Sophie appeared alongside her friend, and then her strong hands had Mouth’s other arm. Mouth spilled onto the deck of the damaged pirate boat, coughing up a ruckus. The deck was flooding, four or five centimeters deep already.
Mouth pulled herself together, still looking at Bianca. “I would have done anything for my people, the same as you would for yours. I don’t know why you thought I was going to risk my life for your cause. You can’t control anyone unless you know what they want.”
Bianca recoiled. Then her face closed up, and she took on the same dead-eyed expression that Mouth had seen on the faces of so many practiced killers. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll try and remember that.”
Back on the Resourceful Courier’s skiff, four or five meters away, Alyssa faced off with the last pirate. “Hey, can I get some help over here?” But the pirate had surrendered by the time Mouth, Sophie, and Bianca arrived.
“There’s no point.” The pirate, a pale Zagreb-looking dude with a long beard and no eyebrows, was throwing all of his weapons into the thick water on deck. “No point fighting any more. My name is Gerry. I surrender. We’re all dead anyway. I hope your stupid cargo was worth it.”
So the survivors of all this were Mouth, Alyssa, Bianca, Sophie, Yulya, Gerry, and the badly injured Reynold and Kendrick. You couldn’t even tell how Reynold was injured, he was just red all over, leaning on the sled with no strength. “I used to have a lot more blood. Funny the things you take for granted.”
“You idiots chose to fight,” Gerry said. “We were fighting for our whole community. You don’t even know what it’s like to grow up hearing the shallow splash of fishing boats coming home empty, and seeing the exhaustion on people’s faces, the sheer inability to keep trying to pull life out of these waters.”
“You can just shut up,” Yulya spat at Gerry. “You fuckers attacked us.”
The skiff and Red Jenny’s boat were well on their way to sinking. “We need to get as much of the cargo onto that boat as possible.” Alyssa gestured at the remaining pirate boat, which looked ancient but still seaworthy.
But Sophie, the mute girl with the big dark braids, pointed while grabbing Alyssa’s arm.
At first, Mouth didn’t see what Sophie was pointing at, but then it made sense: she was pointing at nothing.
“That’s full night.” Alyssa cursed. “We’re too late.”
* * *
How are you supposed to prepare for death, anyway? The Citizens had done a whole hospice thing, where you were supposed to make peace, and leave the world the same way you left your campsite: clean and empty, except for whatever knowledge might be helpful to those who came after you.
The others were discussing whether they should all get in the pirate boat and hope it held up better than the skiff. But no boat could survive hitting the ice shelf.
“Wait,” Mouth said. “The sled. The sled has those big tires that we took off an old all-terrain rover.”
“Help me untie it,” Alyssa said. They worked quickly, Mouth, Alyssa, and Sophie, cutting the ropes that secured the sled to the skiff. And then they helped Reynold and Kendrick into the driver’s seat. Everyone else climbed on top of the cargo, crawling under the tarps.
The impact of the skiff’s metal underside against the thick ice floor almost knocked Mouth off the sled. “Hang tight!” shouted Alyssa. The sled rolled off the doomed skiff and hit the ice with so much force Mouth’s jaw and spine contracted. Then they slid forward.
“I can’t see where we’re going,” said Kendrick.
“Can we stop?” Alyssa said. “Try and stop.”
“I’m trying!”
They kept sliding on the ice, and their headlights provided no guidance. Mouth kept wanting to crawl out from under the tarp and help, but couldn’t. At last the sled hit a snowbank, with another bone-splitting impact.
SOPHIE
I wrap myself around Bianca, trying to shield her from the freezing wind, and I try not to think about the look on her face when she almost let Mouth die. The night feels even colder here than near the Old Mother, thanks to the frigid sea air. Every breath feels like swallowing an open flame. My eyelashes turn solid, like needles, and my lips freeze. Mouth and Alyssa wave electric torches, but everyone else fades into the mist.
Someone tugs my wrist, hard enough to jolt me. I don’t even realize at first that the bracelet has woken up and is trying to pull me deeper into the night. I nearly stumble away from Bianca and the others before I get my footing.
Rose gave me this bracelet so I wouldn’t be alone, no matter where I went, and there has to be some way I can call for help. The bracelet exerts more pressure, trying to coax me into deeper darkness, and I keep trying to figure out the interface.
Alyssa has the tarp from the top of the sled, and she wraps it around all of us, even Gerry the pirate. We all huddle together, sharing as much warmth as we can.
My bracelet stops yanking at my wrist, and instead makes a low warbling that carries over the squalling wind. As if my message has been received.
“What the hell is that sound?” Alyssa says.
I whisper to Bianca, “I managed to contact a friend of mine. They’re sending help. We’re going to be okay. But when they show up, everyone needs to stay calm.”
“What are you talking about?” Bianca says aloud, each syllable chopped up by shivers. “What friend? How could you have friends out here?” But I just shush her, because I can’t draw enough breath to explain, even if I knew how.
So Bianca just repeats my message to the others, and adds, “You idiots shouldn’t do anything stupid. Just keep it together.”
* * *
Everybody is too cold to talk, except for Mouth, who murmurs something that I can’t make out at first. Then I realize Mouth is speaking No?lang, which we studied at the Gymnasium—something like, “Keep my face a secret until you are ready to make a safe place for me, oh Elementals, keep me unknown even to myself unless I can know my friends by the sound of their feet on the road. Keep me cold naked unless I warm myself with compassion. Keep the road straight. Keep me safe between day and night in your eyes.”
“I knew you guys were maniacs, but shut up already,” Gerry the pirate stammers.
“You shut up,” Alyssa hisses at him. “You don’t get to have opinions.”
My bracelet gives a louder, more insistent spasm, and I look up to see soaring mounds gathered around us on all sides: a whole group of Gelet, though I’m the only one who can identify them by faint torchlight. Bianca yelps with surprise, and the others all stiffen. But then the Gelet lean forward and wrap each of us with the same mossy blankets that warmed me after I was banished into the night.
I nudge Bianca, until she says, “These are, uh, Sophie’s friends. They’re here to help us.”
Everybody tries to spit out questions, but I just ignore them. The Gelet nudge us forward, and we push the sled along the ice with us. Next to me, Mouth falls face-first on the ice, picks herself up, and keeps going.
I can’t make out enough details, with these feeble torches, to tell if any of these Gelet is Rose. Even if I could see better, I still probably couldn’t tell. I sense their tenderness, their concern, as they usher me forward through uncountable meters of snow. I can count on a few fingers the number of humans who have cared for me as much as these night-dwellers seem to. I’m conscious, even through my frost-drunk haze, that my debt to the Gelet has doubled.
Just as I’m feeling as though we’ve been walking our whole lives and any memories from before must be false, I see a glimmer on the horizon. Everything wakes up and gains substance. We come into the twilight on the far shore of the Sea of Murder, close enough to see the swaying of the waves and the distant notch of the last pirate boat.
“Well, I guess we made it after all.” Mouth sounds deliberately casual, like this was a lark.
“Sea of Murder, always a rare pleasure,” Kendrick grunts, his leg still bleeding despite his crude attempt at a bandage.
The Gelet are already retreating back into the night, tentacles swirling and pincers flexing, but not before Bianca gets a good look at them and squeezes my arm in shock.
Now that our faces are visible once more, I turn and smile at Bianca. I still don’t know if she heard anything I said during that storm at sea, and the longer this goes on the more I wish I could unspeak those words. Before Bianca looks away, I glimpse the same stony expression as when she almost let Mouth fall onto the blades of ice.
PART
FOUR
SOPHIE