Kindred had woken before Sarah and sneaked out, not wanting to face the fallout.
“Prairie palimpsest. Wyldwort. Meadow sweet. Queen of the prairie. Rachel’s joy. Lousewort. Blue-eyed grass.”
On and on the names spilled out of Kindred as she watched the prairie unfold into a sheet of light and flame, creased and riffled by the wind’s touch. This was the Forever Sea at its truest—baronies of color and texture and growth in every square length, an explosion of difference and sameness all bending in the same breeze, all joying in the same sun. Even the patches fallen to the Greys were glorified in this light, burnished and brightened.
Kindred breathed in the prairie air, letting it expand in her lungs and still her spirit. Seraph’s excitement in recent days had reached a peak, and he had been starting their work days earlier and earlier, but this—cool, pure wind stirring in her lungs; a prairie Sea aflame with light—was enough to calm her.
They moved through the fleet, checking and correcting as they went, twisting bone and plant to keep hearthfires burning or ready to be lit.
As they walked around the trunk, Kindred saw the dew-skimmers coming in, their long, thin hulls cutting lines in the fiery Sea. One by one the boats docked, and burly Once-City pirates carried barrels of freshly skimmed dew into the Once-City. Kindred watched as they moved, trying to count the barrels and translate that number to water rations, but she eventually lost track. Still, she thought, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
She and Seraph began moving through the defender boats on this side and then through the dew-skimmers. They had just a few recently emptied boats left when another dew-skimmer cut into port. It was The Quisling, Kindred saw. She’d been spending so much time aboard these vessels that they had begun to look familiar.
It was the last vessel to come in, and she worked on the other hearthfires while the crew moved back into the Once-City. Kindred waved at them as they moved by, but none returned her greeting, burdened as they were with various sacks and bags of supplies. Their hoods pulled up against the sun’s early light, she couldn’t even make out most of them.
“Can you get The Quisling’s blaze?” Seraph called over from where he huddled on the deck of another skimmer. “And then we can head down to the Gone Ways.”
Kindred nodded and hopped aboard The Quisling, her eyes on the remnants of light playing across the plane of the prairie. The sun had moved high enough that most of the fire was gone, but bits remained, and Kindred let her mind wander.
She had nearly completed her work on the hearthfire when she noticed it.
The build was strange to her at first, orderly and compact, even and linear. No grasses or plants wound through the fire—only the clean white of bones angled around and against one another. She had begun to teach the hearthfire keepers of the Once-City how to better manage their fires, but none of them had reached the point of building a fire like this.
The clean white of bones, Kindred repeated to herself, cocking her head to the side. Clean white bones meant fresh bones.
She looked again at the hearthfire, studying the order of it. Something was off there. Something she couldn’t quite grasp. The earliness of the morning and the silence in which they worked had dulled Kindred’s mind, allowing it to wander, and it was taking effort to pull herself back to the present.
All in a rush she saw.
The Quisling coming in late.
Crewmembers moving quickly, ignoring her greeting.
A hearthfire built with new bones, orderly and even.
No reports of Cantrev from the west.
She stood quickly and rushed belowdecks. Water barrels, each one full or mostly so, tied up and ready to be brought in. Beside them, half-filled bags of sand leaned against one another, and more sand spilled out around them. On the ground she saw a few large leaves covered in scrawled diagrams. Kindred leaned in and saw they were drawings of the Once-City, with various points labeled. On one in particular, arrows had been drawn to show the path through Wisdom, the path to the Gone Ways.
And there, back behind the water barrels and up against the hull, puddled in shadow and blood, were the bodies of The Quisling’s crew, evidence that some of them had been tortured, broken, perhaps for exactly the information in those drawings. Among them, Kindred could see Talent, her body contorted and bloodied.
But why impersonate the crew? What could eight or nine do in the Once-City? Where had they gone?
She ran back up to the deck, leapt from the ship, and rushed to where Seraph knelt beside the hearthfire.
“The attack has begun,” she said, breathless, her mind racing with the possibilities. “Seraph, Cantrev’s attack has begun. The crew of The Quisling, they’re dead.”
“What?” Seraph said. “I just saw them, didn’t I?”
“That wasn’t the crew!” Kindred shouted, but Seraph was looking past her, his eyes focusing on beyond, out into the harbor, to the east. Kindred turned and gasped.
Sails crowded the Sea, approaching at pace, emerging out of the fiery glare of the sun’s ascending rays.
* * *
Kindred raced inside with Seraph close behind, moving through the archway and down the stairs fast enough that she nearly tripped. Down to the first level, where the city still slept. Kindred wondered why no one was awake, why no sentries had seen the attack, how she and Seraph could be the only two people aware of what was going on.
But they all thought Cantrev would come from the west, through the pass in the thorn reef. It would take spans to sail around it, to find another way in.
Spans he’d had.
Kindred stepped off onto the first level and was suddenly unsure of what to do.
“The Hanged Council’s chambers!” Seraph shouted from behind her, winded by that short run. “I’ll begin the tolling!”
And Kindred took off.
As she arrived, she saw five or six wardens walking out the front door, probably just given their assignments for the day, and Kindred felt some sort of relief that Barque was one of them.
“Barque!” she shouted, her lungs pained, no longer moved by the same easy, steady in and out. “Cantrev’s attack. It’s happening. Now. He has people in the city. Eight or nine. Maybe more. Dressed like dew-skimmers. Ships on the horizon.”
Barque stared his confusion at her, the buds decorating his skin tightly furled today. The other wardens he was with laughed at Kindred.
“Our callers scouted last night and found no collections of ships between here and Arcadia,” he said after a moment, his voice gruff, dismissive.
“No,” Kindred said, coughing out the word. “He’s not coming from the west.”
The guards continued to laugh, and Barque continued to simply stare at her, anger and annoyance beginning to move over his face.