Along with the deep maroon cowls and cloaks that marked them as Vithtak, the slavers also wore simple but well-made trousers and tunics. The three slaves working outside the cage wore only pants, and those were filthy and worn. Their torsos bore the gnarled lines of whip scars.

Inside the cage, the details of dress became more varied. Before the Vithtak incursion, Leriand had officially encompassed most of the Wandering Tears region. But within those boundaries had lived many splinter kingdoms and independent tribes, especially in the south. Those who’d fled the Vithtak at Lechat Leriand had brought their own cultures and ways with them.

So while Ashes and Moss wore woven reeds with no adornments, a handful of others wore plants woven into their hair or cerbho tooth necklaces. One, a young woman with a complexion too pale for Meres-folk but not enough for Vithtak and hair a fine golden-blonde, wore a dull blue tunic over leggings and even boots instead of bare feet, in the way of someone who hailed from the far side of the river and had not learned how to cooperate with the swamp instead of fighting it.

At the barge’s front rode the overseer, a plain-looking man with slicked-back black hair and matching eyes, a sharp contrast to his deathly-pale complexion. His blood-colored cloak also bore threads of silver. He carried himself as if that made him a king.

Three other slavers, as pale and dark-eyed as their commander, walked on the towpath, behind the ox and alongside the barge. Ashes supposed that if the ox or the slave guiding it were to attempt an escape, the slavers would spring into action.

Aside from the floating path of lashed-together logs and the barge itself, murky water stretched out in all directions. From hummocks of higher ground, cattails and slender, silvery reeds waved. Plumes of stirred mud trailed in the barge’s wake. The water was not deep—not right here or now, at least. That didn’t’ make it safe.

“Trade you tomorrow’s bread for tonight’s last watch.” The slaver called Abbo by the others turned his head toward the one called Fal. A conniving expression slid across his long, thin face.

Fal snorted and shook his head. Wavy black curls shook. “You think that lousy bread is worth losing a good three hours of sleep over? Idiot.”

“Settle.” The third of the walking slavers, one called Sab, never raised his voice. The other two fell silent and looked away from each other, just the same.

The floating towpath creaked as the ox plodded onward. Steering poles swished in the water.

“I know things that are much more valuable than any price you’d get for me on the slave block.”

The man’s voice was a near whisper. Had Ashes not been crouched beside Moss close to where the captive named Arrold, a man with hair and eyes of a similar dull brown, leaned against the bars and murmured to Barab, the slaver overseer, she might not have heard him.

Beside Ashes, Moss’s body tensed. Ashes placed her free hand on Moss’s arm, reinforcing the hold she already had on her hand.

“Don’t involve yourself,” Ashes whispered beside Moss’s ear. “Don’t put yourself at risk.”

The irony was not lost on Ashes that the attitude she’d just murmured to Moss was almost exactly the same excuse Moss had spent years using to keep Ashes away from the north. It was perhaps how they’d ended up in this cage to begin with.

We were only children.

“Don’t you bargain with these bastards, you selfish lout.”

Ashes and Moss were apparently not the only ones who’d overheard. Another man, Charak, shuffled closer to the bars and Arrold. Blue eyes shined out with ferocity from beneath a mop of wavy red hair.

The tension drained from Moss’s tensed body.

“Survival is not selfish.” Moss leaned closer toward Ashes, but she did not look into Ashes’s eyes.

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Barab glanced back at the cage behind him. From his belt dangled a key that he’d made a great show of using to lock the chains which held the cage closed. He flaunted it, sometimes, with a flourish and a sneer which showed even, white teeth.

In Barab’s hand, he held a long metal pole which ended in a blunted point. Without hesitation, he lifted the prod and delivered two quick, bruising blows between the cage’s bars. Arrold and Charak both grunted and stumbled back.

A woman with sunken brown eyes and lank black hair caught Charak before he could fall. Arrold avoided falling simply because there were too many captives crammed into the space and no room for falling. The woman set Charak back onto his feet. Everyone else simply looked away.

Ashes looked away, too. There was nothing she could do for any of them.

Avenge your people. Find the crown.

Ashes wasn’t sure, entirely, if the thoughts were her own guilt or if something outside herself teased the memories to the surface.

For twenty years, Ashes had stayed where she could be safe from the darkness with a voice that was not quite a voice that wriggled at the edges of her consciousness, where it remained little more than the sound of a single blade of grass in a field of other thoughts.

The slavers, though, had carried Ashes away from more than one kind of safety. They carried her, in a way, not only toward a bleak future but simultaneously toward a past, where a ritual filled with familiar and unfamiliar names and scents and that sense of overwhelming, bitter blackness had impressed itself into Ashes’s consciousness.

Keres, help us. Mother Death, have mercy on us.

Ashes sought simple comfort from the pragmatic goddess who’d given her a new name and in whose mindful living she’d spent the years since fleeing Lechat Leriand.

But a deep sense of foreboding prickled across the back of Ashes’s neck. Arcane symbols rippled at the edges of her vision, as had happened for the first time when Mother Reed cast her dark ritual and again more recently when the slavers took her and Moss. The hissing rattle which accompanied them didn’t alarm Ashes, for she knew it was not a real threat but only inside her own head.

Still, the sound and the symbols unsettled her.

As the light through the trees turned the color of flames, the slaves stowed their poles and dropped anchors from the barge. The ox was unhitched and cared for. A fire was built on the barge’s deck and a meal was prepared, filling the air with the infuriating scent of grease and warmth. As the slavers settled in to eat, the slaves served a gruel that tasted like mud and green scum to the captives and to themselves.

Ashes could not shake a growing sense of something waiting.

The fire slowly died to a silent, pitch darkness. Night clung to Ashes’ arms, a shawl of cooler but clammy air. Around her, the other captives settled onto the cage’s bare floor, pulling ragged clothing around themselves as best they could. Ashes huddled in her corner, bars pressing against her back, shoulder to shoulder with Moss, and dozed.

And she prayed, despite the alien darkness which whispered in response. Despite the fact that this darkness did not quite feel like Keres but instead something dangerous.

Perhaps, deep down, because it felt dangerous.

The storm stole upon them quietly at first. Silvery light flickered beyond the treetops. The faintest rumbles followed. Fal had taken first watch while the other slavers snored in their bedrolls. He swung his lantern as he peered periodically into the swamp and watched the water’s surface. His face, lit with a red glow, never turned toward the sky.

The heavens opened, and a deluge fell upon them like an attacking army. Typically, rain in the swamp fell in drips and patters, the trees providing partial protection from the falling drops. This rain slashed through sheltering branches with a driving ferocity, tearing smaller branches and flinging them into the lake, as well.

Fal shouted first, and then the rest of the slavers. Around Ashes, other captives woke with startled gasps. Moss jerked awake and sat bolt upright. Her hand moved toward her hip, where her whip would have been had it not been taken when they were captured.

No weapon would help against this, anyhow.

Lightning blazed, a blue-white brilliance that sizzled through the air. Thunder boomed simultaneously. The cage’s bars rattled, and the sound vibrated in Ashes’ chest. A fierce cold wind drove needle-sharp rain into her exposed flesh.

Instinctively, Ashes fumbled to her feet. But even as she did, she curled in on herself, covering her head with her arms. Moss stood, too, and her arm encircled Ashes.

Ashes wanted to hide her face, but she wanted more than that to see. She leaned into Moss’s embrace, but she tipped her head and squinted into the rain.

The storm-battered swamp water rolled, and the barge rolled with it. The barge slammed against the extent of the anchor ropes holding it with so much force that the cage slid a few inches across its surface. Moss let go of Ashes and grabbed a bar to keep from being knocked over. Ashes caught herself against Moss.

Fal stood at the barge’s edge and held aloft his lantern. Covered, its flame had not been immediately extinguished, but only the faintest shimmer of red light emerged through the falling rain. With the impact of the barge against its restraints, Fal stumbled. Pinwheeling, he let the lantern go. It broke the water’s surface. That single crimson pinpoint glowed a moment more, and then the swamp swallowed it.

In that breath of a moment when the lantern’s illumination lingered, movement writhed beneath the water’s choppy surface.

In Ashes’s chest, a deliciously, terrifyingly tight ball of hope and fear formed.