The winds were changing, blowing cold against the stern. It had been threatening rain all evening, but now it looked like the storm and the warning crackle of thunder in the distance might blow past them.

Small mercies, oh all-powerful one, Doku thought, eyes turned heavenward, in case Teonanácatl or any of his underlings were listening in. Small mercies when you owe me so much more.

The Great Hunter, if he was really there at all, sent a wave crashing into the ship, throwing spray into her eyes and hair. She made a face, wrinkling her nose at the smell of decaying seaweed and salt, and dropped her head between her arms as the Karanene swelled beneath her feet and her stomach jumped into her throat.

Teonanácatl, what am I doing?

Through four nights, she hadn't been able to answer that question, and it was infuriating. She was still standing for a reason, and this, this just wasn't it. This was noble and good and right and an utter waste of her time. Doku sighed and linked her hands out over the wooden railing. There was no way this would end well.

"Excuse me?" a voice said, and Doku turned to see Ria standing behind her, arms folded behind her back. She smiled awkwardly and ducked her head. "Mind if I join you?"

Doku shook her head and gestured to the spot beside her. Smiling again, more confidently, Ria walked over and leaned against the railing, rising onto her tiptoes, until Doku worried that she would fall overboard and into the massive, rocking waves.

"I love the sea," Ria laughed and brushed a few hair out of the corner of her mouth. "It smells the way Damali smells at dawn."

Sticking out her tongue, as much to smell the air again as in disgust, Doku rolled her eyes. "Like fish and seaweed? I would not love that."

"Not like fish and seaweed!" Ria protested, eyes widening as if she had been offended but the phantom of a smile playing on her mouth. "Like salt and the wind and freedom."

Doku felt her lips part in a genuine smile, and it felt odd. "Freedom smells like fish."

Ria relented. "Alright. Maybe a little like fish." She laughed softly, and her eyes flashed out to the horizon. "I like fish." She paused and then continued, a little quavering. "What does the desert smell like?"

"Home," Doku answered without thinking. Ria raised her eyebrows, wanting more, and Doku sighed. "Dust, sun," blood, "...and horses."

"Horses?" Ria mused. "Can you ride then? I used to love playing in the stables at home, although I rarely rode."

Doku leaned on the railing and listened to Ria paint her home with words. It was peaceful. This girl could make poetry out of anything, and maybe it was that more than anything that made her miss Yurusu so keenly. Yurusu, for all that she had hated the Hunt, could make it beautiful, and Doku suspected Ria would have been able to do much the same. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the waves and to the sound of Ria's voice.

And then...something moved. Something unseeable. A vibration in the air. Like soft, secret footsteps. Doku held her breath and listened.

Ria drew closer, eyebrows knitting together, anxious. "What is it?"

With a shake of her head, Doku pressed a finger to her lips, pleading for silence. Confused but compliant, Ria nodded and kept quiet.

There was another ripple, different from the first. It threaded up through the floor, razor-edged but...muted. Like a muffled scream...maybe? Doku crouched, pressing her hands to the planks, and waited. This time it was clearer: a scream -- cut short -- the gurgle of blood, footsteps moving on.

In a moment, she was back on her feet, grabbing Ria by the wrist and running towards the stairs to the hold.

"What?" Ria hissed, stumbling as she too began to run.

Doku felt her lips draw back in a true, feral snarl. "Trouble." Please let us be in time. This time, please.

They took the steps three at a time, hitting the floor just as the sounds of the first swords being drawn and the first shouts of warning began to echo through the corridor. The smell of iron, blood, was thick. Ria covered her mouth with a hand and choked.

"Oh, Ilithya!"

Oh, Teonanácatl.

It took one look over her shoulder for Doku to decide that Ria would be safer waiting in the hall than running through the cabins. Her face was too pale and her eyes too wide. It's better for her not to know.

"Stay here."

Her eyes were still frightened, but Ria drew up to her full, dignified height. "I appreciate that you want to protect me, but you can't protect me from the truth."

"No," Doku said, brushing off the nagging guilt that said that was exactly what she'd been trying to do, "but I can protect you from the men with swords. Please. Please stay here? I will come back. "

The determination, all that pride, melted away, and for a second, fear and doubt rippled across Ria's face. "You...promise?" she asked.

"I promise."

--

The first cabins were worse than she had expected. The mercenaries had, almost certainly, been taken while they slept. Most were unarmed, spilling out of their makeshift beds, blankets caught around their ankles, bleeding out through their throats. The floor was slick and black in the dim lighting, and for all that Doku had seen far worse, her mouth went dry.

She slunk on, passing from cabin to storage room to cabin, looking for someone who was still alive.

When she reached the main room of the hold, she found them, and the screams and clash of steel nearly brought her to her knees. Not again, please. Instead, she stood, half in shadow, searching for Ria's companions among the fighting. She saw the Myr'l on the far side of the hold, taking on three men at once, but neither fairy nor that human girl were in sight.

A dagger winged her way, and Doku sidestepped, eyes already searching for who had thrown it. The sailors seemed to be attacking...and winning. Every second, another mercenary fell to litter the floor. She fisted her hands and lunged.

The press of bodies swelled around her, massive and stinking. Every sailor and mercenary on the Karanene seemed caught up in this fight. A sword came from one direction, a dagger and a fist from another, and there was no time for Doku to wonder if those she was fighting were, in the grand scheme, friend or foe. There was no time to think at all.

"Doku!" An urgent shout from somewhere to the left. Doku turned, fast enough to see the sword cleaving down on her, not fast enough to do anything about it.

No!

The air around her seemed to freeze and solidify, and Doku felt a deep shiver wrack her body. The sword cracked against the air, deflected, and spun out of the sailor's hand. They looked at each other, both confused, before Doku rammed her knee into his belly and snapped his neck.

A hand grabbed her shoulder, but before instincts could kick in, a voice hissed, "Doku." She glanced over her shoulder and met Devon's eyes.

"Devon. You are all right?"

Devon nodded and tugged her shoulder urgently, pulling her back towards the wall and the safety of shadows. "I'm fine. Damia is too." She gestured to the fairy, crouched against the wall, eyes shut, whispering under her breath. "But maybe we should be getting out of here."

"What is she doing?" Doku asked, still watching the fairy.

Devon shook her head frantically. "I don't know! Magic! Can you please help me get her out of here? We're in trouble if you hadn't noticed!"

Doku fixed her eyes on Devon and frowned, biting down on the thousand things she wanted to say. You think you understand danger better than me...human? No one is hunting you. But, in the end, she shrugged, and together they managed to lift Damia between them. She looked at them with dazed, unseeing eyes and continued to murmur.

"Carry her," Doku ordered, heaving the tiny fairy into Devon's arms, "and stay close."

They stuck to the walls, clinging to their safety. Around them, the fighting was trailing off as the mercenary's numbers dwindled. Soon, Doku knew, the sailors would have the time to search the room for any survivors. Soon it would not be safe even against the walls, in the darkness. They had to move quickly.

And they did, but making it to the doorway was still a tiny miracle, and Doku suspected they had Damia, not any higher being, to thank for it. Even as they dashed out between the heavy beams, into the web of cabins, a voice shouted: "Dammit! Commander, those girls are getting away!"

They sped through the cabins, Devon nearly tripping over the bodies of the mercenaries, breathing erratically. It wasn't until they burst into the corridor that Doku's legs gave out, and she collapsed on the ground, fighting the urge to gag. Her mouth tasted like bile, and...Teonanácatl, she had thought she was past this.

A hand touched her hair, and Doku looked up at Ria.

"Are you okay?" she asked, soft and so very frightened.

Doku drew in a shaky breath and nodded. "We must go. Quickly, we must."

The sound of iron clashing with iron was drawing closer when they reached the bottom of the stairs. Ria started up first, lifting her skirts up so she could move quickly, without the swish of velvet that usually accompanied her movements. Devon repositioned Damia in her arms, preparing to race up the stairs, and...froze.

"Calhan!" The name was said in gasp, as if she had been hit. "I--" Devon turned to Doku and practically threw the little fairy into her arms. "I have to go back! I can't leave Calhan here! I have to find him, have to--"

Doku clutched Damia; the fairy was barely breathing, eyelashes fluttering as if she were dreaming. They needed to get her somewhere safe, soon. "No," Doku told Devon, praying that the human girl would listen, praying that she was not too blinded by her emotions.

But Devon's daggers were out, and she was brushing past with a sad shake of her hand and a muttered. "You don't understand."

"Devon!" Ria cried, but the stupid, stupid girl wasn't listening, couldn't hear.

Then the Myr'l was there, a blur of green and brown as she grabbed Devon by the collar and dragged her back to the stairs. She screamed something, incoherent and animal, and hurried the two humans up the stairs and out of sight. Doku closed her eyes, hoping to slow her heart's beat, heaved Damia over a shoulder, and ran after them.

Night had come, deep and heavy with mist. The deck of the ship, which had always been alive with some form of activity, now sat dead, silent. The Myr'l ushered them toward the railing, almost to the exact place where Doku and Ria had stood before the world had changed. Doku lowered Damia gently to the floor and into Ria's care. She turned to face the Myr'l.

"We don't have much time," she said, voice a gruff purr even though anxiety threaded through it.

Doku shook her head. "We have no time," she corrected.

The Myr'l nodded. "We need to find a way off here. Come on. Leave the fairy."

Ria's head jerked up, and her hands closed into a fist against Damia's shirt. "No! We leave no one behind."

"I thought all we offered you was a surer death?" Devon said, drawing closer to Ria, eyes narrowed, face taut. "We don't need your help."

"Humans!" the Myr'l said, almost swore, "I don't know why I bother. Look, these men are obviously aiming to kill everyone on this boat, and if helping you disrupts their plans? I'm all for it. The fairy is weak. Leave her."

"No," Ria said again, and Doku wondered if she was the only one to hear the danger in her voice.

Footsteps rippled through the air, and Doku hissed as she turned. Men were pouring out of the doorway, shouting and pointing. The Myr'l growled something and adjusted her grip on her sword's hilt. Doku fell back on the balls of her feet and prepared to fight again.

"Ria," Devon hissed, dropping to her knees beside the girl and the fairy. "We have to get out of here, now!"

"I will not leave her!"

The sailors had spotted them, and Doku's eyes, not as sharp in the blackness as the Myr'l's, strained to make out the advancing shapes. Then they were in front of her, steel flashing like old nightmares. Doku reached for the nearest man as the Myr'l hacked through her second victim, but they kept coming, pouring out of the hold like an unchecked river. They were dead, sooner or later. They were dead, and she had failed. Failed Achryn. Devon. Damia. Ria. Her ghosts. Everything.

Behind the wall she and the Myr'l were making, Doku heard Devon rise to her feet and lunge into the fight. The girl's fighting was rough and unskilled, amateurish, but with the fearless panic that made her more dangerous than Doku and the Myr'l combined. She attacked without defence, with stupid self-abandon. She didn't even see the sword until it had sliced into the tendons of her shoulder.

"Devon!"

All sound stopped. A void replaced the ringing in Doku's ears, and the air grew as thick as quicksand. She half-turned to see Ria rise behind her. She saw the Myr'l's mouth move but heard no sound. Then it was like everything, all matter, all being, was rushing past her toward the sailors.

It, whatever it was, hit them, threw them backward to crash against the deck and masts and railings. There was a moment of peace before the rumbling started, a rumbling she felt rather than heard. A moment lulled before something heavy and invisible caught her in the chest and heaved her back through the railing. She heard Devon scream as the wood snapped behind her back, saw the Myr'l scream in frustration as she was torn from her prey. Then her back hit the sea, and pain stung, red lightning against her bare skin.

The water swirled and sucked at her legs, waist, arms, shirt before closing over her head. For Doku, all sound suddenly stopped as water rushed into her ears and darkness stretched out below her. It froze and clung and pulled her down and down and down into the dark. She opened her mouth to cry a desperate prayer, and the water rushed in mercilessly. Her blood chilled. She was dying.

Finally...

Then she was wrenched up by a hand twisted in her shirt, unsheathed claws pressing marks into her back, and forced to grab a piece of wood as she gasped and gasped the night air. The hand released her, and Doku held on with all her fading strength.

"How you kits managed to get this far," the Myr'l growled next to her, bobbing with the waves, one arm wrapped around the broken slat of railing.

In answer, Doku shivered uncontrollably and gazed around her.

Ria and Devon clutched boards of there own, floating in the dark, looking desperate but relieved. Damia was nowhere to be seen, until Doku looked up and saw her hovering, wings flapping, all traces of spell-coma gone from her face.

"When I," Devon began, spitting out sea water, "said we had to get out now, I didn't mean like that."

Damia lighted on a board, looking almost like she was standing on the sea alone, and looked intently at Ria. "It was an odd exit, indeed," she murmured. Almost ashamed, Ria looked away.

They floated, the ship shrinking in the distance as the waves carried them farther out to sea. They were alive, and though that would likely change soon, Doku had doubted they would be granted even this much.

"If anyone so much as thinks a wet cat joke," the Myr'l declared wearily, squeezing water out of her mane. "I will kill you all."

Between shivers, Doku chuckled. "Too late."

--

"Commander?"

Commander Gidall turned to face the young soldier still dressed in sailor's garb. It took a moment for face and rank to connect, but when they did, he cleared his throat and nodded. "Lieutenant?"

The lieutenant saluted, a slight nervousness in the gesture. "The mercenaries are all accounted for, but apparently the women went overboard, sir," he said.

Gidall frowned. "Really? His highness won't be happy." And his highness would see that someone paid for it. Gidall memorized the lieutenant's face for later use.

"With all respect, sir, they're just little girls. They aren't a threat."

"The cat was dangerous," Gidall replied, stroking thoughtfully at the claw marks that still oozed red on his cheek. "I'd be happier to see her skinned."

"They're as good as dead, commander," the lieutenant continued. "There's no land for leagues."

That at least was true. "You managed to capture the rogue-spy, though?"

"Yes, sir," and the lieutenant saluted again for good measure.

"Good, his highness was getting tired of watching him crawl around the kingdom." Gidall looked out to sea where pieces of railing floated as dark strips among the bodies of his dead soldiers. Gidall permitted himself a rare smile. "I'll...see to him now."