A moment later, a shout.
“Enemy at the rocks! To arms!”
The storyteller has sensed all of this coming, has felt the approach of the small band of raiders—four or five of them—from a nearby community, a place called Bale.
Most people died in the events that drew a line between Before and After, especially those who were at Sea, but a few walked the bright line of luck and were spared, and Bale is one such community. A group of people living on the suspended husks of old sailing vessels pierced and held up in the darkness by great green lances of grass.
If the people of Twist think they have it hard, they know nothing. On each of his visits to Bale, the storyteller has choked on the shreds of astonishment he is still capable of feeling at the perseverance of the survivors of Bale.
The storyteller does not move or speak as shouts and cries of rage and terror fill the space. Weapons are produced for those not already carrying them, and a group runs off in the direction of the rocks, led by the First, who gives him an angry, accusatory look as she goes.
Those who remain gather together by the larger of the two fires, their own weapons held tightly. Even the children hold sharpened sticks, fist-sized rocks, or, in the case of one girl who could not have been more than ten, a well-rusted sword.
“I thought the storyteller’s presence offered protection,” Praise says, climbing the dais to stand next to the storyteller. He holds a heavy wooden club.
“Only from the beasts in the darkness,” he says, turning to look at Praise. “I can do nothing about human monstrosity.”
The fighting is close enough that they should be able to hear it, but in the darkness, noise invites trouble, and so these people have learned to fight their battles in near-silence.
When it is over, the warriors of Twist return, bearing their wounded and carrying the spoils of their victory. On a regular day, the people of Twist would have been more dispersed, each person working at whatever job they have been given, and a raid like this might have been successful.
Instead, three of Bale’s people are dead, dropped off the rocky edge of Twist and into the darkness below, falling to join Praise’s fictional sister.
The remaining raider has fled, the First assures her people. She is wounded: a great gash on one shoulder and a cut along her leg. She smiles at the assembled population and promises she will be all right and that the storyteller must continue his story.
She is right that neither the gash nor the cut will kill her, but the storyteller smells the sharp stench of death on her all the same. The bruise that will bloom on her neck and head—the one brought about by her collision with one of the Bale raiders—will be the cause, a creeping, unfeeling thing that whispers the end before it happens.
Praise scuttles over to the First before she goes, and the two whisper together for a furious moment, neither able to keep their eyes from flicking in the storyteller’s direction.
After they finish, the First limps off toward the medicker’s home, and Praise takes his seat at the fire, just as most others have started to do. He speaks quickly to the men sitting on either side of him, both of whom furrow their brows and nod as Praise speaks.
“Let us escape again,” the storyteller says, clapping his hands to gather their attention, “to a story of senseless violence and distrust, a story of love and hope, a story of our worst natures and the devastation a few might wreak.
“Let us follow Kindred further out and further down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“We just need to do a walkthrough of the ships above before we can get to the fun,” Seraph said the next morning after stopping by Cruel House to get Kindred. He was nearly vibrating with excitement as they left the house, and he smiled back at her now as they walked up the central staircase. “It’s a daily need, especially after a battle, but we’ll be quick.”
Above, in the harbor, she and Seraph examined every single Once-City vessel—both those that had been involved in the battle and those that had sat out. It was tedious work, checking hearthfires for any flaws, listening to their songs for any discord.
She mentioned what Ragged Sarah had said—about how being put in Cruel House was meant to be an insult—but Seraph shook his head, frowning.
“I won’t deny that there are those on the Council who might like to give insult to any from Arcadia, but the truth is we thought it might be a softer landing for you all to be housed in a place that was more recognizable. I wanted to put you in one of the woven districts—there are a few wonderful grass homes there that have sat empty for years—but even I was convinced in the end that you lot would be happier in Cruel House.”
Kindred nodded, seeing the sense in that and not wanting to pick a fight where there didn’t seem to be one.
Once they had seen to all of the vessels in what Seraph called “the active harbor,” the one facing the reef pass, they moved to the other side of the Once-City and walked through the vessels facing the rest of the Forever Sea. There were only a handful, with some ships deemed unfit for battle just yet, others still being slowly built or repaired, still others used primarily to skim the dew from the Sea grasses each morning.
Kindred saw Talent up in the rigging on one of the dew-skimming ships. Quell appeared on the deck of another skimmer, lugging a barrel. Both asked after the rest of the crew and the captain, their words freighted with blunted animosity. They had been deemed failures and separated from the rest of their crew, forced into lives of drudgery with only the barest hope of escape, given no information other than what they could scavenge.
And their ship was gone, their crew fractured and broken, because of her.
Kindred offered them what she could, and they went back to their work, jaws set, eyes hard.
It was strange, Kindred thought with the now-familiar swirl of guilt and purpose, talking like this, calling back into being the old alliances and communities. In only a few span, the world had changed decisively, creating new communities and identities, eroding old ones.
She bid her farewells to their backs, promising to pass along their greetings to those living in Cruel House.
* * *
“It’s where most of our water comes from these days, what with the city no longer mobile,” Seraph said after they had stepped off the last dew-skimming ship and moving back inside.
“All of the water?” Kindred asked, surprised. “For the entire City and everyone in it?”
Seraph bobbed his head.
“That’s impossible,” Kindred said, thinking back to the dew-skimming The Errant had been capable of each morning at dawn—barely a barrel’s-worth caught, barely enough for a tenth of the crew. “There’s no way that many ships could skim enough for the whole city.”