was burning, splintering, crumbling. The streets were all but deserted as they staggered out into the thoroughfare. To the south, toward the Basilica Grande, Jonnen heard screaming darkness, the rage of godlings at war. To the north lay the rubble of the forum, and beyond, the harbors of the Sword and Shield Arms.
Ships.
Escape.
Ashlinn looked into the boy’s eyes. A question swimming amidst that starlit black. Divinities only knew what she’d been through to return here. The strength it had taken to drag herself back from the Abyss. He’d heard her swear to Tric that she’d kill the sky to be the one standing beside Mia at the end. But meeting Ashlinn’s gaze, he knew she understood how much he meant to the one they both loved. Knew that, if he asked it, she’d turn her back and get him to safety first.
But the boy pressed his lips together. Looking past the fear, the chaos, the hunger, the pain, seizing hold of what mattered most and holding tight.
He looked into Ashlinn’s eyes and shook his head.
“When all is blood, blood is all.”
* * *
“You scat-loving fuckweasels, pull them in before I toss you over!”
Cloud Corleone reached over the railing, dragging another sodden child to safety. The lass was shivering, terrified, dripping wet. Beside him, his crew were hauling up their ropes and dragging more folk in from the thrashing oceans. Not being much help in matters of physicality, BigJon was up on the quarterdeck, bellowing obscenities at his salts in the hope it’d further motivate them.
As if witnessing the end of the entire fucking Republic wasn’t enough.
Cloud pulled the little girl into his arms, handed her off to Andretti behind him. Dragging his sleeve across his soot-stained cheeks and pressing his spyglass to his eye, the captain took a moment to look back out across the City of Bridges and Bones. Smoke was pouring from the warehouses, flames spreading across the laden silos in the Nethers, cinders falling like rain.
The blaze had started in the southern ’Grave, and most folk had fled north across the aqueduct or to the harbors in the Arms. But there was still no shortage of people who’d taken to the closest waters they could find. The storm-wracked ocean around them was filled with rowboats, gondolas, dinghies, wine barrels, and planks of wood laden with men, women, and bawling children—every kind of craft capable of floating and some that weren’t. Itreyans, Liisians, Vaanians, ’byss and blood, a countless horde of dogs, rats, even horses. Name the creed or kin and there they were, paddling away from the dying city, clinging to the Maid’s flanks or grasping at the ropes his crew threw down or simply swimming for their lives fast as they were able. The ocean was lit red by the raging firelight. The winds about them cut to the bone.
“We can’t take on many more, Captain!” BigJon yelled over the rolling thunder, steadying himself against the rails. “We’re close to overcrowded as is!”
“Keep bringing them aboard until we’re well past close!” Corleone yelled.
Cloud had already ordered his holds emptied to make room for more hapless passengers—he knew exactly how many his Maid could take before she floundered. But before you mistake him for a lovable scoundrel rather than a mercenary bastard, you should know he was as keen as his first mate to take his leave from the dying metropolis. But alas …
“I can’t see them anywhere!” BigJon shouted.
“I keep telling you, this thing fucking works!” Corleone waved his spyglass. “But the shadowcat said they’d be coming, and we’re not leaving ’til they’re aboard!”
“I didn’t know we’d started taking orders from daemons, Cap’n!”
“I didn’t know you’d traded in your balls for a vagina, either, but here we are!”
“You know, I’ve never understood that!” BigJon called. “I mean, women squeeze babies out of those things, why are they considered—”
“There they are!” Kael cried from the crow’s nest.
Cloud turned his eyes to the water, squinting through the smoke and cinders, wincing as thunder crashed again. He saw a gondola cutting the rolling waters, familiar bedraggled figures inside it. Sidonius was at the bow, arms gleaming in the firelight as he paddled with a broken board. Cloud could see some misshapen crone shrouded in a dark cloak, sitting beside an old man who could only be Mia’s mentor, Mercurio. Bladesinger sat aft, looking a little worse for wear but still paddling hard. The quartet had picked up a dozen passengers in their flight, men and women hanging on to