard ran and attacked. Giddon had been carrying his sword in his right hand, a habit he’d picked up to hide his secret advantage of left-handedness. He waited until the guard was near. Then, switching sides, he surprised the man with a left-handed parry that gave him an opening for a punch.

Then Davvi was beside Giddon, helping him grapple the guard to the ground.

“We need something to bind them,” said Giddon, who was getting tired of handing out concussions. “And there’s at least one more guard.”

Davvi grunted, distracted. He was staring across the hole in the ground, trying to make out what was happening at the other edge of the hole, where the broken walls of the storehouse began.

“Nev!” he shouted, then jumped up and ran around the hole, then around the storehouse, disappearing behind it. Giddon squinted, trying to see what Davvi had seen. Nev was on her knees on the storehouse’s broken floor, crawling toward the edges of the hole. That’s when Giddon saw Lovisa, clinging to the crater’s edge.