“For the woman who cannot decide if she ought to follow the path before her or the path behind,” the Marchess whispered, looking intently at Kindred, “two bearers, one showing her the way forward and one showing her the person she once was, left behind.”
Off in the distance, Kindred could see her own lantern bearer, watching carefully, watching as a predator might watch its prey.
“We are made by the Sea, child, and the Sea seeks only balance. Just as you walk above, the Sea moves below, strange enemies in a fight neither asked for. The lantern bearers are the Sea’s imaginings of you, and in their reach, they show only the need for harmony, peace, equilibrium.”
The Marchess pointed up, to where Little Wing stood, face to face with her own reflection, the Sea’s reaching hand.
“And for one who has lived chaos in search of peace, who has walked every path in search of her place, a bearer who knows the cut of light against darkness and who has found calm.”
Little Wing’s lantern bearer held out a hand and Little Wing took it.
A thrum of energy—song and light and heat and power—raced out from that contact, and Kindred was momentarily unable to breathe. Her eyes squeezed shut and her body curled upon itself, leaning into the steady strength of the Marchess.
And when she opened her eyes and looked, Little Wing was gone, and so was her lantern bearer. The path once again held only dim light.
“Where did she go?” Kindred asked. The Marchess had begun carrying Kindred—walking or floating or flying, Kindred didn’t know—back toward the path.
“That is a question wrongly asked,” the Marchess said, a phrase she had often invoked when trying to teach Kindred a lesson.
A streak of light from nearby pulled Kindred’s attention away from the approaching path.
Her own lantern bearer approached, in figure and form exactly like Kindred herself, her lantern recently shattered and now only a bare flame dancing in the space around her hand. She neared, moving through the darkness with speed and poise, smiling at Kindred, her eyes wide and knowing.
Without thinking of it, Kindred began to push against the Marchess’s arms, pushing herself toward her lantern bearer, thinking of Little Wing and the joy on her face. Harmony.
“No,” the Marchess said, and she spoke a word then that Kindred had never heard before, could not truly comprehend, and from the Marchess a rush of light emanated that engulfed Kindred’s lantern bearer, throwing her back into the darkness, carrying her away on a wave of the Marchess’s power. “Not yet.”
“Why?” Kindred asked, feeling the intoxication of the lantern bearer’s thrall wearing off but still confused.
“It’s not your time,” the Marchess said, shaking her head and smiling down at Kindred. “Not with so much left undone.”
They reached the path and the Marchess dumped Kindred gently back onto her feet. Out in the darkness of the Forest, more and more lantern bearers were moving, racing in chaotic loops toward the path and the cracks in the barrier.
“Go,” the Marchess said, favoring Kindred with one final smile. “This is not how you rejoin the Sea.”
Kindred opened her mouth to respond, to ask more questions that were perhaps wrongly asked, but the Marchess cut her off with a slash of her hand.
“Go.”
Kindred went, racing back toward the central staircase as the path collapsed to nothing around her and the Forest reclaimed the second level of the Once-City.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Cracks ran through the central staircase as Kindred reached it, and she had to leap over several to climb up. As she did, another tremor ran through the Once-City.
Kindred descended, though the way was treacherous. The central column bore great tears and scratches, and many of the stairs were cracked or broken entirely.
All the way down she ran, racing and leaping over the broken path, and when she heard the scream of the wyrm above, so tortured and mad with hunger and fear and the wrongness of it all, she knew what had done this damage. It had climbed above, probably racing to escape the fires Kindred had given power to below.
When she reached the Gone Ways, she stumbled into stillness at the change.
The hearthfires swayed as one, their movements hypnotic and mesmerizing, as they channeled whatever power they had left into speed for the Once-City.
And beyond them, where walls jagged as broken teeth once closed on the reach of the Sea moving in on the Gone Ways, now the steady movement of grass pulling by could be seen.
Every stretch of plant that had grown over the years into the Gone Ways was . . . gone.
The Once-City sailed again, and beyond the rips and tears in the wall, the mostly dark Sea was a moving image, plants sliding by as the Once-City moved through the Sea.
Kindred watched legions of plants, baronies and kingdoms of rising plant stalks—all of them passing by the Once-City.
The Once-City was sailing again.
“Kindred!” Ragged Sarah shouted from where she stood by the boats. “We have to go!”
Kindred ran through the paths between the hearthfires, trying to ignore the dead and burned bodies lying so still. When she reached the boats, she felt a gulp of relief when she saw everyone still there, a few nursing wounds, but nothing deathly, nothing mortal.
“Where’s Little Wing?” the captain asked. When Kindred gave her head a slight shake, she understood.
“We need to move,” Kindred said, looking around at them all. “They’re insane to push the Once-City into sailing. Seraph and I only started to fix the hearthfires, but they’re not well enough to sail, not really. They’re going to destroy this whole place, and I bet this level will go first.”
As if her words needed proof, a huge crack sounded as an enormous chunk of the wall was ripped away.
“Help me move this boat to the edge,” Kindred said, gesturing at one of the two completed vessels. They all set to, and as they did, the captain explained what they had seen on the battlefield.
“We all thought they were unprepared for the battle, but we were wrong. A few ships went out to defend, but it was a stall tactic. Ebb-La-Kem and the other Hanged Council members were herding their people onto boats as fast as they could, all of them stacked with supplies. There was no way for us to steal a ship—they used every damn one of them.”
Kindred shook her head, wanting to find it unbelievable, but after everything that had happened so far that day, it all seemed right.
“Ebb-La-Kem offered the captain a spot on one of the vessels,” Cora the Wraith said.
“Aye,” the captain said, spitting once on the ground. “Just me. He said my crew could ride their way down in their new City.”