Mav went back up to the room and woke the others.
He told them everything in a whisper, while the guards stood outside the door. Tamsin went white, then gray. Ronald listened without moving. When Mav had finished, he only said one word, which was a word that his mother wouldn’t have liked.
"We leave tonight," Mav said. "Before they’re ready."
"Leave where?" Tamsin whispered. "We can’t fly. There’s no arch."
"Out of the city. Down to the lower terraces, then to Tova. She knows every island. We’ll find somewhere to hide, and then we’ll think about the rest."
"And the girl?" Ronald asked.
Mav didn’t want to say it. "We can’t take her tonight," he said at last. "Not from the hall of the stone, with every guard in the city around it. We’ll come back for her."
Ronald looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded, once.
They didn’t get the chance.
-----
The guards came an hour before dawn.
They didn’t use the door. They came through the window, all at once, with the wind behind them. There were five of them. Three were rank C. Mav could see it in how they moved, quick, heavy and certain, like the Speaker. The first one landed on Ronald’s bed before Ronald was even awake.
Mav had his harpoon in his hand before his feet touched the floor.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
He hit the nearest guard with his lightning. The guard’s wings locked open. But it only held him for a second, because rank C was too strong for that. The guard shook himself and came on. Behind him, two more were already in the room.
Mav thought very fast.
He couldn’t call his army. The room was far too small for his dome. The corridor was full of guards. Several rank C fighters in a closed room were more than he could handle, even with everything that he had. If he fought here, he would lose. Ronald and Tamsin would die with him, or they would all go onto the stone together.
But if he got out, he could come back.
"Mav!" Tamsin screamed. One of the guards had her by the arms. Another had pinned Ronald to the wall. Ronald was fighting him with his bare fists, wild with anger.
It was the hardest thing that Mav had ever done.
[You have borrowed a skill: Lurk.]
He stepped back against the dark wall beside the window. Then he stopped moving.
His skin changed. It felt cold and strange, as if water were running over him. In a heartbeat, his body took the color of the gray stone behind him. So did his clothes. The guards turned toward the place where he had been, but they didn’t see him.
"Where is he?" one of them hissed.
"The window. He went out of the window."
Two of them flew out into the dark to look. The others dragged Ronald and Tamsin out of the room. Tamsin was still screaming his name. Ronald had stopped fighting. As they pulled him through the door, he looked once around the room, at the walls, as if he knew. He didn’t say anything.
Then the room was empty. Mav was alone in it, standing perfectly still against the stone, and he had never felt so ashamed.
-----
He waited until the corridor was quiet. He made himself wait far longer than he wanted to. Then he climbed out of the window.
The wall below it was rough, cut by hand, full of cracks. He went down it slowly, with his face against the stone and the cloud far below his feet. Each time a guard flew past, he stopped and borrowed Lurk again. The guard saw only rock.
Halfway down, he cast his Manifestation on a wide ledge in the shadows. He called Moss, Fern and Reed. The three stalkers came out of the dome and pressed themselves against the cliff beside him. Their skin turned the color of the stone. Nobody in this World had ever seen a beast that could hide. The guards flew past them again and again. They never looked twice.
Then he did the other thing that he had to do.
’Two. Everyone. Go home and stay there.’
"Where are you going?" Two asked.
’I don’t know yet. They’ll come for my dome if they find it, though, and I won’t lose you here.’
Two didn’t argue. Mav felt the points in his head leave, one after another, until only the three stalkers were left with him on the ledge. Then he let go of the dome, and it faded.
The stalkers led him the rest of the way. He was strong, but they were far better climbers than he was. Moss went first, testing each crack with her long legs. She waited for him whenever he fell behind. Fern and Reed stayed above him, one on each side, watching the sky. When the first light came, they were on the lowest terraces of the city, among broken houses that nobody lived in anymore.
He sent the stalkers home last, when he had found a place to hide. After that, there was only the wind.
-----
The place was a dry cistern under a broken house, at the very edge of the mountain. Its roof had a crack in it, so a little gray light came down. He sat in the dark at the bottom with his harpoon across his knees.
He was shaking with cold. He was also shaking with anger, and with something worse, which was shame. He had left them. He knew that it had been right, that it was the only thing that gave the three of them any chance at all. But Tamsin had screamed his name, and he had stood against the wall and let her.
’I’ll come back,’ he told himself. ’I’ll come back for both of you.’
He was hungry, but he didn’t dare cast his dome to call Two with food. A dome of water shining in a dead cistern would bring every guard in the city. There was a little old rainwater in a crack at the bottom of the cistern. He drank it, and he waited, and he tried not to think about Tamsin’s voice. It didn’t work.
In the middle of the morning, he heard wings above the cistern. Two guards landed on the broken house. He borrowed Lurk again and pressed himself into the wall. He held his breath. One of them stared down through the crack in the roof, and Mav could see his black eyes. He was afraid that the guard could hear his heart.
Then the guard said something to the other in their hollow voices. They flew away.
Mav let out his breath very slowly.
He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t climb the mountain alone. He couldn’t fight his way into the hall of the stone without help, either.
He made himself think it through, the way that Tamsin would have. The roost was at the top of the mountain, with six keepers. The cage was at the bottom, inside the hall of the stone, with the Speaker and his strongest guards. They were two places far apart, and he was only one person.
He needed people who could fly, people who knew the mountain and wanted the same thing that he did. He had no allies in this World, except perhaps a girl with a scarred wing who had knocked on his window.
Somewhere above him, in the heart of the mountain, Ronald and Tamsin were in a cage beside a girl of 10. He didn’t know when the Speaker would put them on the stone. He only knew that the old man wouldn’t wait long, now that one of his prizes had escaped.
He had until the next sacrifice.