The captains gathered on the academy roof before dawn.
Only seventeen remained. Nine had brought their broods to the city, five had stayed with the nests beyond the wall, and two had chosen the hospital districts. The last sat on a pipe above the flooded dyehouse and answered neither Styx nor the others.
Before, I would have called it a poor turnout.
Now every refusal meant Kane could not take the entire swarm through a single body.
Styx showed the captains the tower in separate images: white fire in the lower passages, flying beasts above the northern wall, the void conduit beside the family hall. She did not assign targets. Each brood chose where it would go and how many of its members to leave guarding the clutches.
Two captains refused to join the assault there on the roof.
One flew to the wounded beasts beyond the wall. The other returned to the river, where young mosquitoes had gone missing after the herd passed. Styx watched them leave but did not call them back.
Seven broods went to the tower.
Cole built the human plan on the same principle: the dyers would shut down the Crown's cooling system, while the students opened the cages on the upper floors. Rem and the city lieutenant were returning to the archive to hold on to the original documents. Lenny was leading the beasts through the academy tunnels. Leon knew the way to the family hall.
Taya refused to go.
"The lower street is flooding again," she said. "People will need a roof whether you lose or win."
She took half the workers and every pump still in working order.
No one accused her of cowardice.
Lily laid seven communication crystals in front of her. One showed the archive, another the northern entrance, and the rest picked up individual groups. She left only three kinds of message on the shared channel: where white fire had appeared, which doors had closed and who was asking for help.
"I won't relay orders," she said.
"Even if you see us making a mistake?" Leon asked.
"I'll tell you what I see. You decide what to do there."
Kane had spent his whole life building the tower around a single voice. We entered it as a network in which the loss of one channel was not meant to stop the rest.
Before we set out, I checked my weapon. Without the System's highlighting, the sword once again looked like an ordinary piece of metal. I could see no ranks, weak points or probability of victory. Styx sat on my shoulder in her smallest form since her awakening.
"Scared?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Me too."
The captains rose one after another, with no shared signal. The first left when a patrol wheeled above the tower. The second waited for the wind off the river. The third led his brood in behind the workers because they had already opened a passage.
Our route began in an old spillway. Leon went down first, and the Void Dragon squeezed in after him. The beast's damaged wing caught on the stone. Each time it did, he stopped, and Leon waited for him to choose his own way through.
Lily's voice came from the crystal:
"The dyers went in ahead of schedule. They've found a second cooling circuit below."
Cole asked whether they needed reinforcements.
The workers themselves answered:
"No. Seal off the north."
A minute later, the first crystal went silent.
The assault was already under way, and there had never been a common beginning.
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