“You were the curse,” she said before turning her back on Kindred.
She spoke in a mutter, though whether it was from exhaustion or the pain and obstruction of her purpled jaw—most likely broken—Kindred didn’t know. Little Wing stood hunched over, favoring one leg, her arms held in close to her body, a portrait of defeat and brokenness.
Two people—guards, by the look of them—stood near Little Wing.
“. . . so much excitement,” a man sitting at a long table with several other people was saying with a frown. Dark hair fell in gentle waves to either side of his face, and he brushed it aside as he spoke, a gesture he seemed to not even notice.
“My apologies for what certainly must seem to you a barbaric and outdated test,” he said to the group standing before him. “But you’ve passed! And we’re delighted to welcome you as citiz—”
“Fuck. You.” Little Wing said, drawing everyone’s attention. The guards behind her tensed and moved a hair closer.
The man frowned again, as one might at a particularly naughty child. “Little Wing, quartermaster? Acting leader in your captain’s absence? Is that right?”
Little Wing spit once, red-flecked, but said nothing.
“I am trying to congratulate you. There’s no need for this continued anger. You’ve passed the test!”
“Fuck your test. And fuck your congratulations.”
Little Wing jerked forward, lunging for the man, but her captors restrained her, slamming her back and looking at those sitting at the table with panicked eyes.
The man who had spoken turned to the others along the table, eyebrows raised. Kindred noticed a placard in front of him that read, Ebb-La-Kem. A few nodded back at him, though none spoke. There were eight seated at the table, eight members of whatever council or ruling body this was.
After a moment of deliberation in which Kindred didn’t know what was being deliberated, he nodded to the outside of the room, where a man in a robe stood next to one of the torches.
No, not a torch, Kindred realized. It looked more like a brazier, like a portable fire pit.
Like a casting fire.
The robed man took a few leaves of a plant Kindred had never seen before and dropped them into the fire. Slowly and then in a rush, the flames turned from a gentle orange to a bellicose violet, the sway of the fire constricting into a staggering, stuttering ripple.
The mage—for surely he was a mage—spoke a series of low words over the flame and flung a hand out toward Little Wing, who took a step back, wary, though there was nothing she could do. The spell took hold of her and then she was floating, dreamlike, rising a short distance into the air, her limbs loose as if she were floating in a pool of water.
Kindred watched Little Wing’s mouth move, first to speak and then to scream, but no sound emerged. The spell, whatever magic the mages worked with their array of strange plants, held Little Wing there adrift.
“Stop!” Kindred demanded, stepping toward the table, palms out and open.
“I’m sorry for it,” the man said, shaking his head. “We do not, as a rule, restrain or oppress our citizens. But disrespect and violence are not tolerated here, not in any way. One who threatens the safety of another citizen must be stopped.”
Kindred cast a look to the others, but there was nothing to be done.
“Get to the business,” another said—a man long of leg and face sitting at the end of the table. He looked unhappy to be there, his thin face pulled down at the eyebrows and corners of his lips. He was familiar, and it took Kindred only a moment to realize why: he was the one who had struck her on the docks, halting her attempts to beg sanctuary after Seraph had found her efforts lacking. His placard read Morrow Laze.
“Proceed, proceed, this talk grows stale and dull,” two people at the other end of the table said, a man and a woman both speaking at once. They were nearly identical: long, green, ropy hair falling well past their shoulders, discomfiting green eyes, uniform yellow teeth. They spoke in unison, their voices harmonizing in a way Kindred found at once entrancing and horrifying. A single placard sat in front of them: The Word.
And down at one end of the table sat Seraph. He smiled at Kindred and waved.
The man—Ebb-La-Kem—began to talk again, moved forward by his colleagues.
“You have been brought before the Hanged Council,” he gestured to those sitting at the table, eight people, “so that we might decide how best to respond to the appearance of you and your crew. Your willingness to cooperate with the Council will signal a gesture of goodwill for the rest of the crew.”
Kindred nodded, following the intrinsic threat in the man’s words: your mistake is the crew’s mistake. Kindred eyed Little Wing, still floating idly, though she had stopped screaming and was listening.
Ebb-La-Kem began speaking as he read their names from a document in front of him.
“Little Wing, quartermaster. Kindred Greyreach, keeper of the hearthfire. Long Quixa and Cora the Wraith, honored harvesters. Scindapse, young deckhand.” He looked up, gesturing at those before him. “It’s a pity your captain and crow-caller aren’t in better condition, else we might have them here, too. But welcome, all of you, now citizens of the Once-City!”
A polite susurrus of applause sounded from those seated at the table.
“Who will speak for you in your acting captain’s absence?” Ebb-La-Kem let his eyes drift over them, a polite smile on his face.
“I will,” Long Quixa said in her slow, measured way.
“Very well. As I was saying just a moment ago: you have all passed what must seem to be a terribly onerous test. But it is an important one! Arcadians fear the Sea—this is why your island is surrounded by flatness. You cannot deal with a wild world around you, and the thought of darkness and wilderness below . . . True terror for an Arcadian.
“But here, we live in the Sea! It is not only a surface to be harvested and skimmed across. Before the test, anyone could come here and live, but this place drove some mad, and many lives were lost because of this. And so we built the cells, with their openness to the Sea and their white lines. Those who can move past the white line and do so with purpose—whether it be to drink from the Sea’s bounty”—Ebb-La-Kem nodded at Kindred— “or to fashion a weapon”—he nodded, begrudging, at Little Wing.
“Any purposeful movement beyond the line, not motivated by the madness of fear, shows a person might live here without being a danger to themselves or our community.”
He smiled at the line of people before him.
“And so, congratulations. And welcome.”
“What about the rest of the crew?” Long Quixa asked, ignoring the praise.