Wirrin nudged the boat away from her little island as the rain intensified, painting the forms of twenty-three mages moving across the deck of the messenger ship. As it passed the stationary sail-barge, activity seemed to be dying down, just the rowers belowdecks and two, stationary Work mages steering the ship.

  In the heavy rain, Wirrin could even feel the medallions that the mages wore. They had come in even numbers, this time. Six of each, with the exception of one Light mage and all six War mages, who would have been below on the oars.

  Wirrin had never been on a messenger-style ship before, but she doubted there could be much more than the rowers belowdecks. She would have expected the Flesh mages to be below as well, but they were on deck, moving between the other mages, always in contact with at least two others.

  That wouldn’t be enough. If, as it seemed, a Flesh mage could only protect two others from Wirrin’s poison, they should have brought twice as many, at least. Thirty mages was quite a lot for Wirrin to try to fight, but somehow eighteen seemed much more manageable.

  Above the messenger ship, the rain got harder and the clouds darker.

  Mkaer had been right, they were ready for her.

  The sails pulled free of all three masts and suddenly Wirrin could no longer feel the mages on the ship. The wet canvas sizzled and steamed as the rain turned to acid, but the water did not burn through the thick material, it slid off and into the ocean.

  Wooden panels leapt out of the deck to intercept sandy wads of mud launched from the water. The oars stopped moving and in a moment, eighteen mages were airborne, drifting like leaves in the rain toward Wirrin’s little island.

  Wirrin only wondered for a moment why they would bring Light mages to fight her. Lightning flashed from the dark clouds and water torrented from the ocean as the bolt bent in the sky and missed the drifting mages.

  Grass and brush grew under Wirrin’s feet, tangling around her ankles. It dried quick and brittle and only made movement on the muddy platform easier. Wirrin drew her sword again.

  The first trio of mages landed on the island gentle as the rain. Here, Wirrin saw a vulnerability. With two mages hanging off him, the War mage was slower, more careful. A slash at the light mage forced all three to back off or lose their protection.

  Lightning struck down on the canvas shields over the ship, burning them dry for just a moment in the driving rain, but leaving the surface unscathed. More lightning bent in its path as a second trio landed on the island.

  The sandy mud stayed where it was in the ocean bed as a third trio landed on the island and Wirrin didn’t have the concentration to keep up with all of her magic. Her head was pounding and she was sweating in the cold rain, keeping up a flurry of wide sweeps to force the War mages back.

  So far, Wirrin had found only one way to reliably pierce the Flesh mages’ defences. The fourth trio landed into a lunge and Wirrin was once against stabbed on the left side. The point of the rapier sheared right through her collarbone, above her lung and heart.

  Then Wirrin did something even more foolish. She sunk her teeth into the War mage, clapped a hand onto the Flesh mage’s neck, and struck herself with lightning.

  For what seemed and eternity, Wirrin was deaf and blind. Her body shuddered uncontrollably, blood leaked into her mouth.

  ‘Oh, I like her,’ Haerst bubbled.

  It had worked. All three mages lay smoking on the ground. The fifteen other mages now landed on the little island looked between their dead comrades and Wirrin.

  ‘It will only work once,’ Mkaer rumbled.

  Wirrin didn’t have time to disagree. The War mages were so much faster than her. None of them had just been struck by lightning. The only thing keeping Wirrin from immediate death was that there wasn’t enough space for fifteen people to stab her at the same time.

  Nine people was more than enough.

  Not all of them had swords or knives drawn in time to add more wounds, but five of them did. Despite the shin sword that emerged just under her right breast, the knife stabbed into her right shoulder, the sword that cut open the side of her neck, the knife that cut open her left triceps, and the sword that disappeared into her gut, Wirrin was lucky.

  She wasn’t dead.

  If the last bolt had been blinding, afterimages still bright enough to blot out the haloes in Wirrin’s eyes. If the last bolt had been loud, ringing in Wirrin’s ears drowning out the pelting rain.

  This was something else.

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  Mkaer wasn’t always right.

  What Wirrin had learned in her fights with the Gods’ mages was that there was always an amount of force that they either couldn’t manage or were unprepared to deal with. Enough lightning to turn the two swords stabbed through Wirrin into burning irons was too much for the Light mages to deal with. Was too much for the Flesh mages to deal with.

  It was also too much for Wirrin to deal with.

  Wirrin couldn’t be sure that she actually did scream, as thunder sent out waves strong enough to rock the ships, but it felt like she screamed. It felt like her throat tried to tear itself from her body. It felt like being stabbed with several pieces of red-hot steel.

  Even her new senses of the world seemed blotted out by the shock of the lightning. She could only barely feel the mages around her, some collapsed, some reeling. Her sense of touch still worked, when she grabbed at one of them.

  Her sense of taste was unnecessary when her teeth sank into flesh.

  For a long moment, the only sensation in the world was the gentle tearing of meat and bone in Wirrin’s mouth. For a moment, all there was, was the bleeding pain all through her body.

  Then someone stabbed her through the left lung.

  Wirrin couldn’t see the trio of mages who had recovered sufficiently to stab her, she hadn’t felt them move. She knew where they were. She knew that she was hungry. She knew that her teeth were strong.

  She didn’t remember eating Baras. She had been assured repeatedly that she had done exactly that. She would remember eating these mages. She would remember the bare scraps of screams that made it past the ringing in her ears. She would remember the soft feeling in her teeth. She would remember strength enough to destroy the world insufficient to get away from her.

  Mkaer was right a lot of the time.

  Someone stabbed her in the back, not quite in the right lung but much closer than Wirrin liked. As her extra senses filtered back into her mind, she could feel the trio of mages still standing to her side. None of their weapons had been buried in her when the lightning struck.

  Wirrin had made a mistake. Her hands were full. Her mouth was full. She couldn’t have helped herself.

  Her returned senses were blotted out by an impenetrable canvas sail above. The ground turned harder than stone, impossible to see through, impossible to move. But she could feel the plants growing up around her legs.

  She could smell the blood in the air.

  She could feel the precision in a wall of sandy mud just a little too short to stop the wave that washed over Wirrin’s island, just in time.

  Wirrin did not need to move much. Wirrin did not need her melted sword.

  Wirrin’s claws tore the throat out of the last Light mage.

  Water washed over the other Flesh mages at her feet, twitching and struggling and alive. Mkaer was right too often.

  Blood spat from her ears and nose and mouth. There was more than one way to move the earth.

  Even if she could not hear or see, Wirrin could feel the blast of lightning rumble through her bones, shattering that impenetrable canvas. Shattering that impenetrable, wriggling mud.

  The last of the War and Flesh mages did not fall. They were not Wirrin’s target.

  Wirrin felt that solid, unyielding stone follow her into the ground. She felt it, slow and creeping and precise, fall short of her. She felt it leave her exit open.

  Wirrin’s claws locked into the side of the boat. The water around her pushed. The wind thundered into the unfurled sail. The only comfort Wirrin had was imagining Yern jumping and yelping in adorable surprise as the water shoved Wirrin over the side of the boat.

  As far as she knew, Wirrin might never get to see or hear Yern again. That hardly mattered now. What mattered now was that Wirrin needed to stay awake long enough for the Church’s ships to disappear from what remained of her senses. She needed to stay awake long enough to absolutely get out of here.

  Wirrin and Yern’s little boat blasted across the reefs, bouncing over top on higher waves when the reefs were too close to the surface. The wind and water dragged them all the way to the strait, where the wind changed to push them up the coast as fast as Wirrin could still manage, blood leaking from all over her body.

  She tried to speak. Perhaps to reassure Yern, perhaps to ask something. She lost track of thought when only blood emerged from her mouth. At the very least, she could still feel through the water. She could still feel through the trailing rain.

  She needed to get away.

  Wirrin woke fitfully to stabbing and cutting and pinching. She woke fitfully to the stink of myrrh. She woke fitfully to blurred images and muffled sounds. She woke fitfully to the peaceful ocean all around.

  When she was six years old, Wirrin had conducted an experiment. It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed whoever had told her it was harder to hold your breath when the water was frozen. It was that she couldn’t be certain without checking for herself.

  Water so cold it burned her skin drove the breath from her tiny lungs instantly. It gripped her around the middle and it dragged her down into the darkness to be frozen and crushed.

  A hand had reached into the water and grabbed the hood of Wirrin’s coat. A little hand with strong fingers. A girl whose face and name were missing from the memory, the same age as Wirrin, had dragged her back onto the ice.

  ‘Was it worth it?’ the girl had panted.

  Wirrin had assured the girl that it was, indeed, worth it. Now she knew for sure.

  When Wirrin woke, her vision was grey and blurry in the centre. Her ears hummed into her aching mind. Her body refused to move. Everything hurt. She had a lot more stitches.

  Above her, the sail was furled. Below her, the water was smooth and the boat was motionless. Beside her, Yern was nodding off, sitting cross-legged on the deck, the contents of Wirrin’s pack spread out around her.

  Further above, the sky was blue and clear. Far below, coral and fish leaked their fascinating miasma into the water.

  Somewhere, the Fiends rumbled and burbled and cackled and bubbled. They must have been speaking to her, but she could not understand them.

  The stitches in her neck pinched when Wirrin moved her head.

  Yern startled awake. ‘Vos tholgek.’