Sumira struggled to pull her ankle free of the twisted thongs still wrapped around it. Without the strap across the top of her foot, her sandal flapped loose, nothing but a hindrance. She managed to slip free of it just as her pursuers rounded the corner. However surprised and unbalanced she must have looked hopping on one foot at the mouth of the alleyway, they echoed that expression for an instant when she flung her broken sandal at them before she turned and ran.

Her lungs felt raw; the soles of her feet did too, as she tried to navigate narrow backstreets to find the Palace quarter. She hadn't expected to so sharply regret slipping away from her escort, Would she find him where she had left him? Or would he be searching for her, somehow? He had no eyes, but it never seemed to hinder him any more than it hindered Apolyon, their Emissary.

She hoped that he was, as finally she staggered to halt with a barricade before her, and a small cluster of raiders behind. Her knees felt like water and threatened to buckle. She darted to the buildings on either side of the lane, tried the ironbound doors, rattled the latched shutters. The raiders closed in with heavy footfalls. Their leader, horned and scarred, looked as exhausted as she felt. To some tentative relief, he held forth not a weapon but an empty hand.

But then, she heard something, a droning buzz, a snap like a sail in the wind. She felt herself finally crumpling to her knees but a pair of large, chitinous hands caught her beneath her arms. Then she was lifted up, cradled against the fluted carapace of her bodyguard's chest. She looked down to find the alleyway, and the rooftops framing it, retreating below.

"Wings?! You have wings?"