“Wake up,” Isotta whispered at his ear. Gerard startled awake to find the others rubbing their eyes and yawning. He felt the incessant rocking as the rowers drew them through the water.

  “Grab everything you have and come with me when I say,” she said. “Quietly.” Her words came clipped, driven by a sense of urgency.

  Gerard shouldered his backpack and emerged onto the deck. The barest sliver of moonlight lit the water. They’d come upon land in the night. A small island. Very small. In the dim it took Gerard a moment to comprehend that she’d led them to an iceberg.

  The sound of waves lapping gently against the ice echoed strangely in the night. He could smell the tang of cold in the air. He’d thought the iceberg might be moving, but soon realized that they were sailing towards it at speed. Their paced slowed as the rowers stopped and stood on the deck, looking up.

  The dark night air flared from a sudden burst of flame. A few of the men sent spires of fire into the sky. In the sudden contrast of black against orange, Gerard saw the silhouette of two birds igniting and plummeting. Feathers blazing, they dropped into the water with faint splashes.

  Isotta whirled her hand near her hip. Gerard heard a humming sound, then a crack, like a horse whip. With dizzying speed she reloaded a handful of tiny stones into her sling pocket, whirled and flung once more. The smattering of rocks found their target and a third bird fell.

  “Now,” she whispered, tugging at Gerard’s sleeve.

  The six of them crouched on the deck of the raft. The iceberg drew closer.

  “Hop on,” Isotta said, staring at Gerard. “You first.”

  Gerard felt his throat tighten with fear. “But I…”

  One of the rowers picked Gerard up and hurled him from the raft onto the ice. Just before he fell, a cushion of air lifted him up, then plopped him down. He heard another thud nearby, and Tomyko’s strangled cry of indignation.

  Glim ran and jumped onto the ice, turned, and caught Lhani, who had slowed her own descent with a gust of wind.

  Arrad swung the hammer once, then again. On the third upswing he leapt off the side of the raft. He wasn’t going to make it, but his course adjusted with assists from Lhani and Isotta, who each gestured at him with guiding hands.

  Finally, Isotta stepped into the air and glided onto the ice floe like a feather on the wind. Her cloak fluttered around her as she landed.

  Wasting no time, she led them to a ledge of slightly overlapping ridges of ice. Between them, Gerard saw a hole barely wide enough to fit his shoulders. It glinted in the moonlight like glass, as if the ice had melted recently.

  “Down you go,” Isotta whispered.

  Gerard shimmied into the tunnel and slid down an icy ramp. His fall was cushioned by burlap sacks stacked into a heap.

  He heard a sliding sound behind him and scrambled out of the way. Tomyko, Arrad, and Lhani followed one after the other.

  They hopped aside and brushed themselves off. Gerard waited for the others, but no one came. The silence lingered and he worried that something had happened. At last he heard the ringing sound of steel leaving its scabbard. Moments later, Isotta slid down the tunnel, looking shaken. He could barely see her, but her wild eyes and the shadow of deep furrows in her brow told the story.

  Arrad perked up, as if listening.

  “Glim wants to know if it is safe here.”

  Isotta sighed in the dark. She walked away from them, fumbled around, and lit a candle, which she cupped her hand around to hide its light. In the flicker of shadows, Gerard saw they’d landed at the bottom of a cave-like hole, about the size of his cabin in Hiehaven. The floor had a smooth sheen where it had been leveled by flame. Bedrolls and barrels lined the walls.

  “Whatever you tell him, do it quietly,” Isotta whispered.

  “It is safe, Glim,” Lhani said hoarsely.

  He slid down, swordpoint first, and rolled into a crouch. He spun, taking in the surroundings. He stood and sheathed his sword.

  Isotta blew out the candle. She picked up a large, white sack. It seemed light, perhaps filled with straw. She shoved it into the tunnel’s entrance, plunging the chamber into absolute darkness. The sounds of the sea became muffled.

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  “Tomyko, a light if you will?”

  Gerard heard fingers snap. A flickering light danced just above Tomyko’s hand. Isotta used the light to find an oil lap, which bathed the walls in a warm glow. She stretched, and at a normal volume, said: “Welcome to our temporary home. Each of you, take a bedroll. Chamber pot’s through there.” She gestured to a cleft in the wall at the rear of the cave.

  ?.??.??˙˙??.??.??˙˙??.??.?

  No one moved.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Lhani said. Glim nodded vehemently at her words. Gerard found himself in full agreement.

  “Please,” Isotta said, sitting down on one of the bedrolls. It crunched beneath her, again suggesting straw. “Get comfortable. I will ease your minds.”

  “He—you know who I mean—draws nearer with each moment!” Arrad said, with an uncharacteristic annoyance.

  “If that is true, I’m in as much danger as you.”

  Gerard felt something ease in his mind. That made sense at least. He took a seat on the bedroll next to Isotta. “Why are we here?”

  “We’ve had spies following us since Fsisbon. Three birds at least. There could be more, but they take time to enspell and everything happened quickly. And Certe is a far more interesting target for their spies. I doubt anyone else had time enough to mark us. Assuming those spies were all, no one will know where we are. Pelutians are the best sailors in the world. They’ll be far from here come morning.”

  “So,” Gerard said, “We wait for the trail to go cold? Literally, in this case?” Isotta smirked at the pun. Not his finest effort, but she relaxed a bit.

  She nodded. “We are taking a risk, but one I am comfortable we’ll be on the right side of. We wait here a few days to really be sure. Those curious about us will expect us to head to safety. I seriously doubt anyone will be looking for us in an ice floe in the middle of the sea.”

  “Including Certe?”

  They all leaned in to hear her reply.

  “He doesn’t want us dead. If he knew where the hammer is, he’d already have it. He didn’t know back then, and he doesn’t know now. He’s been using logic thus far. Logic is not going to suddenly give him our location. As long as we’re careful, it will be like finding a needle in a haystack. ?olia has been searching for her sling for thousands of years, and she has much longer reach.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t want us dead?” Arrad asked.

  “Because we are still alive.”

  Gerard frowned. “So your entire plan was based on assumptions about his personality?”

  “Certe is known for his enduring patience. If we can use past behavior to indicate future behavior, he will be seeking calm more than anything. I doubt he wants to encounter people right now any more than they want to encounter him.”

  “Then what is he doing now?”

  Isotta shrugged.

  Gerard looked around to gauge everyone’s reactions. The same fear and exhaustion lurked in their haunted expressions. But he also noticed a visible relaxation. In Tomyko, it was a smoothing of his forehead and lips that were no longer pulled into a tight line of tension. In Arrad, it was a deflation of some of the bluster his posture had been expressing lately. They all seemed to sink a bit lower into their bedrolls, and their eyes seemed slightly less haunted.

  Only Glim had not changed. Gerard wondered if he ever would. The young man had clearly seen into the eye of the storm.

  And right now, Glim trembled with rage. Arrad spoke for him. “Glim says this is complete…” Arrad blushed. “Well, let me rephrase it as, implausible. Certe completely destroyed Wohn-Grab.”

  “Did he?” Isotta asked, her tone pointed.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Did Certe attack anyone? That would be entirely out of character.”

  Glim stood up and screamed silently at the ceiling. Arrad clamped his hands over his ears.

  “Answer me! Did Certe attack you?”

  Glim shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Glim,” Isotta said, her voice sympathetic. As if she completely understood his pain, and would not wish it upon anyone. “I know that your home was destroyed. And Certe was the cause of it. But indirectly. That’s how the Trine works. And to be fair, in response to what Incantus Troix did to him. He had no way to know the war is ended. I’m sure he’s realized that by now.”

  Glim sat heavily on the ground. Lhani draped her arms around him and murmured encouraging sounds into his ear that he alone could hear.

  Isotta looked at the huddled pair with some mixture of emotion Gerard could not fathom. He saw ferocity in her eyes, and a resolve that chilled him. He knew in that moment that he never wanted Isotta as an enemy. She unconsciously ran her fingertip over the fresh scar above her eye, with a vulnerability that seemed incongruous.

  She sighed. “I’m sorry to say it this way—and I wish with every bone in my body that it could be different—but we all have a hard road ahead. There is nothing I can say to take your pain away. Nor would I ever try.” She looked around at each of them to make sure she had their full attention. “This is exactly why my sisters and I fight for a different path. You have two ways to move forward from here. Either constantly looking over your shoulders in fear of what might come, or deciding what path honors your intent and walking it no matter what stands in the way. I have chosen the latter.”

  Isotta dimmed the oil lamp to a low bead of flame and shrugged a blanket over herself.