sight

So: it had been Ilja's idea to go out.

Zoran had been resistant to it in the extreme, clinging to the freshly familiar claustrophobia of his new apartment and its many paisley plates. But he could deny Ilja nothing at all, and there was a part of him that dared, stupid and senseless, to hope that it would all be okay: that he would join the others at the bar and that they would smile at him and that they would say i understand how hard you have found it all and he would swallow their sympathy like a rat poison and smile back at them without too much blood in his teeth.

Ilja had chosen a very charming pub on the edge of the ghetto, the type of place that aspired to Irij clientele but usually had to settle for Kur customers. There were benches outside where, in the mild yellow sun of the day, bureaucrats in their black collarless suits sat quietly with pints of bitter ale and students of the nearby secretarial school laughed too loudly over glasses of jam-red wine. It was a warm enough day, with only a hint of greyish wind that drifted, rather than blew, through the street. Yet Ilja still ducked into the building and Zoran followed him with only minimal hesitation.

He looked for her; he couldn't help himself. He looked for her pointlessly.

Instead, Ilja headed across the bar to the booth by the emergency exit, where Khalore and Myghal had folded themselves into the small space to play a vigorous game of incomprehensible cards. They were playing so fast and aggressively that Zoran wasn't sure either of them knew who was winning; certainly, from the looks of it, Myghal was cheating.

They barely looked up as Zoran and Ilja approached. That was, in its own way, preferable to the alternative. They could slip invisible and unnoticed into the booth, and when the game was over – Zoran could not determine how or why that was the case – Khalore dealt them both in silently and they played a single four-hander. Zoran mimicked Ilja's actions, even as he could tell that Ilja was silently mirroring Khalore and Myghal without quite knowing why. They went round in a circle thus, each feigning understanding in order to direct the play of the next. Myghal won. Zoran suspected he had cheated again.

When that was done, Myghal addressed Zoran quite casually, in the way that perhaps only he, of all the Warriors-that-were-and-weren't, could manage. He hadn't been with them in Illéa; he could afford to be careless. He made it sound affectionate. Zoran still wasn't accustomed to this Myghal, the one that was more mature, more patient, more. He smiled as he said it. "Long time, no see, Czarnecki."

"I've been... the Bureau have kept me busy."

"Oh?"

"They want me to write," Zoran said. "Which, you know." He shrugged. "The last thing any writer needs to hear."

"For the next generation?" Khalore arched an eyebrow. She looked apprehensive; she looked as though she had glimpsed the edge of their doom as it moved towards them. She reeled from it. "Have we reached that point?"

"I don't think so," Zoran said. "It's all..."

He chewed his lip thoughtfully.

"I don't know."

Ilja had feigned polite interest in the conversation but it was clear that the vagaries of prescience were rather lost on him. He was checking his watch and, sensing a lull in the conversation where Myghal and Khalore were waiting for the other to chivvy Zoran into fuller honesty, risked a complaint of his own. "Where is he?"

"He's late," said Khalore, in an exceptionally obvious tone.

Myghal shook his head. "I wonder why that is."

"Oh, it's a mystery," said Ilja. "But that does seem to be going around recently."

Khalore cleared her throat, and, at the stern looks she was cast, feigned offence. "I'm being good," she said, pointedly. "I know he doesn't like it when we do it. I know he considers it a breach of privacy."

Ilja said, "you haven't happened to see anything about it, have you, Czarnecki? No new bad habits or secrets of his?"

"It's all unclear," Zoran said. "Very unclear – and, frankly, I would consider it a breach of privacy to even look."

"Unclear," repeated Ilja. "Unclear."

"Most things are," said Zoran, "of late."

"Ah, but that's not your it's unclear face." Ghjuvan had arrived at last; he was wearing a coat that had once been Pekka's, and a scarf that Belle had knitted him this Fall Day last, with a windswept, rushed appearance that suggested he had run at least part of the way there. He compensated for his terrible delay by bringing an entire tray of honey liquor with him as atonement, which he doled out dolefully. It was an exaggerated penance: there was still a simple joy in his voice as he teased his brother. "That's your it's simply too terrible to say face."

Zoran smiled. "I don't know what I can say."

"We won't press you too hard, then."

Khalore wrinkled her nose and scowled. "He doesn't speak for the rest of us," she said, irritated, and relented only when Ghjuvan had slid into the booth beside her and nudged her arm affectionately.

"She's just grumpy she wasn't chosen for the mission," said Myghal. "Don't take anything she takes to heart. She only means about forty per cent of it."

"Ah, well, I'm as in shock as she is," said Ilja. "I hope you know I'd never pick Nez over you, Lore."

"And Hyacinth?"

"Well," Ilja said, "let's not be totally irrational here. That makes a good amount of sense to me."

Khalore objected loudly – her hand came down hard on the table, so all the glasses hopped. Zoran suspected that she and Myghal had been here for a few hours before the others had gathered. "Who completed the Illéan objective? Who captured the Radiance? Who brought the whole team home? It wasn't Nez, it wasn't Hyacinth, it wasn't –"

"Ina?" said Zoran.

Khalore gave him a filthy look. "I didn't say that."

"I'm sorry," Zoran said, silently delighting in the patterns of old into which they had slipped so quietly and easily. "What were you going to say?"

She groused quietly. "It's fair to Ina to include her, but it's just not fair to me."

"It could be dangerous," said Ilja. "It could be very dangerous."

"The life of a Warrior always is."

"You could die."

"I wouldn't care."

"I thought you'd want a break." Ghjuvan shook his head. When he spoke, he addressed Zoran directly, like there was absolutely no one else in the world. He said, "aren't you tired?"

"I am. I'm so tired."

"We're nearly there."

"I can't tell," said Zoran, "if that's a good thing."

She was in the kitchen, fingers dusted with the tiny crystals of the peculiar pink-grey sugar that had been so common in Illéa. Zoran didn't know why his mind did this: why it put her back into this place, like he had bound her here by memory and thought and desperate wish.

The exposed brick of the walls stained honey-gold by the light streaming in through the clerestory windows. That same light splintered silver across her dark hair, running little forks up and down little lightning breaking across a very dark sky.

Zoran came up short to see her; his breath caught; he couldn't quite breathe.

"Zula," he said. "Hi, Zula."

She looked up. She smiled. She was always smiling when he dreamed of her. He didn't think he would be able to handle a dream where she wasn't. This was selfishness: he clung to it. He would be unrelenting and unrepentant. He had so few pleasant dreams.

"Zor," she said. She was softer than she had been in life: her cheeks were rounder, her arms fuller. She had not been stretched thin by the demands of war on a child's new shape. She was all dark hair and darker eyes. She had knotted dough around her knuckles, so that she could knead and twist it with the slightest movement of her fingers. "Do you want some?"

He didn't know what she was making. There was icing on her cheek, which was green, which usually meant pistachio. Zoran had bought the pistachios at an Aizsaule market in two big canvas sacks, and the look on Azula's face when he had planted them onto the counter that afternoon had been like the dawn. He said, "yes, please, I'd love some."

"Okay," she said. "Don't tell Ina. She'd want me to charge you."

She winked. She'd always made the worst Devil. Zoran said, "absolutely unrelenting, that one."

Azula Hämäläinen smiled. Having two names suited her. She was always smiling when he dreamed of her.

He could see the strings on her. They stretched from the tips of her fingers in all directions, gossamer-thin and mercury-silver, like she had been trussed up in cobwebs when no one was looking. Even in these perfect preserved moments, she was the Devil. Even now, she was dying.

It took him a moment to realise what he was looking at, what had bled all over the walls and the floor. Kinga clutched at it like it was a piece of flesh that had been cut from her, the way Zoran was accustomed to watching her hold closed a wound, hold in her innards. The baby was small and swaddled in blankets and drenched in blood. It was silent. There was no maternity in Kinga's arms or in her eyes. Zoran had seen her carry a rifle with similar gritted resolve. She was a soldier, soldiering.

She was sitting on the edge of the couch, curled up over herself like she had just torn herself free of her druj form. There was movement in a room nearby – next door or down the corridor, somewhere close enough for whispers, too far away for warmth. The curtains were drawn tightly shut, but Zoran sensed it was dark outside.

Was that purposeful? Were they keeping the moon far from her tonight? Was she meant to yearn for it?

She was breathing in that way Kinga had in every world, like she had never learned how to do it automatically, like it was effort: it rattled her ribs. She looked up when Zoran came in the door: he had the sense that he was not himself, for the way she looked at him was not the way his Kinga would have looked at him. She said, "it's done."

"It is," he said. He wasn't sure if it sounded reassuring. His voice was unfamiliar to himself, brittle and hoarse and husky. He sounded like he smoked.

"It continues," she said. She had burst blood vessels in her eyes. She was pale and sweaty and dishevelled. "She'll be good. I guarantee it. She'll be good enough."

"The best." Zoran was compelled to speak the words; it was like a song he had learned long-ago, prompted to mind by the sound of the opening bars. He wanted to say more: he wanted to replace the tired, scared Kinga on the couch with the one he had known. He wanted to take the new-birthed Moon from her arms and take her into his own and tell her it would be okay. He kept speaking, for he sensed that, in this vision, he could only speak, could only watch this unfold in the way in which it was bound to unfold. "Bogna suggested you name her Jadwiga."

She nodded, unhearing, uncaring. The cruelty of this suggestion passed her by. He practically expected to see blood welling up on her fingers from where she was clutching the blankets too tight. "Where's my tata?"

Whatever part Zoran was playing was not a heartless role: he had not the strength of mind or character to tell her that Krzysztof Szymański was not coming, that Krzysiek could not bear to see the girl he had raised contribute her mandated tithing to the vicious cycle of the Szymańscy, that her stary had left before the first screams started. He had not gone to see the last Moon buried. He would not come to see Kinga bear the next. Zoran said, "I don't know."

Nez had never broken Ragnar Kaasik's arm in this version of this world. When he stooped forward to take his daughter from Kinga, his arms were stronger than they had ever been at the academy, strong in the way struggle makes strong. Somewhere else in the city, Zoran and Ina might have been in their apartment on Majnun Street, watching flowers twine the railing of their balcony, baking halva together. Somewhere in the country, Ghjuvan and Azula and Hyacinth were alive and, blissfully, strangers. Pekka was whole; Ilja was himself.

The Warrior cycle churned on here in Siarka, unseen and ravenous and ceaseless, ceaseless, ceaseless.

Zoran had told the truth: he had typed out a very many pages at the Bureau earlier in the day and more again this evening before Ilja had arrived. He set them out on the table in front of the Chariot, fanning them out as a tarot-reader spreads out a future, face-down like they were wagering. Ilja said, "I suppose you've already foreseen which one I'll look at?"

A smile. "I might have," said Zoran, "but I didn't write it down. A thing unwritten is a thing unseen."

That sat ill with Ilja, but he tried not to show it as he reached forward in his chair and trailed his finger across the pages, wondering as he had at initiation whether he was meant to be feeling something in particular – if he was supposed to be drawn to this or that one. He had always wondered exactly how the Szymanscy family swung it. How they ensured their child captured the Moon each time they turned their card in the sacellum. Kinga wouldn't have told him, even if he had thought to ask her. He still wished he had.

He had dithered long enough. He set his fingers down flat on a page, quite at random, and turned it over, watching Zoran closely for any flicker of a reaction. To his disappointment, Zor was not even looking at him: he was sitting back in the chair, rubbing at his eyes tiredly.

The paper was smeared with ink where someone had torn it hastily from the ribbon. The type-face was small and blocky and unsophisticated. There were six words printed across it, unevenly spaced: AN D KHA L FAL LS FACEF IRST WITH

Ilja swallowed an exhale and choked out a laugh. "You didn't finish this one."

Zoran said, "I don't think I..."

He ran a hand over his face. The food had done little to return colour to his cheeks: he was a pencil sketch of himself, all overlapped lines and greyscale.

"My visions do not lend themselves to the pen," he said finally, "or to the typewriter. It isn't – I struggle to put them down. To explain them. Now that I have them, I cannot share them, and they still feel – "

Ilja's decision to wait for him to continue was Inanna-like. Did the same unease and irritation roil through her stomach when she adopted saint-like patience thus? Had she silently boiled like this all those long months in Illéa?

"Irrelevant," said Zoran finally. "It's all long ago and far forward. Nothing about now. Nothing about here. I'm a Hierophant in the wrong generation, I think."

"This," Ilja said, holding up the page. "It's about Khalore. So it will come to pass in – in what, the next five years? Less?"

"It's a charitable interpretation," said Zoran, "to say that is about anything. It's nonsense. If you can figure something out from that, you're a smarter man than I."

"Always was." Ilja shook his head and put the page down on the table. He ran his fingers across the typewritten words, as though he could scratch them away and reveal some version of the truth underneath. "I feel a sense of perspective coming over me. You know, maybe we were too hard on Matthias for the nonsense he left behind."

"No," said Zoran. His voice was cold and decidedly unlike his own. "We should have been harder."

"You've been very hard on people these last few weeks," said Ilja.

Zoran stood to pick up the dishes. Ilja clung tightly to his bowl.

He said it again. "Very hard."

"I've been absent," said Zoran. "Absence is lightness."

"You know," said Ilja. "The bruises are still there. She thinks they aren't, and we let her believe that, and no one else would see them but Khalore and I, because we know to look for them, and we can still see that they're there."

Zoran did not so much as flinch when Ilja said it. It was as though the words were all reaching him from the other end of a long hallway: like they had echoed around and ended up in front of him quite by accident, without any urgency within them. There was a coolness in his demeanour that was unlike him, and which did him little credit.

Ilja said, "there's only four of us left. The others are dead. There are four of us who know what it is to be xrafstars, and to be Warriors, and to be returned from Illéa, and it's misery when you insist on martyring yourself by staying away. It's selfish."

"Selfish?"

"Utterly," said Ilja, "and we all think so."

"Selfish," – as though Ilja hadn't heard it the first time – "but I've been dangerous to you before. All of you."

"Get a grip on yourself this time, then," said Ilja.

He turned over another page, trusting that the conversation had distracted the Hierophant sufficiently so that he could catch another stolen glimpse at a murky future. This one had more words on it, written more legibly, as though the motive behind it had been that much stronger, although some of the words were here misspelled as though they had been punched out in a desperate frenzy: A LINE STRETCHS TO OBSCURITEY TO CHOKE THE WORD THE WORLD THE WORD HOW MANY MORE MANY MORE MORE MORE – AND DOWN – ND MORE – AN DONE – HAVE YOU DECIDED WHETHER IT WILL BE?

"Get a grip," said Ilja, with much more feeling. Zoran seemed so nice and normal and lucid that for a moment it seemed somehow more horribly likely that this garbled page, this incoherence, was some hideous joke, a gambit to keep everyone away and wondering, rather than the genuine fruits of a day's labour. "And come see her off with the rest of us tomorrow. She's being sent out to the border."

"She isn't."

"She is."

"Well," said Zoran, with the hideously smug finality of one who holds hidden cards, palmed at the outset of the game. "She won't be."

"I won't," said Ilja decisively, "give you the satisfaction of asking what you mean by that."

He would regret that later. Zoran could have told him that he would regret that later but Zoran – even then, even now, Zoran was Zoran is Zoran will be Zoran weeping and holding on by his nails by his fingertips by will and luck alone.

it was all he could do to smile coherently,,,

Ilja pushed back his chair. "Thanks for the dinner."

Zoran looked up from the table, but did not rise from his seat to bid his friend farewell. He looked small and diminished, like something waning. He said, "any time at all."

"Tomorrow," said Ilja. "Please."

Zoran nodded. "Tomorrow."

"I suppose," said Ilja, "I don't need to tell you when or where."

Zoran shook his head. "No," he said, mirthfully, "I think I'll manage."

"It's so typical," said Ilja. "We really could have done with this Hierophant in Illéa, you know."

A smile ghosted across his lips. They were chapped: Ilja had the sudden thought, more than fraternal and acidic in its pained concern, that they were keeping him in a too-cold room at the Bureau. The Hierophant didn't look comfortable in himself, like the chill had clung. Zoran said, "we still got here, didn't we?"

"We lost," said Ilja, "so much."

One of Zoran's eyes fluttered, a sudden spasm of eyelash and eyelid that unnerved Ilja more than the papers on the table ever could. "But you think it was worth it."

Repent. Atone. Salvation. "So do you," Ilja said.

He knew he was right – he didn't need Zoran to confirm it – but he was suddenly aware of a chasm opening between their understandings, the feeling that the two of them were regarding the question from very opposite sides of a gorge. It was as if the floor had moved bodily beneath him: he was, for a second, unmoored.

Ilja didn't mean for it to sound like he was trying to persuade himself. He said, "it was worth it. We got the Radiance."

Zoran said, "how is Silas?"

Ilja was sure it was his turn to blink spasmodically. "I don't know."

"You haven't asked?"

"I think," said Ilja, "they've probably killed him already."

"And if they haven't," said Zoran, "then they should."

Ilja shook his head, but didn't disagree. He looked back towards the door. There were shoes lined up carefully beside the door, and a coat-rack on which hung three coats that belonged to Zoran and one that didn't. It was a woman's jacket, well-worn, with patched elbows. Ilja had the sudden impression that he was badly overstaying his welcome. The Hierophant had only allotted him so much space and so much time.

"Thanks for the dinner, darling."

"Any time," said Zoran, "in any world."

After two days, they had cast out the boats onto the water and Evanne Chae had gasped to realise that they were truly going and that every moment that passed would carry her further again from her dear home than she had ever been before – than she had ever known a person could go. Their fleet was an exceptionally small one, and there was only a small group on their boat: Lorencio guided the tiller with a sure hand, and Kane stared at the faraway, indistinct shape of their destination with the sort of intensity he usually reserved for things that he could gut with his sword.

Pjotr could tell them nothing of the place they were about to come into, though Evie could sense he badly wished that he were able: there was a willingness in him that seemed to chew at Kinga's conscience. If he had been able to tell them anything – if a single thing of value had passed his lips – Evie imagined that Kinga would have thrown them both from the boat to keep him quiet, bound hands or no.

Still, it worried Lorencio. They were still too far from the mainland to determine what defences might stand against the Illéans, but it was clear that the technology of these people far outstripped that of their own. Perhaps they had detected them already. Perhaps they were drifting slowly and peaceably into a trap. Perhaps – but perhaps not. Kinga would probably have seemed a bit alert if that was the case. Instead, once Pjotr had fallen silent, Kinga had relaxed her tense posture and the rocking rhythm of the boat seemed to have lulled her into something approaching a stupor.

It could only last so long. After an hour or so, Evie crouched down beside the traitor and spoke softly – only because the moment called for softness, rather than out of any interest in remaining unheard. That would have been an utterly futile effort: Kane was paying far too much attention to the druj girl for anything to go unseen, unnoticed, unheeded. Evie said, "what would it take?"

She felt bold and transgressive when she said it, and wilted only slightly when Kinga cracked open her eyes and cut her gaze across to the other girl. Evie had never got used to seeing the dead eye Kinga had hidden beneath her patch all this time: it was longer than the other, almond-shaped and lidless, and it was black-all-over like that of a bird. There was not a hint of iris or sclera. Black veins crawled away from it and disappeared beneath her hairline, curled around her cheekbone like henna. It must have been worse for the others, who had known her so much better; Sanav always looked slightly sick when he caught sight of it.

She said, "the captain already knows."

"He doesn't," said the captain.

Kinga turned her head away. "Shame."

Evie said, "you're not worried but you're not excited either. You don't know what to expect. You don't know if we're going to be able to make it into the city – do you have a city, a capital city? - but you don't know for sure that we won't."

Kinga said, "you won't."

"How's that?" said Lorencio.

"Because they have human druj," said Kane quietly. "Isn't that right? Cities full of them. Armies of them."

Kinga rolled her head on her shoulders. She shrugged.

"That's what I'm afraid of," said Lorencio, quite gravely.

Reiko made an ugly sound. "Her highness seemed quite sure their number of xrafstars was limited. Thirteen, didn't she say? And we've killed some already. And we have three of them here." Their sword traced a path between the Watcher and the captain and the captive. "They will have – "

"Four," said Oroitz in that dead voice of his. He was sitting on a bench in front of the steer. "Four, maybe five, depending on your count."

"Five at most," said Reiko. "Idiots."

"The princess," said Lorencio, with as much magnanimity as he could muster, "has never been outside of Illéa."

"We have the texts."

"The texts are very old."

"Oh, very," agreed Asenath. "But they tell us enough. We took the cursemaker with us when we left: they are limited to the curses they took from us during the war. I am sure of it. Isn't that right, Szymańska?"

Asenath crouched beside the traitor and seized hold, hard, of her chin, so that she could stare directly into that black druj eye.

"Isn't that right?"

The monstrous girl was silent.

"We'll raze your cities," said the princess. "As you did ours."

Kinga Szymańska seemed to have none of Kinga Kaasik's quick wit or feistiness. She didn't even spit. She looked like a kicked dog, and when the princess released her, her face swung back like a pendulum to face the bottom of the boat, her head hanging desultorily from her neck like a flower with a broken stem. There was a still, silent moment, and then, as though compensating for his comrade's silent grief, Pjotr kicked the side of the wooden boat, hard. Evie had thought him asleep until this moment.

Their hands were bound: Evie supposed this was the closest he could come to protest. Still: it was unlike him. It was totally unlike him. Was there something in the air, something that alerted him to the idea that they were drifting closer to the place he had once belonged?

A dense fog had gathered over the water, more suddenly that Evie had realized possible: the shape of the land opposite was doused, and the other boats in their petty little flotilla were lost from them in the peasouper that seemed to drink up all the light in the world. They were abruptly alone: a ghost vessel, drifting, forgotten, through white cloud.

Sanav lowered his spyglass with a sigh. "We're blind, sir."

Lorencio said, "is your plan still the same, your highness?"

"It is," said Asenath. Something had come across her face at the use of the honorific, first when Reiko used it and now when it came from Lorencio's mouth. Evie supposed it was reality hitting, not for the first time, but more brutally in each instance: the king was surely dead, and Silas may well be, and if that were true, then Asenath could be queen for a very long time without ever knowing it at all. They all seemed aware of something similar: they were walking with brittle step whenever they spoke, and yet they clung to the formalities like life-vests. "If Reiko is still willing."

Reiko was clutching the railing at the front of the boat with an urgency. They smiled with a vicious delight at their princess's offer. The hand – concerned, and unwanted – that Kane laid on their elbow was gentle, and quickly shaken off. "At your order, highness."

Asenath nodded hard. "Priscus assures me," she said. "The older a person, the quicker the curse takes hold."

Kane would not look away from Reiko. After a moment, they turned their head to meet his look.

"While Reiko occupies their Warriors," said Asenath, "with the support of our soldiers, the tagma shall accompany me to the place my brother is being held. I don't suppose our friends here are going to tell us where that is – we might have to tear the place apart to find him. The prison would be an obvious place to start, but my grandfather assures me he expects it to be quite empty."

Pjotr hit the side of the boat again, very hard. Kinga curled her lip and put her head against the side of the boat. Evie, watching them very closely, could see no sign of friendliness or collaboration between them. Kinga had closed her eyes, while Pjotr's, bluer than the sky, stared and stared.

"If he is injured – if he has been made unwell – Oroitz will sustain him until we can return to Illéa." Asenath took a deep breath. "I think that accounts for our main concerns."

"It's a very simple plan," said Lorencio. "But..."

Kane sighed quietly.

"Simplicity has always concerned me," Lorencio continued.

"You always did," murmured Reiko, "love to overcomplicate things."

Kane laughed. "An understatement."

"I would urge you," said Lorencio, heedless, "ma'am, to consider allowing us to lie low a day or two and make reconnaissance. A better understanding of the situation would serve us very well."

"Time will not be in our favour, Suero."

"I understand that, but neither shall rashness. There is nothing to be done about lost time now. We can still make the most of the opportunities granted to us. This is the first time in hundreds of years that our people will set foot on our ancestral land. We could accomplish so much more than – as well as – a rescue."

"Your point is well taken," said Asenath, frostily. "And I shall consider it."

Lorencio paused, and then nodded, and exchanged an unhappy look with Kane.

Evie hoped that General Suero and Captain Hijikata would never realise how fervently she agreed with the princess. Silas was the whole point of this; this was all for nothing if they could not save him. Kinga's people had killed so many in Illéa, had felled so many of the walls and laid low so many of the districts. Their city could burn, just a little. It wouldn't hurt so much, when it was the first time. The druj had laid ruin to Illéa, but the true, deepest despair had come from the unrelenting nature of the onslaught, the way that the monsters would not stop, and the fact that they would be homeless and hungry and hurt and haunted and it would all start again and again and again.

Eunbyeol would be okay. Misfortune needed time to add up. It would be disastrously unlucky of her to die the first time that death landed on her shores. She would be okay. And so would Silas.

Gods above, Evanne very nearly believed it.

Asenath came past her, and put a hand on her back as she did so. "You'll be with us, Lady Chae," she said, "isn't that so? When we go to get my brother."

"Absolutely," said Evie, "it would be my honour."

"He should have chosen you," said Asenath, mournfully. "You would have been wonderful. We needn't have worried if it was you."

Oroitz, the Watcher with the death-black eyes, smiled as though this brought to mind a pleasant memory. Evie pretended not to have noticed.

"He is the main priority," Asenath said. She was speaking to Evanne, but it was obvious that the entire group was paying exceptionally close attention to her words, even if they feigned distraction. "But revenge – deterrence... that would also be rewarded very handsomely."

Pjotr's boot hit the side of the boat again, and then again, and then again. His eyes were staring straight forward. His leg was moving mechanically, like something clockwork, like it was inevitable.

Kinga had realized what he was doing. "Stop," she said, urgently, roused from her silence. She elbowed her way up, roughly, to a crouching position, braced against the side of the boat, too pinioned to be much use. "Stop it, stop him, he's going to - "

Something struck the front of the boat, very hard. Kinga stumbled and hit the bottom of the boat again, swearing in a tone that was more her usual sense. Lorencio struggled with the tiller, and Reiko and Oroitz clutched at the princess defensively as they all swung towards the edge of the boat.

Evie pitched violently, and it was only Sanav's arm around her waist that kept her from plunging head-first into the dark water around them. The surface of the water – what little they could see beneath the silky white mist – was shivering.

Kinga tipped her head back and exhaled a furious sigh. "He's more of a prick than Pekka was."

"What was that?"

"Brace in case it comes around again."

"They're attracted to the sound, that's why you can't use a motor -"

"Where did it go?"

"Did you really think the world wouldn't try to stop you, Schreave?"

"Are those...?"

"Druj," said Kane and Reiko at the same moment – he irritated, she fascinated.

"We can fight them," Lorencio began. "Perhaps using our hooks as harpoons..."

Evanne hoisted her crossbow, gripping on tightly to it to ensure it was not lost to the churn of the watter below.

The druj in the water rammed them a second time, and there was the unmistakeable sound of splintering wood. "Déja vu," said Kinga, to herself. There was water pooling around her boots and trousers. She seemed ill-inclined to stand. She looked ready to lie down and drown.

"Sir," Evanne began, urgently, looking to Lorencio.

"Protect the princess," Reiko ordered, to no one in particular, turning in a few neat steps to guard Asenath with their entire body. "Don't - "

They didn't get the chance to finish. A grey hand, enormous as a house-gable, rose from the depths of the water, and wrapped its fingers tightly around Reiko, and dragged them from the boat into the depths of the shuddering water.

A third strike at the front, and they were taking on more water than they could sustain. At the front, Sanav had yelled: he was striking with his sword at the long black tentacles, dripping with ichor, that had clawed their way aboard. Everywhere he sliced them, the stumps dropped away into black water, splashing harmlessly across the deck, but there were more and more swarming ashore with each second.

Kane seized Oroitz by the lapels and shoved him towards the princess, who was crouching by the tiller with her dagger clutched in hand. "You heard the lieutenant. Sanav, can you see Morozov?"

"We're going to be joining them," Lorencio said, kicking his way through the water towards the captives. He knelt, and began to saw through the ropes binding Kinga's hands together. She looked at him like he had brought the sun to her in his cupped hands.

"Are you crazy?" Sanav spat, swinging his blade wildly. He was drenched in black, as though bathed in ink; a long tendril shot from the water and wrapped tightly around his face. Evie charged forward to slice through it – the slick surface of the deck nearly caused her prosthetic to slide away beneath her as she ran – and Sanav tore it away from his face with a guttural oath.

Lorencio was unrepentant. "I'm not going to let them drown."

"He literally brought them to us..."

"Mahesar," Kane snapped. "Morozov."

"Can you see the other boats?" called Asenath.

The boat was literally descending into the water – Evanne might have sobbed out a laugh if it wasn't all so pathetic. They were going to drown a mile or two off the coast of Illéa. They had seen saltwater for the first time and now they were going to drink it forever.

She stayed standing. She had to stay standing. If she fell now, she wasn't sure she would ever have the strength to rise again.

Kinga tore away her bindings as soon as Lorencio had cut through them, and fell over herself reaching Pjotr on the other side of the boat. "Neither of us had the joy of this the first time," she hissed, low and urgent, as she seized hold of him by the collar of his borrowed coat, "but Ilja assures me it was perfectly pleasant," and then – before Evie could call a warning to him, before Kane shout her name – Kinga had propelled them both to the side of the boat with a surprising strength, and they had both toppled over the edge, and they had both vanished beneath the wine-dark surface of the water.

"They would seem to know something we don't," Lorencio muttered.

"I'd prefer," Sanav said, "not to go in there, if we can avoid it." He was bleeding from a wound above his eye; Evie couldn't say for sure when he had received it.

"I wouldn't say it's a question of choice at this point," said Kane, "just how and when."

Evie darted to the side and searched the depths for any sign of Reiko, her crossbow readied. There was nothing: Kinga and Pjotr had disappeared just the same. "I think the general's right," she said, very uncertainly. "I think they're after the boat."

"One of them was very much after Lieutenant Morozov," Asenath said, acidly. She had taken her decision, and strode with remarkable power and fervour across a deck that was soaked in druj blood and salt water. It was pitching back and forth like a rocking horse as druj on every side took turns in charging into it as though it were a sport, but the princess staggered only a little. Asenath was currently wearing a pair of army trousers – otherwise, Evie had to imagine she would have gathered her skirts around her with suitable elegance as she stepped up onto the edge of the boat. She cast a look over her shoulder, which bade them follow. "And, Szymański, if it comes to it – please don't forget to die for me."

She tipped herself into the water then, as graceful as a falling star.