It was very late, but Daja did not sleep.

She could have. She had lived for ten years aboard a ship; the months at Winding Circle had melted away when she woke up on this one, and it had taken her moments to find her sea feet again. Daja was at home hearing rats scurrying below deck in the dark, the creaking of timber as the ship swayed, the water lapping against the sides of the ship.

Daja did not sleep, because the snores around her did not come from her family-her siblings were scattered across the fleet. She had not seen Briar or Sandry in months. She had not seen Tris or their teachers at all. Now, while Enahar was lost in dreams, it was time to act. She could figure out how to right this tragedy that her cursed luck had brought.

Tonight. I can unravel the weave tonight. That was Sandry's voice/presence, thin and fragile, like thread worn against rock. There was a disturbing echo to it, a hollow, a space Daja couldn't sense. There's just one knot that refuses to come undone.

Show us, Daja responded.

We've seen it before, was Briar's contribution. But he did not say anything else. Desperation held his tongue - Daja could feel it.

She turned her mental attention to Sandry. Three minds are better than one, saati. Show us.

Four minds, actually.

Tris? Daja couldn't tell where her mental voice ended, and where Sandry's and Briar's began. She couldn't tell the difference between her surprise and theirs, either.

Tris's mind-voice was faint, like the bond between them had stretched to the point it would snap, and Daja could barely feel her presence. It was more than Tris had managed to muster up in nearly two weeks, which was just as well. They would have gone ahead with or without Tris-there would have been even greater urgency if Tris had not arrived, for fear of what she had been given this time. But Daja was glad to hear her voice.

No one can be on guard all the time, Tris said, simply. Like you always said, Briar.

And I'm learning things he cannot see, Sandry added. The faint echo followed her voice again.

Lying back on the hammock, Daja closed her eyes, and bit her lip.

They had played this conversation through so many times in the past three years, very little in it could be a surprise. They had learned not to ask Tris what happened when she vanished from those nightly conversations, or what exactly Sandry was learning. There were nights, more and more frequently, where Briar's mental voice turned to his namesake thorns. As for her -

We'll find something. Briar's words were less reassurance than a promise, a threat to their captor.

There was a mental tug, and Daja was seeing from Sandry's eyes.

Three years ago, Discipline Cottage slept.

They slept through the pirates docking at the shore. They slept through the hordes passing through Winding Circle's gates. When the pirates entered their home and grabbed them, they slept through that too, a deep, dreamless sleep fueled by Aymery Chandler's poppy-based drug.

By the time the first of them woke - Briar, of course, who had reached immediately for knives no longer there - the fleet was a hundred mages and countless artifacts heavier, and days from Summersea's coast.

Briar did not so much knock as bang against his sisters' mental doors, hard enough to wake them up too. We need to get off the ships.

Briar, Sandry said, We can't.

Daja was the last to open her eyes and stare into the darkness, slowly comprehending what had happened. She did not say anything at first. If they have us, they have Lark and Rosethorn too. And Niko.

That was when a new, unfamiliar voice flooded Daja's senses. Fascinating.

The conversation snapped closed.

Enahar interrogated each of them separately. Chained mentally this time, their mind-sharing was closed to them, and Daja sometimes wondered what it was that he'd asked each about.

Sandry, she supposed, would have been questioned the most thoroughly, as the one who had spun their bond in the first place. Perhaps Tris, next. To have control of the winds was a boon aboard a ship - she thought of the sparks gathered in Tris's hair, and for the first time, shuddered. Briar, she couldn't place.

When Enahar summoned her, he simply asked, "Which metals can you work with?"

Daja hesitated. A searing pain through her head brought her to her hands and knees, gasping for breath.

"I don't know," she said quickly. "I haven't been learning for long."

Enahar must have heard the same story from the others, because he accepted this. "Well which ones have you worked with?"

There was no punishment this time, as Daja thought about it.

"Gold," she said at last. "I've only really drawn gold before. Gold likes me. And... iron."

Enahar laughed. "No one's going to let you touch gold, girl, even if you find it for us. Iron, though, I think I can find a place for."

Daja was put to work across the fleet. Every three days, she received new orders about what to do next. Most of the time, it was sensing rust in the metalwork and cleaning it until she could barely see straight. Every so often, she went through each ship's weapons to ensure they ran smoothly. She was never sent to work with boomstones, nor to maim or harm with her magic, although she was sometimes brought along to find any hidden treasures in the towns they attacked. Perhaps her value in keeping the ships safe was greater, perhaps it was for some other reason, but there was no point dwelling on it.

She thought, more than once, about trying to bring the ships down around her. And if she went down with it, well, that was what her trangshi luck had brought to her loved ones - why not direct it better to her captors? But her siblings were somewhere in the fleet, too. And there were those chained below deck who were kind to her, even when a kind word could mean a beating.

Enahar - it was not long before he summoned her to clean his charms, iron or otherwise, and then to go through every piece of metal in his quarters in minute detail. There wasn't the faintest hint of glee or even amusement on his face. Daja supposed that after collecting so many mages, the novelty had worn off.

"Pour your magic into this," Enahar ordered, tossing her a smooth, iron cylinder marked with a dense spiral of tiny symbols.

Her magic was not a toy for his amusement - Daja hadn't realized how much the magic was hers until thick bindings kept her from using it freely - but she knew better than to say it. Daja closed her eyes, and obeyed. In her hands, the iron started to heat, then to glow, then to blaze with light that made her narrow her eyes.

"Keep going," Enahar said calmly, watching her.

Daja reached for more of her power still... and grasped air. Even as she watched, her strength flowed out of her body, through a series of pale threads that were slowly coming into focus, and into one of the silver links in the necklace Enahar wore.

Enahar watched, saying nothing, as Daja swayed, then fell to her hands and knees, the world suddenly spinning around her. At last, as Daja stayed there, struggling not to collapse entirely, she raised her head to see him smile.

"I can do more, even from a distance. If one of those ships mysteriously collapses under rust, I know where to find your family."

Unable to speak, Daja nodded. The effort left her breathless.

"Oh, and don't try to escape either," he said. "Your kind always seem to think it's possible. Your hands might be too valuable to take fingers from, but sometimes sacrifices need to be made. Now, lets see what other metals you can work with."

She saw Briar once, one ship over, peeling seaweed off the ship's anchor and sides. Their eyes met over the distance, and the relief on his face was palatable - Daja felt the same way. At least he was still able to stand. Enahar had the ability to drain them into husks of themselves. He smiled, sharp, an expression she had not seen on him before, and turned back to work.

The only sign of Tris's presence was four months after their capture, in the midst of roaring canons and boomstones, when a waterspout sputtered into existence and began attacking.

Daja had not prayed for herself for a long time; her debt was so great, her books were so unbalanced. But she begged Bookkeeper Oti to keep her family safe.

It was nearly a year into into their captivity that she felt any of her siblings, and she did not immediately recognise her.

Daja?

Sandry? In the midst of polishing one of the canons, Daja stilled. That voice had sounded like Sandry, but there was a strange echo, a darker edge to it. Maybe, she thought helplessly, she had finally been struck down by the sea fever and begun to hear what was not there. How are you doing this?

Tonight, was all Sandry said.

Daja was given five lashes for distraction. After one year of worse, it could not dull the glow of hope in hear heart.

Sandry had met another mage even younger than them, but where they had magic, the younger mage had been drowning in a pool of black. He had also been crying, fighting so hard against their captors that the darkness was leaking out of his body and swarming everywhere. Wherever it touched, the threads of silver scattered across the ship had vanished.

It freed me, too, Sandry said. Daja felt her smile. Not so much that the bindings have collapsed, but there are... holes in the cocoon. I don't think he's noticed.

And where's the mage now? Briar demanded.

Somewhere else, was all Sandry said. Sometimes he still talks to me. He showed me how to do this.

There was a tug, in Daja's head. She groped in the dark, and there it was - the lines that connected her to Sandry had flared back to life, but she could feel two other threads too. Tris and Briar. Tris's was impossibly pale, with shades of fading blue; Briar's was a darker green than anything she had seen before.

Daja turned in her hammock, wincing as her back flared in pain. What else can you do?

Not much. I need time to summon it, and I can't use much. Will you help me? There was a faint edge of pleading.

Daja didn't understand why, not immediately.

Not until she said, Yes, and felt something gnawing at her power and nibbling at the edges of who she was.

They would have only one chance to escape those bindings. It was difficult to remember on the days she was exhausted and was still asked to give more; when they raided a harbour, Daja aboard the rowboats for once, and land seemed not so far away. Daja shuddered to think of what Enahar would do if he caught them.

There were more ways than magical bindings to stop them from escaping.

In the meantime, Daja returned to work, but this time she took strict inventory of the ship's metal. Which ways the canons pointed. Where the anchors were stored. She sent her mind scouring the ship for boomstones, as she had once before - but they had been moved since, and she was forced to find them again.

Briar familiarized himself with every plank of wood. He did not dare throw magic into them; Enahar would know. But each grain of timber knew his voice. The seaweed clinging to oars and anchors caressed his hands, and they mourned together for every piece of greenery he had been forced to burn, for every cut that had left scars across his arms and back.

Tris's was the most difficult; she was under the most careful watch, and was rarely allowed into full wakefulness. But every night, she let power bleed into the currents of air following the ship above hand. Her magic vanished into the vastness of the ocean - beyond anyone's reach - and in exchange her blood ran like saltwater, her bones shifted like the ocean bed grinding far below, her lungs filled with wind. She would always have power.

Daja wasn't sure how to apologize for bringing trangshi luck into their home. Perhaps the pirates would have attacked a different centre of mages; perhaps the seasonal storms would have devastated this fleet.

But either way she would balance her debts.

Tonight. I can unravel the weave tonight.

The knot of power snapped, and it was a rush, so much heat that Daja fell out of her hammock. Molten metal seemed to cover every inch of her skin, and Daja screamed, making every piece of metal in the ship rattle and try to jump out at her. It sang to her, a cacophony that made the earlier silence all the more painful.

She could barely hear the cursing around her. Someone tried to touch her, and reared back with a shout, unable to cross the circle of metal she had created earlier that evening. It was beginning to flare with light; beginning to melt.

Daja would deal with them later. For now, there was one person she needed to turn her attention to.

Ensconced in Sandry's mind, Daja felt it, the moment Enahar jerked back into full wakefulness. He started drawing power again, and all around the fleet, mages began dream even more deeply as their strength flowed away.

Good. Sandry's voice was almost serene as she turned her attention that way. He goes down first. And I'm hungry.

Her magical body - dragging the four of them along, strength flowing from them into her to feed the spindle of darkness she was shaping between her fingers - rushed back down the bonds, devouring everything in its path. It was not so much that Sandry was tearing through the bonds, of course, as that they were her sustenance, if the magic even noticed her at all.

You have so much power, Sandry whispered, at the place where Enahar's threads became a single weave.

And we want it, Briar finished.

Inside Sandry's mind, Daja had a clear view as the silver encasing Sandry flared bright, then faded, and oily absence remained. Sandry touched the threads, and the darkness wriggled, then began to spread along the lines, rushing towards the sleeping mages - and Enahar.

You will pay for-

I think you've talked enough, Tris said. What was it you realized, Daja?

There's more than one way to entrap a mage. Or destroy them.

Around Enahar's ship, the boomstones began to shake as they heated up. Tris laughed in delight at the sparks being thrown around, catching them with her fingers. Between Daja and Tris, the sparks grew into a whirlwind of lighting and flame.

Daja remembered Enahar standing over her while she gasped painfully for breath. With Tris's presence by her side, they funneled their destructive spiral towards the boomstones.

In the wake of the explosion, they turned their attention to the other ships.

I'm hungry, Daja muttered, and back in her body, she smiled-with teeth.

fin