CHAPTER 452: 452:THE HOODS WITH NO NAME PART TWO

The cat-mask came back, different face beneath it now —narrower eyes, tighter jaw. It struck for Mia’s head; Thea took the blow on a plate and let it slide to be what it wanted: loud. Her old woman second flicked a pinch of talc up into the mask’s mouth. The assassin did not cough. He did not breathe. He pivoted, blind, and stabbed exactly where Mia would have been if Mia had not already moved. Seven stars do not wait to see if a trick worked. They assume it did and keep going. That is why they stay alive.

They still bled.

Serit pinned a wrist to a root with his dull knife and used the root to finish the job. Om, on one leg and angry about it, smashed a lens into a face, then into the dirt, then into a face again because anger does not always make you stupid if you have been trained to spend it properly. Kiva put her back to Mia’s and her breath to Thea’s and made her own little world inside the bigger one where three people lived because one of them refused to let the other two stop.

And still — half of Mia’s twenty were down within the span of a handful of heartbeats that had felt like a thousand already. Seven, then nine, then ten. Not all dead. Some are too quiet to move. Some moved without words, which is a different kind of quiet. Thea’s fifty lost men you would have chosen to build a wall with. The kind of men who do not say "ow" when you stitch them; they say, "Tighter."

"Fall back," Thea said. Not loud. Not brave. Correct.

They cratered their shape and pulled it backward in one piece, which is the difference between retreating and dying. The assassins did not pursue like fools. They kept the pressure on the edges and used it to draw, draw, draw.

"Deep forest," Mia said through teeth. "Not a basin. They planned dirt. Give them trees."

"If you had told me yesterday you wanted to go for a run, I would have laughed at you," Thea said, and then, to her second, "Spider two. Salt thread. Lose it after the second rise."

They moved like men and women who had been told years ago what to do this morning. The assassins followed like men who did not need to be told anything at all.

Branches whipped. Roots learned new names for pain. Twice the assassins tried to double the line around and close a mouth on its own tail; twice Thea’s second cut the corner out from under them with a dragline that turned their sprint heavy. The leader adjusted —he always adjusted— and sent two over a dead log low where a croc-scute drake had left its belly gloss. Pads slapped, just wrong enough to be right. Tracks told a story that would read like a beast to any scribe lazy enough to be convinced by the theatrics of claw marks.

They bled for another hour. Then for another. The sun climbed and did its small cruel thing — turning breath to work, work to heat, heat to mistakes. The assassins did not make mistakes. Their prey did.

Om went down in a tangle of vine he had not seen because he was busy making sure the lens did not betray them again. Serit hauled him up and did not grunt. Kiva took a shallow slice along the ribs that would be deep if she let it; she did not. The old woman second took two steps slower than she liked and hid the slowness by changing the count. Professionals notice. Seven-stars notice and do not hurry when they do.

A horn sounded once somewhere behind and to the right. It wasn’t a horn, not really. It was a reed with a split in it and a mouth that knew how to make the split sound like something it was not. The assassins did not smile. Smiles are for later. They fanned wider.

The trees changed. You could feel it rather than see it first: the forest’s breath got a little cleaner, like water that has run under stone. The ground’s complaints softened. Even the birds —what few there were— got lazy with their warnings.

Mia recognized it. Her mouth did not soften. Her eyes did, a fraction that would make a song for her later if someone who loved her had been there and had not been busy saving their own life.

"Follow me this way," she said, and cut left toward a seam of shade that did not look like shade at all. "We got help!!"

Thea grabbed her shoulder. "Who," she demanded, soft, savage, "is going to save us? Because of you, people I trained are dying. There is no one. There is wind and dirt and a door you do not know how to open. Say the name or stop lying with your feet."

Mia’s jaw tightened. "Trust me," she said. "For once. There is someone who will save me no matter what."

"You mean you..., what a joke." Thea snapped. "That is what you mean when you do not want to say what you mean."

"I mean what I said." She didn’t add white hair. She didn’t add a crown. She didn’t add a mountain that hums. She didn’t add boy who is not a boy, king who is not a king, monster who is not a monster to me. She didn’t have the breath and she didn’t owe the names to the air.

"Trust is a loan," Thea said, but her hand left Mia’s shoulder. "It earns interest if it pays back."

"Then collect," Mia said, and ran.

They ran the entire day.

The assassins ran too. Seven-stars are not the kind that get tired in the way stories like to sing about. They get efficient. They shed anything that is not a knife or a lie. They let the tracking beads do a part of the thinking so their feet can do the rest. The beads warmed and cooled as the forest’s breath thickened and thinned.