what else.’
‘I don’t know how they’re going to pay for all this,’ said Kjellrunn, glancing over her shoulder at the ragged children in their threadbare clothes.
‘They looted the corpses of their captors.’ Mistress Kamalov grinned wickedly.
‘Corpses?’
‘There were a lot of soldiers on the island, a lot of loyal novices and Vigilants. These children have fought and killed for their freedom.’
Kjellrunn looked back over her shoulder at the novices with renewed interest. Some of the children were her own age but the majority were much younger.
‘Hah. You thought you are the only one who has killed, yes?’
Kjellrunn shivered as she tried not to think about the dead Okhrana. ‘I still think it’s a bad idea to head into Virag …’ Kjellrunn trailed off as they reached a wide thoroughfare, far more imposing than the crude roads and humble tracks of Cinderfell and Nordvlast. Carts and wagons filled the view and the various ethnicities of Vinterkveld hurried in all directions, bearing heavy loads.
‘Are you unwell, Kjellrunn?’ said Mistress Kamalov. Kjellrunn had stopped walking to take in the vista while the novices clustered around them, all whispering, bickering and laughing.
‘I …’ Kjellrunn blinked and looked around. ‘We’re really not in Nordvlast any more, are we? Cinderfell, I mean. We’re not home any more. We can’t go back.’
‘Darling girl,’ said the old Vigilant in a rare moment of tenderness. ‘We spend three weeks cooped up on a stinking ship, and only now you begin to understand.’ The old woman squeezed her close. ‘It’s to be expected, I suppose. Do not worry. We will make a new home, yes?’
‘Where?’
‘I do not know.’ Mistress Kamalov looked away. ‘But I do know two children have already slipped away.’ The old woman pointed down the street and frowned. ‘Come now. Quickly.’
Mistress Kamalov had many talents but moving quickly was not among them. The old woman hobbled as best as she could. Kjellrunn supported her and they followed the two novices a few hundred feet down the road. The other children whispered and pointed.
‘Go find your friends,’ snapped Mistress Kamalov at two of the older children. ‘Find them and bring them back here.’ She held up a finger in warning. ‘And no trouble!’ The children sprinted down the street, pleased to be given such a task by their hero. Kjellrunn glared at the other novices, daring them to wander off from Mistress Kamalov’s protection. Sounds of yelling up ahead forced Mistress Kamalov to walk faster.
The crowds scurried away, parting to reveal an Imperial soldier who had grasped one of the older children by her neck. The raven-haired girl struggled and spat. She cursed as if she’d been born to it, filling the air with profanity in three different languages.
‘It would be Trine,’ said Mistress Kamalov, sounding exasperated.
‘Who’s Trine?’ asked Kjellrunn.
‘Only the most unruly novice I’ve ever crossed paths with.’ The renegade Vigilant glowered as three other novices argued with the soldier. An Envoy across the street stared and pointed, his mouth hanging open in shock. His gaze alighted on Mistress Kamalov, Kjellrunn, and the other children.
‘I sense witchsign on a scale I have never …’ He said no more as the girl called Trine jerked free of the soldier’s grasp. Kjellrunn could only watch as events unravelled, powerless to stop them.
The soldier lost his patience, and backhanded Trine with a heavy gauntlet. A trio of boys ran to protect their friend but the soldier stepped forward and punched one of the boys in the face. The boy was all of twelve summers old and weighed no more than a bushel of potatoes. He crumpled to the ground and his head smacked against the cobbles, silencing everyone. The boy’s friend, a sandy-haired youth from Nordvlast called Eivinde, knelt down beside him.
‘He’s bleeding!’ shouted Eivinde, plaintive and desperate. ‘He’s not moving.’
The soldier hesitated, feeling all eyes in the street fall upon him. Trine shook her head and wiped her bloody nose on her sleeve.
‘You fucking pigs.’ There was a fury in her eyes that Kjellrunn knew all too well. It had been the same fury she’d felt when Verner had died.
‘Capture or kill them all,’ bellowed the Envoy. ‘I don’t care which.’
The soldier hefted his mace and Kjellrunn ran toward Eivinde, hands outstretched in desperation. Trine opened her mouth and her neck glowed blood red. She breathed out, exhaling a torrent of flickering orange and yellow. The soldier’s head was engulfed in arcane fire.
‘We’ll kill you first,’ screamed Trine, turning to the Envoy. The soldier stumbled backwards, clawing at the searing metal of his helmet, desperately trying to remove it. Kjellrunn felt the acid burn of sickness in the back of her mouth. Her hands were shaking.
‘Not again.’
Chaos broke across the street like a wave. The people of Virag fled as the soldiers advanced on the novices. Far from being afraid, the children unleashed their talents. An unnatural gale pushed one soldier back, tearing fitfully at his cloak. A choir of five Vozdukha novices laughed as they summoned the dire wind, sending the soldier tumbling backwards down the street until he lost his footing and crashed into a wagon.
Another soldier leapt aside to avoid a ball of fire and landed on the cobbled street in a clatter of armour. He lurched to his feet only to discover his cloak was alight. Three Academy Plamya novices held their ground with looks of terrible concentration etched on their faces, hurling more fireballs at their attackers.
‘Kjellrunn!’ barked Mistress Kamalov. ‘Don’t just stand there!’ But Kjellrunn’s legs were locked, every muscle tense, she could barely breathe. ‘So much death,’ she whispered.
A gang of four novices from Academy Zemlya ran forward, calling on their arcane affinity with the earth. Their skin darkened to granite grey as they closed on the sergeant, still bearing his two-handed maul. Kjellrunn could only stare as the novices punched with fists of stone. The sound of rock slamming against armour joined the cacophony in the street. The sergeant stepped back and swung hard with the maul. The strike caught the largest of the novices square in the chest and sent him sprawling. Two other novices fixed themselves to the sergeant’s legs, trying to wrench his armour off with brute strength. The third novice scaled his back, pulling herself up with fistfuls of his cloak. She clamped her hands around the sergeant’s helm, one hand covering the eye slit.
And still Kjellrunn did nothing. Everything was happening too quickly. Indecision held her fast as if she’d been run through with a spear. She stood in the centre of the street and witnessed a struggle everywhere she looked. All the novices had joined the fight in any way they could. Mistress Kamalov remained behind her, though she had been accosted by a soldier who tried to snatch hold of her arm. The old woman stepped out of reach, muttering something dreadful. The soldier faltered, then swung with his mace, but Mistress Kamalov stepped neatly past the weapon, slipping behind the man. Her knife flashed in the sunlight and disappeared beneath the soldier’s helm, the tip sinking deep into his throat.
The Envoy was shouting at the top of his lungs in Solska. He drew a short sword from a jewelled sheath and swiped at the nearest novice. The boy stepped towards the man and parried the blow from a stony forearm, the metal sparking as it glanced from his granite skin. The Envoy raised a leg and stamped on the novice’s chest, sending the boy sprawling backwards, then grabbed a young girl by the shoulder. He held his short sword to her throat, thinking to save his wretched skin by threatening hers, but no one was watching, no one but Kjellrunn.
The sergeant cast off the stone-skinned Zemlya novices one by one. A wild strike from the maul caught the girl clinging to his back square between the eyes. In her stone form the first blow merely caused her to flinch, but the second blow sent her to the ground where she lay unmoving. The two boys grasping the