“You can stay in here if you want,” Stix began. “I’ll leave the door open. No one will stop you if you try to leave. Then you can…” She paused, the words walk outside dying on her tongue. Because what would happen once all of these prisoners walked outside? She had assumed that Kahina’s bargain meant they were untouchable, but the pirate Admiral had never actually said those words.
So although Stix might have freed them, she had not truly saved them.
She cast a bespectacled glance at the four cellmates. Any one of them could leave and be captured all over again. And though she had plenty of coin left over from her Ring winnings, it wasn’t here and it wasn’t enough for every prisoner.
“You can walk outside,” Stix finally finished, but the words were breathy and defeated. “I’m sorry. That’s the best I can do. I … I’m sorry.”
The woman’s posture eased ever so slightly. “All right,” she murmured. “Guess we’ll just have to manage.” And with that, she jerked a thumb toward her cellmates, and they all shambled out the iron door.
Stix followed more slowly, a frown etched between her brows. Voices echoed off rough stone. Keys and locks clanked; throats coughed; rats scurried and squeaked; and a trundling line of tired souls shambled past her toward the Ring’s exits. Freed, but not saved.
We understand, the voices whispered. We have felt the same, but there is sometimes a limit to what we can do. To whom we can save. Strangely, Stix found these words a comfort. The voices had been quiet all day, although not in their usual withholding way. They’d held the satisfied silence of an orange tabby purring in a moonbeam. And even now, with Stix’s disappointment to flicker against them, they still offered her gentle grace.
Stix watched the guards, who in turn observed the prisoners from a shadow. The Hammer made sure none interfered, and if his Heart-Thread was in the prisoners’ parade, he gave no indication, showed no emotion beyond a vague disinterest at the procession.
“I opened the last cell,” Ryber said, joining Stix. “It had twelve sailors who cried when they heard me speak their native Kritian.” She didn’t look happy as she said this.
Stix didn’t feel happy as she answered, “Was this the right thing to do?”
Ryber blinked. Then nodded. “Of course it was the right thing to do.”
“But should we be doing more? This…” She waved to the limestone tunnel; water dripped on her arm. “It isn’t enough, is it?”
For half a moment, Ryber held Stix’s eyes. Then her own frown deepened. “I know I was angry yesterday, Stix, but I’m not anymore. This was a good thing. No one can argue with that.”
Except one prisoner did. Before Stix could say this, Ryber leaned in close and slipped her arms around Stix’s shoulders. It was a stiff, awkward embrace because Ryber wasn’t one for affection, but Stix found herself squeezing the other girl back with a ferocity that startled her.
Because Ryber had stayed. For a month now, she had stayed by Stix’s side, unwavering and true. That made her Stix’s Threadsister. That made her family.
“Thank you,” Stix told her, pulling away.
“Hye,” Ryber replied, an embarrassed scrunch on her face. Then, a cough. Then a nod toward the quickly emptying hall. “Shall we leave?”
“You go on.” Stix bobbed her chin. “There’s still one more prisoner I need to free.”
Ryber’s ribs expanded—an argument clearly on its way. But then the edges of her face smoothed away. “All right. I’ll meet you outside. Be careful.”
“I always am,” Stix agreed, a vague phrase and a vague wave to join it. Her focus was already on what waited ahead, at the end of the cells, down a narrow tunnel of its own. She navigated there quickly, footsteps half jogging while puddles splashed beneath her heels and condensation dripped on her head.
A lone lantern hung beside an iron door with no lock. Stix crept toward it. All was silent. She pressed her palm against the iron, expecting heat, but it was cold to the touch. Water dripped off the limestone ceiling, pooling at her feet.
“Anything to say?” Stix asked the voices, sliding her fingers over a single rusted latch. She waited, wondering if the voices would resist. If anything, though, they purred more insistently.
This, Stix knew, was the right thing to do.
She gripped the iron latch and yanked it down. The door swung wide. Shadows spread. She sensed water, dripping as it did everywhere … But also something faster ahead, something thicker, like an underground stream.
Stix unhooked the lantern beside the door and ventured in. She had expected the hawk to be desperate for escape. That, like most caged animals, it would be waiting for an opportunity to spring. But as she swung the lantern around the cavernous space, she found nothing.
The hawk wasn’t there. Nor were there signs it was ever there beyond a nest-like arrangement of stones in one corner. No charred carcasses littered the floor, no droppings from an animal the size of a galleon. It was as if the creature didn’t even live here.
Come this way. Stix flinched at the voices—mere murmurs at the back of her skull. They weren’t displeased, but they were insistent she listen. This way, this way.
“I hear you,” Stix muttered, and with her lantern high, she hurried toward a darkened corner behind the nest. Water swelled inside her, like an orchestra building, and the sense of movement, of clean water swelled too. Until sure enough, she found a wide hole dipped into the ground. Cold air drifted upward, carrying the brackish scent of a tidal river. The waves wanted Stix to play, to explore, to see how far she could ride them. It came from inland and stretched all the way to the sea, splashing against a wide tunnel as it moved.
A tunnel that led to freedom. Which meant the flame hawk was not a prisoner.
Stix went still as this realization sieved through her. The flame hawk was not a prisoner. It could leave at any time—and clearly did. Which meant the creature was exactly as Kahina had described, exactly as Lovats had too: a pet.
At that moment, as the shards of an image fitted together to form a whole, the water below gave a hiss of interruption. Intruder, it seemed to say. Unwelcome. Then came heat. Then came a crackling that built toward a roar.
The flame hawk was returning, and if it was home, then what if its master had returned too?
A scream ripped out behind Stix, distant but unmistakable. Ryber.
* * *
Something had changed between Vivia and the Empress. Vivia couldn’t say what precisely, except that it was more than a wall falling, more than her mask—their masks—finally crumbling away. It was something warm, and she let it come. Welcomed it, even, for it soothed away the cannon fire still echoing behind. It kept her feet moving southward even as her heart beckoned north.
Eventually, the forest vanished. Desert and death reclaimed the soil and shore—though not before Vivia caught them a fish in the shallow waves. She even coaxed a tiny fire to light, but she was so worried about undercooking the mullet, she burned it to a foul crisp. One more reason among the thousands that she wished Stix were there: Stix was an even worse cook than Vivia, and it always made her laugh when Vivia messed up.
Not that the Empress complained about the fish. She had not complained at all since fleeing the Well, and the one time Vivia asked if her feet hurt, she replied, “I’ve experienced worse.”