“Without. Water. Our. People. Will. Die.” The Word’s voices ground into Kindred’s skull, too low and rough to hear without pain.
“But you can’t sail the Once-City to Arcadia!” Kindred shouted through the throbbing in her head. “The whole thing will fall apart! Even if you make it, you won’t be able to sail it away!”
But even as she said it, Kindred heard the problem in her logic, and Little Wing turned to her, a sad smile on her face.
“They don’t want to live on the Once-City anymore,” she said, broken. “That’s why they’ve been stealing so many ships. They have enough for their people.”
She turned back to The Word, and as she did, Kindred took a step nearer the hearthfire beside her and put a hand in her pocket.
“That’s what the wyrm is for, isn’t it? The only thing Arcadian magic can do nothing against. What are you going to do, let it loose on Arcadia? Let it clean out the island for you? The only people still there apart from the guards in the towers will be children! Elders!”
The Word smiled together, sharing a glance between themselves. They nodded.
The absence of people on Breach suddenly made sense to Kindred—they would have been loaded onto their boats—the ones constantly loaded with supplies, waiting for this moment. They were abandoning their city, which had begun to abandon them long before. With each new Breach, each new push from the Forest, each day of decreased water stores, the Council must have gotten more desperate. And so they turned to pirates, a majority who could scheme and plan something this terrible, this awful.
Kindred wondered idly if Seraph had known. Their work together in getting the hearthfires going again, all of it making this possible. Had he known? Had he been using her just as everyone else on the Council had been using The Errant’s crew? Was he up on one of the ships right now, waiting to sail to his new home? Somehow, she couldn’t imagine that.
“Fuck that. And fuck you.” Little Wing said, and she rushed them, her swords out, her battle cry ringing in the air.
But Kindred was faster.
“Get to the ship!” she shouted, as she pulled the handful of wild feverfew from her pocket along with a few of the bones—her mind now singing with the memory of Seraph describing what had happened to him, his warning to never mix feverfew with new bones—and thrust them into the hearthfire, her voice rising in a terrified shout of song, a single word, held even as the fire recoiled from and then devoured the plants she dropped onto the bones at its heart.
Burn.
With a great sigh, the hearthfire rose, a pillar of grey swaying and writhing and reaching, arcing this way and that until it touched down in another hearthfire. Heat filled the space, pressing in close, and Kindred heard screams, but she could not see who they belonged to, and she could only hope that it wasn’t Sarah or any of the others burning—her eyes were for the fire, and she watched as it spread, leaping from basin to basin, forming an interconnected web of fiery grey archways, dripping and bleeding flames, nowhere safe, nowhere calm. It was an inferno, and it spread.
Through the archways Kindred could see the chaos her action had caused. Bodies passed through the gaps in the flames, some on fire themselves, and behind it all, the wyrm shrieked and roared and pulled free. Too many of its captors had abandoned their charge in the face of the flames sprouting before them, an ever-growing barony of fire.
Before she turned to run, Kindred saw The Word, their twin faces ashen, wiped clean of their usual smirk, empty of anything other than shock as a great column of flame arched over them and dropped, consuming their bodies and leaving little behind.
Kindred ran for the boats but found herself stopped, blocked by Little Wing, who forced her back, swords flicking forward, cutting the air where Kindred had just been.
Back and back, away from the green chance of her boat, until she reached the doorway. Maybe she could lead Little Wing away and double back. There was no way forward, and the flames effectively cut her off from the rest of the crew.
Through the door and up the stairs she ran, hearing steps behind her but unwilling to look behind. Only when she got to the central column did she look back.
“Stop, Kindred!” Little Wing shouted, but Kindred was moving, climbing the stairs, thinking of her grass ship waiting, a chance to escape this—all of this.
But it was no good, she realized. She would never outrun Little Wing, and even if she could loop around and get back to her ship first, she would only succeed in leading Little Wing to her ship, to the crew. It was too much of a risk, Kindred thought as she climbed.
And so, she did the only thing she could think to do.
On the second level, Kindred leapt from the central staircase and raced into the Forest.
Little Wing followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Kindred plunged into the darkness of the Forest, and suddenly, the world and the battle and every hope and frustration swirling about in the chaos above were gone. The trees around her offered only silence, watchful and waiting.
Great tremors continued to move through the Once-City, rippling in this place, too. The trees, strangers in the shadows, shivered in time, as if shaken by a great heartbeat racing in response to the danger.
The path was thinner than she remembered, the trees reaching in closer than before. The darkness between the branches was thick, oily, and it swirled with Kindred’s movement. Each step left a trail of inky black washing away from her.
As she pushed farther in, keeping ahead of Little Wing, Kindred saw the effects of the tremors worsening. Trees shook in the darkness like naked bodies in the cold, uncontrolled and wild. And around the trees, reacting in their own way to the chaos that had infiltrated this place of deadly peace, were the lantern bearers.
They lined the path, articulating its end and the Forest’s beginning. Some lay along the path, paralleling it, while others hung from trees or floated above, their eyes and smiles lit from behind by a ghost light, their lanterns—some whole, others shattered and floating in place in the darkness—dripping white-silver radiance into the darkness.
It was a cacophony of light and presence, and yet not a single lantern bearer spoke or sang, and the Forest devoured even the sound of Kindred’s pelting steps.
She’d stumbled at first upon seeing them crowding the path, but Little Wing was close behind, and she had no choice. She threaded her body through the hollow light of the lantern bearers, trying to ignore their smiles, their knowing looks. Though the quakes moving through the Once-City continued to shake the trees, the lantern bearers moved not at all, shook not at all.
At once, they began whispering, each voice speaking with a different cadence and tone but saying the same words.
Come, see, they whispered. Come, know.
Kindred kept her eyes ahead, remembering Yllstra’s words from their trek along the path before.