Qamara lunged forward, catching Zehrav before he hit the splintered floorboards. The stench of stale spark-fruit and the low hum of the Ley-Loom within him filled her senses. His breath came in ragged gasps, his face pale beneath the dark stubble.
“Zehrav?” Her voice, raw and unpracticed, ripped through the tavern’s sudden silence. The patrons, who a moment ago had cheered her tavern bets, backed toward the walls at the sight of the dark seep dripping past his chin. Just then, a thunderous crack echoed through the building. The tavern’s ornate double doors exploded inward, showering the room with splinters and dust.
Five figures clad in the obsidian armor of the Inquisition stormed through the shattered frame. Their gauntlets spat green sparks, and the sigil of the Obsidian Empress gleamed across their breastplates. A scarred sentry leveled a blunted spear at the bar counter. “There! The fugitive and his accomplice!”
No more pretending to swoon over pressed orchids. Farha the lily-livered herbalist was dead; Qamara had blades to draw. She gently laid his head against a pile of discarded woven mats, her hand brushing his forehead. “Stay with me, you idiot,” she muttered, a tremor in her voice that had nothing to do with fear.
With a smooth, practiced motion, her hands dipped to her waist. From beneath the folds of her ‘botanist’s tunic,’ she drew forth two gleaming, curved blades. The paired scimitars, Dusk and Dawn, caught the oil lamps along their silver bevels. The squad hesitated, boots scraping sawdust.
“Stand down!” the squad leader shouted, his grip shifting on the haft. “Imperial decree! Drop the steel, girl, or face summary execution!”
Qamara didn’t reply. She merely shifted her weight, her stance wide and low, the scimitars held in a deadly X-pattern before her. Her gaze flicked between Zehrav’s limp boots and the squad’s vanguard.
“Oh, perfect!” A high-pitched whine pierced the air. Jalil, who had been attempting to melt into the shadows, burst from behind a overturned table. His hands flailed, a desperate plea for magic on his lips. “I’ll just… a quick concealment spell! They’ll never see you!”
A smoky vapor curled over Qamara's boots. Then, with a brassy *thrum*, the mist congealed into a massive neon-green directional marker. It hovered three feet above her crown, pulsing brightly and pointing a sharp green tip straight at her skull.
“Right there!” the squad leader barked. “Under the giant glowing pointer!”
“Jalil!” Qamara hissed, dodging a lunging spear. She parried the thrust with Dusk, the blade ringing against the metal shaft. “You blithering idiot! Get out of here!”
“I cast misdirection!” Jalil wailed, flinging mica dust that merely peppered a soldier's visor like festival sugar. The trooper ignored him and surged toward Qamara.
Qamara whirled, Dawn slicing through the air with a deadly whisper. Dawn sheared across the man's pauldron with a screech of shaved plate, sending him stumbling back. Qamara did not wait. She hauled Zehrav over her right collarbone, knees dipping under his bulk before her sinews locked in place. Above her hair, the neon arrow bobbed faithfully.
“Through the back!” she commanded, kicking open a warped door that led to a narrow, rickety platform overlooking the dizzying expanse of Djata. She sprang onto it, Zehrav a heavy burden, but her movements surprisingly agile. The armored pursuers clattered through the doorframe right behind her.
The chase was on. Qamara leaped onto the nearest rope bridge, the ancient, woven fibers groaning under Zehrav’s weight. She moved with a desperate, brutal efficiency, her scimitars flashing in lethal arcs. The public, thronging the aerial markets and floating bazaars, gasped and pointed. Market vendors ducked behind fruit crates, shrieking as the green beacon led the sprint across the skyway.
A scout cut across the planks at a three-way crossing. Qamara swung Zehrav's heavy armored frame into the path of the spear. The soldier flinched to avoid skewering his target, giving her room to hook Dawn behind the man's knees. He dropped with a shout.
Another chaser dropped from an overhead winch line, steel greaves whistling toward Qamara's neck. Qamara saw her coming, the flash of her helmet reflecting the perpetual twilight of Djata. Qamara dipped sideways; the impact clipped Zehrav's heavy iron spaulder with a dull clang instead. Before the scout recovered her footing, Qamara slashed upward with Dawn, severing the harness leather and sending the woman tumbling back onto the decking.
The bright arrow hovered overhead like an executioner's lantern. Jalil sprinted beside her, slinging illusory sky-swallows that pecked uselessly at iron visors before dumping conjured grease that sent one trooper skidding across the ropes.
“I am tactical support!” Jalil huffed, dodging a crackle of Ley-bolts. Ahead hung an isolated islet bearing a mossy shrine dedicated to Raxar, its stone portals cracked open to the mist.
“Inside!” she barked. She plunged through the shrine's fractured gate, Zehrav's dead weight dragging down her collar, and threw her weight into the lichen-crusted slabs. Jalil helped shove a sheared column into the latch-groove. Over her scalp, the green light sputtered out.
She gently lowered Zehrav to the dusty floor, leaning him against a crumbling altar adorned with defaced carvings. His breathing was shallower now, the dark veins visible beneath his skin more prominent. He coughed again, a wet, rattling sound, but no more blood appeared.
A resonant iron *THWANG* sheared through the floor joists. The entire sanctuary canted thirty degrees. Lime dust poured down as the braced pillar groaned in its notch. Qamara locked her fingers into a wall fissure to keep from sliding. Outside, boots thudded against the anchor lines.
“Sever the southern hawsers!” a voice hollered over the gorge's wind. “Drop the whole rock!”
A second cable snapped with a sound like a ballista discharge. The shrine tilted outward over empty mist, suspended by nothing but the tangled jungle briers anchored to the cliffs above.
Flagstones slipped loose beneath her heels, tumbling into the open clouds beneath Djata. Creepers shrieked against the stone cornice, shredding strand by strand under the pendulum sway. Zehrav lay slumped against the listing altar, blind to the drop below.