But if the walls on Breach had begun to lose their fight against the Sea’s encroaching, then this place had long since given up the ghost.
Fragments of a wall reached up from the floor and down from the ceiling, but they were only bare shards, cracked and broken teeth forming an imperfect smile, a mouth filled and choked by the Sea rushing in and through.
As she looked around, the pressure increased in her mind, taking shape, the memory resolving itself into a song, memory into melody. Kindred looked around for the source of the music but couldn’t place it.
Plants of all kinds formed an impenetrable wall around this place, bristling and curling upon one another over and over, pushing in and in, toward the center of the level. Kindred saw where these plants had been cut back, forming a large central space, open and circled by an impenetrable barrier of prairie grasses.
And guards.
Guards stood all around, not the too-young or too-bored guards Kindred had seen about the Once-City, the wardens and night watchers who seemed to be going through the motions. These were warriors, tall and short, young and old, but fit and foreboding all.
Kindred saw groups of them clustered all around the central space enclosed by the wall of encroaching Sea plants, but she only managed a short glance before a group of them nearby approached, their shoulders pulling together to form a wall, eyes hard.
“Seraph Three-Twist of the Hanged Council and Kindred Greyreach, citizen,” Seraph said, holding out his empty hands and looking at Kindred until she did the same. That music continued unabated, growing with each step she took.
“Councilman,” one of the guards, a woman with a nose that looked to have been broken and reset more than a few times, stepped forward and looked over both of them before turning to Seraph and nodding her head.
Seraph tugged down on his ratty, dirty robe, pulling at the cloth up near his chin until he had exposed his neck.
Kindred nearly recoiled from what she saw there.
A marbled ring of purpled flesh circled Seraph’s neck, deepening to points of black at places, spawning root-systems of red veins disappearing down toward his chest. Sores punctuated the bruising, puckering and breaking through the skin at points—sores that looked old, the pusses having long dried, the ruptured skin turned flaky and dead, and yet many remained open.
It hurt just to look at, but Kindred couldn’t look away, and she felt a sigh of relief escape her lips when Seraph pulled his robe back up around his neck.
“Thank you, Councilman,” the guard said, smirking at Kindred’s discomfort. “Please proceed.”
The guards split, a few still chuckling. Kindred looked back out into the space, anything to forget about the curve of that ring, a circle of purple and blue and black that begged terrifying questions of her mind, that asked what might unite those on the Hanged Council.
Looking out, Kindred saw what she had seen before: guards moving about the wide, flat space, in small groups or as individuals. It looked much as it had when she’d stepped through.
And yet Kindred couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, something had changed in the few moments between walking through the grass door and now, that she had missed something, that the guards allowing them inside—guards who apparently had authority above and beyond members of the Hanged Council—had blocked her vision of this space intentionally.
Fewer, she realized, the thought straying through her mind. There are fewer guards here. She had no idea how she knew, could not have said how many there had been or what evidence there was for her sudden suspicion, but the thought held nevertheless. Fewer.
“Come on,” Seraph said, walking off, free now that he and Kindred had made it through the initial blockade. She followed, the music a wail, a cacophony in her mind.
Seraph stepped around a small clutch of guards circled up and talking, and as Kindred followed him, the center of the Gone Ways was revealed to her.
And the music became a wave crashing over her.
“Here we are,” Seraph said, sweeping one arm across the empty space in the center of this level.
Not five. Not ten. Not twenty. Hundreds.
Hundreds of them, spread out along the floor like lesions roaming across a body. Kindred sipped a quick slip of air as song and sight twined in her mind, and she listened to their chorus.
The Marchess had long before taught her how to diagnose a hearthfire’s needs based on its song. A low-slung dirge begged for fuel just as clearly as a cracked, high melody asked for guidance. The path is in the music, the Marchess used to say.
But Kindred had never heard this many hearthfires singing all at once, their melody a constant barrage in her mind.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Seraph asked, his voice inconsequential next to the chorus of flame and bone before Kindred.
“How can you stand it?” Kindred asked, shouting to hear her own voice over the tumult. The pressure of the hearthfires’ song had pushed at her mind like a bad headache upon entering the Gone Ways, but this was something entirely new. She felt as if her mind were sludge, thick and nigh impossible to move through. Thinking was trudging, one solitary thought at a time.
Seraph patted her on the back and smiled pityingly.
“You get used to it,” he said, leaning in close so she could better hear him. “Most of these brutes”—he gestured toward the guards all around the level—“can’t hear anything. I envy them at times.”
But Kindred wasn’t listening to him. She had clamped her hands over her ears—which dampened the song of the hearthfire, if only just—and had moved closer to one of the blazes, her brow pulling together in confusion.
The flames were frozen. Tongues of solidly grey flames reached up from the metal bowl set into the floor, but they moved not at all, flickered not at all. It was as if the hearthfire were instead a painting of itself, a representation of the truth.
Kindred had seen grey flames before—she could think of a dozen builds that would turn the fire this shade of grey—but to freeze the hearthfire, to stop its motion, to give a strange body to a fire that was only ever spirit, Kindred had never heard of anything that might do that.
“Why is it so loud?” she shouted, if only to hear her voice over the tumult. This close to the hearthfire, the music was cacophonous, like a thousand voices shouting and whispering and speaking in just as many languages.
The path is in the music, Kindred heard amidst the tumult, her grandmother’s voice reasserting itself as it seemed to do more and more in recent days, but Kindred could see no path, or worse, she could see too many paths, too many needs.
For a moment, Seraph only stared at Kindred, openly astonished, but her distress finally cut through and he moved.
Seraph leaned down and reached into the fire, singing a song Kindred could see on his lips but not hear. His hand, she noticed, pushed with some effort through the thickness of the flames.