Roach hands the rest of the petals to the others, and they break the fragile pieces down sparingly. Three more wake from the haze. The last doesn't stir. The one Roach said wouldn't make it.

  Ricket returns to kneel over their body, his trembling hands once more poised over a lifeless chest. The child is still dead. Still gone.

  “You did your best, Ket. He was dead before we hit the water.”

  “I-I saw him move, I swear—” The boy’s voice breaks.

  “Involuntary.” Roach covers her face with her hands. “Happens all the time.” A nasally voice. Not hers.

  Rivin bends down, resting a hand over Ricket’s shoulder, silently demanding his eyes. He looks up and into softened steel, a grey that grounds him always.

  “This isn’t your fault. We’ve got to keep going.”

  “I-I-” Brown hues well with tears. The boy touches his mouth, his eyes foggy, not with dreams, but rather grief. Failure.

  Roach herself won’t look; she’s darting from foot to foot, chewing at her lip, raking her fingers through her hair — one catches the bone and curls and uncurls around it. “He was dead, Ricket.” She sounds unfamiliar. Distant. “I was right. I’m always right.”

  Grey eyes flit towards her. “You’re not always right.”

  He's learning that quickly.

  Why had she tried if she already knew?

  She catches his stare, but only for a moment so fleeting it may have been imagined.

  “Seems I was pretty right.” Snarky. Defensive.

  Still, there is no malice in Rivin’s answer. No condemnation. Only a truth he knows so well it's ingrained in his bones:

  “Death is inevitable.”

  She doesn't argue.

  Only walks away.

  But beneath her breath and so softly, he swears he hears her whispering,

  “Everything that burns,

  Rises up.

  Everything that burns…

  Rises… Up…”

  She taps her temple, drilling it in.

  Rivin watches after her, concern coiling within his gut.

  She twitches away from a shadow, forcing a breath through clenched teeth as she pulls her hair once more from her face and tucks it down the back of her jacket. She must succeed at her repression, for she turns back only to square her jaw and gesture towards the exit — the shattered panes of window.

  “Come on, sinners.” Her smile isn’t quite right; her pupils—despite never ingesting the flower—are enormous. “Time to go.”

  It’s Chip who offers to carry the body out of the pit.

  Someone's baby swaddled in his arms.

  He’s gentle. Always gentle.

  Together, the group step out of the ruined steeple and through the shattered windows into a layered staircase of smaller pools below.

  The environment thrums with life and light. Slugs bigger than he’s ever seen cling to the walls while lightflies swarm in the thousands, each casting its own hue across what was once a courtyard, now folded into dirt and ruin. An enormous bell lies on its side, half-eaten by stone and water, its mouth twisted open.

  Right at the end of the stacked basins exists what appears to be their only way out. A small semi-circle opening in the wall where clearer liquid streams thinly over a lip.

  “This way.”

  Roach leads, but she's weighed down; they all are in some way or another, each clutching a barely-there survivor. It's difficult to weasel through the crevasse, even harder with a body, but the children all work together, withered and tired as they are.

  Past the lip, they clean themselves briefly in the clearest of the ponds, washing some of the grime and the filth from their travels. Some aren't so lucky as to feel free of the taint.

  Sen tries to scrub at his skin, weakly and with trembling hands. His nails, chipped and short as they are, tear into the scripture printed on his thighs.

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  Roach catches his fists, pressing them between her own.

  “Stop, stop — you’ll make it worse.”

  He pauses, brown eyes dense with frustration. Slitted now, as he looks away. “How could it be any worse?” He sucks in a breath. “They—they wrote on me…” he spits it out. “They tried to boil the parts they didn’t like away.”

  The girl squeezes him, but his gaze doesn’t return. She tilts up his chin. Forces the contact. Inescapable are her eyes. Her voice is low when she speaks. Not hers.

  “Clock it, log it, move on, kid.”

  Rivin’s heard that tone before. An echo of someone else, gruff and mimicked by a voice box not made for it.

  Sen squints at her, afraid no longer but rather puzzled.

  “Wh-What? How can I—?”

  “Are you lead, or are you flesh?”

  Sen blinks. Once. Twice.

  “Louder, boy! Are you lead, or are you flesh?”

  “F-Flesh! I'm flesh!”

  “Good, good.” She smirks. “Stop sinking’. We’ll do that in shallower waters, okay?”

  Her hand is on his shoulder now, firm and strong.

  The boy nods, but he doesn’t look reassured; rather, his lips are set tight.

  “Okay…”

  The walk a fair distance before the clearing narrows into sleeker paths. The water too begins to thin, falling in through cracks in the floor. Still, the ground remains slick. Finally, they spy their exit — a circular grate in the ceiling, scarcely visible save for a consistent drip.

  Rivin helps Slink twist open the old iron, heavily rusted and worn. When it shifts, they're both beading with sweat. A gush of brown water spills over them before receding. Complaints are kept to a minimum. They’re all too tired.

  Eventually, they return to the surface. Salty, thick air burning like vinegar to greet them.

  The spout opens to a run-off into a dark corner of the marina — a sunken and cracked ravine of giant, ugly pipes. From the stain on the walls and the rock, they’re in luck the tide is low, for this edge of the marina is usually high with water.

  In the distance, they can spy the very faint glow of the Drowner fishery, the silhouette of shanty buildings and the pier.

  One child opens her mouth, reaching out towards the light — her face caught in despair. She breathes deep and quickly, thundering her fists against her heart.

  Thump-thump.

  Thump-thump.

  Ricket takes her hand, softly, hesitantly. Beats his free fist against his chest too.

  Thump-thump.

  Thump-thump.

  Two heartbeats.

  Tears well and waterfall.

  “We’ve got to keep moving.” Rivin guides the pair away.

  The girl looks back over her shoulder longingly, silently weeping. Still, they continue down the rocky ravine of stacked pipes and further away from the light.

  Roach is growing more confident now — more familiar with the terrain, but she’s whispering often, twitching at nothing, smacking thoughts from her head with her palm — manic once more as she zigzags ahead. She’s breathing hard. Harder than she should be. Sen, the boy she guides, struggles against the abruptness of her stride, clinging to her desperately.

  The rest of the journey is marred by exhaustion. This victory feels as clean as their hands — which is to say, not at all. The only sound that breaks apart the darkness is the choked-back sobs of the child Ricket attempts to console.

  Roach leads them along the outskirts of the Marina Bay and to a small and isolated opening. They navigate increasingly narrower tunnels before it all begins to look all too familiar.

  Rivin’s heart quickens. His palms begin to sweat.

  He recognises the glow first — the jagged waterfall.

  The echo of the Pale Knight's savage attacks still carved into the walls and floor. He can imagine his own ghost cornered in the downpour, the blood streaming from his torso and his legs.

  He can also feel the rune in his pocket suddenly hang heavy and cold.

  He’s not sure why he brought it.

  Why he insists on keeping it with him.

  But, it’s still there.

  … Is she?

  He glances down a familiar hallway of stretched tunnels; the opening tangled and marred now, etched anew by explosives.

  Chip is looking too.

  They’re both watching.

  Waiting.

  Perhaps she’s been waiting as well — cold, alone and living off rats and stubborn hope. A blonde head to scurry right up to them in some new bright colour.

  Somehow unharmed, unburned, unangry. As if none of it had mattered at all.

  But—

  Mouse is dead. They burned her.

  Rivin turns away first.

  Chip lingers. Chokes back a weep.

  Roach has already led the children to the edge of a pool, once more allowing them to stop and rest. She helps the smallest by assessing the worst of their cuts. She takes her time now, less urgent, less tense.

  Closer to her own domain.

  Even so, she does not appear relieved. More-so caught between faces, her features twisting in and out of a crumbling performance. Despite this, she moves on, examining the next ward just as critically, and soon enough they learn the names of the children they’ve rescued.

  Abì and Coel, a brother and sister taken from the Spine.

  Monet, a Drowner child stolen from the Aquifer.

  Sen from nowhere.

  And the nameless one.

  “We weren't allowed to speak to each other,” Sen explains.

  Chip tenderly wipes the filth from the corpse's face. Eventually they start to resemble a human again. Small nose. Big lips. Big cheeks. All ruined in one way or another by the carving of a blade. They couldn’t be any older than ten.

  It’s a while that they rest, gathering their strength. Mostly quiet and contemplative, before Slink breaks the silence.

  “We should lie low for a while.”

  “We need to get the ledger back,” Rivin muses.

  He’s then reminded all too suddenly of their goal.

  He searches his pack in an instant and is horrified to find the cover and all other contents completely dripping. Terrified, he flips through the first pages — then exhales.

  Damp, stained, but intact.

  “We're good.”

  The crew relax, exhaling in unison.

  Chip adjusts his rifle, checking it over, distracting himself. “You think they’ll find us?”

  “Not if we’re smart.”

  Slink raises a brow. “You think it'll be that easy?”

  “I think anyone that saw enough of us to point fingers is dead.”

  Several sets of eyes glance to Roach. She doesn't react—not really; she merely turns her head away like she wasn't paying attention to begin with, but Rivin sees the twitch, the recoil.

  The cracks.

  “But, we should still be careful.” Rivin continues.

  “We need to get them somewhere safe.” Chip follows.

  “The Hole?” Ricket pipes up.

  “No.” Roach intercedes, shaking her head before her gaze settles on Rivin. “Safer.”

  He anticipates the question she doesn't ask.

  “Your place?”

  “No one will find us there.”

  He nods, tries not to look eager, this isn’t the time for it — but he is. As crazy as it might sound, he is so very eager to return. He feels a flicker of exhilaration come alive in his chest, the memories of her forgotten kingdom flashing before his eyes.

  The drop. The war. The ghosts.

  He wants to go back there.

  “I agree.” His voice shakes. “Take us home, Roach.”