One moment she was staring frozen in shock, the next she was on the raider’s back, twice her size or no, spiked club or no. She looked unsure how she’d gotten there, or when she’d drawn the knife, just vaguely aware that she had one arm wrapped around his neck while the other fist started jamming her little blade into any soft target within reach. Meanwhile, Meg slashed the backs of the raider’s knees and he toppled forward, Sairy riding him down and shifting her grip to smash his face into the ground with both hands as he fell. Jumped up neatly and Kath lifted his head by a fistful of hair and cut his throat.
“Who’s she, then?” Kath asked, nodding up at Foster. “Wait. Is that a fucking ghost?”
“Her name’s Foster. She’s a friend of Isabel’s. She’s on our side. I know—not now—Kath, I know, I’ll explain later. For now, she’s on our side, and she can fight like ten of us put together, and if anybody asks you, you tell them—”
“Ten of us, huh,” Kath said, crinkling her brow at Foster skeptically. “Yeah, okay.”
“Look, I didn’t trust her at first either, but she just took out four armed guards in the time it took me to get there, okay? Ask Meg. Right now the ghostgrass is poisoning her, she’s like absorbing the smoke or something, we have to clear it out some—”
Her words dried up as she followed Kath’s line of sight to Foster.
Foster had stabbed her sword into the ground and was leaning her full weight on it with both hands, hitching up shallow unsteady breaths. Her eyes were downcast, staring at the ground with a vacant, dreamy, distinctly un-Foster-like expression. For one bewildered second Isabel thought she might’ve found somebody she recognized, lying there on the grass. That man with his guts torn out, maybe, or that woman with the nearly-severed arm.
But no. Something else must have snared her attention. She’d been dead for ages, she was a ghost for Catchkeep’s sake, she didn’t know any of these—
Then it hit her.
Foster was staring at the blood. Yearning toward it openly. It put Isabel uneasily in mind of what Sairy had said earlier: They’re not going to go all crazy hungry ghost on us like the last one?
“Clear out the smoke?” Kath was shouting. “How the hell exactly are we supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Sairy said, staring after Foster helplessly. “I just know we have to figure it out before she—”
In deep horror, Isabel watched Sairy’s face light up. She had a very, very bad feeling about where this was going.
“Go find Lissa,” Sairy told Kath and Meg. “I’m going to try something, but I want you out of the way in case it goes wrong.”
“Goes wrong how?”
“Find Lissa and back her up. That’s an order.”
Sairy watched them go. Then she turned back to Foster. Muttered under her breath, so fast and low that Isabel didn’t at first recognize it as a prayer to the One Who Got Away. Set her shoulders like a person bracing for trouble.
No, Isabel thought. Sairy, you wouldn’t—
“Your name is Catherine Foster,” Sairy said carefully, watching Foster go even stiller than before. Began to work her way over. Not raising her voice. She knew Foster could hear her. “You’re a ghost. You’ve been a ghost for a long time. You used to be some kind of fighter in a war in the Before, with Salazar and Ayres and that pissy-looking one hanging out down there with Isabel now, but something bad happened to you, I’m not really sure what. You helped Isabel, healed her at some point, and there was something about you being lost in the ghost-place and they found you…”
Even from her distance, Sairy could make out the shudder that rippled through Foster’s body. Her edges began to glow, flaming white against the black of her uniform. Light shuttled down the threads’ length in rapid bursts. With it came a sound like cloth tearing free of scorchweed brambles, a smell like summer rain.
“Sorry, she didn’t tell me a lot of details,” Sairy mumbled, embarrassed and suddenly nervous to stand before this destabilized superweapon alone. Flashes in Isabel’s head of what Foster had done to those four guards earlier. Sairy hadn’t even seen her move before the blood started spraying. “Just—” she faltered— “memories made Salazar stronger—in the tunnels—I couldn’t clear out all the ghostgrass so I—”
“Thanks,” Foster said.
“Hey.” Sairy swallowed. Trying to stop her voice from shaking. “Point and shoot, right?”
Foster essayed a bleary grin. “Pissy-looking one?”
“Yeah, maybe don’t tell him I said that?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like you’re wrong.”
All at once Foster snapped to attention. Listened. Lifted her chin at something across the way. “Somebody over there just said Lissa.”
Over there. Loose impression of skirmishing, little clusters of bodies sloppily fighting around the burning meeting-hall, some fleeing off screaming through the smoke. Isabel spotted Jen and Lissa, Kath arriving at their flank. Brawling their way through a knot of raiders in formation to surround something she couldn’t quite make out.
“Those combatants are expendable,” Foster said. “Whatever they’re protecting, it’s something that isn’t.”
“Let’s get a closer look at it,” Sairy said. “You good now?”
“Good enough,” Foster said, but from Sairy’s face she knew it was a lie. The memories Sairy had reminded Foster of weren’t anything the ghost hadn’t told her already, and the little burst of energy they had given her was already wearing off.
“If Isabel had just told me more about you,” Sairy began, and stopped. Looked down at the blood-slicked grass. Seemed to weigh something in her mind.
Sairy—Isabel thought at her. Sairy, you can’t be—
But Sairy had bent down and was swiping at the ground. Walked over and smeared her hand on Foster’s glove.
“They’re not gonna miss it, you know,” Sairy said quietly.
Foster looked at the blood. Then she looked at Sairy.
Two things happened at once.
The first was that off near Lissa and Jen, someone in that knot of raiders started screaming. “Fall back! The Crow! Protect the Crow!” and there was a huge rush of noise and a surge of bodies and that black-clad figure Isabel had seen earlier was now lifted onto shoulders and borne away at a run. Raised up, she got her first good look at it. A small woman, armed with two knives like the ex-upstarts, except these were strapped tightly to the backs of her wrists and hands. Her clothing was of some kind of scratchy weaving, dyed blue-black, stuck through with black feathers, a few of which had molted in a kind of patchy trail, indicating which way she’d gone. “Stay on them!” Sairy shouted. “They’re heading for the shrine!”
The second was that Foster hesitantly, deliberately, raised her bloodied glove to her mouth and licked.
The rush of energy was quick-burning but amazing. It was like a part of her brain being plugged back in. Like a fog had lifted from her, throwing silver sparks.
She barely registered straightening, sheathing her sword, breaking into a dead run, plowing into that knot of raiders like a meteor. She was moving out of time with the living world, half here half gone, and they didn’t even see her coming until she was already among them and they were falling around her like autumn leaves.
Fighters from both towns attacked her, unsure which side she fought for. Isabel couldn’t make out quite how Foster was determining which were Clayspring and which were Sweetwater, but her success rate was flawless.
Sairy trailed her at a sprinting, panting, never-closing distance, dodging fallen bodies. Each one taken out with a single clean blow, dead before they landed.
“She’s with us,” Sairy shouted to anyone who could hear her, “she’s one of ours, she came to help us, let her through—”
Some of them listened and backed off, but others either didn’t hear or were too worked up to register or believe what Sairy was saying. They ran at Foster, and Isabel could see that she was trying to ignore them, let t
hem glance off of her like pebbles pattering off a window, but she was just too fast, too strong. Right now, all keyed up like she was, the gentlest touch from her was like a battering ram.
Three of the Sweetwater townspeople went down howling, holding a broken shoulder, a bloody mouth, shattered ribs. Seemed like the more Foster tried to regulate this sudden upwelling of strength, the more it threatened to burst unstoppably out of her. As if that strength itself was wearing Foster like a puppet, making her shatter windpipes and break spines. Working its way up to leaving her standing alone in the center of a ring of fallen bodies, like in “Ember Girl Tells Catchkeep No.”
Sairy trailed Foster the whole way to the Catchkeep-shrine, bobbing along behind her like a kite on a too-long string. On the final approach out of town and among the shrine outbuildings, the sheds and bread-oven and beehives, it became clear that the Clayspring raiders had looked at the shrine, the holiest place in the town, and seen nothing but a fortified building, a defensible site. They’d barred themselves inside and were firing arrows and unidentifiable projectiles through the windows. The townspeople were outside, firing back, but severely disadvantaged. One man had dipped a spearpoint in something, set it on fire, and was trying to jab it through the window-slots. A couple of teenagers were ducking under those windows, slashing at the raiders’ arms when they poked through, picking up the dropped objects and hurling them back inside. This seemed to be working until one girl got an oil-jar shattered over her head and the flaming spear caught her unawares. She went up like a torch and ran off screaming.
When Sairy caught up with Foster, she was ringed around with Clayspring raiders, sword and gun still in her belt, not moving as they sized her up. Was the blood wearing off, or was Foster giving them a chance at mercy? Isabel wasn’t sure. All that was obvious was that any second they’d rush her, pile onto her, and die. Like moths at an open flame.
But they didn’t.
A few dropped their weapons and stared, one or two muttering something that Isabel couldn’t catch. The rest turned tail and tore out of there like Foster was the Chooser Herself, all bone cape and famished eyes. Straight back into the fray.
Barely time for Sairy to choose and lock onto a target before there were three raiders coming straight at her. Whatever they thought they’d seen in Foster had spooked the hell out of them and they barely seemed to register Sairy as they broke and ran around her like creekwater around a rock.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said, and clotheslined one on the side of her arm as she passed, crouching with her as she dropped. A woman a bit older than Sairy, one ear missing, shoulders huge with muscle. Shot one arm up, grabbed Sairy by the throat and squeezed. Trying not to draw blood was a lost cause at this point, but training was training. Sairy caught her knife in a reverse grip and slammed the heavy handle into the woman’s temple. It didn’t seem to take so she did it again, more frantic now. She looked to be a few last gasps from blacking out. Isabel watched, helpless at her distance, as the raider’s free hand drew a knife.
It was going to be somebody’s blood, training or no. Sairy fumbled her knife into position. Buried it to the hilt in the raider’s eye. Worked it free, labored to her feet and assessed.
Jen was hanging back, issuing orders to a group of townspeople. Kath and a heavy club were doing cleanup on a succession of fleeing raiders, one set of kneecaps at a time. Meg had shouldered a badly wounded child and run off in the direction of the midwife’s.
Foster stood unmoving, glowing bright as a full moon. The halo of her light was shuddering hard now, spiking and settling as the blood and the ghostgrass battled it out within her. The ground beneath her feet began to tremble.
Just in front of Sairy, the man carrying the Crow began to topple and went down, harried by a pincer attack courtesy of Lissa and a Waste-road guard. The Crow herself jumped free, pivoting into a midair lunge, slashing with her wrist-knives at Sairy’s eyes.
She was fast. Improbably, achingly fast. It was all Sairy could do to twist away from the worst of it, waiting for the impact. But it never came.
There in front of her was Foster, with one of the Crow’s hands, shiv-blade and all, caught in each fist. Bones audibly cracking, the Crow dropped to one knee, staring up at Foster in anger and disbelief, hissing wordlessly. It came to Isabel that in her dedication to Carrion Boy she may well have cut out her tongue.
“Still not taking prisoners?” Foster asked. She’d gotten the waves of ghost-energy under control, but now something was wrong with her voice. Like she couldn’t regulate it. Like her teeth were chattering with cold or nerves. Then Isabel realized it wasn’t Foster’s voice, it was Foster herself, vibrating like a bowstring while the arrow flies.
The noise from Foster’s grip on the Crow’s wrists was less of a cracking now and more a kind of squelch. Foster, noting either this or the full-body cringe Sairy was making, let go.
And, crushed wrists or no, the Crow leapt. Both shivs flashed out simultaneously, aiming to collide and cross somewhere in the region of Foster’s heart. She caught both wrists before the blades so much as snagged her coat-front, yanked them down to one side, and at the same time shot her leg up to bash the Crow to the ground on the downswing, bootheel to neck.
Isabel knew she’d meant to be gentle, but could see at once she’d failed.
At the barred doors of the shrine, half a dozen raiders were making their stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, bristling with weapons. Darting their blades out at arm’s length but unwilling to break the line. Some of them had shields made of wood, or salvage scrap, or bones, or a combination of the three. They held the shield-wall and did not attack.
Breaking the line, Isabel realized, wasn’t all they were unwilling to do.
“They’re down too many fighters,” Sairy shouted, earning herself a burning lungful of smoke. “They’re not going to go for the kill if they don’t have to.”
By reputation, they all knew what Carrion Boy’s raiders did to the people of a conquered town. They wouldn’t needlessly damage fighters they could conscript into their army. Or kill outright the ones they could only injure strategically, clean to prevent infection, and keep for food.
“That’s our home,” Sairy shouted to the ex-upstarts. Leveling a knife at arm’s length at the shield-wall and the shrine beyond. Coughing and choking and wringing the words out anyway. “I say we show these shits they picked the wrong fucking ground to stand.”
But the townspeople were practically bouncing off that shield-wall. Charging up yelling, trying to poke their weapons through gaps in the formation. The raiders weren’t even engaging them, really. More like they were waiting for something.
Then Isabel made out what Jen was yelling.
The leaders are in there.
In the shrine. Barred in and guarded. They didn’t have to fight. They only had to stay alive long enough to inherit the town off the backs of its dead.
That’s what the shield-wall raiders were waiting for, Isabel realized. The rest of the Clayspring army to finish clearing the town and come here to the shield-wall’s aid. At which point the barrel-scrapings of the Sweetwater defense would be caught between the incoming raiders and the shield-wall itself.
Sairy saw it too.
“Foster,” she said.
“On it.”
Foster looked at the depth of the press of bodies around the shrine. She looked at the height of those huge doors. She listened to what they sounded like when the shield-wall rocked back against the front of the building. The weight of them. The density. “Keep them back.”
She approached the shield-wall and the raiders behind it took a step forward in tandem to meet her. She centered on those doors and charged. Jumped lightly up, pivoting in mid-air, reaching down to clamp one hand onto the top edge of a shield and sail over the head of the shield-bearer, slamming into those heavy doors with both boots. They splintered and gave, banging inward hard enough to shatter one door off its fastenings.
The raiders turned and
rushed in to guard the leaders, but Foster and her sword were in the way. She spun among them, whirling and flashing. Bodies fell, leaving gaps, and she waded in, the ex-upstarts at her side.
Together they pressed ahead into the depths of the shrine.
Past the door that led to the altar. Sairy peeked inside and signaled with a shake of her head: nobody in there but Catchkeep.
Through the long main room, past the long table and fireplace. Blood and bodies but no active combatants. One or two wounded, near the windows where a spear or arrow or projectile must’ve nailed them. None of Foster’s doing, or they wouldn’t be alive enough to moan. Sairy beckoned to Kath and she scuttled among them, cutting throats. Past the row of curtained sleeping-alcoves, which Kath threw open one by one while Sairy and Lissa stood to either side, knives at the ready for whatever ran out, but nothing did.
Foster stopped Sairy before she went through the curtain to the big room at the rear of the shrine, the one where the Catchkeep-priest used to sleep. Gestured hush. Gestured stay back. Threw the curtain aside.
Three door-guards stood there with spiky clubs. Foster let one come at her and swept his legs, dropping him onto his own spikes, then planted her sword through his heart with surgical precision. The other two fled into the back room. Foster followed and cut them down with ease.
Behind them stood what they’d been guarding. The leaders of Clayspring.
There were two of them: one man, one woman. Both dressed in long-sleeved jackets and long pants, all in black like the Crow before them, though these ones were without feathers. Both with all their visible skin cut and scarified as per Carrion Boy’s devout. Both with their weapons raised to attack—until they laid eyes on Foster, standing in the doorway with her sword in her hand.
They dropped to their knees, weapons clattering to the ground before them. Long knives, longer than Sairy’s, almost the size of Isabel’s, made of sharpened lengths of salvage-metal. Once dropped, neither the man nor the woman made any move to pick them up. They were looking up at Foster, not so much scared or angry as expectant, like they were waiting for her to rescue them.
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