She knew that each burning meteorite, bright despite the noon sun overhead and dragging behind it a plume of black and yellow smoke, must be a Swordbearer. She should be hurrying to get out of the city, she knew, but instead she ran toward its center.She wanted to warn Azazel; she owed him that much.The crow flew on ahead, just beyond her reach.Other Ainokites heeded the more sane imperative, though, and she struggled to push through them. Women and men of her own kind—not quite her own kind, but her kin, at least—rushed in a thick and burbling stream toward the gates of the city, and she had to push fiercely to force them to part and let her upstream.The Fallen were fewer, easier to see and avoid, but much more dangerous. They towered above their mortal subjects, and though Qayna had become accustomed to their appearance, the beast heads and limbs were still terrifying when they rushed at her at full speed. A towering Fallen with the lower body of a horse, Ezeq’el, trampled people who might have been her servants, or even her lovers; a giant with the face of an octopus or a squid dragged shrieking bodies with him as he plunged into one of Ainok’s great canals, finding it a more expedient route to the exits; a corpulent man with long yellow tusks jutting from his face and spikes growing from his back and shoulders lowered his head and charged through the crowd, leaving behind him a trail of mangled corpses and blood.These were Qayna’s people now, and they were destroying themselves in their flight.The towers of Eden, Mother had told her, were observatories.
