Chapter 40
Smoke filled the corridor. Manat and Bradamante dropped to their knees and crawled over hot stones to help the others.
They kicked open doors that were latched from inside. “Get out!” Bradamante shouted, pulling a young girl from her bed. The child fell limply to the floor.
“Breathe into her!” Manat shouted.
When no breath could awaken the child, Manat pulled Bradamante away. “There are others. Keep looking.”
They crawled through the smoke and heat, choking, shouting, coughing, beating on doors, saving those they could, leaving behind those they could not.
Each limp rag of a child or a monk bored a fresh hole through Bradamante’s heart.
The flood, she thought. All those bodies. Nothing I could do.
If her god had meant to prepare her, Bradamante had missed the lesson. She
