“Down low, Daness.” A man also stepped toward the bars, choosing a corner and crouching low before giving them a merciless shaking. Ashes recognized him as Arrold, the man who’d earlier tried to wheedle special treatment from Barab. “Where the chains hold it to the barge, there may be weak points.”

“Wait. Here.” This new voice whispered, but with urgency. Ashes glanced behind her into the cage, but only Charak and Meleri and the blonde-haired woman stood there. None of them were looking back at Ashes. Instead, they stared wide-eyed toward the cage’s door.

Hope fluttered anew into Ashes’s throat. She sat back on her heels and followed their gazes. Beside her, Moss rose from a crouch and also stared.

One of the slaves stumbled through the reeds outside the cage. His hair was black and greasy and Ashes thought he’d been working one of the poles. He clutched something in his hand, something metallic and elongated.

The key.

The slave fell against the cage and fumbled with the large metal lock holding fast the chains which in turn secured the cage’s door.

“You have to help me.” The slave’s voice trembled. “You have to take me with you.”

Charak stepped up to the door from the inside, reached through, and grasped the chains to hold them steady for the slave.

“Of course. We’ll all get out of here together.”

“Those of us who still can,” Meleri murmured.

Ashes stood alongside Moss and clutched at her arm. It occurred to her, finally, that the cage being opened was only the first step of her journey home. Surviving the swamp and navigating it to get there would be another story altogether.

Assuming that’s what you should do.

The darkness to the north whispered otherwise.

The lock clicked, and the chains fell away. The door wanted to wedge against the hummock the barge had come to rest against, but the slave and Charak and Moss wrestled and shoved until it opened enough.

The surviving slaves stumbled out of their captivity and onto the spongy earth of the hummock, huddling together like dazed livestock too startled by sudden escape to do more than stare uncertainly at each other. Reeds slashed at Ashes’s mostly-bare arms, and mud dragged at her feet.

The dead remained behind inside the cage, accusing without speaking.

I was just a child. How could I have stopped them then? How could I now?

Nothing whatsoever remained on the barge’s deck except the cage itself. The poles were gone, the supplies were gone, and all the slavers and slaves save the one who’d freed them were gone.

“How did you get the key?” Arrold’s gaze scanned back and forth even though he addressed the slave who’d freed them, as though he tried to take in the entirety of their surroundings all at once.

“I took it from his body.” The slave turned and lifted his arm, pointing toward the base of a thick-rooted cedar.

The grasses were mashed, but nothing was there.

The slave’s eyes widened. He whirled the rest of the way around and stepped backward.

The backward step almost saved his life.

Almost.

From behind the tree, Barab’s massive form loomed, ghostly pale in the night. The blunted point of the prod he carried whistled straight forward, spear-like and aimed toward the slave’s stomach.

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The slave’s back arched desperately. He howled and lashed out blindly with the large cage key. Barab turned his head to one side, and the key slashed his cheek instead of his eyes. A red line welled, but it could not have done enough harm to be more than a nuisance.

Or an incitement.

Blunted though the prod’s point was, it was still a point. The power of Barab’s blow drove it into the slave’s stomach. The slave’s back arched even more violently. Barab yanked the prod free, and the slave fell, gasping, onto the ground. Blood streaked the grass. The key tumbled from dead fingers.

What would most likely happen next unfurled easily in Ashes’s imagination. Barab could not, of course, hope to round up all of them at once. But only he bore a weapon.

“Run.” Moss pushed at Ashes’s arm.

Ashes remained frozen in place.

“Run!” Moss growled the command. “Get yourself out of here!”

But Moss made no move to flee, herself. And the two of them were not the only people still standing before the murderous slaver.

Half of them or more were dead already. Maybe that was Ashes’s fault, maybe not. But in the frenzy of the moment, as the greasy-haired slave threw himself desperately at his master with only a key for weapon, another moment replayed in a flash, of a priestess pushing two frightened girls into the murky waters of Keres’s Embrace, while the screams of the loved ones they left behind fell to the murderous weapons of the invading Vithtak.

One frightened girl. Moss is never afraid.

Even as Ashes thought it, Moss stepped forward, angling her body between the slaver and Ashes. A fear much deeper and colder than that for her own life sliced into Ashes’s gut.

She would die for me. I can’t allow it.

For most of her life, Ashes and Moss had been known by the locals as swamp witches. For the most part that had only to do with knowing the right plants and preparations, but sometimes situations called for smoke and mirrors and knowing the right things to say. They had, over the years, discovered that Ashes had a much greater knack for those moments than straightforward Moss.

Now, Ashes drew herself up to her full height and lifted one hand, allowing her long fingers to wave in a sinuous way. She stepped up alongside Moss.

Barab looked up from the fallen slave. He lifted the prod.

“The dark Mother has already fed you a taste of her displeasure.” Power boomed from Ashes’s voice. In truth, she had no idea who that dark god might be or whether she existed at all. Ashes did not step forward, closer to the slaver and his weapon, as she spoke. There was brave, and then there was foolish. “Would you truly risk drawing her anger again?”

Barab’s black-eyed gaze shifted toward Ashes. A snarl curled the overseer’s lip.

He will not listen. All Ashes had done was draw his ire in her direction.

Which means Moss will die all the faster for me.

From the edge of Ashes’s vision, another figure drove toward Barab. Daness, tall and thin, ran at Barab with her arms extended. Her hands closed one around each end of the prod Barab wielded. With startling strength, she pressed the prod toward the slaver, levering it to shove him backward. She slammed him into the tree behind him and pinned him there with his own weapon. His breath whuffed with the force of it.

Movement happened elsewhere around Ashes. To her left, the blonde young woman had dropped to her knees and dug frantically at the water’s edge, as if looking for something to use as a weapon.

Anything. Ashes glanced around, as well. Only reeds and grasses appeared, and none of those would do any good.

Barab roared like an angered beast. With his back planted against the tree, he leveraged all his weight into a hearty shove. His arms thrust forward, the prod between them. Daness lost her grip and stumbled backward.

The blonde young woman stood. She made an odd sound choking sound.

Sobs. She’s crying.

In her hands, she clutched handfuls of muck. With a furious scream, the girl flung both hands forward, and mud splattered Barab’s face. He drew back his head and closed his eyes and spat. He blinked away the mud, the whites of his eyes gleaming against the contrast of his dirtied face.

Two more figures flew into the fray. Charak and Meleri fell upon Barab with their fists, dodging around the prod before he could regain full control of it. The impact of their desperation-driven blows thumped, and Barab grunted. He doubled over. The prod loosened in his grasp.

All the while, half-noticed symbols drifted at the edges of Ashes’s vision, as if telling a story Ashes could not comprehend.

Moss darted forward and snatched the prod from Barab’s grasp. Barab shoved Charak to one side and reached around to grab Meleri by the hair. Moss reversed the prod, aiming the point toward Barab. With a trembling roar that nearly exceeded Barab’s earlier one, Moss slammed the prod’s point forward into Barab’s stomach.

The overseer screamed. He let go of Meleri and snatched at the prod with both hands. Still yelling with fury, Moss leaned harder against the weapon. Barab slammed once more into the tree. Blood welled from the corners of his mouth.

Moss pulled free the prod and drew it back for another blow. But Barab’s body slid down the cedar’s trunk, leaving a dark smear on the bark. He fell against the roots and lay still.