Molly thought of Hob, and before she realized it, she felt herself nodding.

  The barge crept towards the West bank of the river, and Molly pushed the pole against the muddy bottom and struggled to stop it, but it weighed too much for her to change its direction. “You need to throw some of this junk off the barge,” the General said. “And lighten your load.”

  Molly threw the rust-metal and the strange blue material and everything the Zabbas had dug from the 'Fills into the river until the deck was clear. By daybreak, all that remained on the Zabbas' barge was Molly and her ghosts.

  Chapter Nine

  Wrecks' Landing

  Molly passed a few lash-raft barges traveling up river pulled by jerkline mule hooves pushing against the bank's soft mud. “More Zabbas going out to the 'Fills to dig,” Vora's ghost said. They stared, and no doubt they were trying to write the story in their minds of how a little girl came to float downriver alone on an empty raft, but none of the Zabbas tried to stop her.

  When night fell, Molly drifted in darkness for several more hours. After a series of shallow bends, the river's once star-peppered meander pointed right at a bright green glow over the horizon and reflected nothing else. The raft floated down the lurid vein into a place unlike anywhere Molly had ever seen.

  She saw the ships' towers first, rising high in the night-haze like squared castles. Then she saw the broken hulls underneath them, all bathed in the gas-green glow that Molly had come to know as the color of burning methane. The city's earthen walls were a silhouetted against the light, and floating above them, the eerie green-lit ships sailed high on the rooftops.

  “Ah,” Fin Singh's ghost said, suddenly next to Molly where she stood in awe of the sight rising over the river. “Wrecks' Landing, its gaslight glow, and its famous four ships – tossed inland by one of Kitty Hawk's Gargantuans, they say, to become the heart of a new city. Each of the ships is a castle-keep that houses one of the four gangs that fight the others to rule this stinking place. The Red Hand, the Blood Dowsers, the Dragons, and the Sons of Samson. They're all much weaker than the noble families, of course, but their struggle is not so different. Wherever one goes, the nature of men is the same, and the strongest will rule.”

  Molly hoped Vora's city wouldn't be like that. She didn't ask Fin Singh; she knew what he'd say.

  The dark walls of the city rose steadily higher as the shining, green river carried them past dark mountains of scrap. On either bank, the Zabbas' fruits of the 'Fills were piled in jagged tangle-heaps that rose up over dozens of lash-raft barges moored along the banks. The braying of their jerklines cut the air.

  When the river carried her around another bend and through a wide-mouthed gap in the earthen walls, the city swallowed her, and Molly swam in its gas-lighted glow. She watched the flickering green flames dance atop the lamp posts along the river roads on either bank. The brick buildings there were only two stories high, but they seemed to loom over her like eerie, flattened, four and six-eyed faces, underlit and glowering.

  Behind them were the high-rising hulls and the towers of the great ships that dominated the city.

  It was night, but there were people everywhere on the river's banks and the docks that jutted out into the river. “It's time to abandon ship,” Fin Singh's ghost said. “Jump into the water and swim for the right hand bank.”

  The water near the banks and the docks was choked with river rats, but the swarm parted for Molly. Their greasy-furred snouts made tiny, v-shaped wakes pointing away from Molly as she swam to the muddy banks and walked out of the river and into the streets of Wrecks' Landing.

  The stink was powerful and it was everywhere. Movement and sound were everywhere, too. The din of shouting voices, jerkline hooves, and wagon wheels was a frenzied music that drove Molly to run without knowing why. She became a streaking, witch-sped blur that ran down wide, crowded streets and narrow, dark alleys where the gaslight's glow didn't reach. Even in the quieter spots, the air around her thumped and pounded with a sound that couldn't be heard, but was felt in the nerves. It made her run even faster.

  Molly ran until she reached the edge of a broad and deep, gas-lighted night-market packed with people and carts and savory smells. There were men there who parted the crowd like she'd parted the river's rats. They had bloody hand prints on their chests and their backs and swords sash-tied at their waists – crude and cruel machetes – flesh-hackers. “The Red Hand,” Fin Singh's ghost whispered to her.

  Molly saw that other people at the food carts paid with coin, but not the Red Hand. They took what they wanted, and as they swaggered through the night-market, it was obvious that the people there feared them.

  Vora's ghost appeared in the crowd next to the Red Hands. She pointed to one of the underlit ship towers that poked over the tops of brick buildings on the edge of the night-market square and said, “There, Molly. Follow the tower of the Rekki Maru. Go there.”

  Molly followed the tower down wending streets and dank alleys. The tower Vora pointed at was always visible over the low buildings, and it finally led her to a curving, metal wall that rose over fifty feet above and blocked her path. It was the scarred and torn hull of a great ship, and the tower she'd followed loomed above it.

  Looking up at the hull and the fierce faces peering down at her from the deck high above made Molly fearful. The ship's sides were torn in places, and the darkness inside the rip-torn rents was profound. Only after staring into one for a full minute did she make out the faint, bluish glow inside the hull. Every sense Molly had told her to fear the ship in front of her and to run somewhere else – anywhere else.

  Fin Singh's ghost appeared, gestured to the great ship with a sweeping hand, and said, “This is the Rekki Maru. Before The End she sailed across the seas, carrying the black-blood of the earth to and from faraway lands. Now, her tower houses Uncle Ho's Red Hand, and her claw-torn hull shelters have-nots. This is where you will sleep tonight.” He pointed to the dark-filled, jagged tear in the hull nearest the ship's bow end and said, “In there.”

  “Is it safe?” Molly asked, sniffing the air.

  “It's the best place for you to go,” he said. “I know a great deal about this city and what happens here. It's all part of my plan.”

  “It doesn't smell safe,” Molly said, wrinkling her nose up at the rank and dank wafting out of the bow end's interior.

  Vora's ghost appeared. Her smile had no warmth, but Molly was still happy to see it. “The interior appears to be coated with a bioluminescent bacteria, Molly,” she explained. “It's very pretty. Like the moonlight always shines there. Go inside, Molly. It's important that you go inside. You can rest there.” Vora's ghost smiled at her again and vanished. When Molly turned to look, Fin Singh's ghost was gone, too.

  The bow end had an awful smell. It was desperation and fear, and it was far worse than the simple stink of the huddled humanity within. The bodies sheltering inside were curled up on the dirt floor and on the multiple levels of platformed bamboo scaffolding that rose up the sides of the hull. A narrow channel down the very center was open from the floor to the ceiling where it glowed like someone had mixed the moon into a paint and brushed it thinly there.

  It looked less crowded nearer the front of the ship. She walked between the sleeping bodies and over them when she had to. In the very tip of the bow section, against the most forward bulkhead where the walls narrowed around her on left and right, Molly found a yard-wide, open space where she could rest.

  For a few moments, she thought she might not be able to stand the smell of the place enough to sleep there. Then, she heard a faint, but sharp sound as her head tilted back and the bone wreath met the metal wall. Molly dreamed of fresh air.

  Chapter Ten

  The Twin-Horned Hero

  “And you're sure the girl can execute our plan?”

  “She's more than capable.”

  “And you're certain the Stitchlife is here?”

  “The bioluminescent bacteria on the ceiling of the ship's interior confirms it.”

  “It confirms a Stitchlife was here once, not that she still is.”

  “If you had her, would you let her go?”

  *****

  Molly awoke to shouting and kicking at her feet. “Pay up, freeloader!” the voice bellowed. “Pay Farber! Nobody sleeps here for free!” A hulking, scar-faced brute towered over her. The people to the left and right had risen and moved away as far as they could. “Pay up!” Farber shouted, kicking at her feet some more. “You sneaked by me last night, but I see you now, and it's time to pay up!” Molly pulled her legs and feet back from his kicking, and when she did, he moved closer. There was a metal wall behind her, and a towering fury in front of her.

  “What? Why?” she asked, squinting from his stink. It was anger and liquor and tooth-rot, and it was a worse stink than the whole bow-end combined.

  “Why? Because I'm Farber, and this is my hold! From there,” he pointed at an imaginary line a third of the way down the bow's length, “to where your ass is sitting. You sleep here, then you pay Farber. Now pay up!”

  “I don't have anything,” Molly said.

  “How about that fancy, little half-crown you're wearing?” he said. “That's a pretty something. Gimme.” His hand reached out to take Vora's wreath from Molly's head.

  Molly felt the same cold calm wash over her that she'd felt when she killed Hob. Then the world slowed, and the General was there, sitting next to her against the bulkhead. Farber's grubby, meat-fingered hand that had been reaching out so quickly to snatch the wreath now hung extended in the space between them. He was frozen like Hob and the raiders had been in her coma dreams. Like the Zabbas and the bloodhounds had been in the 'Fills. But not frozen, she reminded herself, just much slower.

  The General's eyes looked up and down at the man looming over Molly and finally rested on the man's outstretched hand. “He offers you the arm,” The General said. “Take it. Grab the wrist in your right hand.” Molly's right hand reached up and caught Farber's wrist. “Twist it,” the General said, “so that his elbow points up and to the outside.” She did it so quickly that Farber's muscles couldn't react fast enough to resist, and all his strength was useless. “Good girl,” the General said. “Now bring your left arm up so your fist points to the sky and your elbow points to the earth.” She did, and the memory of how the General taught her to break Hob's bones was fresh in her mind. “Twist your torso,” he said, “and smash your forearm into the brute's elbow as hard as you can.”

  To Farber, Molly was a break-bone blur. He felt a tug and a twist, and in nearly the same instant, his elbow shot hot jets of pain through his entire body. He looked down to see it bent the wrong way and he screamed and howled in pain and fright.

  “Eight pounds of pressure, properly applied,” the General said. “Shall we try the right knee next?”

  Molly nodded and said, “Sixteen pounds.”

  As Farber crawled off on his unbroken side like a whimpering worm, the frightened people in the bow section looked at Molly with their mouths agape. They blocked the way out, and Molly wondered if they'd try to put her in the stocks until she looked into their outstretched hands and saw how they held out offerings. Coins. Scraps of dried fish and salted pork. One of them held out a cask of liquor and said that this was all he had and he'd have more tomorrow, and if she let him stay, then he'd be grateful.

  The crowd was offering her the money and food and liquor that Farber was going to take. One monster had replaced another; Farber's territory was hers now. Molly didn't want it. She pushed away everything the crowd offered her. “Take the money and the food,” Fin Singh's ghostly construct said. He smiled at her from the filthy crowd in his perfect, unwrinkled suit. “You earned it, Molly, and more importantly, you need it.”

  *****

  Molly wandered East where the walls of the city went right down into the sea. Vora's ghost explained that the sea had already risen to take back the very Eastern part of the city, and that eventually it would take all of it back, along with a goodly portion of the 'Fills.

  The East end of the city's North and South walls had long ago collapsed into surf breakers and created a harbor with gentle waves. Between the ruins of drowned buildings, fisherman stood on the prows of their rowboats, waiting with barb-tipped spears held high to impale the darting silver fishes below.

  Molly had never seen the ocean, and as she stood in the tide-soaked mud that had once been the city's Eastern market, she was transfixed. She watched the hypnotic surf break over the crumbled walls and all the while, the boats and the fisherman rose and fell in lulling rhythms.

  The wind blew in from the sea, and nothing ever smelled so fresh, so inviting. Molly made sure that the wreath was still fixed firmly to her head, that her pockets were sealed up with her sheathed knife inside, and then ran across the salty black mud and splashed into the water.

  Hours later, Molly sat on a broken wall only a few feet into the water and let the sun beat down and dry her. She was poking her pruned fingers and watching the salt crust on the skin of her arm when Vora's ghost appeared and told her that she had to return to the Rekki Maru. Molly didn't ask why.

  *****

  In the night-market, she used the coins from the Rekki Maru to buy green noodles mixed with a meat she guessed was rat. She had two full bowls, and they were gone in moments – in as many bites as breaths.

  When she found herself walking back towards the tower and the steel wall of the Rekki Maru's hull, it rose higher in front of her with each step she took. She felt the urge to flee again, but Vora's ghost appeared at the end of every street and alley, silently pointing her towards the ship. Molly grew more and more sure that the ghosts in the wreath knew what was going to happen when they sent her there the night before and that they knew what was about to happen now.

  Molly's stride shortened as she approached the claw-torn fissure in the Rekki Maru's hull. “It's not safe,” she whispered.

  The General appeared next to her and said, “You're right to be cautious, Molly, but don't turn and run; you fought Farber to draw this threat to you.”

  “I don't want to hurt anyone,” she said.

  “I,” he said, letting the word hang alone. And then, “Don't Want.” After a pause, he told her, “There are more important things than those words, Molly. I think you know that. This is the nature of sacrifice.”

  The General told her to wait so Molly waited and watched the claw-torn rent in the Rekki Maru's hull and tried to picture the Gargantuan beast that dropped it there. Minutes later, she heard faint scuffing in the dirt and asked, “Who's there?” The answer to her question formed itself, first blurry in the darkness, then sharp-edged, green-lit, and clear. A single figure stepped out into the gaslight. Then there was another. And another. A dozen of them spilled out of the dark rip in the hull to spread themselves around her in a grinning half-ring of malice.

  Molly stepped backwards to keep them all on one side of her.

  They weren't more than fifteen or sixteen. They moved with youth's lithe grace and bristled with arrogance. Instead of the Red Hand's machetes they had clubs – short, weighty, bone breakers they flipped in the air to spin once before the handles hit their palms with sharp smacks.

  The one at the center was tall and mean-faced, curly-haired and pockmarked. He shook his head and laughed. “Farber didn't tell us you were such a runt.” The rest of them laughed along. “But don't think that's going to make any difference, little rat. Don't know how, but you messed Farber up bad, and Farber operated under our protection. I'm Holt, and these chuckle-heads are the Bow Enders. Farber was our collector. He paid us daily. He was part of our Biz, and the Bow Enders protect their Biz.”

  “Leave me alone,” Molly said. “I don't wan-”

  “We wanted to do this inside so the whole bow end can see, but I figure out here is almost as good. Just make sure you scream real loud so they can all hear.”

  Holt nodded, and the two Bow Enders at the tips of the semi-circle closed on Molly from the sides. They meant to break her bones while the rest of them watched.

  Molly moved witch-sped and time slowed to seep out in a trickle. The Bow Enders were statue-still all around her, and the clubs they'd been flipping end over end now hung in the air above their hands and lazily rotated.

  The General appeared next to Molly, grim-faced and sober. “Draw your blade,” he said.

  “But why?” Molly asked. “I don't need to ki-”

  “Look,” He pointed up to the top-deck high above where a dozen ghoulish, underlit faces peered over the edge to watch the fight. “The Red Hand is watching. Tomorrow you will meet their warlord Uncle Ho, but to do that, you must show that you have Power. Kill the Bow Enders and show your power, Molly. Do it. For Sugar Music to succeed, the Bow Enders must die.”

  “But I can't just kill them; they haven't done anything.”

  “They have. They're gangsters and thugs, extortionists and murderers. And they'll do worse. The world will be a better place without them.”

  “But that doesn't mea-”

  “That's why you killed the first time isn't it? Yes, of course it was to protect your brother, but it was also because you decided Hob needed to go. He was a dangerous boy and he was getting bigger. I know why you chose to act, Molly, and I also know you meant to kill him.” Guilt and self-loathing flashed through Molly like a wave of fire. The General saw it and smiled. “Hob was just one sadistic imp, but these are blooded criminals. They're far worse than he was. Don't pretend killing them bothers you so much, Molly. And don't look so shocked at what I've said. I've been in your mind; I know what you're capable of. I know all about the cold calm in your heart and how it lets you do things other people couldn't imagine. Don't be ashamed of what you are, Molly. Use it.”