“Come on,” Kindred said to the others. “I need the supplies for the boat’s hearthfire.” She rushed along the wall, toward Seraph’s collection of bones and plants. She flicked her eyes over the plants, fear and panic making her hands shake, her breath come in labored stitches.
“Bluestem,” she whispered, seeing the blue-red stalks, thinking of the way the casters could shape it into a shield. But that was on a working casting fire—not the sludgy grey these had become. And it was with an experienced caster.
“Let’s go, Kindred,” Cora whispered from where she hid behind the storage containers holding the hearthfire supplies. “That battle isn’t going to last much longer.”
“Prairie smoke. Echinacea. Thrice-root.” On and on she moved through the plants, ignoring the growing worry in those around her. Never having done more than imagining taking the boat out, than theorizing how the hearthfire might burn—what it might burn—she had no idea now what she might need.
So, she filled her pockets with everything she could think of, plants she had known her whole life and plants she had only recently met.
Behind her, the sounds of battle, bright and sharp, and of dying, abrupt and awful, filled the space.
She was nearly at the end of the plants when one caught her eye, thin green stalks ending in perfect white flowers.
“Feverfew . . .” she mumbled, memory reaching back through the fog of this day to something—something—Seraph had said.
But it was too far, and the battle behind her was too near. She scooped up a handful and dropped it in a pocket.
And finally, she grabbed a few smaller bones and one of the longer leg bones in the collection, a hefty thing that looked and felt like a club. It was disrespectful, a bastardization of purpose and meaning and value and everything else. But it would have to do.
Kindred turned to the battle.
Little Wing and the other Arcadians fought the Once-City guards, their battles spread out across the level into small skirmishes. Bodies littered the walkways between hearthfires, Arcadians and citizens mixed together, the same in death.
“The boats are just there,” Kindred said, pointing. They would have to cross some open area to reach them, but it was the only way.
“Sorry, not those big grass messes, right?” Cora said, her voice rising in disbelief. “We’re not escaping this pirate city on half-formed grass sculptures, are we?”
“Shut up, Cora,” Sarah hissed.
“They’re not all half-done,” Kindred said. “But . . . yes, our boat is made of grass.”
“Oh, good,” Cora said. “We’re all going to die.”
“Enough, Cora,” Captain Caraway said, her eye still trained on Little Wing.
“Get ready to run for it,” Kindred said, steeling herself against the fear. She breathed for just a moment—In the prairie wind, out the prairie wind—and then she moved, a heart become a hand.
“Go,” she whispered. And they went.
Her feet felt light beneath her as she pelted along paths she had been walking for many days, past fires she had begun to know as friends. The others took parallel paths, all racing for the hopeful green on the other side.
She ran, feeling the air change as she neared a skirmish. One Arcadian, his back to Kindred, filled the air before him with sword cuts, pushing back the two citizens who looked for any way in. Behind them, one of the larger hearthfires, waiting, hungry.
As she approached, Kindred heard the Arcadian’s laughter, high and haughty, and Kindred was reminded of Cantrev, his self-satisfied smirk, his chortle as the Trade behind him burned.
Kindred cut her own swath through the air, the bone in her hand a flashing arc of white for just a moment before it collided with the man’s head, shattering at the end with a bright snap.
The man dropped, slack and empty, to the ground.
One of the citizens, a woman Kindred had seen before in the Gone Ways, nodded her thanks.
The other, though, was looking over Kindred’s shoulder, eyes wide.
Kindred turned and immediately dropped to the ground, falling under the cut of the blade from one of the two Arcadians who had come to join the fight. The bone in her hand, almost as long as her arm and fractured to a wicked point at the end, skittered away as she fell, and Kindred could only scuttle back, crawling awkwardly but desperately needing to move.
The woman pursued, a vicious smile on her face, and it took a moment for Kindred to realize it was Rhabdus. She carried two swords, like Little Wing, and they moved in her hands as if they belonged there. A laugh brimmed up from her chest, wicked and gleeful.
“Oh, I hoped for this moment, girl. Hoped and prayed for it.” She sliced at the air, cutting closer and closer to Kindred.
The other Arcadian warrior engaged the two citizens, pressing in far enough to effectively cut them off from Kindred. And beyond, Kindred saw her friends caught up, too, tangled in this petty, sprawling, all-consuming conflict. The captain’s blade flashed into a fight, and Ragged Sarah’s shouts echoed above the battle sounds.
Back and back Kindred moved, crawling and scampering as fast as she could, but she tripped and fell into a sprawl.
“This was always where your wild ways would lead you,” Rhabdus said, looking down at Kindred with a sneer. “The end of a blade. You were always a traitor, girl—I just saw it before everyone else.”
Rhabdus closed, her swords gleaming in the low light, and Kindred pushed herself back one more time, every bit of strength she had just to fall back a bit farther. Her arms and legs splayed in exhaustion as she hit the hard floor, and one hand fell into a hearthfire.
As if by instinct, Kindred began to sing, letting the language of the hearthfire spill out of her in breaths short and pained. The sluggish grey of the flames answered, flexing around her hand in a kind of hello, viscous and oily.
Rise, Kindred, pleaded, begged. Rise and consume this place.
“Die, girl,” Rhabdus said, and Kindred heard her blades cutting through the air.
Rise, Kindred sang, feeling the fire moving about her hand.
And it did.
Grey flames like grease and oil and sand, hot and thick, flared from the hearthfire basin, not the mighty reach of a clean blaze on a fresh ship but instead the hoary grasp of a hearthfire too old, too tired to burn in colors beyond the grey of an overcast day. The flames did not consume the woman, did not even reach her—instead, they formed a thick shield, a protective layer over Kindred that lasted just a moment, but long enough to startle Rhabdus and pause her sword cut.
Long enough for Kindred to reach into the heart of the blaze and grab a shard of bone, long ago grown hard in the slow death of the fire.