“What are they doing?” Kindred asked, shielding her eyes.
“Attacking,” Little Wing said. The pirates dropped from the trees onto Cantrev’s ships as they sailed deeper into Once-City grasses, landing among the unsuspecting crew and lashing out with their blades.
“They’re all going to die, though,” Ragged Sarah said, shaking her head. “There are more than sixty sailors on some of those boats. They’re on a suicide mission.”
“They’re martyrs,” Seraph said, his voice quiet. Kindred thought back to how Seraph had talked about the pirates: fanatics who lived in the trees above, zealots absolutely dedicated to their purposes and goals.
“They’re monsters,” Long Quixa said, her eyes wide.
Even Cora the Wraith no longer wore a smile.
Kindred was thinking back to stories told about pirates boarding ships, locking the crews away belowdecks or keeping them at bay while the pirates stole the captain, killed the keeper, and snuffed the hearthfire, striking at the critical points of a ship without needing to shed any more blood than needed. The ship would sink into the Sea, the crew helpless, and the pirates could sail away, their attack perfectly cruel and perfectly efficient.
And here it was, that same story played out.
Arcadian sailors rallied to kill these intruders, hurling spears and leaping forward with swords, but it was too late.
“No . . .” Kindred whispered, leaning forward, horror rustling through her like a cold wind.
Pirates rushed for hearthfires, one or two executing the oblivious keepers kneeling before the flames, one or two emptying bags of sand onto the hearthfires, snuffing them.
Perfectly cruel.
Perfectly efficient.
The Arcadian fleet fractured, ships listing and sinking, sinking themselves into prairie plants not seen around Arcadia for hundreds of years. Sailors familiar and unfamiliar to Kindred leapt over the bodies of fallen hearthkeepers and pirates alike—heroes and martyrs and warriors and just people—leaping to throw anything into the hearthfire, anything to begin the blaze again.
“Gods . . .” Cora the Wraith said, shaking her head.
Long Quixa had closed her eyes and bowed her head, her lips moving, and Kindred could just hear her voice intoning a prayer to her god or gods. Kindred didn’t know Quixa was religious in any way, and she felt some surprise at learning that information now, after having sailed for over a year together. It was as if the Once-City continued to reveal the true selves of any who walked its floors.
More and more of Cantrev’s vessels were getting slowed just at the edge of the pass, unable to wind their way into the fight, stoppered up by those who had gone first and now were paying the price. The trees, what had at first seemed a paltry defense between the onslaught of Cantrev’s forces sailing two by two down the pass and the Once-City vessels, all twenty-four of them, had now grown into a field of destruction to be entered only with extreme caution. A few foundering vessels had crashed into trees and somehow managed to stay afloat, their decks pitched dangerously, masts angling away.
But most simply sank, whispering their way beneath the green Sea, leaving behind a memory of what they were. As in everything, the Sea was always all that was left, the Sea and the memory of what had once sailed atop it.
Listen for me in the grasses, Kindred heard as she watched sailors flailing against the inevitable, angling blades at pirates who smiled at a job well done.
Listen for me below, Kindred heard as she watched sailors giving in to the Sea, Arcadians standing next to Once-City pirates, silent as the Sea took them.
“Get down!” Little Wing shouted, and Sarah wrenched Kindred to the ground.
Heat like a rash flared in the air where Kindred had been standing, and she looked up in time to see a red bolt cut through the air, arcane energy singing. The spell ripped into a huge tree branch back and up from where Kindred and the others huddled together, cutting into it, leaving a fuming runnel in a branch that must have existed for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
It tilted sickeningly, cracking with a sound like the bones of the world breaking.
The tree exploded with activity: people running along the branches to get down, the ladders suddenly choked with all of those who had wanted a better seat for the slaughter.
“What are they doing?” Ragged Sarah shouted into the tumult, and Kindred followed her gaze down to where a few Arcadian ships that had managed to avoid the pirates in the trees now cut toward the Once-City line, though as they did, they slung magical attacks not at the enemies before them—the dreadnoughts and other Once-City war vessels—but at the Once-City itself.
Flashes of purple and gold, red and green, flashes of unnatural war magic meant to rend and wreck flared garish against the sunned sky. It was destruction writ polychromatic.
“Being heroes,” Kindred said as she pushed herself up. “We need to get down from here.”
Even as she said it, more ships from the Arcadian fleet began hurling magical attacks at the Once-City. Even a few of the already-sinking vessels loosed last-breath assaults, bolts of gold and purple that skewed wildly through the air, only a few finding their mark.
People crowded in close, and Kindred found herself trapped, pushed from behind by Long Quixa and Ragged Sarah and a crowd behind them, blocked in front by Little Wing and her guards and the crowd trying to do exactly what she herself was trying to do.
The tolling of the central column had changed. A new rhythm vibrated the air, and as she looked back toward the battlefield, Kindred saw its effect.
Ebb-La-Kem and the others atop the scaffolding had scampered down, leaving a lone flagbearer above, a young boy waving a single black flag. Already the Once-City fleet had begun to collapse on the suicidal Arcadian forces, slinging their own vicious magical attacks. Kindred squinted and thought she could see Morrow Laze himself, tall and haggard, standing at the prow of one of his ships, huge black lashes of arcane energy extending from his hands, a whip of pure power pulled from strange plants burning in his casting fires, striking again and again at the Arcadian vessels destroying his home.
And there was one of The Word’s vessels, flying a blue banner, racing about, foolhardy and brash, a big galleon. It might have once been a storage or transport ship, but now it glowed with the casting fires littering its deck, mages crowding the sides and casting their magics, some holding defensive spells up around the ship, some hurling angry bolts of power, garish greens and golds. The Word’s ship was a battalion unto itself, leaving Arcadian vessels foundering in its wake.
“There!” someone shouted, and Kindred followed a pointed finger toward an Arcadian vessel cutting through the morass of foundering ships, angling hard for the City.
“Come on, come on,” Little Wing said, her voice carrying over the sounds of battle and alarm. The press and surge of bodies had momentarily halted, all of them breathing in and out together, watching to see if this ship would make it to the City, if the battle would be brought in from the Sea.