They traveled in a line into the woods, down the same path toward the hidden cave. The trip was easier and shorter when she wasn’t withering away from starvation, clinging to the handles with her last drops of strength. And this time she noticed that the path was less an established channel through the woods and more a series of trees marked with a dab of cerulean blue at a level just higher than she would naturally look. It would take a certain amount of luck for someone to follow it unwittingly.

When they reached the cave with the harrowing stairwell, Hesperus took the lead. Mino followed at the rear, and in between, the eight of them took every single step with great care, Pisces muttering the whole way.

Finally, they reached the dock, and their real work began. Light flooded the air, winking against the rounded tops of all eleven deepships. They were each roughly ten feet long and only half as wide with a hatch in the roof as the only way in or out. The rest of the ship was hidden beneath dark water, where they would all soon be.

It wasn’t until this moment that the full scope of what they were about to do really settled in for each of them. Caledonia saw the same twisting tension she felt in her chest pull at the corners of Sledge’s wide mouth and drain the color from Oran’s warm cheeks. The only one of them who didn’t look as though they’d take an invitation to travel right back up those stairs was Nettle. Her eyes shone at the sight of the ships.

“We won’t all fit in one,” Hesperus explained, as Mino hopped from the dock to the roof of a deepship and pried open the hatch. Inside the cabin was dark and terribly small. “I’ll take one group and Mino the other.”

“Will Sledge even fit?” Nettle asked with a laugh as she crouched to peer inside. “I think he could wear this ship like a skirt.”

Sledge frowned at the small girl, but she had a teasing gleam in her eye.

“Pi,” Caledonia said. “You take Sledge, Amina, and Ares and go with Mino. Nettle, Pine, Oran, you’re with me and Hesperus.”

“The thief, the Bullet, and the Fiveson,” Hesperus grumbled. “What could possibly go wrong?”

It was everything Caledonia hated about being underwater. The cabin was cramped, long, and barely wide enough to accommodate two people standing abreast, or a single Sledge. Either end was cupped in thick bulbs of self-healing glass beyond which pressed black water. Once the hatch above them was sealed, the entire world narrowed to what they could see in those two directions. Which at the moment was absolutely nothing.