“That was … harder than I expected,” the leach groaned, sinking to his knees.
Gwenna could only nod.
Hook and Qarsh had crept above the horizon sometime around noon. Gwenna’s Wing, however, slowed by the barrels of supplies and their own weariness, didn’t make land until almost midnight. Gwenna had inwardly debated going for Qarsh, but Hook was closer, and besides, they needed a little time to get their feet back under them before going toe-to-toe with whoever was flying the birds. The west coast of Hook provided as safe a landing place as any, and so she’d aimed for a miserable little stretch of rocky shingle wedged between high cliffs. If she remembered the spot correctly, no one was likely to be there in the middle of the night.
“We need a perimeter,” Annick said.
The sniper shook her head to clear the water from her short hair, then stood unsteadily, managed half a dozen steps, then collapsed onto the stones. It was a good reminder that, despite appearances, Annick wasn’t invincible. She needed food and rest just the same as anyone else-she just refused to admit it.
“Forget the perimeter,” Gwenna said.
“We’re vulnerable without a proper perimeter.”
Gwenna snorted, then lay back on the uneven rocks. “You can’t even stand, Annick. None of us can. Let’s just concentrate on getting the barrels up the beach while not drowning. It would be a shame to swim all this way just to pass out in the surf.”
Overhead, the clouds had finally cleared. Gwenna could pick out constellations-the Jade Peaks, the Smith, the Serpent-stars so bright they might have been on fire. She shouldn’t have been glad for the starlight. The Kettral worshipped Hull for a reason-his dark cloak covered their approaches and retreats-but after two nights swimming, floating between the bottomless dark of the ocean and the endless overturned hull of the cloudy sky above, it was a relief to lie on the hard rocks, to look up at the hard stars.
The water lapping around her legs was warm enough that she could have fallen asleep right there, halfway between the land and the sea. There was, however, that whole drowning thing to worry about, and Annick was already trying to drag the barrels up out of the surf by herself. Each one weighed almost as much as the sniper, and she was struggling, rope over her shoulder, straining forward as though leaning into the wind. Gwenna groaned, hauled herself to her feet, staggered over to the barrel, put her shoulder to the wood, and shoved. The small stones shifted beneath her feet, but she refused to stop until the thing was clear of the waves, up the shingle, then tucked beneath the overhanging limestone cliffs. The second barrel was even heavier, but the work put a little life back into Gwenna’s legs, and by the time they had all the gear stowed beneath the cliff, she was starting to think she might actually survive the night after all.
“Water,” she said, prying off one of the lids, then handing a full skin to Talal. “And food. Then sleep.”
Talal took a long draft from the skin, bit into a strap of cured beef, and chewed thoughtfully.
“You think we’re safe here for the night?”
Gwenna coughed out a laugh. “I don’t think we’ve been safe since before Hull’s Trial, but this spot…” She glanced out at the narrow strip of broken stone once more, at the greedy sea. “I’d say it’s as good as any. We’re out of sight from the air. It’s too rocky to land a boat. They can’t patrol everything on foot.” She shrugged.
“They,” the leach said, leaning hard on the word, the obvious question left unspoken.
“Kettral,” Annick said flatly. Instead of eating, she’d been tending to her bows, unrolling dry string from the barrels, checking the mechanical action on the flatbow to see that it hadn’t been damaged. It occurred to Gwenna suddenly that they were all moving about as though the stars shed as much light as the sun. It was hard to remember what it had been like before Hull’s Hole, before drinking from the eggs of the slarn, but she was pretty sure it would have been tough to see her hand in front of her face. Did the bastards who destroyed the Widow’s Wish share the same advantage?
“We don’t know they’re Kettral,” Talal said. “Not for certain.”
Gwenna raised her brows. “Soldiers flying on a bird? Lobbing Kettral munitions?”
The leach frowned. “Could be civilians. Someone who found the birds and the bombs after the Eyrie tore itself apart.”
“Unlikely,” Annick said.
Gwenna stared up into the night sky, trying to reason it through. Whoever carried out the attack on the Wish had managed not only to wrangle a bird, but to fly one; fly it effectively. And then there were the munitions to consider. You didn’t need to be a genius to set off a starshatter, but to hit a ship from any height, to calculate the ordnance necessary to sink a vessel of that size …
“The good news,” she said finally, “is that the birds are here. One bird, at least. As for the rest of it-we always knew there might be Kettral left on the Islands, a Wing or two gone rogue.”
“I was hoping for pirates,” Talal replied. “Drunken pirates.”
Gwenna half smiled. It was the sort of crack that Laith might have made. Then she thought back to what had happened to Laith. Her smile withered.
“And what have we all learned,” she asked grimly, “about hoping for shit?”
* * *
It was still dark when Gwenna woke to the smell of smoke.
Annick was curled in a bony ball just a few feet away, while Talal sat up outside the cave, keeping watch. Over his shoulder she could see the bright stars of the Smith’s hammer dipping into the waves. A couple of hours until dawn, then. An odd time for someone to be lighting fires. Large fires.
Gwenna sat slowly, suppressing a groan. A few hours of sleep on the stones and the muscles of her back and shoulders were twisted into knots. She stretched her neck one way, then the next, buckled her blades across her back, and moved out to the front of the cave.
“You smell that?” she asked.
Talal nodded. “I noticed it not too long ago. Thought about waking you, but it’s pretty far off. Nothing urgent, and I figured you could use another hour of rest after that swim.”
“After that swim I could sleep for a week.” She twisted at the waist, cringing as the muscles seized, then relaxed. She knuckled them for a moment, then took a deep breath through her nose, sorting the before-dawn scents of the island.
There was salt, and beneath the salt, sand. The warm green reek of vegetation farther up the cliff, hanging vines and twisting shoots, languid and sinuous. It still amazed her, whenever she paused to think about it, how much, how well she could smell. It was like she had lived her whole life blind, and then woken one day to a riot of shape and color. There were a few fish rotting down the beach. She could make out the shit of the seabirds dried by the sun, crusted on the rocks above. And she could smell the smoke.
“Could just be someone up early,” Talal suggested. “Kitchen fires over on Buzzard’s Bay.”
Gwenna closed her eyes, dragged the air over her tongue, testing it, tasting it. Someone was burning wood and dung, but not just that. There were other smells twisted into the scent, stranger and less wholesome. Even after a year away, the training came back to her easily. Paint was burning. And hair. And flesh.
She exhaled heavily, suddenly eager to have the air out of her lungs.
“It’s not just kitchen fires.”
Talal studied her for a moment, then nodded.
“Are we going?” Annick asked.
The sniper had risen silently to join them while Gwenna was still puzzling over the smoke. Annick hadn’t slept much longer than Gwenna herself, but if she felt worn out or sore from the swim, she didn’t show it. Her smoke steel blades were already buckled, and she had her shortbow in one hand, the quiver strapped across her back.