ASAIO

“Seventeen,” I say.

“Eighteen,” Ellie-Darlin says.

“Where?”

“Over there.”

“I can’t see that far.”

She pushes her lenses up her nose. “Me too.”

We’re countin the number of Yaselle’s Bugs that have pulled up into the harbor since we got here. the red ship hasn’t come into port yet after maybe an hour of waiting. The red sky and the loomin Suns are visible in a rare instance of clear skies. I’m already feelin a bit restless. Countin keeps us busy and keeps Ellie focused, so she don’t forget why we’re here in the first place.

Her long term memory is pretty good, but we don’t know what she’ll remember in the short term. The plague never has any rhyme or reason.

“No Pitters?” I ask.

“None,” Ellie-Darlin says. “Yaselle is here, though.”

“Really? Where?” I ask, even though she already said this twice.

Yaselle is a straight-haired, young woman, standin without any sort of hunch in the center of the harbor. She wears a long black coat and carries a white parasol. It’s not entirely nondescript. A group of Rubies stand around her. Not right beside her, but the red-necked man are clearly keepin an eye out. She has a placid smile on her pale face.

There have been multiple Yaselles. No one knows who exactly is the right one, as they all introduce themselves as Yaselle, but there’s said to be three main women. They all carry the white parasol and, whenever somethin goes down with the Bugs, at least one is present.

Her Bugs are scattered across the harbor. None carry weapons, though. In fact, they seem to be talkin nicely to the lickers.

A sudden onslaught of yellin comes. Barrelin through the static bells and the harbor comes a carriage. A blue carriage, the old sort that’s dragged by two very strong men, onto the north side of Harbor Street. A group of lickers in their pristine snake-skin uniforms come runnin, mustkets in tow, shackles in hand.

“Hey, hold it, hold it!” the coachman yells. He waves a yellow paper in the air, with some design I can’t see on it.

One of the Rubies, a fellow with a tongue a leg long that’s just droopin out of his mouth, approaches. He nods at the lickers and they back off.

The coachman steps down and slaps the backs of the men pullin the coach. These men are covered with black veins so thick they do not seem human anymore. Their muscles are thick and unnaturally profound. I wince as they scream, tryin to fight against the shackles on their legs. Even from here, I can tell they’ve lost their minds and are bein exploited as nothin more than free, morally-alright behavior. When someone needs to be shackled, most just kill them off before they can go completely rabid. But some twisted Souls have realized that, if they have enough connections with the lickers and the Slaughter Houses, they can get away with usin the near-dead.

Ellie shuts her eyes and looks away.

The coachman opens the door. A short, stubby man steps out. He’s got bright orange hair, not red like Asher’s, and no arms. He limps a bit weirdly and one eye is completely black, surrounded by grossly gray, rottin flesh.

Yaselle, a group of Rubies, and a few Bugs approach.

“I can’t hear what they’re sayin,” I say.

“Me too.” Ellie-Darlin rubs her ears. “It must be a very civil engagement.”

Yaselle gestures to her left. A Bug appears to her left, one that we hadn’t clocked.

The Bugs wear semi-lavish clothin, his hair tied up in a bunch of buns. He has a musket over his shoulder. When he turns, I realize he’s got clawed, pointed hands. probably feet too. He grips a young boy by the neck, younger than us. Round Kim’s age.

“Hostage?” I say.

Ellie-Darlin grabs my sleeve. “What color was the ship we were supposed to be looking for?”

“Red.”

“Like that one?”

Comin into the harbor is a red ship, grander than anythin Vernon described to us. It’s about twice the size of our own, which are rickety at best and old as can be. They used to be warships for the Sixty-Seven Cycle War, I think, but their… less-than-desirable quality shows in their cryin sails and poor paint jobs.

This red one ain’t that. I think it’s steam powered, it’s movin a bunch faster than our own. There are a lot of flags on it, wavin the green and yellow flags with a mandalic pattern in the middle. Dozens of people turn their heads at the site.

“Yes. Like that one. Suns, them shipbuilders in Damaskraga mean business. Wow.” I pause. “That is… suspicious timin.”

“Why?”

“Hostage right over there.”

“Oh.”

“What are those patterns?”

“The Damaskragan flag,” Ellie-Darlin answers.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember there’s a world outside of Mecraentos—not even Mecraentos Kingdom but Mecraentos City—when there is no one or nothin to expose you to it.

A few clicks come through the air. Faint, but just loud enough to hear. We’re ready, the message says. The click system is used by all the Garnets, but was developed by Seht and I.

The red ship ain’t close enough to port for Crass and Crimson to safely sneak on from the oceanside. I know they wade about thirty feet away from the port, while the ship is near sixty or seventy.

Suddenly, the sound of a gunshot comes, then a chorus of screams.

I turn my attention back to the hostage situation. It’s gone bloody. The Bugs that Yaselle had stationed around suddenly clamor onto the Pitters that filter out of the blue carriage. Three in total. Eighteen versus a team of three. No, that’s wrong, I realize as the clamor of wheels and a harsh crash comes.

A second round of carriages suddenly appear, their less-than-people drivers barrelin through confused crowds of incessantly screamin tourists and merchants. They must have been waitin just around the block.

Yaselle’s Bugs pounce on them, attackin. The lickers pull out their muskets, yellin, while the Rubies pounce to break up the two groups.

The little boy that had been taken hostage is gone. I look around, unable to spot him.

The red ship pulls up closer. There won’t be a clear path for Crass, Crimson, Vip, and Ana to make it back to Ellie-Darlin and I if this escalates into a full-out rumble. There is one ship in front of the red one that has to pull up before it can, which means we have at least a few minutes for that ship to be harbored.

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Mustletop and Shimmy scurry between the confused crowds, settlin between a close-off watch tower; a wooden hobble that had been burnt against the side, makin it look less than menacin.

Yaselle’s Bugs break off into five separate groups. Three of them run and, to my surprise, rescue the tourists and merchants. The other two deal with keepin the Rubies and the Pitters and the lickers at bay.

It’s a bloody mess of musket shots and sheer violent force.

The problem with the plague is that you don’t know what abilities someone’s got from it just by lookin at them. The other gangs probably have profiles on all their enemies, and so do the lickers, but it seems so random to an uneducated bystander, like me.

I watch as a red-necked woman suddenly throws off her shirt, revealin giant spikes growin out of her spine, and three extra sets of arms. The entirety of her back is covered with black, rottin skin. She screams and launches herself at two of Yaselle’s Bugs. One dodges at a pace faster than my brain can comprehend. The other barrels and points her hand. Suddenly, two giant flies come buzzin at the woman’s head. This woman is someone like Flynn, who can conjure the very rare non-plague ridden animal.

Tourists and merchants don’t help. They run away from the Bugs that are tryin to get them to safety, many headin back to the ships they came off of, ships that are high-tailin it out of there.

Muskets go off. I watch as four shots hit the same woman—I don’t even think she’s a Bug or a Pitter, I’m pretty sure she’s just a random person—and she falls to the ground.

I watch as a merchant takes her body and hauls it off in a greedy frenzy, instead of leavin it for the Slaughter Houses to take and turn to packaged meat.

Mustletop and Shimmy suddenly appear, Vernon trailin them. They’re usin the crates to section off one of the alleys. Ensurin that there is an emergency exit to escape to. Good.

The flies crash into the woman and three lickers that were tryin to keep the peace. All insects that survived the plague, the only sort of real animal that survived, are giant. Absolutely giant.

It feels like my neck is gonna snap, tryin to watch everythin all at once.

A group of Bugs that are carryin a significant amount of civilians away from all the fightin are suddenly shot down, one by one, civilian or gang, by the lickers. They don’t go down easy. The Bugs shove the civilians into the road, yellin for them to stay away, and pounce on the lickers. Each one pulls out a parasol.

I don’t get what good a parasol will do and don’t get time to think about it because two of the four carriages that came to the Pitters’ aid suddenly burst into flames. It seems that Yaselle’s group is the cause of all the arsons, then.

Yaselle herself is a force to be reckoned with. I can’t see any very obvious plague on her, but she’s a damn good fighter. I realize, her parasol is her weapon. She brings two men down to their knees and stabs the parasol into their eyes, then, with the parasol still stuck in their sockets, draggin it upwards into their brains. The screams are worse than anythin I have ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of screams on these streets. A gunshot hits her in the shoulder. She lets go of the men and goes runnin in the other direction, where her Bugs can cover her.

I watch as a single Ruby slams four men into one of the burnin carriages, incineratin them.

The orange-haired Pitter has grown a bunch of scales on his arms. He seems to be a human shield for his more important friend, a lanky fellow with an extraordinarily long beard, throwin him around by the neck to catch the musket bullets.

Dozens of bells are ringin.

If you listen to it beneath the chaos, it almost sounds musical. Peaceful. A wonderful, predictable melody. Somethin entirely more real than what the buskers offer–this is the real music of the City.

either fled or been forced out of the vicinity due to a series of crates bein thrown by one of the gangs, I can’t even tell who right now.

One of the two remainin carriages crashes into a group of lickers, rollin over them.

The coachman yells at a group of Rubies, “Help us, Huiy, damn it!”

One Ruby grabs a Bug and smashes her skull into the ground. “We are, you fucker!” he yells as he picks up the Bug’s parasol and whips around to whack another Bug.

As the ship in front of our own pulls into the dock, the orange-haired Pitter runs at it. “Down, down, down!”

“Now!” Yaselle screams.

The ship is probably a quarter of the size of the red one from Damaskraga, but it is still significant. Three Pitters are runnin at it when a bunch of heads pull over the helms and quarterdeck.

“It’s a trap!”

The entire ship erupts into flames. The red ship is forced to stay back.

Out of all the possible scenarios that we’d envisioned regardin the gang violence, settin a ship that had not even reached us yet had not been on the table. On the brightside, the harbor’s completely emptied out. Except for the dead ones, many civilians had been successfully pulled away by Yaselle’s Bugs. I can see many of them still cluttered on the other street, just barely far enough away from the violence.

Then, there is a sudden crash.

The burnin ship did not pull into the harbor correctly. No, it crashed directly into the wooden harbor. The wooden planks penetrate the rudder and send the entire thing teemin. It sways dangerously. The sudden, strong waves don’t help it at all.

Many bodies are jumpin from the ship, shirtless and pantless.

The red ship has stopped itself completely.

“Oh Suns. That’s not good,” I whisper. I look over to my left, where Ellie-Darlin has steadily moved away, one hand over her ears. “Oh, Suns! Ellie! Ellie!”

“What?”

“The fire!”

One of the coaches got a little too close to our brush-ridden rooftop. The flames are startin to dance towards us.

“We’ll do it again!” Yaselle yells. I don’t know where her voice is comin from. It echoes in a way that it could have come from anywhere. “Your men on the Queenspire are burning, or they’re drowning! We will set fire after fire, until your coffers burn worse than your ships, Jax! Do you hear me? I said, do you hear me?”

More gunshots. More screams.

I whisper to the leaves and branches, runnin down their sides and havin them slide me down towards the ground from the rooftop, where the fire is startin. I’m exposed plainly to everyone in the harbor now, but it don’t matter. I take off my shirt and start whackin at the flames, turnin all the branches around me away from it so that this singular piece is the only piece that is charred.

Thankfully, the flames go out.

I catch sight of the crates in the alley that Mustletop and Shimmy had placed. They’re waitin in there, helpin Genavieve and Vernon and Kim over too. When a few tourists try to squeeze by, Shimmy shoves them out of the way at first, but Vernon helps move them towards safety.

I look around. Where’s Asher?

A body is suddenly thrown into my direction. I gasp and climb back up the branches onto the rooftop, wavin a hand to enclose the space.

When I make it back to Ellie-Darlin, she says, “Are the others still going to get onto the ship? Ana and Vip cannot reach it.”

“Knowin Ana and Vip, they’re gonna think it’s the perfect distraction so that they can get on completely undetected,” I say. “And Crass will think so too, so she’ll be up there first, with Crimson.”

“Oh.”

“We wait here until we see them.”

The red ship does not seem like it is going to pull into the harbor very soon.

I’m not sure how much longer I want to wait. The fire ain’t spreadin except for our own branch. The Bugs did a good job at ensurin that the entire harbor they’re fightin for won’t actually be for nothin—knockin away crates that could potentially go up in flames away from the coaches—but still. The smoke’s startin to come by, and the fightenin has long but stopped.

The longer we stay, the more at risk one of us becomes bein caught in the crossfire.

More bullets reign. Ellie-Darlin grabs my arm. “Asaio, look. Why is Crass swimming over there? Did I forget something else?”

It’s only a quick glimpse, but I can see Crass swimmin through the harbor, Ana on her back. Her gift makes it so that she don’t swim the normal way. It’s hard to describe how she does, only that she’s underwater for an extreme amount of time. Ana looks like she’s barely breakin a sweat, holdin on for dear life.

If Ana is on her back, that means Crimson must have been dropped off onto the red ship, and that Crass is comin back for Ana and Vernon. They’re still gonna get the job done, just one-by-one.

“Smart,” I murmur.

I look back over to where our family is hidin in the alley.

“Give it up, Jax!” Yaselle yells.

“Who are these kids?”

Oh no.

A group of lickers are cuttin through the crates that Mustletop and Shimmy placed to guard our escape.

Two towerin Rubies shove past the lickers. “Get out!” one roars. “Get out of here, rats!”

Go, I urge. The exit on mine and Ellie-Darlin’s side is still open for our buddies on the boat.

Until one of the lickers yells, “There’s more kids in the water! Look there!”

Damn it.

I hear a gun go off. I gasp and pull myself forward, lookin out.

They’re tryin to shoot Crass, who has Vip on her back. And if they alert the crew on the red ship that somethin’s amiss, we’re screwed. Crass ducks back underwater, takin Vip down with her.

“If those are your kids,” Yaselle coos. “You better get them, Jax.”

“Those are thieving street rats,” one of the Pitters says before punchin a licker in the jaw. “They can die for all I care.”

“Run, kids!” Yaselle yells.

But we can’t, not with half the lickers leavin and runnin towards the dock to catch Crass and Ana and Vip and Crimson. Not with the red ship crew lookin around wildly, yellin out orders in Damaskragan, probably to check what’s happenin in their storage.

The lickers are the only ones who care enough about theft that is not bein partially pawned off to them. The Rubies, Yaselle’s Bugs, the Five Pitters—they care about territory. They don’t give a damn about us as long as we don’t get in the way like this again.

So the rest of us just got to distract the lickers long enough for Crass to pull everyone out of the red ship.

I look out and over the branches, makin eye contact with Vernon.

He nods.

Then, the five of them who were hidin in the alley, pounce right as two of the lickers pounce onto them, handcuffs and muskets in tow.