*
We still hadn’t answered the question by the time we returned to Dombang. After spending the whole day retracing our route through the delta’s winding channels—the same channels Ruc’s soldiers should have been following—we’d encountered only crocs and tufted ducks, winebeaks and tiny blue-headed rush thrushes. The sun had dropped out of the purpling sky by the time we could see the smoke rising from Dombang’s chimneys. The first boat we spotted was a long coracle crewed by half a dozen fishers. They paused in the hauling of their nets, studied us warily, but didn’t raise a hand in greeting or cry out.
Ruc and I had been rowing all afternoon, but when he noticed the fishers he shipped his oar and stood up.
“Have you seen Greenshirts?” he shouted. Like most sound in the delta, his voice didn’t carry. It seemed to fade into the reeds, to sink into the mud. “War boats,” he went on. “Packed with soldiers?”
The oldest of the fishers shook his head gravely, watched us a moment longer, then turned back to his nets.
“Your soldiers are probably dead,” Ela announced lazily. “Just like the others. The ones on the transport.”
It wasn’t the first time during the long trip back that she’d made the observation, but for the first time Ruc responded. He rounded on the woman, who was reclining lazily in the bow, leveled his finger at her as though he planned to plunge it through her neck.
“The men on that transport were tricked, then ambushed. Most of them were probably drunk, finishing off the last of the journey’s rum before gliding into the city. Every one of the soldiers I sent out this morning was armed with a flatbow, sword, and spear. They knew the foe and they were ready.”
“No one is ready for the Given Land,” Chua said. She slid onto the bench beside me, lifted the oars from my hands. “Move.”
“I can finish,” I said.
“Night is almost here, and you are slowing down. I do not intend to die so close to Dombang that I can smell the smoke.”
Reluctantly, I climbed aside. Ruc and I hadn’t spoken all afternoon, but there had been a satisfaction, even a joy, in sitting close to him, matching my rhythm to his, listening to his breath, deep and even, as he leaned back against the oar, feeling his bare shoulder brush against mine. We’d spent so much time vying with each other, sparring, testing, distrusting; it felt good to labor at the same task, to work in concert. The oar felt honest in my hands. As long as we were silent, there could be no lies.
Chua was right, though; I was exhausted. The sooner we docked at the Shipwreck, the sooner we could find out what happened to Ruc’s missing boats and the missing soldiers. More than that, I realized I wanted to be back in Dombang. No one had died on the return trip—Chua had neatly speared the one snake that swam close to the boat—but the open delta at night brought back memories of my childhood, of huddling hungry and terrified in the low branches of that tree, knife clutched in my hand, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows to kill me. The dying part didn’t bother me any longer, but not all fears are about death, and I breathed a long sigh of relief as the city buildings closed around us once more, as ruddy lanterns replaced the last light draining from the sky.
The relief didn’t last.
Before we’d gone two dozen boat lengths into the city’s canals, I realized something was strange. There were too few people on the docks, bridges, and causeways. Usually, the folk of Dombang tended to congregate outside in the relative cool of the evening. Tavern terraces overlooking the canals would begin to fill. Fishers would yoke their boats together, come out from the canvas tents onto the decks. Stalls on the bridges, closed during the day’s worst heat, would open, selling fruit and crushed ice, plum wine and a hundred varieties of quey. That, at least, was what happened on a normal night. This night felt different. At first I thought my mind was playing tricks after two days in the delta. Maybe it wasn’t as late as I thought. Maybe this part of the city didn’t see the same kind of traffic. As we slid noiselessly over the darkening water, however, I noticed Ruc, too, studying the walkways and bridges, a frown on his face.
Ela picked her head up from the bench where she’d been dozing, cast a sleepy eye over our surroundings. “It seems less lively than I remember.”
“Something’s wrong,” Ruc said.
The few people who were out scuttled along the walkways, glancing furtively over their shoulders every few paces. The boats on the canal gave us a wide berth as we approached. No one hailed us. No one so much as looked our direction. We might have been ghosts drifting through the evening on an empty boat. We might have died out in the delta for all the notice anyone gave us.
“The city was skittish when we left,” I pointed out. “If there was another riot…”
Ruc nodded. “Curfew. I gave orders for the Greenshirts to lock the city down at the first sign of violence.” He cursed quietly. “That explains where the legions went.”
“I thought you left enough men to deal with the city.”
“So did I. But it’s a big fucking city. Wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong.”
Despite rowing all afternoon, he picked up the tempo. Chua glanced over, then matched him, and the boat darted forward, carving through the water as though it were a living thing eager to be home. I watched the great buildings of the city slide past: the Temple of Intarra, spangled with glass; the brooding, half-collapsed custom house of Old Harbor; the water gates, built by Anho the Fat as a way to close off the city’s heart from any ocean-borne attack. It looked dead, all of it. Instead of lanterns and cook fires, singing and drumming, we passed empty alehouses, empty whorehouses, boats with empty decks. I had thought a lot about killing in my life, had witnessed the life pour out of dozens of people, but I’d never imagined the death of an entire city. There was something holy about Dombang that night. It seemed larger than I remembered, more grand, less filthy. I found myself wanting to explore the dark canals, to leave Chua, and Kossal, and Ela, take up my oar again at Ruc’s side, see for the first time the city where I had grown up.