Ivy awoke in a forest of flames and ruin. She staggered to her feet, pain pressing on every corner of her body.

  Adan lay close, still and motionless. Long sat slightly further, hid between two piles of fallen wall. He was yanking his hair with wrenching force and swinging back and forth uncontrollably. "No…not again…" he muttered. "No, daddy…no."

  Whole body trembling, she reached Adan. Her limbs moved as though submerged in the deep sea—her own body, foreign, strange, and unwelcome.

  The quartermaster groaned at her shaking. She checked him thoughtfully. No blood was seen, but that didn't mean there weren't wounds. She'd learned all too well from Em.

  From between a blood-reddened face, his eyes opened. "Damn," he hissed as she sat him up slightly. "I think my leg is broken. Or my knee. I don't know."

  The ruined house behind them, or at least the remains that still stood, issued a silent warning that a full collapse was coming. Ivy ignored Adan's complaints and helped him to his feet. Then, she edged aside to reach AhLong. She signaled him to start moving, but his gaze stayed lost. Gripping his shoulder with a sudden, unyielding force, she jolted him into motion, yet he remained still.

  The slap across his face rang loud, cutting through the clamor of collapsing stone and droning planes. His head snapped toward her, eyes gleaming with a malice so sharp it raised every hair on her neck. What stared back at her was no longer Long, but something darker: the evil holding all the world’s wickedness.

  She stood her ground. Unbent, unflinching before the malice.

  “Rise, soldier! We cannot waste a moment!” Her hand signals came more than an order; they were a challenge.

  The command tore the old man's trance. He blinked, snapping back to the world. Long obeyed as the old soldier he was. No questions asked, no complaints said. He rushed to Adan, finding grip under the man's shoulders with the steady resolve of someone who has done it a thousand times.

  On the other side of the square, a group of men surged forward, their silhouettes jagged against the fires' glows. Ivy’s eyes narrowed, straining to tell if they were friends or foes.

  Moments before, the square had been a battlefield. Waves of attackers had crashed against the blue defences for hours, every single assault repelled by Ivy's Rangers. The last one, led by Uwe himself, unfolded perfectly. A final strike shattering their defenses piece by piece. But bombs took victory from him, and did not grant it to Ivy's forces either.

  Where Uwe’s men had once surged forward with swords aloft, there were now only demolished buildings. A few survivors clawed through the wreckage, dragging companions from the ruin. All around the square, the wounded writhed, cried, and waddled through the fire and smoke.

  A section of a ruined building groaned, collapsing in a final, horrific surrender. The group she'd seen before escaped the rain of rocks, but as they moved to the square's open center, the weight of a hundred shots fell over them from above. With its prey lying on the floor, a low?flying aircraft sliced through the clouds and flew away, its engine reverberating like the cruel chortle of an assassin's laughter.

  At a distance, a bomb struck the fortress's summit, yet the tower remained unbroken.

  "Their fate is sealed!" Adan said. "We can't do a thing for them. We need to go!"

  "I know," Her guts twisted with the weight of the choice. "We need to move to the city's edge. Bombardment may be less intense there, but we will never reach south; we need to go northside."

  Adan opened his mouth, but AhLong pulled him into a gap between boulders. "Cover!"

  Above, a low ruffle heralded the coming of another plane. An instant later, a barrage of bullets swept across the cobblestones. Further, as if the bombardment itself was part of a macabre melody, an explosion thundered against the fortress once more. Smoke and fire billowed upward, and the walls of a once unbreakable structure crumbled into ruin.

  For a moment, clear of threats, or so it seemed, heads began to rise from the square's demise. Long shouted, and Ivy’s hand flickered in signal, guiding their people into their side. Everyone who could still walk stumbled toward them, even men who only moments ago had been enemies. Long spoke in the tongue of Jo, and soon it was plain: there was no fight left to be fought, not when both sides lay broken by a common enemy.

  Small groups formed to press forward, slipping from gap to gap, each following the next to scraps of cover. They headed deep into the tangled net of alleys, out of the square’s open trap and better hidden from the hunter's above.

  Flames writhed like serpents around the gutted remains of a city. Every step crunched over shattered glass, piles of rubble, and charred wood. Ivy followed Ahlong's group as a broken shell. Her resolve to act as a leader had been drained; it had been extinguished. Only three things remained clear in her mind. Survive, find Vega, and avenge Em. Nothing else mattered.

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  A handful of survivors joined, mostly Uwe’s own. None dared to question why the enemy was no more against them. Every single soul was now tired by fear and despair, and as such, they all understood the new rule of things without the need of words. Ahlong exchanged terse commands with a man who had taken leadership by force, and soon it became obvious he didn't want it.

  When they reached the middle of the northern quarter, a pirate crew stopped them, bowing in desperation and pleading. They edged forward, cautious of ambush but too battered to resist.

  Each step uneven, they hobbled toward the entrance of a fallen building, the only place to cross through a street closed by a mountain of rocks. Before they entered, one of the pirates moved aside, climbing the pile of rubble with difficulty and calling out between sobs. At the top, a few of his peers were digging and pulling rubble in desperation.

  "He want help." AhLong said. "To free Uwe."

  The finger of piracy had survived the first wave of bombs, they had told Long. And as the seasoned man he was, he wasted no time in fleeing. But luck had not favored him, not in the assaults, nor in the bombing. He'd survived a building collapsing on him, only to be struck by another moments later. And the second pinned him good.

  Ivy’s hand tightened around a stone boulder, her eyes narrowing through a gap where men groaned beneath the rubble. Amid corpses and dust lay Uwe, half-buried. He was not trapped, she thought, he was crushed.

  His gaze found hers, a fleeting grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, followed by a breath that was half chuckle, half guttural grunt. Then he spoke. "Tell my men to leave and take you with them. I order."

  "We no leave Dana!" a pirate said, his yell ringing painfully in Ivy's ear.

  The pirates fell into a frenzy, clawing at rocks and planks. The Blue Rangers, however, held still, waiting for her signal.

  Ivy hesitated, even when the pirates pleaded for help: their words broken by sobs, their hands filthy and trembling as they beckoned for assistance. She caught Adan’s glare. He wanted nothing to do with them, no more than she did. Every moment lost here was another step closer to death. Their help would never make a difference. Those men, Uwe included, would be better death.

  Long’s nod carried the weight she could not ignore. The old man’s eyes were steady. Not begging, not questioning. Only certain.

  Ivy's fingers cut a short command in the air.

  The Blue survivors and the pirates moved together, scrambling over blackened beams, rolling aside chunks of stone, digging with bare hands. Dust filled their lungs, and the heat of nearby fires seared their skins, yet no one faltered. Hands slipped on char and ash, freeing a few men worth rescuing. When the charred beam that had become Uwe’s coffin resisted the pull of a dozen men, Ivy's hands took command.

  “Lift!” Adan barcked for her.

  The cries of all men pulling knifed through the city. The beam had barely budged under common men, but with her joining, the wood rose.

  Dust cascaded, and a wet, rasping breath escaped the pirate as his chest found air. They dragged him free down the wreck. They lay him down with care, smoke-crusted and grey, the skin of his face mottled with grit. He coughed twice, blood staining his chin. He did not speak the common tongue this time.

  Long bent close and listened, as all the other pirates did.

  “He say he broken inside,” Long said. “He asks for sword end. warrior death.”

  Uwe's men dropped their faces as they dropped their souls. For a breath, even the fires seemed to dim. Then the pirate who’d taken the mantle of reluctant leader stepped in. his face held a new, terrible commitment; of this task, he'd not step away. He took a sword and held it with the steadiness of duty.

  The execution had no show. No fanfare or mourning. No last words, no solemn speech. The man dropped the blade with the economy of someone who had learned there is no meaning in flourish. The edge found Uwe’s neck and passed through it clean. A spout of blood raised as his head rolled. Then, with no words, the pirates moved away, as if the body of their beloved leader had no more worth.

  From the ridge of the northern harbor, Uwe’s ships burned at anchor, tongues of flame licking their hulls. Herjard’s navy, lining outside the shallows, punished the red-sailed ships with a constant barrage of fire. Planes drifted in and out lazily, circling above them to add destruction to the Jo navy as well as to the city.

  “It’s trap,” said Uwe's executoner. "They promise many thing. Give riches to kill Blue folk. Uwe believed. We believed. But all a trap. All Fingers of piracy here, either enemy or ally. When all come, they close trap, encircle and destroy. All filth of sea killed in one blow."

  Ivy didn't pile on the words. Neither did Ahlong nor Adan. Stares locked on the port and mouths shut, they agreed with silence.

  "We find cover," the pirate said. "Wait night, and with small vessel, escape. Crazy but only option."

  “At night, we will take those vessels if any are left," Adan repeated Ivy's commands. "But we will cross the fortress pass. Meet our Navy in the south.”

  A man motioned toward a standing house, then dipped his head toward a narrow door. “Down,” he said. “Cellar. Safer.”

  They moved as the city continued to die around them, each step a bargaining with luck and ruin. Before entering the refuge, Adan spat a ball of blackness before whispering. "Do you think there are any remaining ships of Riko's?"

  "Doesn't matter," Ivy said, her only thought to find Vega and kill him. "We are not going there to win."