Holding her rifle and the spy’s satchel close, Mei crept as close to edge of the woods without leaving its shadow. This gave her good look at the chapel and the large Souran cup carved into its door, which had lock that Huan would have laughed at as he took it apart. While she expected to have more difficulty, that wouldn’t matter unless…

  An owl called then choked. As one, Sorgi’s mercenaries went on high alert, their hands tightening on weapons, their eyes peering into the darkness.

  Scar came charging around the corner. “Faal is down! You and you, go check it out.”

  The two mercenaries she’d pointed at came to attention. “Yes, ma’am!”

  Together with lanterns aloft and blades bared, they advanced into the woods. When they disappeared into the trees, the sound of wind and leaves and owls covered their tracks. Then one of them screamed.

  Cursing, Scar took out her whistle and blew on it three times, summoning more mercenaries. “You four with me. The rest of you, stay here!”

  She led her freshly formed squad into the woods, while the remaining mercenaries aimed their swords and spears at the dark. On her own, Mei would have chosen this moment to sneak up to the chapel door and risked discovery when she broke the lock, but the spy had asked Mei to trust them and wait.

  A helmet-shadowed face, pale with fear, emerged from the trees. “Is… is it gone?”

  The southeast corner saw it.

  “Faal?” asked one mercenary.

  “Is it gone?”

  The mercenary gestured for his partner to follow. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Is it gone?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s gone.” The mercenary held his hand out. “Why don’t you come out here? We’ll get you fixed up.”

  “Fixed up?” The face moved towards the mercenary. “Fixed up.” It rose, higher than any human. “Is it gone?”

  “Holy Cup.” The mercenary pulled back. “What? Faal? What’s happening?”

  “That’s not her,” said his partner. “We should…”

  “Is it gone?” A body, pale and bulbous, bony protusions and torn gray fabric, trudged into view. “Is it gone?” A body wearing their leathers landed at the mercenaries’ feet, having fallen from hands slick with ichor. “Fixed up.”

  The mercenaries fled screaming. As they disappeared around the east wall, the monstrosity screeched then turned toward Mei’s hiding place and tapped its chest with its fist.

  Trust.

  Freed from her shock, Mei dashed to the chapel door, jammed her dagger into the lock, and popped it free with a twist of her wrist. Shoving her way inside, she clambered over stacks of notebooks, batted aside a heavy curtain, and entered a small office barely twice the size of Charlie’s. Edging around an altar, Mei lit a match then started rifling through the papers atop the desk.

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  Recalling the spy’s words, Mei searched for Dwayne’s name and found it immediately right on top of the pile, where a sheaf of envelopes had his name written all over it in big blocky handwriting. That was a surprise, Mei had expected to at least have to open a drawer first, but she wasn’t going to complain. Slipping the sheaf into the spy’s satchel, she continued looking, soon finding Dwayne’s name again in a notebook that, this time, had been hidden in a desk drawer. Since taking the whole thing might be too obvious, she ripped out the page and its neighbors and put them in the satchel before moving back the way she came. She paused. She had enough to help Dwayne, but she had to look for one other name, a four letter one she’d rarely written. She returned to the desk and after too long, found it in a list: “Huan Ma.”

  She’d just slipped the list into the satchel when the office’s main door slammed open.

  “Stay where you are!”

  Mei vaulted over the desk and kicked a chair at the speaker, who batted it out of the way. “Mei?”

  Mei jumped onto altar, ducked a hand trying to grab her by the neck, then dove through the heavy curtain.

  “Get back here, Mei!”

  The notebooks were sent flying as Mei rolled through them and out into the night where she gained her footing and started running.

  “He believed in you, Mei!”

  He was right behind her so once Mei got six wirs into the clearing, she slid to a stop and aimed her rifle at the door. When a mass of muscle and white surcote slammed into view, she fired, hitting the monk in the thigh. Howling, the monk fell back, his bulky form entangling his two brethren, one of whom had blue eyes, blond hair, and a look of absolute fury.

  “Get back here, Mei!” shouted Kay.

  Without a word, Mei turned and ran. Behind her were more orders were shouted: to grab her, to stop her, to chase her. As she dashed into the woods, crossbow bolts zipped by, thunking into tree trunks, ricocheting off stone. To make herself a harder target, Mei ducked and weaved and put as many trees between her and her pursuers, but she had only two directions to run in: north and east and deeper into the woods or south and west and into civilization. She couldn’t fight all those monks and mercenaries. They’d take her down before she could blink.

  But maybe she could hide.

  Mei switch-backed south and into her pursuers, which immediately rewarded her with a monk’s flying tackle. Whacking him with the butt of her rifle, Mei rolled out from under the stunned monk and resumed her course, soon crashing onto a familiar path. She went east, barreling over cracked stones and fallen trunks until she reached to a little wooden cabin on a pond. Behind her, more orders were shouted as her pursuers sorted out which way she’d taken, but as she reached the cabin door, Mei ignored it all because either she’d bought herself time or she hadn’t. She reached pulled out the card-like golden key Lady Pol had given her and shoved it into the slot on the door.

  Something beyond it rumbled.

  “She went south! South!”

  Somewhere below her, water sloshed.

  “I found a path.”

  Mei put her hand on the door, ready to push it open. This had to work.

  “You two, go that way.” Scar. “I’ll go this way.”

  Thunk. Mei opened the cabin door, kicked it closed, then charged down the stairs to grab a lever and pull it down with all her might. The stairs she’d just taken dropped with bone-shaking thud, which meant that the open cabin door above her now opened onto an empty room.

  Sliding down to her knees, Mei waited. Her pursuers arrived and curses and breaking ensued. Surely she was safe. Lady Pol had said that no one else even knew about the Duelist’s College secret training grounds and, even if they did, Mei had just used up all the water so the entrance couldn’t be raised until daybreak by which time Maggie and Lady Pol would have arrived for training. Heaven help anyone who thought they could stop those two.

  As for the spy, they’d have to escape on their own. Although, to be honest, Mei wasn’t worried.