CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

The streets of South Haven were busy in the evenings. Sailors rushed up from the harbor while farmers spilled down from the fields, and children raced along in small groups, hurrying toward the mess halls for the evening meal.

South Haven, or the Holster, as it was once known, had changed shape overnight, it seemed. In the weeks since the Battle of the Bale Blossom, people had flocked to its harbor. At first, it was because they were hungry, but then, as people found the place changed, they came to stay. They came to make the city their own. There were signs of change everywhere, from the ships free of desiccated bodies displayed on spikes to the covering of bandolier scars. South Haven was a place where people went to change.

The gun towers still flew the banner of Caledonia’s fleet, shining boldly through the night. The fleet itself still existed. Fifty ships had been sent in all directions, offering aid to anyone who needed it and resistance to anyone seeking to continue the traditions of the Bullet Seas.

Caledonia spent more of her time thinking about the ocean than actually seeing it. Every decision fell to her, and while she no longer felt the immense pressure of every single one, she also wondered if the only reason she was still the one making them was because she was the one everyone feared now.

Respect. That’s what Pisces said. Not fear. She might have been right, but when people saw her for the first time, it was hard to read their wide-eyed expressions as anything but fear. She’d turned herself into something ferocious on purpose. She’d needed to be in order to have any chance at winning that fight. And there was no coming back from it. Not in the eyes of others. She’d known that. She’d made the choice with her eyes open, and now she was feeling the full press of the consequences.

Caledonia tucked her chin as she hurried around a corner that brought her out of a sheltered alley and into a main thoroughfare. It didn’t matter what she did to avoid notice, people found her red curls whether she’d wrapped them in a scarf or bound them in a tight braid. In spite of the sticky evening humidity, she’d donned a hooded jacket, but even that wasn’t enough. She heard the gasp of the first person to notice her—a child with big brown eyes and pale brown skin—and did her best to appear unthreatening.

It never worked. People watched her pass, some of them even bowed slightly, and she was reminded all over again of the things she’d done to earn that response from strangers.

Pisces would tell her to think of all she’d done to ensure those same strangers got to choose who they followed and who they didn’t. It was comforting, but only just.

As Caledonia’s steps brought her near the city center, she strode past a row of colorful murals now splashed across tall walls. They’d grown little by little as stories and dreams took root in the city. The first depicted ships like stars streaming into the night, the second fields of bushy green crops growing in neat rows from earth so brown it was almost black. The most recent was a crew of girls on the bow of a ship with their eyes hard and bright and fixed on some point in the distance. In the center stood a girl with streaming red curls that dripped into the waves, tangling there as though she were part of the sea.

When it had appeared, Pisces pulled Caledonia from her bed late at night, knowing she wouldn’t want to see it when there were witnesses. Hand in hand, they had hurried through the dark until they stood in front of the painting.

“They love you,” Pisces said, as if this should be proof that what Caledonia interpreted as fear was in fact love and respect. “You’re a legend.”

Caledonia couldn’t speak immediately. The image of herself was stunning, but the other girls were what caught her attention. Tin and all four of her sisters held a flag between them, their grip firm as the wind rippled through the fabric. Amina stood on the rail with her long braids bending at her back like a sail, and she pointed north, toward the Hands of the River. At her side stood Hime, calm and poised; she wore a hood to symbolize her work as a healer. On either side of Caledonia were Nettle and Pisces. The smaller girl was tucked beneath Caledonia’s arm and unlike the others, she smiled broadly and boldly into the sky. Pisces was on Caledonia’s other side, her shoulders bare, her own family sigil drawn on her temple, and her fingers entwined with Caledonia’s, a bit of lace caught between them.

Behind them all, two figures stood in the background. Redtooth, tall and strong with the tips of her blonde braids coated in red clay. And Lace, a rolled map clutched in her hands.

When Caledonia found her voice again, she turned to Pisces and said, “We.”

“What?”

“We are a legend.” She corrected Pisces’s earlier statement.

Pisces smirked, but conceded the point.

Beyond the row of murals, the city coiled around a central square. When this had been the Holster, it had been a place for Aric’s terrible theater. Now it was transforming into a market that reminded Caledonia of Cloudbreak. She wove through dozens of stalls, all closing up shop for the evening, until she found herself on the other side, where the streets soon emptied and turned quiet.

The northeastern quarter was a place few people had reason to go. The vast majority of the quarter was devoted to helping former Bullets through their addiction. They stayed behind closed doors, venturing out only at specified times and only on specified routes through town. It was a massive undertaking, and one Cepheus had offered to take on. Ares was helping, and to everyone’s surprise Pine was not.

Guards stood at each door along the barracks, where windows glowed with warm light. It wasn’t a prison, but it was close. Anyone who had once called themselves a Bullet had a lot of work to do before they earned the city’s trust. But Caledonia had made it clear that violence toward former Bullets would not be tolerated in South Haven. It was hard enough containing their violence toward each other, and they’d lost hundreds of lives in the fight.

Even walking through town, she had to confront the two sides of Caledonia Styx. There was the side that people adored, the part that was being spun into legend and splashed across walls, and then there was the side people feared. The part that made people stop when they saw her on the street. Neither side felt true, but she wasn’t sure she knew what was true anymore. It was that feeling that drove her past the barracks toward the low bank of the prison.

At Caledonia’s approach, the guards opened the door with brisk nods. She met the bailiff inside and without asking, the woman handed Caledonia the keys she’d come for, then led her through the fortified interior doors.

Caledonia had struggled with this decision for weeks, but Oran had been encouraging. She had nothing to fear, after all. Not anymore.

The prison was a labyrinth of narrow corridors that reminded Caledonia of a ship except these were built of stone, and they pinched together at several points so that only one person might pass through them at a time. She’d only been here once, but the way to Lir’s cell was seared in her memory.

Lir was alive and he would live here until something other than Caledonia’s blade or her order took his life. The decision hadn’t been an easy one. Caledonia herself had argued for his death at first, but after several days of discussion, the command crew had decided Lir would live. Killing him would be to align themselves with his own tactics. It was better to let him live. Even if he was imprisoned.

For days, Caledonia had tried and failed to quiet the drumbeat at the back of her mind: Lir. Lir. Lir. She’d won, but there was a part of her that needed to know she hadn’t simply become the thing she hated. She needed to look into his eyes and know that they were not the same. Then she would finally be able to close the door and walk away.

The air was cool and a little damp this far inside the building. There were no more windows to give a sense of direction or to offer the rhythm of day and night. Here, the world was nothing but stone and solitude.

She’d practiced what she might say to him. The temptation to reflect his own cruelty was strong. That was part of the reason she’d come. She needed to see what she would do, who she would be now that they’d traded places. She was in power and he was not. It had changed them both, though she wasn’t sure what she would find in him. Would he cling to his arrogance? Beg for death? Would he show her fear? And how would she respond?

Lir’s cell was at the end of a short, narrow hallway. There was a window at eye level with a hatch that could only be opened from the outside. Just inside, Lir likely lay on his cot. While his wound had nearly healed, his recovery had been complicated by his withdrawal. The healers reported that he would remain weak for many moons to come.

Without meaning to, Caledonia reached for the old scar on her belly. Her fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt and for a moment she imagined that Lir had been right all along. Their lives had been connected from the moment they’d met on that beach. Without her, he’d never have risen to power. Without him, she’d never have had to take it.

That wasn’t right. But that plaguing thought was exactly the reason she’d come.

Caledonia reached to unlatch the window, then stopped. What good would it do to announce her presence? She should just go inside. She raised the key.

Her breath came more quickly. Not from fear, but from anticipation. What part of herself would she find in his star-pale eyes? Who would she be when she entered that room?

Who would she be after?

The key slid into the lock with a soft metallic kiss. In the back of her mind, the question spun, sending invasive winds through her thoughts.

You are a reflection of him, they hissed.

She closed her eyes and paused with the key in the door. A fine sweat coated her palm. She felt as she always did on the brink of battle, when her senses were as vast as the ocean itself. Only now she had no one to fight.

You are the person he made you, the winds moaned.

But that wasn’t right. That had never been right. Caledonia was the person she’d become because of herself, because of Pisces, because of every girl who’d ever joined the crew of the Mors Navis, because of Oran and Sledge and the rest of the Blades. She was the person she was in spite of Lir. He’d stolen pieces of her against her will. She had nothing to gain from him. She never had. But if she walked through this door, she’d give him one final victory.

Caledonia pulled the key from the lock, then she turned and left the prison.

Lir had been the focus of her story for too long. His door was shut. And Caledonia had so many more to open.