Ghostsmith by Nicki Pau Preto

Author:Nicki Pau Preto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2024-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

Wren stared at Leo on the other side of the bars, relief washing through her. He got to his feet, face striped with shadow and ghostlight.

“Stop him,” came a familiar voice. Standing in the doorway she’d just been looking through was Lord-Smith Francis, regent of the Iron Citadel.

Wren’s brain backtracked, trying to figure out how he had beaten them here…. Then she recalled the Red Guard descending upon them at Mercy’s, almost as if they’d known they were there. And then they’d chased Wren and the others into the very tunnel that led them here.

Had that been the plan all along? Not to find them, but to redirect them? And Starling’s body… Suddenly, all the circumstances that had landed them here felt not coincidental but deliberate.

And if that were the case… how much had Hawke known?

Julian glowered at his uncle, drawing his whip sword. Footsteps echoed from all around, Citadel soldiers and members of the Red Guard moving through the chamber and heading their way.

“Hurry,” Wren said to Leo, racing to the grate. She tossed him one of her smaller bone blades—it was all that would fit between the bars—and drew her swords. “Go to the fort. Tell them. Warn them.”

Behind her, a dozen or so soldiers poured from around the ranks of iron revenants, making for the narrow walkway that led to the door Wren and Julian now defended.

Across the chamber, the regent extended his hand. Apparently the grates were iron, because the metal started to lift—until Julian slammed it back down. But despite not needing to touch the bars to keep it lowered, he was quickly distracted by the oncoming soldiers. Wren raised her swords but knew they’d soon be hacked to pieces by the Red Guard’s iron blades.

She had to be smarter than that. Using them to deflect the first blow and duck the second, Wren reached for her bonedust instead. Clouds of it obscured their surroundings and made the soldiers stumble and cough, but when the air cleared, Wren and Julian were still outnumbered, and the regent was still attempting to lift the grate.

Knucklebones and throwing knives bought Wren a few more breathless seconds, but then a gauntleted fist landed against her stomach, and another cracked the side of her head.

“Wren!” Julian shouted, his whip lancing out and slicing her attacker, but he wasn’t the only one to object.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt her!” came Hawke’s anguished voice. Wren had forgotten about him. Looking up from the ground, her gaze bleary, she spotted his pale face amid the red-enameled soldiers… and he wasn’t alone.

Next to him was a woman in a long black veil and a crown of bone.

On her shoulder perched a black raven, its eyes glowing ghost-bright. Wren thought she knew how the Red Guard had found them in Laketown…. The revenant raven they’d seen in the sky that day had clearly been a spy or a scout. A servant of the Corpse Queen.

And Hawke had known it. That was why he’d been so uneasy.

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