27th of Nema, Continued

Arramy came to a halt at the ladder to the trapdoor, and I almost ran into him in the dark of the landing.

I whipped around, facing the dimly lit maw of the stairwell we had just come up, the Caraki woman's cries of "Stop! What are you doing? I have nothing!" making my stomach churn. They were there, in the apartment. Lots of them, moving quickly, their footsteps heavy.

Behind me, Arramy climbed up the short ladder and got the bolt undone, but the hatch refused to budge when he shoved at it. With a quick, heavy sigh of frustration he climbed up another rung so his legs were bent, braced his hands on the frame of the trap, and stood up quickly, grunting as his upper back connected with the metal of the trapdoor.

The walls in the building were thin, and the sound of something shattering in the apartment below had me clamping my hands over my mouth, sobs rising in my throat as the little blonde woman told the Coventry men to do something obscene to themselves.

"Arramy..." I gasped as everything suddenly went very quiet.

He stopped slamming his shoulder into the trapdoor.

"Unlock it," a male voice said in Altyran. "Right now. Where's the key?"

I couldn't make out the woman's reply, but it must not have been what the Coventry agents wanted to hear. There was a series of muffled thumps and a sob of pain, and then someone was kicking at the stairwell door.

Arramy didn't hesitate. He lunged upward, plowing into the hatch again. Then again. And again.

The stairwell door gave way, splintering around the lock plate and flying inward.

Arramy swore and hit the trapdoor again. This time it let out a beautiful shriek of rusty hinges, and a crack of daylight appeared along three sides. He kept pushing, widening the gap by agonizing inches as those heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs below us.

I let out an involuntary little shriek as Arramy got the trap open a half-meter, dropped to the floor, grabbed me around the waist, and shoved me up the ladder and out onto the blazing-hot surface of a flat tile roof. I winced when my hands met a puddle of thick, sun-heated tar, and then I was scrambling out of Arramy's way, squinting against the bright sunlight. I turned around... only to find he wasn't coming up after me.

He had launched himself back down the stairs.

I screamed. I think it was the word "No," but it sounded more like a hoarse animal cry. I didn't even think about the binder or getting away. Arramy disappeared from beneath the trapdoor and something snapped in my head. I should have slammed the door back down, gotten up and started running. That's what Arramy would have told me to do. Instead I knelt by the hatch, peering down into the landing, my heart in my throat, foolishly waiting for Arramy to appear again, whispering the words "come back, please come back, please come back, please," like some sort of insane prayer.

There were no words for what it felt like, seeing that flash of pale hair in the dark of the stairway, and that stern face lifting to look up at me.

"What are you doing?!"

He was shouting at me, but all I could do was stare as he scaled the ladder and squeezed through the opening between the trapdoor and the roof, his shoulders almost too big to fit. He swore at me and crabwalked backwards on the hot roof to haul his long legs out with him, then stood up quickly and jumped on top of the trap door, slamming it into its frame just as one of the Coventry men tried to push it open from below.

"You should have run!" he yelled, his eyes flashing silver as he glared at me and jumped on the door again, driving it down on the man beneath it.

He was right. I should have run. Too much hung on getting this binder out of Nimkoruguithu. People's lives were in the balance. I should have weighed all of that over one stubborn Altyran, closed that trapdoor, and gotten away. But I hadn't. And now I might have signed a whole bunch of death warrants for nothing, because Arramy was stuck fighting to keep the trap door shut with nothing but his bodyweight, and the Coventry would eventually find another way up.

I pushed myself to my feet, ground my teeth, and ran to the edge of the roof overlooking the yard, thinking maybe we could make it down into the alley. Instead, I discovered a small army of clothbadges swarming behind the meatery. There was a shout, and several of them raised their weapons, taking aim at me as I dropped down behind the parapet of the roof.

I scuttled back toward the trapdoor and the front end of the building. The Coventry agents had come from the boardwalk and the street entrance, so maybe there wouldn't be as many on that side.

I didn't even get all the way to the edge before a bullet zinged past my head like an angry bee. A half-centimeter to the left and I would have had an extra hole in my face.

Arramy's hoarse, "Get down!" wasn't necessary. I was flat on the roof, trying not to be sick.

"You'll have to drop to the next building," Arramy called.

I turned to look at him. "What about you?"

He was sitting on the trapdoor, his heels wedged under the lip of the frame, the strength of his legs the only thing keeping the men on the landing from pushing the door up. But his hands were free, and he lifted them in a haphazard shrug. "I'm officially out of ideas, kid."

A ragged, breathless laugh burst out of my chest. I shook my head. This couldn't be it. This could not be the last time I saw that blasted, grumpy, irritating man.

"There's a lock between my feet but the bolt is missing," he observed, his voice incredulous and a little high, almost like he was going to start crazy-laughing too.

I stared at him, a mad thought popping into my head. It was risky. I doubted it would actually work... but if it did... I didn't let myself consider any other option. I wriggled around and started crawling back toward the trapdoor.

Arramy glanced up, then did a double take. "No," he said, shaking his head. "That is not - that is the opposite of what I said." Then he had to grab at the hatch, hanging on and slamming it back down as the men beneath it tried again. "There's no lock, therefore you need to leave. Not come back."

"Oh shush," I muttered, scooting into a crouch next to him, working on the assumption that since Arramy hadn't been shot yet, whoever had shot at me when I was standing upright two meters from the edge of the roof wasn't able to see Arramy sitting on the trapdoor four meters farther back. I reached down and untied my boots, yanking the leather laces out. Then I started threading the thong through the holes that were meant for the bolt in the lock on the trapdoor, once, twice, and a third time. It wasn't perfect, but it would take some serious effort to rip it open.

Arramy watched me, his face impassive. "You're wasting time. You should be gone."

"I am not leaving you here," I said curtly, still threading.

"Stop it."

"No."

"Fine. Give it to me," he commanded. "I'll do that, you start running."

I tied the thong into a self-tightening knot, thanking the sailor who had taught me how. "Too late, already done. Let's go," I said, rising into a hunched-over crouch and hobbling the few yards to the side wall of the meatery.

Arramy took a deep breath, then another, and then he lunged up off the trapdoor and came ducking along after me, vaulting over the parapet and landing on the next roof with an athletic bounce while I was still in the process of lowering myself down the wall feet-first.

He didn't ask permission. He just grabbed me by the waist and peeled me off the parapet, carrying me for several paces before I slapped his shoulders and demanded to be put down.

Then we were running again.

I lost my loosened boots in the first couple of strides and kept going in my stocking feet.

This building was a traditional Continental style split-gable, with a dining area under a pergola and a decorative garden of potted trees and plants, but it was little more than a blur in my peripheral vision as we raced across the patio, clambered over another parapet, and started across the ridgepole of a Tetton sallet-grasse, hopping over, under and between the backs of wrought iron dragons and gargoyles while trying to avoid a fall down the steeply inclined slate roof.

There was a shout below us as the clothbadges realized what we were doing and started following us in the alley.

The next building was vaguely triangular, widening toward the far end. Which was a good thing. We could put diagonal distance between us and the men pursuing us on the ground. But it didn't do much good when there were men staying parallel with us on the roofs across the street, taking shots at us whenever we popped up to go over a wall.

Two parapets later, we started taking fire at our backs - the trapdoor had come loose.

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