Dawn was a few hours away, but nightmares of cages and death had Kora awake.
Thankful that she’d not cried aloud during her fitful sleep—more than once, she’d awoken herself and anyone near her—she’d crept out of her makeshift tent along the wall and walked to the rim of the bay.
She sat down on a rock. The waters below, ringed by cliffs, were a dark circle. The sparse torches lighting the ramps and platforms strung along the wall between—useful though they were for navigating between chambers and levels at night—were, from this angle, no match for the shadows.
Though she knew she could turn around and see the many tents of her fellow Stormborn, crowding the space between the rising walls of the palisade and the falling walls of the cliffs, Kora could look out from here, in the silence, and almost feel alone.
Sometimes that helped. Sometimes it didn’t.
Carefully resting her injured arm in her lap, she adjusted the sling around her neck with her good hand. At once, she was thinking only about how it showed no signs of recovery, how she might never draw back a bow again.
Deciding this would be a night when the feeling of solitude wouldn’t help, Kora looked up at a sky filled with stars that twinkled in the rising mists of the waterfall.
She sighed.
Then a bell began ringing upon the palisade wall behind her.
Kora scrambled up to her feet. Turning, she saw tents rattling. Beyond them, two women stood at the watchtower near the gate. One was pointing out into the jungle. Another was ringing the alarm.
“Bloodborn!” screamed the woman at the bell. “Bloodborn!”
Another bell answered from behind her, below, echoing up from the bay itself. A ship’s bell. Then another.
Panicked faces were emerging from the tents. Kora ran between them, heading for the watchtower, waving her one arm as she went. “To the bay!” she shouted. “To the Crow! Take the ramps!” The lifts down to the bottom were faster than the zigzagging ramps and platforms, and many of the Stormborn, like Kora herself, had learned to use them. But there were only two lifts, and each could hold only a handful of people. If they tried to take the lifts down, dozens would be standing around waiting for them to come back up. They’d waste precious time.
And if the Bloodborn were truly here, they had no time to waste. “The ramps!” she repeated. “The ramps!”
A woman was running from the watchtower. It was Vayra, the older woman she and Alira had saved from the Bloodborn. “They’re here!” she was screaming. “I saw them!”
Kora angled for her, grabbed hold of her. “What? Vayra, it’s me! How many? What did you see?”
The woman’s face was ashen in the light of the torches that marked the paths between tents. “Run!” she said. “Run!”
Vayra pulled and twisted in her grip. Kora let her go and ran on toward the first watchtower, where the bell was still ringing.
She was nearly to it when she heard the high and horrible laughter of the Bloodborn on the other side of the wall. She looked up to the young woman ringing the bell. One of the pirates, she saw. Perhaps her own age, though she didn’t know her name.
“Get down from there!” Kora called out. “Get down!”
The pirate couldn’t hear. She was ringing the bell. Her eyes were wide.
The wind, when it came, threw her head against the bell. She hit it and went down.
Kora reached the steps a moment later. She took them two at a time. The pirate was dazed but alive. She was trying to get up, and Kora had to shift around her in order to get her weight under the one good shoulder she had. As she did so, she looked out beyond the palisade.
There was an open space between the wooden walls and the jungle, kept clear by the younger pirates so they could see anyone approaching. From above, it was lit by starlight and the torches of the walls. Dark figures were walking out from the darker wall of the jungle. Most of them were moving toward the great gate, slow and unhurried. They laughed. They moved their hands. The gate shook as it was battered by unseen forces. Like the fists of an invisible giant trying to pound his way in.
The pirate groaned as Kora dragged her to the stairs. Another slap of wind blasted the tower apart behind them. The debris scattered, clattering across the steps.
The pirate was hurt badly, Kora was realizing. Her head was bleeding. But there was no time to stop. “What’s your name?” Kora asked her.
“Jélyn,” the pirate managed.
“I need you to be strong, Jélyn.” Kora almost had her down the stairs now. “Walk with me.”
Jélyn moaned, and she tried to get her feet under her. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to help Kora move her weight along faster.
Ahead, a man was standing where the ramp headed down along the cliff’s face to the first level. He had a torch raised high in his hand. He was waving it, getting the attention of the Stormborn streaming toward the rim. As she’d ordered, he was directing them down that way.
Good, she thought. Good.
He looked up, saw Kora and her burden. Handing his torch to someone else, he came running. He put his arm under Jélyn’s other shoulder.
The gate broke.
Kora didn’t turn to see it. She didn’t want to see it. She heard it give way. And she heard the laughter getting louder.
Jélyn’s weight shifted, and Kora realized that the man was trying to take her in a different direction than toward the emptying ramp.
“What are you doing?”
The man nodded toward the waterfall. “The lift,” he said. “We’re the last ones. Can’t carry her the whole way.”
He was right. They’d never make it down the ramps in time. Not with the Bloodborn soon coming after them.
She nodded. Jélyn mumbled, stumbling on her own feet.
“We’re almost there,” Kora reassured her. “Just a little farther.”
Fire bloomed behind them. It threw their shadows forward to where the rim met the waterfall. The lift was there beside the bridge over the river. Open. Waiting.
They reached it. The man took Jélyn’s weight. “She’s bad,” he said.
“I know,” Kora said as she unlatched the lock holding them in place. She tugged the line to go down.
The lift dropped, and the levels sped by. Kora was pleased to see that the first few were empty. People were getting down to the shoreline. They were getting to the ships.
She pulled the line to slow and stop them at the bottom, faster than she’d intended to. The box they were riding in shook and jerked, but nothing broke.
The platform before them was crowded with people hurrying to the two ships behind the waterfall. Many of them had bags of precious things. Kora had watched Alira and the pirates ready the Black Crow for carrying them all. The Stormborn would be packed in like logs, she knew.
But they’d live. Alira and Amaru were right. That’s what mattered.
Kora abruptly realized that no more bells were ringing. She hoped that was because they’d all left to get down here and get on board.
She and the man hauled Jélyn through the crowds, past the roaring waterfall, and into the torch-lit cavern. It was a swarm of chaos, enough so that her heart quaked. Did they have time to set sail at all?
The dock for the Pale Dawn was less crowded, and they turned toward it. One of Jélyn’s crewmates saw them and called to another to help. Soon, a number of pirate women had her in hand and were hurrying her away, up the ramp, onto her ship, and into the rooms belowdecks.
Kora, panting, turned to the man. “Thank you,” she said.
Wiping Jélyn’s blood from his hands, he smiled. “I’m just glad you told everyone else not to take the lifts. Let’s get on the ship, shall we?”
Kora nodded, and they turned to go. But there was a new crowd forming between them and the walkway to the Crow. An angry crowd. Two groups. Pirates facing pirates. Kora recognized Julara at the head of one group, trying to order the others to move. “Aboard the ships!” she yelled. “Ready the Dawn to cast off!”
But those in the cluster of women standing between Julara’s group and the Pale Dawn weren’t moving. “We’ll not be sailing. You’re not our mistress,” hissed the pirate at their head. She was older, a veteran hand, with wide shoulders and a strong back.
“Shaesara—”
“Isn’t here!” The woman opened her arms as she addressed the crowd around them. “For all we know, Shaesara is dead. And our oaths were not to her. They were to the ship! I am Madoka. You know my strength! By the law of the sea, I challenge for the helm!”
Madoka’s supporters cheered her. Kora saw the women behind Julara hesitate in doubt.
Whatever they thought about her orders to set sail, it was clear they had misgivings about whether or not she could stand up to the looming veteran.
“Madoka,” Julara tried, “please, we’ve got to sail out, like they said—”
“We don’t listen to them! And you”—Madoka pulled the sword from her hip and pointed the tip of the blade at a wide-eyed Julara—“you gave them a ship. We should gut the lot of them. Right after you, I think.”
“Stop this!” a voice shouted.
The crowd behind Julara parted, and Alira walked out to stand next to the pirate. Kora saw Amaru at the edge of the circle behind, watching what was happening.
“You’ve no say here.” Again, Madoka pointed her blade at Julara. “You’ve less right than this one.”
“I am Belakané’s friend,” Alira said.
“And we don’t care.”
Alira nodded over at Julara. She was trying to give the young pirate confidence, but it wasn’t working. Alira could see it as clearly as Kora could: Julara was no fighter. If Madoka swung her blade, the girl would spend the last heartbeat of her life pissing herself on the dock.
“You swore an oath to the ship?” Alira asked, turning back to the angry pirates.
It wasn’t what Madoka expected her to say. “We did. We all did.”
Alira stood up straighter. “Then I, too, challenge Julara.”
Julara looked like a stunned deer. “Alira, I—”
“Yield to me,” Alira said to her.
“You’ve no right!” Madoka cried out.
Alira ignored the other woman and focused on Julara. “Yield,” she repeated. “Yield to me and serve as maiden.”
Julara, open-jawed and eyes wide as she looked between the women, simply nodded.
Alira spun back to Madoka. “Then it’s me you’ll fight. Yield or challenge. Be quick.”
“Challenge,” the pirate growled.
“And I accept,” Alira said.
Without words, a circle opened up. Alira didn’t draw a blade. “Last chance,” she said. “I’d rather have your strong hand when we leave.”
“The Dawn won’t sail,” the older pirate sneered.
Alira lifted slightly onto the pads of her feet. Kora recognized it. The same stance she’d taught Kora to use as they’d trained, dancing blades as they balanced among the Furywood branches. “She’ll sail,” Alira said. “But you won’t.”
The pirate roared. She thrust her sword toward Alira’s chest. But Alira, trained in the branches to be as light on her feet as a feather on the wind, stepped easily aside and forward, dodging the blow and moving inside the sword tip’s reach in a single quick movement. Her hand darted up and across Madoka’s outstretched arm. Alira had a knife in her hand, Kora now saw. A tiny blade, but it was impossibly sharp. Kora had seen it cut magick from the strange trees of the Bloodborn.
It cut flesh just as easily. A bright red line sliced across Madoka’s upper arm, severing muscle. The pirate screamed in agony. Her sword fell from her hand. She tried to cover the wound with her other.
Alira had the blade to the woman’s throat just as quickly. There was a stunned silence. “Yield,” Alira said.
Madoka spat.
Alira made another cut and stepped away from the splash.
The pirate’s body fell forward, blood rushing out over the wood. Several stepped back, away from it.
“Anyone else?” Alira asked, turning around quickly. Red pulsed thick at her feet, but slowed quickly. “No? Then remember your oaths to the ship. Hikora?”
Hikora’s small face appeared out of the crowd. “Yes, mistress?”
“You’ve helm of the Crow for now. Pick six from the crew of the Dawn to help you sail her. Lines off in two minutes. Go!”
Hikora pointed to a half-dozen crew. They hurried away, pushing the Stormborn up toward the Black Crow.
“Julara is my maiden aboard the Dawn,” Alira announced to the remaining pirates. “Now as she said: all hands aboard! Ready for sail! Move!”