“There’s no wheel?” Captain Caraway asked from where she huddled near the prow’s forward jut.
“No wheel,” Kindred said, shaking her head. “Just the fire and the ropes for the sails.”
Captain Caraway nodded in the near-darkness, the only light from the hearthfire. She smiled.
“Hold on to something,” Kindred said to those who hadn’t been given a job. She leaned into the hearthfire and, slowly at first, pushed both hands into the flames, watching as the golden shoots on the one unfurled, waving lazily about in the fire.
The flames curled and moved around her hands evenly, and Kindred smiled. Though different, they were both her hands, one the unblemished hand of the woman she’d been, the other the changed, healed hand of the woman who she had become. Kindred worked the bones, adding a few more from the bag at her hip.
And she sang.
A song of leavings and new beginnings, of friends lost and lives changed.
The ship leapt forward, faster by far than anything Kindred had ever sailed in or seen. It cut through the Sea with ease, as if it belonged. Kindred smiled.
She sang. She sailed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Once-City, by the time they got their bearings and gave chase, was well ahead of them. But Kindred’s ship moved without frozen hearthfires dragging it down, and soon enough, they sailed just behind the city, its great mass leaving behind an enormous wake that took Kindred a few attempts to navigate.
As they sailed, Kindred explored her new vessel, feeling its response to her urgings, moving tentatively at first and then with greater confidence, growing to understand and love the green, braided confines of it. As other crew members bandaged themselves up or rested themselves, Kindred spent the voyage getting to know this new friend.
And Seraph explained what had happened above.
“Ebb-La-Kem and the other pirate councillors began loading citizens on to boats, ward after ward, moving far more efficiently than it seemed possible. Clearly, the councillors had been practicing. A few of the pirates remained behind on the city to pilot it, but the rest got out. And most of the citizens went too, though some refused, and they were killed. Morrow Laze tried to raise a rebellion—him and several of his sailors fought back, and for a bit, I thought they might actually stop it all. Morrow was a fierce warrior, and he fought all the way to the end. But finally, they cut him down. I couldn’t watch.”
Seraph shivered, and Kindred thought again of Little Wing, of a warrior who believed so strongly in a certain view of the world, who fought and would keep fighting for it no matter what. She shook her head, disgusted at all the lives lost, the damage done—all for control over the world and its gifts.
“I was lucky that they needed me for the hearthfires—Ebb had one of his lackeys toss me in the hold of one of the ships instead of killing me. But I know those vessels better than any of those monsters. I made it out and escaped.”
“Did every other citizen know?” Kindred asked, her voice quiet. She was remembering those poets, their voices so beautiful, calling into existence their shimmering scene. Did they know all along? Had they lived their lives in joy and anticipation for the day when such destruction would happen?
“No,” Seraph said, shaking his head, and Kindred felt some strange relief. “It was only the majority of them on the council, I believe, and a few of their trusted friends. Even as they were loading people onto the boats, Ebb and the others were lying to them, saying that the City was falling apart, that they had to evacuate, that they would find somewhere else to go.”
Seraph looked down at his hands.
“It was . . . awful.”
Kindred could think of nothing to say to that, and so she stayed silent, as did everyone else aboard.
* * *
The ship cut through the grasses as if they were nothing, friendly whispers on the hull, and though the voyage began to grow long and uncomfortable without the steady rush of air and light from above, Kindred found herself growing accustomed to it.
After what could have been a day or five, the Once-City began to change course slightly and pick up speed, its wake shifting enough to draw Kindred’s notice.
“I’m going to bring us up, Captain,” Kindred said. “Will you pop the top hatch and get a look around?”
The captain climbed the short rope ladder that hung from the hatch, and when Kindred nodded at her, she opened the hatch and stuck her head out into a beautiful prairie evening.
The effect of real sunlight on those inside was immediate. Smiles, still tentative, showed on faces, and a few spots of conversation and even laughter broke out. The surface still existed, and for everyone, that was a relief.
“Arcadia just in sight,” the captain said as she dropped back down. “The entire armada of the Once-City is keeping pace with the City itself. Probably forty ships in all. Maybe more. Everything from the dreadnoughts to hoppers being pulled behind bigger ships.”
Kindred nodded at this.
Arcadia wouldn’t have been so close on a normal voyage, couldn’t have been, but the Once-City sailed at a dangerous pace for something so large, and Kindred couldn’t imagine the structural damage being done to the City. What would be left when it crashed ashore on Arcadia? What sad remnant of the lives lived there would still be around to see?
“Should we try to take out the City? Stop the attack?” Cora the Wraith asked. “Or, should we help them attack and try to gain back their favor?”
“We can’t stop the City,” the captain said. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s too big,” Seraph agreed. “It’s repelled more attacks throughout the years than any can count.”
“And they don’t need us anymore,” Kindred said. “There’s no winning back their favor. We never had it in the first place.”
“The best bet is to run,” the captain said.
“But where?” Ragged Sarah asked. “We have no stores here, not anything that would last more than a few days.”
They all fell silent, mulling this over, searching for a way.
“We don’t have any stores,” the captain said slowly, thinking her way through her words as she spoke them aloud, “but each one of those ships in the armada is packed full, stores enough to last spans and spans. Who’s to say how long the sacking of Arcadia will take? Who’s to say how long they’ll have to wait for the wyrm to do its work?”
The captain let her words fall into silence before she continued.
“Why don’t we steal one of their ships?”
No one spoke for a moment, and then Kindred laughed.