Moonlight faded as the moon set, and then a rosy hue warmed the trees and water, resurrecting it to colorful life with the dawn. By contrast, what the light of day revealed was far less pretty than the shimmering greens of deep leaves and silvery water.

Ashes woke from a dream of shadows and whispers to the pangs of hunger gnawing around her ribs and the rustling sounds of others already up and about.

The barge clung to land with the one corner where it had gone aground. The cage remained on its deck, and within lay the bodies of those who’d died the night before. The cool scent of rain had shifted already toward the sickly scent of decay. The slave who’d died for opening the cage sprawled beside Barab’s corpse. The heavy scent of coagulating blood rose from them both.

“We can’t just leave them.” Meleri flapped a helpless gesture at the somber scene. “Not like this.”

“We could sink the cage. If we could get it free from the chains.” Charak stepped forward, craning his neck to look closer.

“We won’t get it free from the chains.” Arrold spoke with cool matter-of-factness. “We tried once to break the bars and failed. We’re no better equipped to break iron links. It would be more efficient to carry them each individually out.”

“We have no anchors.” Ashes instinctively supplied the information, despite how long it had been since she’d served in the Church of Cycles. “They will float free of the embrace.”

Arrold merely shifted his gaze and peered steadily at Ashes. Charak turned his head, and a puzzled furrow crossed his brow.

“We served as acolytes in the service of Mother Death.” Moss snapped out the words as if they were a challenge. “In our childhood. There are things you don’t forget.”

Arrold stared a moment longer. Then he shrugged. “Then we’ll find a way to get the entire cage free. Those Vithtak daggers, who has them?”

And so Meleri and Charak and Arrold took turns sawing at the wooden bars where the chains bound them to the barge. When they’d weakened the wood enough, Daness wrenched and kicked at them until they broke. It was a long, messy process that left the daggers dulled, but they had time, now. Moss carried the dead slave who’d made that possible into the cage and set him gently with the others.

Barab’s body, they left exactly where and as it was, for the swamp to take and turn into something more useful than he had been in life.

While the others worked, Ashes took the pale girl, Kestrel, and taught her which plants they could eat—arrowroot, cattails, reed grass—and showed her how to dig their roots loose before pulling them from the marshy ground. The two of them tramped over the closest vicinity to the others, and by the time the cage was freed, they had gathered enough to sustain them all for the time being. The roots would be crunchy and a little bitter, but filling.

“You could say the last prayer for them.” Arrold stood beside the cage with one hand resting on a bar and stared inside. When no one answered immediately, he turned and looked at Ashes. “If you remember it?”

Something about the way he said it made Ashes wonder if he’d cared more than he let on about the people who’d died. Had she seen him speaking to anyone else during their captivity? She couldn’t remember. She’d been thinking only of herself and Moss.

“I can try.” Ashes padded barefoot over the spongy ground until she stood beside Arrold.

Ashes glanced toward Moss as she walked. Moss frowned. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest. But when Ashes placed her hand against the cage bar, Moss reached from behind Ashes and laid her fingers against the wood, as well.

“Keres, Mother of Death, Quiet of Night and Shadow of Day, be with your children now. As light fades to darkness, open your arms. With life lived and rest earned, the cycle turns. Hold them to your breast and welcome them home.”

When the prayer was done, all of them, even slight-framed Kestrel, placed their shoulders against the cage’s bars and shoved. The cage bumped and rasped and caught against the barge’s deck, but they persisted, until finally the cage tipped. They pushed again, through the soft mud until the swamp’s shallows gave way to the lake’s depths. The cage and its somber cargo splashed and slid into the water and eventually sank.

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They travelled south, Charak and Meleri leading the way and all of them watching and listening, for more slavers and for Kestrel’s search party but also for the usual dangers.

Banks of low-lying fog persisted, thickest over the open lake. They waded through water that came sometimes up to Ashes’s waist but more often only her knees, prodding ahead in the mud as they walked with sticks they’d stripped from the trees. Negotiating the swamp was an ingrained process for Ashes—test with the stick, move slowly, place her foot carefully, and make sure the footing would hold before shifting her full weight onto it.

Other times they walked over boggy patches of damp mud covered by soft matted grasses. With the damp and humidity clinging to Ashes’s skin came also the scents of sunshine and sweat and algae, that overall semi-rotting but earthy rich aroma that was home.

Along with cautiously feeling their way forward with their footing, they tracked any ripples or shadowy movements beneath the water’s surface. They watched for any s-shaped waves which might mean a swimming snake. They watched for the slightly purer green with scale patterns which might indicate cerbho instead of just mud. They watched for clustered vegetation which might be nests to avoid and for bushes which needed to be tapped with a stick before wandering too close.

And while they watched, they also listened, for the slappy splash which might mean something slipping into the water with them and for the whine of an insect which might penetrate the barricade of mud with which they slathered themselves and bite or sting anyhow.

Moss walked alongside Ashes, close but not talking. In part that was customary practice. It was easier to listen for warning sounds if you weren’t speaking over the top of them, and Ashes and Moss had many years to be comfortable with each other’s silent company.

Ashes couldn’t help feeling, though, that today’s silence was cautious rather than comfortable. She felt the decades-old ritual-induced presence still, although it had fallen as silent and waiting as Moss.

I will have to choose. Someday, I will have to choose.

She should have, of course, chosen many years ago. But even knowing that, Ashes couldn’t give voice to her thoughts, so she remained silent, as well.

What I’ve always done when I don’t know what to do—or do but don’t want to do it. I leave it to Moss.

The others with them travelled in equal quiet. Charak and Meleri sometimes murmured or signaled to each other. Kestrel walked with a stubbornly-lifted chin, but her breathing sometimes came more raggedly, as if she were unaccustomed to walking such long distances. Ashes noticed that Daness and sometimes even Arrold offered gentle corrections and encouragements to the girl.

“It’s all right,” Kestrel murmured at one point. “I’m walking, at least. Not in a cage.”

Toward midday, Charak stopped and lifted his hand. Meleri stopped beside him. As the rest of them straggled up closer, Meleri looked over her shoulder and whispered, “Listen.”

Ahead but off to the left, something let out a cry. Ashes couldn’t make out what kind of bird it was. Another cry answered, and comprehension ran like cold rain through her.

Not birds. People.

With Charak and Meleri leading the way, they crept closer. As they did, the voices grew louder—shouting, Ashes thought. Other sounds emerged, of wood slamming against wood, or perhaps even metal. Charak once more held up his hand. His jaw tightened, and Meleri’s lip curled.

Another shout rang out. This time, Ashes recognized the lilt of the accent.

Vithtak.

But other words drifted through the reeds and across the water, in a more rounded cadence that felt familiar to Ashes’s ears.

“Keep them pinned down!”

“We need to see better.” Without awaiting a response, Charak crept forward.

Meleri followed, of course, and Daness after that. Moss’s frown carved lines around her mouth, but the just-so crinkle of her brows spoke of worry to Ashes.

“They might need help?” Kestrel said, but she glanced between Ashes and Arrold as she spoke.

“They might be able to help us in return.” Arrold waded toward a patch of shallower water and reeds which Charak had just reached. “It could even be your people.”

Kestrel hesitated another moment and then went after Arrold.

Moss followed them, and Ashes followed her.

Calf-deep water became ankle-deep and then simply mud. The seven of them drew up in a clustered line into the reeds, crouching low and moving with extra caution.

A stretch of open, scum-covered water away from their vantage point, a patch of relatively dry land had become the site of a skirmish. A half dozen Vithtak, wearing tunics and deep-cowled cloaks of a dark burgundy, faced off against what Ashes at first counted as eight or so swamp dwellers in green-gray clothing.

The Meres-folk held simple spears, while the Vithtak wielded heavy swords and polearms. One of the Vithtak hung back from the others, and the quilting of her armor sparkled with gold thread.

The fighters had faced off in something like a line, with the Vithtak to the left and Meres-folk to the right. Three Vithtak with fat iron swords faced off against five opponents with spears. Behind the five, three more held their spears at the ready.

On the Vithtak side, two soldiers stood behind their front line. Polearms leaned against their shoulders, their butts propped on the ground, but they wielded slings. One let loose at the end of a wind-up arc, and a flash of metal spun out from his hand. It flew high over the heads of all the Meres-folk fighting and into the trees beyond, where open water wound between the trunks of leaning, rough-barked cedar and swamp oaks.