Page 76 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
“No!” A large, open, glistening building that announced its position so loudly? We might as well have been fish in a barrel.
With my eyes only seeing chaos, I used my other senses–and I smelled the stench that could save us. “Here.”
I rushed toward another building, crammed in a dank alleyway, with a store front that opened right into the main street. Fish guts smeared the porch in the back of the shop, but it had a good, stony base and small windows. I kicked the door. It shook, but didn’t fall. I kicked it again, the impact rattling my skull.
“Come on, come on!”
Vexa came up behind. With a quick nod, we kicked the door open together. The potent smell made my eyes water.
“It reeks.” Kaya coughed into her sleeve as Vexa escorted her inside.
“Exactly,” I said, shoving Goose after them; I’d apologize later, when we both still had air in our lungs. “When those Serpents will be running down the street to gut people, they’ll instinctually avoid this place.”
“But the others went to the temple,” Leesa said when I grabbed her elbow.
My insides twisted as I saw people shoving each other on the temple stairs, called by the bells. There were already so many of them. Some clung to the columns to keep from being shoved down the main platform.
Where prey flocked, predators followed.
Those children that had been running after the ball cowered in a corner, hugging their knees.
Their eyes. They were so afraid.
I looked at Vexa, a harrowing understanding flowing between us. She threw one of her biggest knives toward me.
I caught it and turned. “Stay hidden.”
“Where are you going?” Kaya screamed after me as Vexa bolted the door and I ran as fast as my feet could carry me.
I yanked off my billowing cape. Great for hiding, but a liability that could get me caught in jagged things and knives.
My feet pummeled the streets. I had to warn those civilians to get away from there. Too many, too crowded. They were the perfect target and no gods could protect them now.
I wasn’t fast enough.
Just as I passed the alley leading to the port, where Adara, Zandyr, and his warriors cut through the sea of attackers so quickly their swords flashed, five of the Serpents rushed the steps of the temple, their green knife pummels glinting menacingly.
The crowd roared with fright, pushing farther inside the temple. Those with enough strength and good joints took their chances with gravity and jumped off the temple platform; I spied the loud-mouth with the scar on his shoulder among them. Coward.
Those who couldn’t jump, the old and the young, swarmed closer to the altar, where the priest’s voice thundered with chants. But these attackers weren’t phantoms that could be prayed away. They were real and they were armed.
Zandyr and the others wouldn’t get here in time to save them all.
But I could. The Serpents hadn’t seen me yet. With the bells blaring, they wouldn’t hear me, either.
The bells.
I impaled Vexa’s knife into one of the columns, using it as leverage. A pillar, no matter how intricately carved, was justa fancier tree. At least that’s what I told myself as I climbed, higher and higher, easing myself through the eaves and the roof, into the webbing of beams above. Praise the gods that weren’t listening right now; the bells’ mechanism was the same as in the churches I’d had to visit as a child.
An apprentice pulled on the bell strings with all his might, tears streaming down his face.
“Get away from there,” I whisper-hissed, feet gliding over the beams.
He startled, almost losing his footing, but didn’t let go of the rope. “It’s forbidden to touch the sacred bells.”
“Would you rather have innocents killed inside the temple?”
He shook his head and let go. With the momentum, the bells still swayed. Good. The sudden stillness would have attracted the attackers’ attention. They prowled toward the group, eyes hungry for blood. The children had been herded in front of the altar, surrounded by a barrier made up of elders. They could barely stand up, but one of them held his cane in front of him like a sword. Even the priest gripped his sacred book poised to throw it at the Serpents.
