Yawa met Baru’s eyes. She looked immensely, sourly displeased. Baru tried to signal back to her that at least she still had all her fingers. Then Iscend crouched, and kicked, and her whole glider slid forward above her on the wooden rack until she leapt off the cliff and the glider tore free with an enormous shudder and vanished from Baru’s sight.

Execarne tested his footing. “I think I’m high enough to do this,” he said.

A harsh shout came from behind: “Stop! Stop right there!”

“Oh shit,” Execarne growled, and he ran forward grunting, and then—

*   *   *

BRINE slapped at Baru’s face. She howled in dismay. She’d grayed out! She’d missed the flight! “Go back,” she snarled, desperate to experience such a marvel. “Go back, do it again!” Then she felt Execarne beneath her, unmoving, and saw the bright blood pooling around the glider: they’d landed on the wavetops, the glider’s wing settling above them.

Execarne had been shot. A bolt jutted from his right shoulder. He was breathing but he would not move.

Baru reached around to untie herself from him and smashed her stumped fingers against the harness. Pain like sickness. For a while she could only curl and yawn in agony. Then, determinedly, she put both her hands underwater and found the buckles. Execarne dropped free with Baru still bound to him. A wave crashed over them and they sank. Baru kicked and stroked, her wet stumps numb now, roiling brine all around her, and everywhere the bladdered ash-kelp that Baru had once gathered for glassmaking. To the surface. To the surface. Where the fuck was the surface? Was that the moon—swim for the moon, Baru!

The moon swam toward her. The moon itself. A silver crescent in the darkness, fast approaching. Why, that wasn’t a trick of light—something real was coming toward her—maybe the moon was death itself—

Baru gurgled and clawed upward.

An eye stared at her. A great white eye. And beneath it a small black second eye, glittering—the two eyes swept past and in hallucinatory sequence Baru saw a silver crescent moon, a gnarled mass of brain coral, a human skull, a black door sweeping toward her—

Something struck Baru and smashed her to the surface. She gasped for air, kicked, and arched Execarne’s weight across her chest and stomach, lifting his head, at least, above the water. He gurgled the water he’d inhaled.

Baru smelled fire.