Scindapse moved, nodding her head. She followed Kindred down the stairs and out of Cruel House, and then they were running through Breach, dodging around citizens. Above, Kindred could hear the beginnings of the battle. She could feel the sear and crack of magic, the pull of hearthfires burning, of casting fires releasing huge amounts of magical power—all of it shivered through her bones, but she ignored the call and continued to move.
As they ran, Kindred shouted bits of explanation back to Scindapse.
“Have you figured anything out with the hearthfires? Can the Once-City move away yet?” Scindapse asked.
“Not without major structural damage,” Kindred called.
As they ran, Kindred was surprised to find fewer people out in the streets than she had expected. It was still chaotic, but this first level of the Once-City had the feeling of watchful silence, waiting for the victor to emerge. Waiting to see if it would survive this battle or sink to the dark deeps.
“If we can’t steal one of the boats, what are we going to do?” shouted Scindapse as they came into view of the staircase, where Kindred saw the others already waiting.
But Kindred didn’t hear her, not really.
Horror moved through her, quick and fast, a lightning strike of realization.
Where had the fake crew of The Quisling gone? They had docked with enough ease that Kindred assumed they knew something of the Once-City, and they wouldn’t go for anything on the first level, where they were sure to be caught and killed before doing much damage. And there was nothing to steal or destroy on the second level.
“No no no,” Kindred whispered. It was martyrs again, she saw. Always fucking martyrs, a great contest to see whose life could be used for the greatest impact, the most efficient and effective extinguishing of a flame.
Half-filled bags of sand. Kindred knew this game, had seen it already.
They were going to the Gone Ways. They were going to do to the Once-City precisely what the pirates had done to Cantrev’s vessels during that first battle.
A gang of assassins striking at the heart of the Once-City, going to extinguish its hearthfires and pull it down to the deeps.
“They’re going to sink it,” Kindred whispered.
* * *
“Kindred, what—” Captain Caraway said as Kindred and Scindapse approached. They were all there: Cora the Wraith, carrying an already-bloodied axe; Long Quixa, with a stout shield covering one arm; Ragged Sarah, wielding two long knives; and Captain Caraway, sword in hand, alert and ready.
“We have to go! Follow me and stay close!” Kindred shouted, as she plunged down and down, past the Forest and its odd stillness, seemingly untouched by the battle being fought above.
She looked back, just once, suddenly afraid that captain and crew would not have followed her, that she had lost or broken too much of their trust. But they were there, flying down the steps behind her.
Down on the third level, she stepped off and plunged into the maze of small buildings, happy that she’d been given a few span to memorize the path to get down to the Gone Ways.
She moved through darkness with speed, and at the entrance to the Gone Ways, she found the plaited grass door broken apart and a few guards on the ground dead, killed quickly, efficiently. Cantrev’s killers moved with purpose.
“I think there are eight or nine,” she said, turning to the others. “The hearthfires are down here, and I think Cantrev’s people are coming to put them out. But back beyond them, I have a ship that can take us out of here. It won’t look like much, I know, but . . .”
“Kindred,” Captain Caraway said, “we need to move.”
Kindred nodded, and pushed through the doorway and down the stairs, unsure of what they would find. Had all of those guards who normally occupied the Gone Ways rushed up at the sound of the central column tolling?
Or did some stay? Was there a perpetual guard down there?
Down they walked, down and down, and then they were at the bottom of the staircase.
This door had not been torn apart; the plaited grass remained intact, and Kindred peered through the sliver between the slightly open door and the frame.
A small skirmish filled the space with sound and movement. Kindred counted at least eight soldiers, still wearing their stolen dew-skimmer uniforms, their blades out and flashing in the light.
Against them, desperately trying to hold their ground, four Once-City guards fought, defending one another and moving as a unit. They were good but outnumbered and unprepared, and Kindred saw the fight would not last much longer.
Around them, the hearthfires burned in sludgy grey—or most of them did. Kindred saw a few of the fires had already been extinguished, reduced to tortured piles of bone and plant braids choked with sand.
“Okay, I think we can skirt around the battle and . . .”
Kindred trailed off, about to move through the door, but stopped when another figure entered the fray, and Kindred felt the air rush out of her as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
Little Wing leapt into the battle, her robes in tatters, her once-powerful frame now angular and taut, muscle evaporated into stark lines and emptiness.
Little Wing, former quartermaster of The Errant.
Little Wing, Kindred’s ghost haunting her dreams.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kindred watched, knowing she should move, knowing she had to move, but suddenly unable to think anything other than Little Wing is here.
“Kindred?” Sarah whispered.
The former quartermaster moved in battle as if she were born for it. She carried a naked blade in each hand, and they sang through the air as she parried and blocked and cut. As she had always been, Little Wing was a force all her own, though Kindred noticed she sang no song during this fight. She moved her body to no melody, no rhythm.
“Kindred!” someone, Cora or Quixa or the captain, said.
“Move, Kindred,” she whispered to herself. “Move.”
She slipped the door open and moved, keeping an eye on the battle, edging immediately to the right, away from the battle. She hugged close to the wall, gesturing for the others to do the same, and they began creeping along, moving as quickly as they could without drawing attention.
And as they did, the Once-City guards steadily lost ground, taking injuries as they parried and thrust slower and slower.
“Is that Little Wing?” Captain Caraway hissed from beside Kindred, her eye locked on the battle. “What’s she doing?”
The battle would soon be lost, and Kindred cast about for anything that might help.
For so long, she had operated at the periphery of action as the hearthfire keeper—working the hearthfire in the center of a ship while her crew fought or sailed or harvested, singing for others, always the heart and so rarely the hand.