“We’re in no shape for a fight,” Talal observed. “Whatever’s going on here, it’s been going on for months. Another day won’t change it.”
“You’re probably right,” Gwenna agreed. The smoke was stronger now. Thicker. It reminded her of Andt-Kyl, of the burning of an entire town. “On the other hand, some days are more important than others.”
“You think this is one of them?”
“Only one way to find out,” she replied.
* * *
The trail up to the ridgeline was rocky and steep, so steep in places that Gwenna found herself searching for toeholds in the pocketed limestone, balancing on precarious buttresses, hauling herself over tiered ledges using whatever purchase she could find.
At least it’s not more fucking swimming, she reminded herself.
By the time she reached the crenellated ridge, however, swimming sounded like a relief. You might drown in the water, but the waves wouldn’t cut you to pieces one nasty slice at a time. Her palms were bleeding, and her knees. She could smell her own blood on the stones, and Talal’s, and Annick’s.
“I remembered this being easier,” she muttered, straightening up. “There was one time…”
The remaining words died in her mouth. From atop the ridge she could see almost the entire island of Hook, the dark waters of the sound beyond, and still farther to the north, the low-slung bulk of Qarsh. That is, she could have seen Qarsh if she’d thought to look at it. Instead, her gaze was glued to the conflagration raging below, a massive fire roaring through the streets of the island’s only settlement. Hook had been a shitty little town even in the best of times, a haven for pirates and smugglers, criminals whose luck had run out on the mainland, whores, drug peddlers, and fishermen, both the enterprising and the insane. It was an amusing irony of the Islands that Hook was allowed to persist just across the water from the empire’s most powerful military force, but the Eyrie had decided there were uses to a civilian settlement on the island, regardless how corrupt, and so the small town had survived, even prospered in its twisted way.
It wasn’t prospering anymore.
“Someone’s burning down the whole west end of the town,” Gwenna observed quietly. “I guess they got tired of the smell.”
“The fire was set on purpose?” Talal asked. “You’re sure?”
“Look at the flames,” Gwenna said, gesturing. “They started in three places at the same time. There. There. There.”
Talal glanced at Annick. The sniper just shrugged.
“How long ago?” the leach asked.
“Not long. None of the buildings have collapsed yet.”
They hadn’t collapsed, but they were getting ready to. Half a dozen roofs had already fallen in. Flames lapped from windows and gaping doors. Timber framing groaned as the sudden strain torqued it out of place and crucial beams gave way. Buzzard’s Bay itself was bright with borrowed fire, slick waves reflecting back the shifting red and yellow, as though the water itself were burning.
“Someone’s pissed off,” Gwenna said. “I think we can be pretty sure of that.”
“It’s Hook,” Annick replied. “Someone’s always pissed off.”
“And the Kettral aren’t there anymore,” Talal said. “To keep them in line.”
Gwenna nodded slowly. The Eyrie had never really bothered to police the southern island, and it wasn’t unusual to find bloated bodies floating facedown in Buzzard’s Bay, to hear screaming from inside the garish taverns built out over the water on rotting stilts. The Kettral didn’t care about the private vendettas of pirates and profiteers. Open conflict, however, was destabilizing, and whenever some overzealous captain took it upon himself to turn the Island into his private kingdom, the Eyrie’s response was invariably quick and conclusive, the message clear: Kill each other if you want, but do it quietly.
Obviously, no one was sending that message any longer.
“Not our problem,” Annick concluded. “We’re here for the birds, not to bring Hook back into the Annurian Empire.”
“Republic,” Gwenna said absently.
Talal was still studying the town. “We could take a look,” he said.
Gwenna watched the fire rage a moment. Probably Annick was right. Probably the hot, smoldering violence that had always plagued Hook had finally exploded. On the other hand, whoever started that fire had taken some care to see it done right. It wasn’t a stretch to think it might have something to do with the assholes on the birds, the ones who had sunk the Wish.
“We go down,” Gwenna said finally, “find a few poor bastards who aren’t throwing water on the blaze, and figure out what the fuck’s going on.”
* * *
It was worse up close.
Up close, Gwenna could hear the crackling of the blaze, the cries of anger, and terror, and pain. The townsfolk of Hook raced back and forth in a chaotic effort to extinguish the fire, but they were doing a piss-poor job of it, screaming recriminations and bellowing threats instead of working together. When she emerged from the cover of a narrow alley on the unburning edge of the town, Gwenna could feel the heat on her face, hotter than the noonday sun, even at a distance.
No one so much as glanced at her. Not at her, or Annick, or Talal. It made sense-a few unfamiliar faces didn’t mean much when half the town was burning down. Skulking, if you didn’t do it right, tended to draw attention, and so rather than skulk, Gwenna and her Wing moved through the streets quickly, purposefully, as though, like everyone else, they were going somewhere. The important thing was to keep moving. To keep moving and keep listening, trying to pull the useful information from the noise.
Unfortunately, while there was a great deal of noise, the inhabitants of Hook proved short on useful information. It seemed common knowledge that someone had set the town ablaze intentionally. People understood that the western end was burning while the eastern half was relatively safe. A few opportunistic fools, arms piled with dubious treasure, were trying to organize raids into the burning streets. It was idiotic. Gwenna could tell just from the sound-a greedy, growing roar-that no one going in now was likely to come out alive, but she hadn’t crossed the Iron Sea, swimming the last few dozen miles, just to wag her finger at looters.
There was an abrupt surge of noise a few blocks to the north-shouting, screaming, chanting, then a vicious explosion, then relative silence.
“That was a flickwick,” Gwenna said.
Annick pointed. “North. By the docks.” She switched to Kettral hand sign, hooking a finger. Move out?
Gwenna glanced at Talal, then nodded.
“Docks. Three approaches. Annick, west. Talal, east. Rally point is the ridge above the beach.”
It wasn’t far-maybe a hundred paces-to where the buildings gave way before a broad open square fronting the docks. From the head of the street, Gwenna could see the whole harborside, the western shore ablaze, the east lit only by a few lanterns and lamps flickering in the windows. What looked like most of the population of Hook had gathered in that square-maybe two thousand men and women crammed together, faces smudged with smoke and soot, streaked with sweat, fitfully illuminated by the fire raging through the town. Despite the fire to the west, they were all looking north, toward the harbor.
Well back on the center dock, high as a house, talons lodged in the rotting planks, perched a kettral; huge, silent, black eyes glittering and gelid. Gwenna hadn’t seen a bird up close for nearly a year, and for a moment she, like the townsfolk before her, could only stare. In the stories told across Annur, the kettral were cast as glorious flying mounts, huge horses with beaks and wings. So wrong, Gwenna thought, gazing up at the bird. The kettral had been trained to accept human riders, but that training did nothing to obscure the more ancient, enduring truth: they were not mounts, they were predators.