A noise wakes Gil up from groggy half-sleep.

The wooden door at the top of the the stairs creaks open. He hears the hur­ried clank­ing of a pearlstone-clad hoplite descend­ing.

He presses his fore­head against the wooden bars of his cell and watches the bot­tom of the stair­case with bleary eyes.

Actu­ally, the clank­ing sounds more like falling—

And then Gil sees the hoplite crash into the wall at the bot­tom of the stairs. Arrows stick out of his bare calf and under­arm. He had been car­ry­ing a tray with three bowls of thick, gloppy stew, which splat­ters like gore on the walls and floors.

More foot­steps, faster and lighter this time.

In the other cell, a gasp.

A young man

 

A blue robe fringed with black bil­lows out behind him—the same color blue as the woman’s robe in the other cell. His pale skin glows red with what looks like sun­burn.

jumps down the stairs and leaps over the col­lapsed guard. In his hands is a bow, long and curved, the string pulled taut and knocked with a flint-tipped arrow.

His dark eyes light up when he sees the veiled young woman—Ayan.

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