Stix whistled again. Long. Clear. And loud enough for the crowd to notice.
They silenced instantly, and Stix had no doubt that if she could see their faces instead of just blurred streaks of skin, she would find a thousand wide eyes. A thousand horrified frowns. Superstition ran deep here, and Lady Baile’s poem was not to be crossed.
Stix whistled a third time, and it was the only sound to fill the Slaughter Ring. It carried over the rain, over lapping waves, and over the sea foxes still racing this way. But just as the crowds had heard the whistles, the sea foxes had heard them too—the one between Stix and the exit paused. Its face, silver-furred and sentient, eased into calm interest like a dog awaiting a command.
One of its massive eyes was damaged and milky.
Stix whistled one last time, and the fox listened. It dove beneath the murky water toward the other sea foxes, to intercept, to fight, to stop because the whistle had commanded and it lived to obey. Stix used the moment to kick her magic forward again in a gentle current that propelled her and the prisoners toward the other stall. She was tired; she needed to conserve her energy just in case the fox changed its mind.
No, not its mind, but her mind. Like with the orange tabby, Stix just knew.
She reached the wooden box with ease. And with silence, for the audience still did not speak. Did not even seem to breathe.
It was not until she reached the wooden exit, her waves lifting her up so she could grab at the latch, that someone finally reacted. It was a single voice, throaty and amused. “Well done, Water Brawler,” Kahina called. “I knew you had it in you.”
* * *
Stix had always considered herself cool-tempered. The higher the pressure, the better she kept her head. She had been through brawls and battles and now Ring fights to prove it. Captain Stacia Sotar did not get stressed, she did not get angry.
Right now though, as she stalked out of the wooden stall into the Ring’s winding limestone halls, as water shed off her in great, slapping drops, Stix was a riptide of rage. When Ryber offered her the spectacles, she yanked them too hard; the metal warped; she didn’t care and shoved them on anyway. When Ryber fell into step beside Stix, asking if she needed healing, Stix only grunted and glared.
She reached the highest scaffolding in a blur of fury that thrummed in her blood, sparkling like her magic at its strongest. She only had to snarl once at the guards, and they got out of her way. Ryber, however, had to wait behind again. Which was perhaps for the best, Stix thought vaguely, since she was on the cusp of violence.
She found Kahina’s deck unchanged, though a six-fingered gray cat slept in a ball upon a pile of cushions near the door. The rain had already stopped, leaving a wind-stalled heat thick with swamp stink. The Admiral leaned against her balustrade, scanning the Ring with a gold spyglass speckled in red gemstones.
“You killed that prisoner,” Stix said to Kahina’s back.
“Did I?” Kahina’s drawl oozed over the wooden space. “Or did you kill them because you were too slow?”
Stix’s lips curled back. “You set up the fight today, so it is your soul that bears the weight of that death.”
“If you think that upsets me”—Kahina closed the spyglass with a clack-clack-clack—“then I fear you will be disappointed, my dear. I have killed more men than I can count, and though you may not remember it, so have you.”
“I’m not who you think I am, and I’m not your dear.”
Kahina sniffed. “Such disdain for an ally.”
Stix sniffed right back. “You are not my ally.”
“Of course I am.” Kahina traded her spyglass for her pipe, resting on a nearby stool. “I know who you are, just as you know who I am. And this?” She twirled the pipe around the Ring. “Is not where you belong, as much as you might enjoy it here.”
“Enjoy it? You think I enjoyed swimming for my life while sea foxes hunted? You think I enjoyed having a flame hawk sear off half my hair?” Stix knew she was taking Kahina’s bait, but she didn’t care. She had just faced off with three sea foxes; Kahina didn’t frighten her. “If we’re going to speak plainly, Admiral, then let us speak plainly: I’m here to answer the voices in my head. I don’t care about you or your games or your silly riddles. I want answers, and then I want to leave again.”
“Games?” Kahina’s eyebrows sprang high. “Riddles? You think I toy with you?”
“Of course you do.”
“Of course I do not.” For the first time since Stix’s arrival, something like anger reached Kahina’s face. A strike of stone on flint to flare within her pupils. “The past dwells inside us, Water Brawler, and it can only be set free when we see the places from before. This”—she opened her arms—“used to be yours.”
“Not mine.” Stix mimicked Kahina’s movement. “Theirs. These voices are not me.”
“But of course they are.” Kahina’s face creased with mocking pity. “And you are in for such disappointment if you continue to cling to that belief.”
No, Stix wanted to retort, you are. But she quashed the words in her throat. This conversation was already slinging out of her control. She had intended to come here and tell Kahina to leave the prisoners alone. Then she’d intended to tell Kahina to leave her alone so she could finish what she’d come here to do: Stix wanted out of this cursed pirate hole. She wanted to be back in Nubrevna, back with Vivia. And she didn’t want any more deaths on her conscience before she got there.
Kahina slid her pipe between her teeth. The bowl sparked, smoke plumed, and the edge of a smile fluttered on her lips. She saw herself as the winner of this argument, and it made the storm brew once more in Stix’s blood. In her fingers, aching to curl into fists. This must be how Vivia felt every time she faced the High Council in Nubrevna: like the only sensical one in a room full of fools.
“I,” Stix said, lowering her voice in a lethal imitation of Vivia, “am not like you, Admiral. I am my own person, and soon these voices will go away. And you?” She motioned between them. “Are not my ally and never will be.” She turned on her booted heel then, water from the Ring sloughing off her as she aimed for the doorway.
The cat’s ears perked at her approach.
“Enough,” Kahina snapped, and though all of Stix’s instincts shouted at her to keep going, she let her feet slow beside the gray cat. It opened a single green eye. “We are running out of time. We have been waiting too many years for you to find us—your memories have come late—and now the end approaches. We must find the tools, Water Brawler, and we must restore them.”
“Tools?” Stix asked innocently. She swiveled her head toward Kahina. “What tools?”
Kahina scowled. “You know damned well what I mean. I can see it on your face, even if you hide behind those spectacles. The blade, the glass. The tools from a thousand years ago that disappeared after our world collapsed and that we must find again before a new collapse sets in.”
“So … you want them.” Stix spoke this as a statement, not a question, and the gray cat popped open both eyes. Meanwhile Kahina cocked her head to one side, studying Stix with a raptorial stare.
It was not the frustrated scrutiny from earlier, nor even the pitying one. This was the stare of someone reassessing what they’d thought was a known quantity. Stix could practically see the knives sharpening behind her eyes. “You know where they are,” Kahina said quietly.