It's dark in the second-to-last lock, almost pitch black—but there's a smudge of morning's first light at the horizon. The color of cherry blossoms. A hopeful color, I tell myself—though total darkness would be better for our cause. The starboard deck bustles with activity. The water begins to drain away, the mountain face and lock walls stretching upward as we descend.

Captain Cossta emits a piercing whistle, and crewfolk coalesce around our line of lashed-together, down-turned barrels, afixing the long tethers of rope at either side to the stern and prow of the ship. Two more whistles and they heave them into the receding water, where for a heartbeat they bob at the surface before their weights haul them down.

My Khajra and I wait, hidden away in the cabin, as three Skoli crewfolk dive into the water and set to work, positioning the barrels securely beneath the ship. We'd offered to help with this part when presenting our plan to the captain and crew, but they'd just laughed and shaken their heads.

"It's best we conserve our energy, anyway," says Rhetrien, sensing my guilt as we watch through the narrow cabin windows.

Thrall kneels beside Howla and Saffryn, both propped against the wall. The former dozes intermittently in and out of conciousness, seeming more clear-headed with each return. But Saffryn just sits with her slender legs stretched straight out before her, tangled in what remains of her skirt. We'd all worn and brought practical clothes—bits of what our captor had had packed for us and left in trunks at the ends of our beds, back in our stalstone prison.

Her face is mostly blank, eyes wide and looking off into nothing, or something I can't see. But her Ember is bright and hot, spiky and vibrato with anxiety. Her hands twists around her betrothal shard. Howla's snakes lazy through the space between them, her fingers interlacing with Saffryn's free one even as her head lolls to the side, eyes closed.

Instead of batting her off, as I'd expected, Saffryn's fingers squeeze tight around the other Rhaj's hand, knuckles paling. This whole thing had been mostly her's and Rhetrien's plan, and the best any of us could come up with—but I sympathize with her terror nontheless.

Feeling the heat of my fear through our blood-bond, Thrall turns from them and looks up to me.

"Remember, we won't be concious for most of it." He signs.

"Hanging in the water, in the dark, unaware, unable to protect ourselves..." mumbles Saffryn.

Trapped in a tiny, enclosed space. And who knows when I might become conscious again down there, alone in the total blackness? But it won't matter. I'll be trapped. Trapped. Trap—

"Stop." Rhetrien's tone is sharp as Howla's bonechrys sword. "We've been over everything. There's no point in dwelling now." The light shifts across their all-black eyes, and I'm almost certain they're looking to me. I know from my short experience within their perspective that they can see my breath quicken, my heartrate pick up. Well, not see, exactly. I don't have a word for that sense.

"It's alright" I insist. "I'll be alright." 

Saffryn's Ember and expression sour with doubt. Rhetrien places a hand to my shoulder and squeezes, sending a pleasurably cool shock through my skin.

"I know you will," they say.

I hear the opening of the lock gates through Puka's ears, and a moment later we're moving.

"It's time to go." Says Rhetrien, and suddenly all our expressions are a grim mirror of one another's.

As we step out of the shelter of the cabin, all we can do is hope we're out of range of the puppeteer's power and senses. I reach outward across the Web, breathing a sigh of relief when I don't feel their presence within its range. Nonetheless, we rush for the water as planned, Saffryn wrapped up in Thrall's arms, pausing only briefly at the rail before hauling ourselves over and sliding down waxed ropes. Already strapped to my chest and unconcious, Puka squirms as we hit the frigid water.

Moments later we're joined by more crewfolk, each with a bit of activated emberstone set into bands at the fronts of their heads, lighting our way. The cold of the water is no more pleasant this second time around, and at first my lungs seize up in shock and my limbs protest as they guide us to the row of tethered barrels and the pockets of air hidden within. I burst up into the downturned stallawood barrel beneath the stern end of the boat and feel for the loop of rope affixed to the top, resisting the urge to suck in a massive gulp of air and inhaling only a tiny gasp instead. Down here in the cramped, almost total darkness, the panic takes little more than a heartbeat to set in.

But then my accommpanying crew member with their little headlamp slips up into the barrel beside me, holding their own breath as they use the extra length of rope trailing from the loop to secure my wrists and shoulders until I'm dangling from the barrel like the tongue of a bell. Then they pull a small sealskin pouch up from their belt, unsealing it to withdraw a wad of gray, herbal-smelling fabric. They press it to my face, and everything is gone.

I wake in the total darkness and freezing cold in a state of blind panic. My wrists, shoulders and armpits burn where the rope cuts into them. The air is sour and thin. Puka writhes fitfully against my chest. My heart batters my ribs, and I suck in breath after breath of stale air, but they barely satiate the thirst burning in my lungs.

"Nikessa?"  Rhetrien's cool, deep inner voice breathes across the Link.

"Yes! Why are we still down here? I need to get out! I need out! I need-"

"It's alright. It'll be over soon. The wardens are almost done with their second search. I can...see them."

I cling to Rhetrien's voice, my anchor in the darkness.

"Se...second search?"

"They searched the ship top-to-bottom, questioned the captian and crew, and now they're searching again. There's a beast-eater among them...he must have smelled traces of us."

I long to reach out, to look through Rhetrien's eyes, to ask if I may—but the stallawood contains my power. I can feel only Puka and a little of what drifts below us.

"Why can we hear each other, but I can't use my ability?"

"Stallawood is not stalstone," chimes in Howla, unhelpfully.

"There could be many factors at play here. For one, we are only half inside them,"  says Rhetrien.

"But the beast-eater...if it's one of your guards, they could sense you here—"

"It aught to be muddled enough that it should confuse them, make them question their senses,"

"They're leaving," they add after a pause.

"They'll have to wait until we're through the lock and down the canal a ways before they bring us up," says Saffryn, her voice in the Link terse, clipped. "Or they risk the beast-eater sensing or smelling us, even with the barrels."

"I can't do it," the words tear through the barrier between mind and Link before I can stop them. "I need out now. Please—"

"Dhajia...Nikessa. It's alright. We'll be out soon." Thrall's voice. Steady, soothing.

"Focus on your breathing," Rhetrien instructs. "Even, but shallow. Not too fast. Count them. Five heartbeats in. Hold for five. Exhale. Let everything else in your mind go blank."

I try, but I'm a prisoner to panic. I can't control my breath. Can't slow my hammering heart. Can't stop fighting to free myself from the bindings that secure me in place. That snare me.

I'm trapped. Trapped. Trapped. Trapped—

There's a water-muffled sort of rumbling sound as the lock door finally begins to open. But we're at the back of a crowd of other ships, and for what feels like an eternity, we're frozen in place in the abyssal cold and darkness. Then at last—at long, long last—we begin to flow forward.

Firstborn, may they please pull us up soon. First and secondborn, please. Please, please.

It's getting harder and harder to take small breaths. It's as though each one leaves my lungs feeling more starved than the last. My head swims, lolls to the side. The last thing I feel is relief as the nothingness swallows me up again.

When I wake, I'm bundled so tightly in quilts that I nearly panic all over again. The ship rolls and creaks around me. Puka sniffs about at the stern end of the hold, rubbing his antlers across the oiled wood. The swaying lantern light washes over the faces of my Khajra—all of them bundled as thoroughly as I am, their hair still damp. Howla and Saffryn lay unconscious to my right, but Thrall and Rhetrien sit huddled near my feet, facing one another intently as if carrying out some silent conversation.

They probably are. I know that my parents can form personal Links between themselves and specific others of their Khajra for private conversation if they want to...but I haven't figured it out yet myself. I didn't know that any of us had.

But as I stir and begin to sit up, struggling to free my arms of the quilt wrappings, they look over at me.

"Nikessa," whispers Rhetrien. "How are you feeling?"

"Terrible," I groan.

Immediately, they stand and shrug off the quilt wrapped about their shoulders like a cloak, letting it fall in their wake as they hurry to my side. Their large hands hover in the air around me, as if feeling for my pain—the crystalline formations at the center of their palms glimmering in the dim light.

"Where does it hurt?"

I begin to shake my head and stop, hand flying up to grasp my brow, rub my temples.

"Ah," they say. "That'll be an after-affect of the nightleaf vapor. I think I can I help with that. Here—may I?"

I give a shallow nod, letting my hands drop into my lap as their's reach out to take their place. Their fingers are cool, like the tingling sensation that spreads through my flesh, washing away the throbbing ache.

"Don't you..usually need something to draw life from, to heal?"

"Usually, but this is a bit different. I'm not regrowing anything or repairing damage. Just making some adjustments. Though I can heal without drawing from something else, if I have to." Sensing my relief, they pull away—stretching and flexing their hands.

"But it costs you, doesn't it? Your hands—"

They freeze, black eyes fixed—I think—on mine.

"Yes," they admit. "When I don't draw from something else, it comes out of me—changes my flesh. Crystallizes it. I think it happens every time I use my ability, actually. But usually in such small increments as to be barely noticeable."

Well that explains why they had mechanical hand prototypes just lying around. At the thought of the metal hand, Cass's face flashes before my eyes and my stomach twists.

"Is there no way to undo it?" I ask, voice trembling now. "The crystallization?"

Their eyes tighten at the corners, glittering with moisture. They know who I'm thinking of. "Not any way that I've found...yet. But I don't intend to give up."

As I study their face—those uncanny, beautiful eyes—another thought occurs to me.

"Rhetrien, how did you come to be Mirefallen? How long ago was it?"

Again they go still, turning their face from me. Thrall watches and listens in silence.

"I...I was born this way," they say.

A million questions burst to life at the tip of my tongue, but before I can ask any of them, Rhetrien turns suddenly to Thrall.

"We should tell her what we've been discussing," they say, voice still hushed so as not to disturb the others.

The Falruni Rhaj nods.

I allow myself to be distracted for the moment as I look between the two of them. "Oh?"

"We have been considering what the best next move may be," signs Thrall, his Ember erratic in a way that feels like guilt shot through with hard spikes of fear. "And—"

Rhetrien leans forward, cutting in.

"And we think we need to split up."