Chapter 100. The Lion Gate

They came at moonrise the next night with ladders and lies and men who had to be promised whole new names to get them to climb.

The Lion Gate had seen better sieges. It had never seen this one.

Vesper brought engines held together with hymns to betrayal. Dusk Spire brought men who have learned how to laugh without joy. Pale Moor brought their dead—ours and theirs—and promised them the kind of vengeance that keeps good ghosts honest.

Syra stood on the parapet, hands loose on the rail, hair a dark banner. “If they breach,” she said, “fall to the square. We cut them in the mouth.”

Orla’s mouth was a straight line. Mavienne leaned on her staff as if it were the last good thing she owned. Neris hummed the lullaby her mother used to drown out raids, then sharpened a knife on the pillar of the gate like a woman planning to ruin a marriage.

The oath-wolves didn’t melt this time. They burned, their eyes lambent, their bodies moving with a rhythm bo