"So this is where you've been hiding," the captain said. "Savor that drink. It'll be your last."
Taliyah was on her feet just as she heard the whisper of steel drawn next to her. She looked over to see her teacher staring down the roomful of guards.
"This man, Yasuo"—the captain spat the word—"is guilty of assassinating a village Elder. His crime warrants the punishment of death. To be carried out on sight."
One of the guards leveled a loaded crossbow. Another nocked an arrow to a longbow nearly as tall as the girl.
"Kill me?" Yasuo said. "You can try."
"Wait," Taliyah cried out. But before the word had finished on her lips, she heard the trigger snap and the reverberating hum of the longbow's release. In the heartbeats that followed, a whirling gust picked up inside the inn. It spiraled out from the man beside her, blowing abandoned glasses and wooden dinner trenches off of tables. It reached the arrows, breaking them midflight. The pieces fell to the ground with a hollow clatter.
More guards swarmed in, their swords already pulled from their sheaths. Taliyah laid down a field of sharp stone, pulling up each rock through the floor in a violent explosion to keep the men at bay.
Yasuo slipped through the crowd of soldiers trapped in the room. They brandished their weapons, foolishly trying to parry the sword that stormed around them, its metal arcing like lightning. It was too late. Yasuo's blade flashed in and out of the men, trailing lethal ribbons of red in a whirlwind behind him. When all those who had come for the man had finally fallen, Yasuo paused, his breathing heavy and fierce. His gaze locked with the girl's, and he prepared to speak.
Taliyah held out her hand in warning. There, at his back, rose the captain with crazed eyes and a broken smile. He wielded his sword with both hands to keep a grip on the blood-slick pommel.
"Get away from him!" Taliyah pulled at the cobbled floor of the inn, the flat stones erupting, lifting the captain off his feet.
As the captain's body was knocked up, Yasuo was there to meet it, the cold blade cutting through the captain's chest in three quick strikes. The body fell to the floor and was still.
More shouting was coming from outside. "We must leave. Now," Yasuo said. He looked at the girl. "You can do this. Do not hesitate."
Taliyah nodded. The ground rumbled, shaking the walls until the thatched roof began to vibrate. The girl tried to contain the power she felt growing from beneath the floor of the inn. A vision passed in her mind. Her mother, hemming a raw edge of cloth, singing to herself, her even stitches running away from her hand, her fingers a blur of motion.
The rock beneath the inn burst in great, rounded arcs. Stone columns threaded themselves in and out of the ground like a wave. Taliyah felt the earth rise, carrying her out into the dark night, the wild wind that was Yasuo following close behind.
