She sighed, weary suddenly, and Kindred wondered for just a moment what rest for Captain Jane Caraway would look like. What would it take for tears of joy and the finality of peace to be writ on her face?
“But what about the battle? They just gave up the city?” Kindred asked. Their plan to hold the wyrm there, to sail the city up to Arcadia, wouldn’t work if they handed it over to Cantrev.
“Prairie fire,” Ragged Sarah called down from where she was working on the ship.
“What?” Kindred asked.
“The defense boats Ebb-La-Kem and the others sent out were just meant to slow Cantrev’s forces,” the captain said. “Once the City began to move, the remaining boats lit a fire among the plants, and since it’s so late in the season, they caught immediately. I saw Cantrev’s forces trying to flee, but . . . but . . .”
Captain Caraway broke off, shaking her head. Long Quixa finished her thought.
“They couldn’t get away fast enough. The fires overtook them, and they burned. All of them.”
“Gods,” Kindred whispered, horrified.
“I don’t understand why they’re doing this,” Cora said, angry and afraid.
“Water,” Kindred said, her voice a grunt as they shifted the boat along the ground bit by bit. She explained what she could.
“They’re going to take Arcadia. Cantrev’s forces are depleted, and there can’t be much of a guard left around the island. The Once-City has been running out of water for a long time, and this is their solution: take control of Arcadia, the island with more wells than anyone would ever need. Who cares if the City starts falling apart on the way; none of them intend to live here ever again. They’re going to take Arcadia.”
“But the mages in the towers,” Cora the Wraith said. “What about the lighthouses and their defense? No ship can get close to the island if they don’t wish it.”
“And why sail the City there?” the captain asked, skeptical. “They have the ships, and they had enough supplies to make it all the way to the Mainland, it looked like. What do they need the Once-City for?”
“The wyrm,” came a voice behind them, and they turned to find Seraph, out of breath, his usually unkempt robes now ripped.
“They’re going to sail the City right into Arcadia, run it aground and let the wyrm loose to clean out the city.”
Cora the Wraith leapt away from the boat and picked up a sword from the ground nearby, a piece of detritus from the battle.
“Please!” Seraph cried, holding up his hands, empty of anything but soot stains from working the hearthfire. “I didn’t know about the plan! None of them told me until it was too late to stop it. I escaped and didn’t know where else to go. And I knew you would be down here.”
He said this last to Kindred, his eyes on her, on the boat.
“I’ve seen how you look at those boats. If anyone can work the hearthfire in one of them, it’s you, Kindred. Please take me with you. Please.”
“What do you all think?” Kindred asked, looking around at the rest of them, but another section of wall tore away, and great cracks tore their way along the floor. The Gone Ways were going.
“If he can help push, I say yes!” Cora said, dropping the sword and returning to the boat. A chorus of agreement sounded, and then they were pushing, straining at the weight of the boat.
Would it sail? Was she crazy? Had she gathered enough supplies? Was she about to kill every one of her new crew, her old captain, the woman she loved?
Close. Closer. Closer.
Escape, the green of the Sea whispered to her.
Belief, the dark of the deeps said.
The nose of the ship passed through the great absence where the wall had once been and was immediately pulled hard, and the rest of the ship began to follow, moving of its own accord, shifting to join the motion of the Sea.
“Everyone aboard!” Kindred shouted. “Get in!”
They began leaping in through the door, falling in a muddled mess inside but not caring. Kindred was last, and she vaulted inside just as the boat pulled free of the Gone Ways.
Down.
“Oh, gods,” Scindapse shouted as she lost her footing and slid back. The others clung to what they could, but the boat began to fall, and fast.
The flame.
Kindred leapt forward to the hearthfire basin, glimpsing it for just a moment before the light was gone. As others clung to whatever they could, she held herself close to the basin and worked in the dark.
Her purposes, her lives up to this point lined up for this one moment: building the hearthfire, keeping and tending it, all to the beat of the deeps, all with the dark in mind.
She pulled two bones from her pocket and wound them together with a three-part braid of prairie grass, bluestem, and echinacea she had braided a few nights before in preparation for her voyage. When she was finished, it was a rough circle, a structure meant to at once circumscribe the fire and give it breath. It was a build for the deeps.
This, Kindred set into the basin and held down.
The song came easily to her. It was the first song any hearthfire keeper learns: a melody to start a fire. She let the viscous syllables rub against one another as they slid from her tongue. Harsh and heavy, the song required strength to sing, not strength of muscle but of will, something that Kindred might once have struggled to find but no more.
Her song gave a thickness to the air, and although the craft still spun, still fell, the air around Kindred stilled and condensed as she sang.
A fire, blue-green and hungry, bloomed atop and around the bone structure, and the effect was almost immediate.
The ship slowed and then stopped its fall, and with a few changes and a slower, lower-pitched song, Kindred was able to stop the spin.
Beside her, Ragged Sarah knelt, unable—like everyone else—to do anything, but her hand on Kindred’s arm was a note of confidence and a reminder of her love.
“Let’s get back up to the surface,” Kindred said. “Cora, pull those braided ropes there. Quixa, pull those on the other side.”
“What do they do?” Cora asked as she moved to do as Kindred said.
“They release the sails,” Kindred said.
How long had she spent watching the Sea, Kindred wondered, watching it and seeing the currents that moved through it? Not the wind that stirred its surface but something more significant, a wind for the dark and deeps.
She felt it in the fire when the sails opened, their curved expanse meant to blend with the Sea as it cut forward and displaced the subsea wind to give them momentum, speed, stability.
“Cora, stay there and pull when I tell you. Quixa, the same. You’re both our way to change course horizontally.”