Shilah shot me a disappointed look, but the slamming noise had been drowned out by the blaring of a distinctive horn.
Three long blows.
Followed by two short.
And three more long.
I hadn’t heard that call in years, and even then it had been faint, sounded from the outskirts of the city. It was a harbinger of death. There was a reason why the noise was rare – important Jadan runaways were quite uncommon – but every once in a while a favoured Jadan Domestic would choose baking to death in the sands over what waited back at the Manor.
That’s when the beasts were sent hunting.
‘Shivers and Frosts!’ Cam exclaimed, eyes flitting around, almost as if he could see the echoes of the horn bouncing off the walls. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
Shilah’s eyes darkened, her chest rising and falling quickly. I didn’t blame her. Torture under the Vicaress would be bad enough, but getting stalked down and eaten alive would be another level of agony entirely.
‘The Khat’s hounds,’ I said, my hands shaking like loose boilweed in the wind. The needles clacked uselessly in the lock.
Cam swallowed hard. ‘Sun damn.’
‘You know about the hounds?’ Shilah asked him with a snarl. ‘You’ve seen what they can do up close?’
Cam wilted, taking his glasses off and closing his eyes. ‘He doesn’t let … I’ve only seen the ones he keeps in his chambers. But they’re small and harmless and … fuzzy. Just relics from before the Great Drought.’
‘Those runts are not his hounds,’ Shilah said, her voice breaking for what felt like the first time. She absently touched her throat, her arms flexing so fast that I wondered if she might try punching the door down. At this point that might have been more effective than my trembling hands. ‘The Khat keeps his real hounds in the basement of the Pyramid,’ she said between clenched teeth. ‘He starves them for days on end. And when he does feed them … guess what he uses for the meal?’
‘I’ve heard.’ Cam’s face went so red he might as well have smeared Khatberries on his cheeks. ‘But you have to remember. I have nothing to do with the Khat.’
‘Other than your name and blood.’
‘I’m only heir to the Tavors,’ Cam said, not meeting her eyes and changing the subject fast. ‘Keep trying, Spout. Please.’
‘Why did the Crier take us this far?’ I asked. The words came out lifeless, and I wondered who this stranger was using my voice. ‘Only to let us get caught. Why would he be so cruel?’
The taskmasters’ shouts were almost on top of us.
‘Spout,’ Shilah said, guiding my chin sideways with her finger, forcing me to meet her eyes. ‘Don’t worry about the Crier. I have faith in you.’
I followed the sweat beading off her face, which dropped quickly and flecked the stone at my feet.
Splashing up an idea.
I set the thin metal picks on the ground.
‘What are you doing?’ Cam gasped, hands pulling at his yellow hair. ‘Maybe let’s just go find a shop that’s actually open, and hide there?’
‘No one leaves their doors unlocked,’ I said, returning to the alley, not looking at the Opened Eye as I passed. Cam softly called after me, but before he could repeat my name I’d returned with a sharp slice of glass from the pile of trash.
‘Tears above, Micah. Are you going to try to fight the hounds?’ Cam asked frantically. I’d never seen him so worked up.
Grabbing an Abb from the bag, I sliced off a tiny golden sliver, small enough to fit under the pins in the lock. Shoving it deep into the hole with the help of a parasol needle, I gestured for Shilah to give over her waterskin. Her lips opened in the shape of a question, but after a moment her eyes lit up with recognition.
‘Do it,’ she said with a smirk.
‘Do what?’ Cam asked.
Shilah licked her cracked lips. ‘Ice. He’s going to open it with Ice.’
Cam paused, looking as though the two halves of his body were trying to flee in opposite directions. ‘How? What if the lock just breaks off? Or we get blocked out completely?’ I could feel the buzz of fear in his words. ‘This can’t be the best idea.’
A harsh voice shouted from the street next to ours. ‘Two of you go high and the rest of you lot go around! Check the rooftops and alleyway!’
Blood shot into Cam’s cheeks, the sunburn there appearing even more raw. ‘Do it.’
I nodded, holding up the waterskin to the lock and letting out a trickle of water.
Cam manoeuvred his hand to the bag on my shoulder, digging into the cloth and putting his palm directly on the bronze lid of the Coldmaker. He closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath.
The sound of Ice expanding rapidly crackled in my ears. I wanted to watch the beautiful crystals unfold, but mostly I just hoped the reaction would push all the spring-loaded pins up enough to trigger the lock. I had no idea how much force it gave or how fast it worked. Our lives depended on something I knew almost nothing about.
If the Crier really was watching, then this was his moment to do something.
Metal clicked, and the door opened a squeeze. A small peg of Ice jutted out of the lock, but hopefully it wasn’t enough to be noticed by any taskmasters.
Shilah grabbed both Cam and I by the shoulders and tossed us inside, just as the next round of horn blasts split the air.
I barred the door, threw down the shades, closed the curtain of beads, and dragged the nearest cabinet in front of the entrance, sliding it flush against the door. Closed Eye necklaces jangled on the shelves, and if someone pushed their way inside, the resulting crash would at least let us know we needed to find cover.
My pulse was in a frenzy knowing the Khat’s hounds were charging into the city.
The stories said that Sun blinded the hounds to teach them pain, leaving them to stalk their prey entirely by smell. And the stories said a lot more than that too. The hounds were supposed to have breath like hot fire, and fangs as long as any rattler, and could smell a specific Jadan body even lying in the dunes.
Sometimes back in my barracks, Levi would get hold of sour ale, and would tell the Jadan children about the other things that lived in the catacombs of the Khat’s Pyramid. Things worse than hounds, that didn’t need to smell you. They already knew you. Things that saw only through Closed Eyes, slithering in silence. Without warning. Without mercy. To drag you into the black.
I stepped away from our feeble defence of an unlocked door and single cabinet, knowing it would be all but useless against such foul beasts if they caught our scent. If only I had my old Stinger, powered by the scorpion venom I used to extract. If I’d only been able to get my hands on some of that explosive power Leroi had used to demolish the Tavor gardens, we might have stood a chance.
I tried to force a real idea that might save us, but I came up empty. Mama Jana didn’t sell weapons. Nothing that we could fight an army with. I glanced around