The first breath I dragged in burned all the way down. Ash caught in my throat hard enough to make me cough, but I did not stop. My boots slipped in mud turned slick by spilled water and something darker. A shadow lunged across the lane to my left and I flinched before I recognized it as one of the village goats, half-mad with terror, rope trailing from its neck.
"Shiro!"
My voice tore raw in the firelight.
Still no answer.
I cut past the lower sheds where one wall had already collapsed inward. Sparks whirled around me in hot, stinging bursts. A barbarian stumbled backward out of the smoke with a clay jug in one hand and blood on his beard. He did not see me at first. He was laughing at something behind him.
I did not think as I snatched up a broken fence stake from the ground and drove it at him with both hands. The jagged wood hit beneath his arm and slid between leather and ribs.
His laugh turned into a wet grunt of shock. He spun toward me and for one horrible instant I saw exactly how large he was. Broad shoulders. Thick wrists. A face more animal than human beneath grease and smoke.
He swung the jug at my head.
I ducked badly and the clay smashed against the side of my shoulder instead. Pain exploded through my arm as I nearly dropped to one knee. He roared and lunged for me.
Then a burst of white-blue light flashed across the lane.
Frost raced up the barbarian's leg in a crackling bloom. His roar turned to confusion as ice seized his boot to the earth and climbed, fast and delicate and merciless, over hide and metal.
I knew that Grace.
I looked up, and at the far end of the lane, near the chapel steps, Shiro stood with one hand stretched and the other gripping the wrist of a little girl pressed tight against her side. Her hair was loose, wild in the heat and smoke, lit silver-white by firelight and Grace together. Her face was pale. Too pale. The hem of her dress was blackened at one side, and ash streaked her cheek.
But she was alive.
For half a second, everything else vanished. She saw me. Her eyes widened so sharply it was almost pain.
"Haruto!"
The barbarian at my feet hacked at the ice with a snarl. I tore the broken stake free and drove it again, this time hard into the side of his throat. He collapsed choking, hands clawing uselessly at the shaft.
I did not watch him die as I ran to her.
There were two children with her, not one. I saw that as I reached the chapel wall. The little girl clinging to her waist could not have been older than six. Beside the door crouched a boy with blood all over one sleeve, though I could not tell if it was his. The chapel doors stood half open behind them, and inside, shadows moved among overturned benches and fallen prayer cloths.
Shiro caught me by both shoulders the moment I was close enough.
"You're bleeding—"
"So are you—"
For one impossible second, we only stared.
Smoke moved between us. The church bell gave another twisted, broken toll above our heads. Somewhere farther off a woman screamed. But none of it seemed quite real compared to the simple fact that Shiro's hands were on me and she was alive and I had found her before the fire had.
Then she shook me once.
"Where were you?" she demanded, and her voice broke in the middle of it.
I swallowed blood and ash and panic.
"I was in the forest," I said. "The barbarians. I heard them. I tried to come back, but I fell and—"
The shame of it hit me then, hot and immediate.
"I didn't make it in time."
Shiro's face changed because there was no time left for softness.
"Haruto," she said, low and urgent, "Father and some of the others are trying to hold the center lane, but they've been pushed back. More came in from the south. They set the lower houses alight first. I got these two out of the chapel when they broke through the square."
She glanced at the children.
The little girl had both fists knotted in Shiro's skirt so tightly her knuckles looked white even in the orange light. The boy was trying very hard not to cry. That effort made him look younger.
"Can you run?" Shiro asked him.
He nodded too fast.
"Good. Stay behind me. Do not let go of her hand."
The girl clung harder.
I looked at Shiro then, really looked.
Her breathing was too shallow. Too quick. Frost still feathered faintly along the edges of her fingers, then thinned and vanished.
"You've been using too much," I said.
Her mouth tightened.
"I know."
Another crash shook the square and we all flinched.
From beyond the chapel corner came the heavy tread of boots and a voice barking something rough and amused. Another answered with drunken laughter. They were close.
Shiro turned at once toward the side lane.
"The eastern path is still open in places," she said. "I was trying to get them around the back of the grain stores and out toward the ridge. Take them!"
"I wont leave you here Shiro..."
Her head snapped back toward me.
"No."
"Shiro—"
"No." It came out sharper this time. "I'm not leaving Father here."
Of course she wasn't. I knew that before she said it. Knew it in the same way I knew my own next breath would hurt. The footsteps were closer now.
I looked down at her hand, still faintly silvering at the fingertips from the residue of Grace. Then back at her face.
"Then we're both staying."
She opened her mouth to argue, but was interrupted when a barbarian rounded the chapel corner. He saw us at once and his grin widened.
Behind him came another and then a third, all three were half-lit by burning houses and the pale spill of chapel smoke. One carried a hatchet. One a hooked spear. The third was still pulling a strip of white cloth from around one fist where, not long before, it had probably hung as a prayer banner.
Their eyes went first to Shiro.
Then to the children.
Then to me.
"Well," the one with the spear said in a voice thick with drink and smoke. "Here's the white-haired prize."
The man beside him laughed.
"And a stray dog too."
Shiro shoved the children behind us.
Cold moved through the air around her, quick and fine as drawn breath. Frost threaded over the packed earth near her feet. I felt it touch my skin before I saw it. Instinctively, without thinking, I reached for her wrist.
Her eyes flicked to mine just as my fingers closed around her.
Grace moved.
It hit me harder this time.
Not because she gave more. Because there was more in her now. Fear. Urgency. Cold honed into defense. Winter made sharp. It rushed through my arm in a clean, terrible current. For one instant I felt the structure of it all: the way moisture could be called from heat-struck air, the way cold could gather not merely as frost but as refusal, as stillness imposed against motion.
Then it was mine. Even if just for this moment.
The spear-man lunged first.
Shiro threw her hand out and a sheet of ice burst low across the ground, racing toward them in white fractures. The first barbarian lost his footing with a curse. At the same moment I stepped in, caught a broken lantern pole from the dirt, and swung it two-handed into the side of his knee.
Something cracked.
He went down screaming.
The second man came at me with the hatchet.
I barely got the pole up in time. The blade bit into the wood with a splintering thunk inches from my face. The shock tore through my shoulders and nearly drove me backward. His breath stank of old meat and liquor. He grinned and leaned harder, trying to force the hatchet down.
I let go of the pole with one hand and seized his forearm.
Cold burst through my palm into his flesh. Though it wasn't enough to freeze the whole man. Ice flashed over his wrist and knuckles. His grin broke in shock as his fingers spasmed open. The hatchet slipped. I drove my forehead into his nose.
Pain exploded behind my eyes. His too, judging by the sound he made.
He stumbled back swearing. I snatched the hatchet from the pole and swung wildly. The blade buried itself in the side of his neck.
Hot blood sprayed my hand.
The third barbarian had already gone for Shiro.
He was faster than the others, and she was tired. I saw it at once. The slight lag when she moved. The half-step too late as he closed the distance and grabbed for her hair.
"Shiro!"
She twisted away, but not fully. His fist caught a handful of white strands anyway and yanked hard enough to wrench her backward with a cry. The little girl screamed. The boy grabbed her and tried to drag her behind the chapel post.
Shiro drove her elbow into the barbarian's ribs. Frost bloomed over his sleeve, but weakly. Too weakly. He snarled and raised the strip of banner cloth in his other hand as if to gag her or bind her wrists. I moved before I knew I had.
The borrowed Grace I had was already fading. I could feel it thinning under my skin, slipping away like cold water through open fingers.
So, I threw the hatchet. The blade struck his shoulder instead of his skull and sank there to the haft. He bellowed and released her at once. Shiro fell to one knee, coughing. I hit him a heartbeat later and we crashed together into the chapel wall hard enough to rattle the loose bell above us.
He was stronger. Much stronger.
His hand clamped around my throat and slammed me back against the timber. Light burst behind my eyes. I clawed at his wrist uselessly as he squeezed. His face was inches from mine, twisted with pain and rage, beard wet with spit and ash.
He snarled something I did not understand.
Then white-blue light flashed past my shoulder.
Shiro's Grace struck the wall just behind his head and crawled over stone and wood in branching veins of ice. Not to freeze him fully.
To freeze him to it.
His grip faltered in shock. I drove my knee up between his legs. He folded with a sound more animal than human. I tore free, snatched the dropped spear from the ground, and rammed it through him with both hands.
He jerked once. For a second, none of us moved.
My chest heaved. My vision pulsed. The Grace inside me was gone now. Entirely gone. Leaving only heat and pain and the awful trembling after.
Shiro was still on one knee, and I dropped beside her.
"Shiro—"
"I'm fine."
She was not fine. Her voice was thinner. Her skin looked almost translucent in the firelight. A faint tremor ran through the hand she braced against the ground.
"You need to stop using your Grace!"
"I know."
"You keep saying that!"
"Because I do know!"
She looked up at me then, and even now, even here, there was a kind of fierceness in her that almost made the flames seem less bright.
"I also know," she said, "that if I stop, those children die."
I had no answer to that. The boy behind the chapel post was crying openly now, though trying not to make sound. The little girl had gone eerily silent, eyes huge and empty with terror.
Shiro pushed herself upright with visible effort.
"We can't stay here."
"No," I said.
The word came easier once it was spoken. Because saying it meant moving. Choosing. Not just standing in the ruins of what had already been lost.
I looked toward the center lane.
Through smoke and fire I could still see figures fighting near the well. Fewer now than before. Too few. One of the houses near the chief's field was fully engulfed. The path east still existed, but barely, a strip of darkness between burning roofs and rushing shadows.
"Can they run?" I asked quietly, glancing at the children.
"They have to."
Shiro followed my gaze toward the square.
"My father is still there."
I knew.
Of course he was.
And because the night had not yet finished destroying everything, because cruelty was never content with only one wound at a time, I knew something else too: if we went for him, we might all die.
Shiro knew it too.
Her hand found mine in the smoke.
Not by accident.
Not as a child reaching in fear.
As a choice.
"Haruto," she said, very softly, "don't leave me."
My throat closed around something far sharper than tears.
I tightened my grip.
"I won't."
Then, with the village burning around us and the bell tolling madness overhead, we turned together toward the fire.