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INARA BARELY NOTICED THE ISLAND TILL IT HAD RISEN like a fin from the steel-blue of the deep sea. The wind was easterly, blustering and warm, soaked through with the sun.

At last, the tipping and turning of her stomach had eased, though she still dreamed strange, hot dreams of gods and death and fire and disappointed mothers. It had been three days since she had learned what Lessa had sacrificed for her.

‘You should sort through your feelings,’ said Skedi, sitting by her, preening his feathers. He had stayed hare-sized, but seemed brighter, more solid, than he had for a long while. ‘Give them names.’

‘I don’t want to name them,’ said Inara. ‘I don’t know how I feel.’

‘Your colours are so dense and tangled. Maybe it will help pick them apart. Then you will know.’

When she passed by the part of the deck where Tarin had died, that ‘tangle’ tightened.

Every time she met her mother’s eyes and saw a stranger.

Every time she got in the way of the crew, or heard them insult Kissen behind her back and to her face, Inara felt how useless she was with all these things she didn’t know how to mend.

So, she found distractions. One of them, she held in her hands, careful not to let the wind tug it out of her fingers.

‘Read it to me again,’ said Skedi at last, when he decided that she was not going to speak about her mother.

Inara sighed and uncurled the long parchment. It was a song, transcribed and translated, it said on the note, from Old Usican. Telle, Kissen’s archivist sister, had thought it important enough to give to Inara from the archives they had rescued from Lesscia.

‘ He called rain upon the Steppe, the child of the storm god

Soft his tread, deep nights slept, the child of the god of storm.

He sang to the gods of wind and rain

Played with the gods of grass and thorn

Till the invaders came, the invaders came …

As they beheld a child so strong, so bold

’Neath open sky, their hearts grew cold.

Hunt! They chased him, fleetest feet,

Across the steppe, through long grass sweet.

And across the steppe the stormchild fled

Far from his mother’s shrine he sped

Away, away, till his soft feet bled.

Cry! His mama watched his flight,

Come back to me, where I can fight.

Too far he had gone, too scared, too small,

Then into the river, the child did fall.’

‘It goes on and on about his death, her vengeance,’ said Inara, rolling the parchment back up.

‘It sounds like a lying song,’ said Skedi.

‘A lying song?’

‘Stories, kernels of truths wrapped in lies. Parents make them up to warn their children of danger.’

He was approaching the subject of her mother again. Sideways. He was still devious when he wanted to be.

‘Why would Telle want to warn me?’ said Inara.

‘Perhaps she wanted to tell you that all power has limits.’

Inara clicked her tongue, annoyed. ‘You sound like Kissen.’

He huffed, his whiskers standing out straight with annoyance, and Inara couldn’t help a smile; Skedi liked Kissen, she could tell.

And, despite everything she said about gods, Kissen had warmed to him.

The two of them had chattered Inara through her seasickness, dragged her up on deck, helped her wash the nausea away.

All while her own mother didn’t seem to know how to talk to her. Of course she had tried, but Inara didn’t know either, what to say, how to be. How to love her.

Before, love had been just basking in the light of Lessa’s rare attention. It had been limited to toasted bread and stolen moments, never complaining, and always pretending that she didn’t want more. What should her love be now, when Inara knew how tarnished her mother’s was with regret?

‘Ina …’ said Skedi softly. ‘It needs to untangle, or it will bind you forever.’

Inara took in a breath, then let it out.

‘I feel like a burden.’ She felt her throat tighten and swallowed back tears.

What a silly thing to be sad for when there was war, when people were dying.

‘Mama didn’t choose me. Didn’t want me. That’s why she never was home.

That’s why she never looked for me and went to fight instead.

That’s why even Tarin dying didn’t hurt her.

Why only Kissen came to help with the seasickness.

She wants her old life back. This.’ She looked down at the wooden railing of the midship beneath her hands, so lovingly carved.

Skedi was silent for a moment. ‘You didn’t choose me,’ he said. ‘Do you regret it?’

‘No.’ How could she regret Skedi now, when they had been through so much? Done so much? When they had almost lost each other and come back to each other, time and time again?

‘Then be careful of the lies you tell yourself,’ he said, fluttering his wings. ‘They’re not always kind.’

‘Stand by!’ came a cry over the breeze. Sallath was sitting up in the crow’s nest, his wind-whipped cheeks as red as the sky at dawn. ‘Tip eighth to starboard!’

‘Back the jib!’ bellowed Lertes.

The wind was strong this close to the island, the sails flapped and luffed, the spinnaker billowing out before being dragged back, taut and heaving them forward. The helm, Aleda today, turned to the right. The sea changed in colour beneath them, from steel to gemstone, blue to brilliant aqua.

The deck was rushing with activity as Lertes bellowed, ‘Ready about!’

‘Ready!’

Inara shrank back against the rails as the ship tipped across the wind, holding on to the wooden banister and her scroll.

‘Furl the topsails! Let the mains fly!’

Ten crew shimmied up the straining mast and others ran to the fore and tightened the ropes, others loosening as they bound the sails up and up, slowing the ship. She saw her mother too, up with the others, swinging from the topsail of the mainmast as they bound the cloth tight.

‘Fourth to port!’ came the cry, and the ship groaned as Aleda repeated the charge and changed direction.

‘What are they avoiding?’ said Inara to Skedi.

In answer, he leapt over the water and, in a clap of wings, took to the sky. High, higher than the mainsail. Her heart lifted. Her mother’s totem, Skedi’s totem, had given him more of his own power.

Rocks in the water, he called to her mind.

Inara put her feet on the ship’s rail and pushed herself up to see the great sweeps of black beneath the pristine blue, like snowdrifts of ash.

Between them was a narrow channel that the crew must know by heart.

Each jibe and tack of the vessel came with a flurry of activity and calls Inara didn’t understand. The Silverswift was now slowing.

Kissen, who had been stretching out her legs on the foredeck, evaded the sudden activity and came down to Inara’s side, limping slightly. ‘Are we stopping?’ she asked.

‘Guess so,’ said Inara.

Skedi landed further back, the ship moving faster than he could fly, and came running back up towards them, jumping up to avoid the lashing of ropes.

‘There are people on the island,’ said Skedi, breathless. ‘And in the water!’

‘Aren’t we in a pissing hurry?’

‘We always stop for the waters of Iska,’ said a passing crewmate, Rhiyande, who extended them all a snag-toothed grin. Even Kissen.

Lessa leapt down from the mast with a thud, her eyes bright and her dark brown arms bared. She kept balanced on her feet as, with a call and a shout, the ship lurched around further to port, then followed in a slow curve again towards starboard.

‘I thought we were going to Wsirin,’ said Kissen.

‘We go there next,’ said Lessa, contemplating her for a moment. ‘Bring briddite,’ she said at last. ‘Time to earn your keep.’

Kissen’s expression hardened with annoyance, and Inara understood what Lessa meant. ‘We’re meeting a god?’ she said.

Skedi’s ears pricked up, and Lessa turned to her, her brow raised in slight surprise at being addressed. ‘If he is present, or allows us to summon him, yes,’ she said. ‘Satuan is not known to be fond of people, but, as your veiga says, we need allies.’

‘Satuan?’ said Kissen. ‘The briddite-maker?’

The creaking of the ship grew louder as it slowed, remaining sails flapping, drifting towards a cluster of other boats all flying white flags of truce.

‘Aye,’ said Lessa. ‘If your reports from Talicia have any weight, we must find out how a god with a briddite heart can be killed.’

Skedi sat up on his hind legs. ‘Why would a god make briddite?’ he asked. Inara, too, was surprised. A god making the very ore that could be used to kill them? So strange.

‘There are tens of tales, and all say it different,’ said Kissen.

Lessa shrugged. ‘Why doesn’t matter. What matters is whether he will help us now. Can you swim in …?’ She gestured at Kissen’s right leg, and the godkiller scoffed.

‘Can? Yes. Will? No. It’s wood and leather, and it won’t like the water.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘And “prosthesis” is not a dirty word.’

‘We’ll take a skiff then,’ said Lessa. ‘But we should all bathe before presenting ourselves. No god likes filth in their shrine.’

‘Gods should take what they can get,’ Kissen muttered.

‘I thought the king wasn’t going to let gods help,’ Inara put in.

‘Few in Middren have enough power,’ said Lessa, ‘but the great gods of other shores … well, we would be fools to waste the opportunity.’ She nodded at Inara.

‘Irisia may not offer the help we need. We must explore every avenue before leaving the fate of our lands up to chance. That is what we owe our people as heads of our Houses.’

She’s happy you’re talking to her, said Skedi.

Don’t lie to me.

I wouldn’t.

Hah.

The island loomed closer, and the last of their sails were furled. The capstan was loosed and, rattling, the anchor plunged into the water beneath the boat, dragging along the seabed, seeking purchase.

‘Brake the capstan!’ Lertes cried.

The crew stopped its rattling spin, the anchor caught, and the Silverswift came to a halt beside the other ships.

‘Arlo!’ called Lessa to the older man with two wooden fingers. ‘Prepare us a skiff.’