The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1)(95)

At last I reached the city wall. The gate was blocked, too many people trying to escape, so I hurled my grappling hook over the parapets and climbed up.

“Wilhelmina!” The deep voice came from everywhere, rumbling through my head until it pulsed behind my eyes.

I gasped as I grabbed hold of the stone parapet, hooked a leg over, and finally rolled onto the walkway.

There was no time to catch my breath. I scrambled to my feet and looped my climbing line, and once it was secure, I began to run along the edge of the city. Guard tower doors hung open, leaving my path unblocked.

My sword in one hand, a stolen torch in the other, I rounded the easternmost district, sparing only glances for the chaos that waited inside.

Red Flag burned, homes and shops and inns. Wraith wolves and bears lumbered through the streets, fighting, chasing people as they ran toward the city gates. People cried out for help, splashing through blood in the streets. A wraith cat yowled and pounced on a fleeing man, who threw his young son out before him. The boy tumbled to the ground, froze, and reached for his father, already half disappeared into the beast’s jaws.

I hesitated, struggling to decide whether to leap down and help, but this was far from the only horror happening in the city. Somewhere, my wraith creature screamed for me.

Trumpets stole the decision. Indigo-coated men raced into the street, brandishing swords and crossbows and torches. They fell on the wraith beasts without mercy, slicing and stabbing the howling creatures. A few men hurried to pull the boy away from his father’s corpse.

I continued onward, uncertain where I was going. Somewhere high. Somewhere I could defend myself.

Rain poured down my face and neck, making the mask stick to my skin. I pushed myself faster through the wet night, coughing against the smoke and stink of wraith.

“Wilhelmina Korte!” The voice came from deeper within the city, and I pursued it through the drowning city of mirrors. Glass gleamed and glowed with the blaze to the west, illuminating the city as surely as sunlight. My heart was thunder in my ears, matched by the beat of my boots on the stone ramparts. My sword weighed me down, bouncing on my thigh, but I didn’t throw it off; I might still need it.

Who knew what waited for me down there?

I kept running.

More gruesome scenes played within neighborhoods below, people fleeing the prowling wraith beasts. Glowmen ran rampant through the city, urging the beasts onward. Several buildings were gutted, hollowed out by something rampaging through them. Stone and wood and bricks littered the cracked streets. Here and there, it looked as though the pieces crept toward one another, as though to reassemble; but that might have been the mist and rain playing tricks on my eyes.

“Wilhelmina!” The keening that followed pierced the noise of fire and screams and rain. Pitched higher and higher, the voice shrieked and rang in my ears.

From Hawksbill out, every mirror in the city shattered. Glass blew from windows and frames and walls, and rained into Skyvale in gold-glittering shards.

I threw my torch in front of me and collapsed into a ball on the walkway, covering the back of my neck with my linked hands. Sparks of pain flew across my back and hands and head, coming from the mirror I’d been standing next to. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, clenching my jaw against the fire of glass slicing open my skin. My gloves and clothes took the worst of it, though; I was lucky.

Moments of deafening silence chased the ear-numbing scream. The clatter of glass hitting the ground was faint, faraway.

My skin felt on fire as I grabbed my torch and sat up. The flame wavered in the rain, but didn’t die.

All around me was a shining field of glass shards, bright in the firelight. The blaze in the west blew closer, billowing heat and sparks.

Aching, I climbed back to my feet and ran through the glass, which crunched under my boots, making me slip where slivers lodged into the soles. A few times, I had to stop and pry out pieces that sliced through, scraping my feet. My fingers throbbed from the pressure it took to remove the glass.

Finally, I found a good place to leave the city wall. A wash line had been stretched from a cheap housing building to the wall—illegal, but not enough of a problem anyone cared to do anything about. I tested the line’s strength—it would hold—and held my sheathed sword above my head, over the line. I abandoned my torch and zipped downward, onto the eastern side of a building.

I sprinted toward Hawksbill, gasping at the reek of fire and smoke and wraith. The odor only grew stronger as I leapt from rooftop to rooftop through Thornton. Everywhere in the streets, I saw bloodied people carrying one another to safety. The Indigo Army was spread thin, but there were always at least two indigo-coated men in sight. Though many of those men now lay dead in the streets.

The Hawksbill wall stretched before me, lamps still burning even with the windshields blown out. I took my usual route onto the wall, wincing when glass cut through my gloves and trouser knees as I reached the top.

I couldn’t see much farther than the mansions nearest the wall, thanks to smoke and mist, but I had enough visibility to tell that the rich district had been devastated. Blackened gardens, shattered glass, toppled statues: that was only the beginning. Nothing was how I’d left it just hours ago.

“Wilhelmina!” It came from so close now. Hot wind cut through the rain, and I couldn’t help but imagine it was the beast’s breath on my cheek.

“I’m coming!” The words ripped from my throat before I could consider the wisdom. But maybe if it knew I was here, it would stop this destruction.