Tam and Brig and I spend the time gathering all the kindling we can find—dry brush and branches and leaves.

  “How will we haul all of this to the raiders’ village?” Tam asks, looking at the piles.

  “We’ll use your bag,” I say. “And if we take off our shirts, we can use those to bundle some of it, too.” Tam blinks, and I roll my eyes. We all have undershirts on beneath our button-ups and it’s ridiculous to worry about propriety at a time like this.

  “It’s going to take a while and a lot of trips to get it all over there,” I say. I didn’t want to gather kindling much closer to the raiders’ village—what if one of them saw or heard us, now that the dredge’s noise is fading slightly as it churns farther up the river? “We’ll need to start hauling as soon as Naomi and Eira are back.”

  We work in silence, dragging sticks into piles as if we’re setting a multitude of campfires. Brig makes his way over closer to me. “That was a nice show of democracy earlier,” he says, loading up his arms with fallen branches. “When you had us vote.”

  “It was, wasn’t it,” I say. “I’m sure it caught you by surprise.”

  “Not really.” Brig’s voice is deep, and when he keeps it low it’s almost the pitch of the dredge. I have to lean closer to hear. He smells like apples and pine, clean, in spite of swimming through the river and sleeping on the ground.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you want everyone invested in the plan if we do it,” he says. “You want us all to have ownership so we try to make it succeed.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “And, speaking of that, I have a question for you.”

  Brig shifts the load of wood in his arms. “Go ahead.”

  “How do you know Eira?”

  “We worked together on an assignment,” he says.

  “For the Admiral?”

  “Yes,” Brig says, and now there is some emotion in his voice. Is it—embarrassment?

  “What was the assignment?” I ask.

  “It had to do with art.” Brig’s keen to be finished with the conversation; he looks over his shoulder at the other piles of sticks almost longingly. I think of Eira and the work she does, and suddenly I have it.

  “The mural,” I say. “Is that it?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I’m half of the men in the picture.”

  “What?” I’m not sure what he means. “The top half or the bottom half?”

  Brig laughs, for real. “I mean that half of the men in that mural are modeled after me.”

  “Really?” I ask. I suppose it could be true. The bodies are only placeholders; Eira is copying the usual style of figures in murals. And when I think about Brig’s body, he is that kind of tall, lithe, athletic figure that is one of the prototypes for perfection. Call had that body type. The Admiral has the other—thick, muscular, bullish, strong. I wonder if he is the other half of the mural, in addition to being the ruler of it, the one standing on top of the ship.

  “Poe! Brig!” Tam calls out to us in a half whisper. “Look.”

  Naomi’s and Eira’s figures slip through the trees in the late-afternoon sun. I stride through the brush as best I can to meet them.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” Naomi says, when we can speak without calling out and alerting the raiders. “We were slow on the way back, thanks to me.” Her face looks grayer than it did this morning.

  “Let’s check out that wound,” I say.

  “I don’t think we’re going to like what we see,” says Naomi. Tam reaches into his bag for an antiseptic solution he brought for cleaning his hands before cooking; we sterilized Naomi’s wound with it last night. Eira rubs some on her hands, and then begins to unwrap the strip of cloth she tied around Naomi’s arm when she dressed the wound.

  “What’s happening with the dredge?” I ask, as Eira’s fingers gently pull at the material and Naomi braces herself against the pain.

  “It’s moving,” Naomi says. “At about the same pace we had it going. The mining gear sounds fine. The armor’s still not working.” She draws in her breath as Eira peels away the fabric closest to the wound. It’s not septic—I’ve seen a couple of injuries like that on the yard, when people wanted to keep working and didn’t get the proper care—but it doesn’t look good. The cut is ragged, and the edges ooze blood and pus.

  “Dammit,” says Naomi, looking down at it.

  “I’ll clean it this time,” says Tam. “I’ve had to dress injuries before, in the kitchen.”

  Tam gets to work and Naomi looks up at me. “Captain,” she says. “There’s something you need to know.” Eira nods. She looks drawn, too. And I remember—there was something Tam wanted to tell me as well. But he doesn’t give any sign that he wants to bring it up again. He’s focused on Naomi’s injury.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The raiders killed one of the crew.” Naomi winces as Tam swipes the antiseptic solution across her wound.

  My stomach sinks. But I’m not surprised. It’s what they promised the first time, when they killed Call. Tell your Admiral that we’re done with you taking from us. Tell him this is the last time we leave anyone alive.

  I knew they were lying when they said they’d let us live if we surrendered.

  “Could you tell who it was?” I ask.

  “No,” Naomi says. “A man. Brown hair. But his face was all battered.” She keeps her gaze firmly averted from her arm as Tam cleans the wound. “The body was in bad shape.”

  “We found it when we were making our way along the shore,” Eira says. “It was downriver from the dredge.”

  “It was tangled in the reeds along the river,” Naomi says. “It looked like the raiders got rid of it through the tailings stacker.” Tam is wrapping her arm up again and she nods to him in thanks.

  “We couldn’t tell if he’d been killed before he went through the stacker, or if he was crushed under the weight of the tailings,” Eira says.

  “Maybe he was trying to escape.” Tam finishes tying up the wound. His face is grim. From the way Naomi’s injury looks? Or because he’s realizing how lucky he was that the raiders didn’t get the ship started when he was slipping away through the stacker?

  Or was that luck? Is anything he said about his escape true?

  “Could you tell for certain that he was one of ours?” I think of the men on the ship who had brown hair. The chaplain, Corwin, who else . . .

  “He was wearing our uniform,” Naomi says, “but no boots.”

  That seems to argue against escape. Why would someone try to go out through the tailings stacker barefoot if they planned to make a run for it?

  The raiders must have taken the boots before they disposed of the body. They’re scavengers, after all.

  I grab Tam’s bag and start stuffing sticks into it, my fingers stiff with fury. “How long had he been dead?”

  “Not long,” Eira says. “There was no sign that animals had gotten to him.” She winces at the way the words sound. “And he wasn’t too waterlogged.”

  “What did you do with the body?”

  “We left it,” Naomi says. “We didn’t want to draw attention. And we didn’t have time to dig a proper grave.”

  That was the only decision, really, but I still hate the thought of one of my crew belly-up on the river. It reminds me of how we had to leave Call’s body behind. Anger and tears rise in me and I push them both down, but not far. Tonight, we’ll return.

  Finish it for me.

  I used to tell Call the ends of his dreams when he didn’t know them.

  I reach down to gather more kindling.

  Finish this for me, Call.

  If only he could.

  CHAPTER 21

  “THIS COULD BE OUR FINAL MEAL AS A GROUP,” Tam says, in a deep, faux-ominous voice. He puts the last of the food into the pot.

  We’re fortifying ourselves before we have to lug everything over to the edge of the raiders’ village in preparation for the fires. We won’t sleep at all tonight.

  “It’s heartbreaking,” agrees Eira, playing along. Tam grins at her.

  “Are you saying we’re not going to make it out of this alive?” Brig asks.

  “Of course not,” Tam says. “Soon we’ll be back on the dredge eating with everyone else. That’s all I was saying.”

  It must be the adrenaline, the thought of what is to come that is giving me an edge of hilarity, of hysteria. This is all ridiculous, impossible. I’m sitting in the woods, eating with a ragtag collection of people, planning to set a village on fire. And we’re all pretending that we’re going to make it back to the dredge, when so much could go wrong.

  “So,” Tam says. “We’ve got biscuits, cheese, and meat. Who wants to start?”

  “The captain should eat first,” Brig says.

  “No,” I say. “Naomi should. She’s injured.”

  Naomi lifts her chin. It was the wrong thing to say. “Start with Eira.”

  Eira shakes her head. “Brig’s slept the least. He should go first.”

  I almost laugh. How will we ever get the ship back working like this? We’re starving, but we’d all rather go hungry than admit weakness.

  Some crew.

  “Fine.” Tam plucks a biscuit from the pot and hands it to Eira, who is nearest him. “Everyone grab what you want and pass it along.” He takes an enormous bite out of the biscuit. “You’d think you’d know by now that none of it is poisoned.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Let’s go over the plans again before it’s too dark to see the map,” I say after we’ve eaten. We crowd around Eira’s precise drawing in the mud. “Brig, you start.” I want to make sure everyone has the plans straight.

  “First, we finish hauling our kindling over to the edge of the village,” Brig says. “We wait until they’re asleep and all their lights are out. Then, we slip in. We have two teams stacking kindling at the base of the trees—Poe and me, and Tam and Eira. Naomi will pour kerosene on each pile as soon as we’re finished.”

  Naomi takes up the thread. “We start with the middle tree and work our way outward. That way, if they hear us and we can’t get to every tree, we can start the fires on the centermost ones and hope it spreads.” I nod at Eira to take over the narrative.

  “When we’re finished,” she says, “we retreat into the woods, and make our way back here to the clearing to meet up, unless it’s compromised and the raiders have tracked us.”

  “In which case, we go downstream to where the dredge was initially attacked,” says Naomi.

  “Because they’ll expect us to flee deeper into the woods or head toward where the dredge is now,” adds Eira.

  “Once we’re all gathered, we assess the damage and decide on our next step,” I say. “If all goes well with the fires, the other raiders will come to shore to help the villagers. We’ll steal one of their boats and what weapons we can, and head over to the dredge to take it back.”

  The forest’s hush seems to surround us as I finish. When the plan is laid out like this, it’s easy to see all the holes. It’s not watertight, shipshape, the way I’d like it to be. There are so many uncertain factors. So many ways it could go wrong.

  Naomi’s weather-worn, pain-drawn face is almost unreadable. Tam’s energy radiates off him as he crosses his arms and stares at the map. Eira tilts her head, thinking, her neat, agile mind on the move. Brig leans back and stares into the forest, considering something, his alert, capable strength present in every move.

  I hope I can trust them.

  I put my boot in the middle of Eira’s map, covering some of the raiders’ houses, printing the tread of my sole in the heart of their village.

  “Let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER 22

  THE LANTERNS IN THE TREES FLICKER OUT.

  Except for one.

  The night slips on. And on, and the light remains.

  It’s in the tree house to the left of the centermost one, where we intended to begin. We’ve brought all our kindling near the village, and no one has noticed us yet. We crouch together over sticks and branches and twigs, our giant unlit bank of fire.

  “Do you think they know we’re coming?” Eira whispers.

  I thought we might wear out and fade as the night wore away. Instead, I feel a kind of charge growing in the air between us. I don’t know what it is. Purpose? Fear? I can’t see the others’ faces well in the dim wash of starlight and moonlight, but it’s as if all of our veins have turned to gold, conducting electricity, sparking and slipping to and through one another.

  As if, for now, we’re all connected.

  “If the light doesn’t go out soon,” I say, “we’ll change the plan. We’ll start with the trees nearest us, and work our way into the middle.”

  The sky is night-black. It will soon lighten to deepest blue. We are at the edge of morning. We are where the night turns.

  “Should we try tomorrow?” Tam asks. His tone is fearful, hopeful.

  “No,” I say. The stars are not perfectly aligned for us, but they may never be. They could get the armor running again at any time. And some things are in our favor. There’s no rain. We’ve managed to bring all the kindling here without being caught. We are close. So close.

  And two years ago I made a promise.

  “All right,” I say, and I feel them all tense. “Now.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Brig and Tam and Eira and I run low, racing to the tree house nearest us, carrying our shirts and Tam’s bag full of kindling. Branches flex and snap against my bare shoulders as we push through.

  “Now,” I whisper again, once we’re at the base of the first looming tree, and we ease our kindling to the ground. Our hands scurry over the bits of wood, stacking as fast as we can. What seemed like so much now looks paltry against the solid mass of the tree trunk.

  We’ll have to change the plan again.

  “Double up on the kindling for each tree,” I whisper to the others. We are a breath away from one another, their eyes locked on mine. Before I can explain—better that we get half of them burning well than spread it out too thin—they make sounds of agreement.

  They are with me.

  “Tell Naomi she can start as soon as we finish the first pile,” I say to Brig. Tam, Eira, and I sprint, soft-footed, back to the piles of kindling to gather more. Brig joins us moments later. We dart through the trees and lay the tinder at their feet.

  We rubbed dirt into our undershirts to keep them from flashing too bright against the dark trees and night, but I still catch glimpses of the whites of the others’ eyes, teeth, as we steal back and forth.

  The scent of the kerosene that Naomi pours out surges through the air as the rest of us work. I breathe the fragrance in deep—that chemical, flammable, familiar tang.

  It reminds me of my ship.

  Can the raiders smell it? In their dreams, do they wonder what it is? Do they smell the first ship burning? Will they remember why they deserve this?

  The five of us gather breathless in the forest. There is no kindling left, no kerosene except the small amount left in the cookstove, which I strapped to my back with my belt. I don’t trust anyone else to set the fires.

  “It’s time,” I say. The sky has lightened a degree or two while we’ve been working and now I can make out the sheen of dirt and sweat on my crew. Naomi’s bandage. Eira’s deft, delicate fingers. Tam’s mouth, with the wry quirk at the corner that never entirely goes away. The cut on Brig’s nose from jumping off the dredge. The scratches from the past days, and from this night. The forest scored our skin with lines from branches and trees. It etched and scribbled on us in a language we don’t understand.

  None of us are caught.

  Yet.

  “I’ll help you,” Brig says.

  “No,” I say. “I’ll do it alone.”

  “We’ll wait here for you until you’re done,” says Naomi. Tam turns away, as if he can’t bear the sight of me because of what I’m about to do, and Eira puts her hand on his arm.

  “No,” I say. “This way you’ll have a head start. Go. I’ll catch up to you.”

  A hesitation. Then Tam moves into the brush, without a backward glance or a goodbye. I feel the current between all of us falter, fall. Naomi nods to me and follows him, and after a quick look at Brig, Eira is gone, too.

  “Get out of here,” I say to Brig. “Keep everyone with you if you can. We don’t know what the fire will do. I’ll find you all as soon as possible.”

  I don’t wait to watch him go.

  Quick-down, low to the ground. At the bottom of the tree, ready to warm my cold hands and weary heart with the lighting of this fire, I lean in. Flick the lighter on the stove. It flutters to life, a blue-orange flare, a moth, a heartbeat. I hold it near the kindling.

  The flame catches.

  No time to watch it go up. On to the next tree.

  And the next.

  Fires crackle as they drink in the kerosene and consume the kindling. My breathing sounds loud and feral to my ears as I run to the next tree. Don’t the raiders hear me? Can’t they feel, smell, taste me coming?

  No one, nothing, stirs in the houses.

  My heart sinks. What if they’re empty? What if the raiders managed to disappear into thin air somehow? What if they abandoned their village?

  I’m not careful enough setting the fifth fire and flames lick my fingers. I hiss in my breath and plunge my hand into the dirt next to me to put out the flame. Not good. I can tell.

  Nothing to be done about it now. Ignore the pain. Keep going.

  My burned hand shakes as I light the sixth flame. As it takes, it illuminates my blistered skin and my stomach turns. My skin is puckered and hot, the top layers peeling back raw. I shouldn’t have put out the fire with dirt. Now tiny grains of it are working into the wound.