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KISSEN HAD WALKED THROUGH MOUNTAINS IN THE sprawling dark and seen them rise around her like ships against the sky, great bodies in the midnight shadows.

Now, the ships around her felt like mountains. Looming, drifting and creaking. Threatening. The bodies of beasts.

She and Lessa had returned to the enclosed harbour beneath the Wsirin fortress walls, walking down from the guarded entrance. Every ship in this harbour had been invited in. Whoever entered and left did so at the request of the Mithrik.

The Restish ship was still quiet. Kissen glanced at it warily.

It was larger than the Silverswift , double the size.

At least it wouldn’t be hard to lose amidst the chaos of the Long Harbour.

She walked behind Lessa, trying her best to keep her breath and not focus too much on how much her lungs still hurt, how her wounds itched.

‘Why are you coming with me?’ said Lessa, probably taking the shortness of Kissen’s breathing for what it was: fear. ‘You should have waited on the shore with Inara.’

They were walking the boards between the other vessels now, and Kissen could just make out the Silverswift ’s prow.

From this distance, nothing appeared amiss.

There was a lantern lit on the topmast, and a few on board, but there was no movement in the dark.

Most of the crew should have been spending the night ashore.

‘I’ve never been much good at waiting,’ said Kissen. ‘Anyway, I can only look after one Craier at a time. At the moment you’re doing the stupider thing.’

‘Ah,’ said Lessa. ‘Then it’s not because … how did your sister put it?’ She repeated Yatho’s phrase in sign, You “like” me ?

Kissen gave her the curled finger into thumb sign that meant ‘fuck you’ in Talic, and Lessa laughed. If anyone had been watching, they might be put at ease.

‘I’m with you for Inara,’ said Kissen. That was starting to become a lie. Lessa was infuriating, even worse than Elo, and without the gentleness that softened his edge. ‘Just because you’re bonny doesn’t mean I’ll die on my blade for you.’

‘You think I’m bonny then?’ smiled Lessa, moving ahead.

Kissen frowned at her back. For a woman walking towards her potential death, she seemed rather light-hearted about it. ‘You know I do,’ she said quietly.

Lessa glanced back, her stride slowing. Kissen couldn’t read her expression and decided not to try. She knew she shouldn’t want her. It was too complicated, for Inara, for herself. This … attraction to Lessa filled her up with voiceless want, and baseless imaginings.

Yatho was right. She loved mess.

‘Come,’ said Kissen, nodding up at the ship now above them.

The Silverswift ’s sails were neatly furled, and all was silent other than the whistling of the breeze through the ropes.

For a night in port, Kissen wouldn’t have expected it teeming with the crew, but she would have expected some broken-barrelled carousing among those left on board, or at least some chatter over the sweets Inara said she had sent them.

Instead, there was silence broken only by the waves kissing at the poles of the jetty and the hull, and the sound of the ropes slapping against the mast.

Kissen wondered what Lessa hoped for; that her crew were dead, and had not betrayed her? Or that they had turned her in to her enemy and lived?

Lessa set a foot on the ramp chained in place to connect the ship to the shore.

The wind coming off the harbour was soft and salt-laced, a refreshing relief after the heat of the city and its people.

Kissen breathed it in, feeling it freshen her lungs, power her body.

She now wore Yatho’s briddite-and-leather leg, a beauty that fitted her perfectly.

Hers. Her self. She felt her power, despite her injuries, in the cutlass at her side, in the air in her lungs, her muscles and strength, her determination.

Through dalliances, families and wars, her strength was her greatest certainty.

Lessa reached the deck, with Kissen behind her.

‘Ho, Captain Lertes?’ called the lady, her hand, for show, going to her sword. ‘What kind of boat do you keep, man, that there is no watch aboard? I could steal away the gold you’ve stashed a’neath your bunk.’

‘Not today, my lady,’ came a voice from aft, and with a sinking stomach, Kissen recognised it. Lertes had stepped out of his cabin, sword still sheathed. Aleda was with him, looking grim, her arm still bandaged from her burn. Whatever Lessa thought, she kept her face inscrutable.

‘What’s going on?’ said Kissen, feigning innocence. She wasn’t a good liar and was glad it was dark.

‘Time for you to go, veiga,’ said Aleda. ‘This doesn’t concern you. Consider it gratitude for saving us from the smith god.’

‘What of my gratitude?’ said Lessa, her hand tightening on her sword, and she gave a chill little smile. ‘Is this mutiny I taste in the air?’ She tutted. ‘How pathetic, Lertes, I thought you were a clever bastard, not a weak one.’

Lertes drew his cutlass, and Kissen felt the boards shift beneath her left foot. There were others on deck, in the shadows, moving around them.

‘Can’t mutiny if you’re not the captain,’ said Lertes, his voice rough but sure, though his expression was tinged with the slightest shame. ‘And you made me captain, my lady. As such, I will make decisions that best befit this crew.’

‘This is my ship,’ snarled Lessa, her mask slipping.

Lertes shook his head. ‘I was given this ship by Lessa the pirate. Young scourge of the waters, demon with a blade, and friend to the gods. Now you’re endangering your crew for a country we have no love for, intending to sail her back for a war that you will lose.’

He looked at Aleda, and she tipped her chin, affirming him. Lertes turned back and firmed his stance. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but I will not risk me and mine on a losing game.’

Lessa drew her sword, and Kissen followed suit. ‘You think I won’t fight for my own ship?’ she growled.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Lertes. He lifted his hands and clapped.

Into the pool of torchlight, four crew stepped forward.

Kissen recognised Rhiyande, looking sorry, with Shah beside her, his hands trembling slightly.

Sallath appeared positively gleeful, and Slim, his jaw tight and the glass beads around his neck rattling.

Then out of the hatches came several more, people Lessa had sailed with, worked with, eaten with, commanded.

‘The Restish want you dead or alive,’ said Lertes. ‘It can go either way, Lessa, but I would rather not dirty the boards again.’

‘What the fuck?’ snapped Kissen. It wasn’t the fight that frightened Kissen. Dead or alive? Bahba had been certain the Restish wanted her living. They were counting on it.

And if they didn’t mind her dead, it meant it wasn’t Lessa they intended for the throne.

It was Inara.