"No."
The word landed like a rock. Lantern light made a half-moon on Aminah's jaw. Men froze as if some priest had cried holy and then been struck dumb. The kiln woman's smile disappeared like a coin flipped into shadow.
"You're an honest fool," the kiln woman said, calm as a taxman. "That makes for bad bargains."
The scarred man's grin widened. Sailors shifted feet. On the Northstar the officer's face tightened like paper folded too many times. The launch beside them bobbed, engines low and ready. The air smelled suddenly of wet rope and that thin metallic taste that meant someone had moved coin.
Hasb's hand found Aminah's sleeve. "We can't—" he started.
"We can't give names," she finished for him. She kept her voice small because small voices carry better in knots. "We don't trade lives for signatures. Not ours."
The kiln woman made a small sound—part amusement, part sadness. "You will regret this," she said. "You'll regret it in the slow way, the way people regret eating when they're starving."
She snapped a finger. The scarred man barked an order. Two sailors leapt to a crate and heaved. From inside, they pulled a wide bowl and a leather sack. Someone on deck tilted the bowl and poured. A cloud rose, thin at first, then like breath that wanted to smother sound.
The ash was different up close—finer than dust, the color of old bone. It unfurled on the air and lay like a gray net on the deck. Men staggered from its touch: a cough, a hand to the mouth, eyes watering. Meren clutched at his throat and gagged. Dzeko spat and tried to wipe his face, but the ash clung and tasted like iron.
"Cover your faces!" Aminah shouted, reflex moving before thought. She dragged her cloak up, sucked the smoke through her teeth like something to be forecast and not swallowed. The world narrowed to the hiss of breath and the slap of water against hull.
Hasb staggered. His hand slipped from her sleeve and he pitched forward, crashing into a coil of rope. He tried to rise and the ash hit him like sleep. His limbs felt cotton-heavy, fingers clumsy. He pushed at his mouth and barked, "Nina—"
"She's gone," Dzeko coughed. He'd been shoved aside by a sailor who moved like a patient drummer. "They took her below when the ash fell. Quick hands."
Aminah spun toward the hatch. Men were slipping; a sailor hauled a pallet and shoved it aside to block the ladder. The scarred man moved with the slow cruelty of someone practicing his favorite part of the job—obstruction.
Below the deck a muffled sound answered—a cry, a struggle, a woman's voice thin and raw for a beat, then cut. The punctuation of a piece of cloth tearing. The scarred man laughed, the laugh sliding like oil against the hull.
"Enough theater," he said. "We have a buyer waiting. He doesn't like missed appointments."
Aminah's lungs burned. The ash made everything slow and clumsy; it was a blanket that dulled the edges. She tasted metal and thought of lists and the deliberate cruelty of people who used the city's own marks against it.
"Open that hatch," she said, voice a blade. It wasn't a plea. It was an order meant to be obeyed.
The scarred man shrugged like he enjoyed the posture of menace. "If you could take the smell of ash and turn it into truth," he said, "you'd already have the world."
He nodded to the kiln woman. She unsealed a small envelope, the knot of it pretty and precise. She pulled a token from her palm—the one they'd seen on the wharf—the token with the hairline fracture, the mimic mark. She waved it so the lantern caught it and the grain shone like a confession.
"Tell them," she said. "Tell the officer you want a formal boarding and I'll hand over what you want."
The officer leaned forward on his launch, mouth a hard line. He smelled of discipline. "Captain Theodore," he called, voice carrying like a civic choice. "Disperse. For the safety of citizens, for the will of the Empire—"
"For the will of the Empire," Aminah spat back, "you mean the will of some man who pens orders in warm halls? This is kidnapping."
"It is imperial property until proven otherwise," the officer said. "This vessel carries an imperial envoy and passengers under imperial protection."
"Is a woman under the hold an 'imperial' thing now?" Hasb wheezed, pain making his words short. He'd half-collapsed to one knee and tried to push himself up. A smear of gray stained his shoulder.
The officer hesitated a second too long. That second tore wider than it should have. The scarred man took it and nodded to the sailors below.
They cracked the pallet further, opened the trap into the hold, and a sailor slid a rope ladder down the hatch. It scraped and thumped like a blunt answer. The kiln woman watched all of it with the calm of people who trade in certainty.
"Give us a name," she said again. "Not yours. A name that matters." Her voice was soft and raw. "Give us two and the girl walks."
Aminah's hands were shaking now, short and hot. She had options that amounted to being clever about loss. She had options that looked like surrender. She had options that would make the Empire's men decide to weigh their paper against blood.
She thought of Hasb's face, the way he'd been brought down by the ash so fast; she thought of Nina's laugh and the knot in the woman's hand. She could not breathe them both into the same lung and live.
"No," she said again. "We will not trade lives for marks."
The kiln woman's jaw tightened. "Then we burn the hour," she said.
"Burn it how?" Aminah demanded.
The woman smiled without humor. A sailor below tossed the small envelope on the deck. The wind kissed it and then took it to the officer's launch where a hand snatched it. The officer broke the seal and read; his face shifted into something colder.
"The envoy?" he said, voice like a blade. "He—"
The world narrowed faster. A trumpet blew from the Northstar—one, two, three notes—an order across the water. From the outer harbor came the deep roll of a larger silhouette taking position; another ship had come close enough to blot the horizon. Lanterns multiplied along the quay like eyes opening. Soldiers in formal coats strode onto the Northstar's deck in rigid lines—Empire men, not merchants, not negotiators.
"You had your choice," the officer said to Aminah, though his eyes were on the kiln woman as if he was asking her a separate question. "You chose wrong."
Hasb's hand slipped and his fingers drummed the deck in a blind rhythm. He made for the ladder again, trying to shove aside a sailor who grabbed his sleeve. Hands grabbed him and held. The ash kept him heavy and clumsy like a body made of wet cloth.
Aminah lunged for the hatch. She shoved a sailor away, teeth gritting, and crawled down the ladder. The hold stank of canvas and old rope and the tiny quiet that comes before a man is surprised. A lantern swung, a shadow stumbled, and then—
—Nina's face. Her hair clung to her temples, pale with sweat or salt. Her eyes were half-lidded, blinking as if waking from a bad sleep. The braid at her wrist was caught in a scrap of twine; she tried to move but her fingers were slow and dull.
"Nina!" Aminah breathed the name like a prayer.
Nina's mouth moved. She tried to smile and it came out as a slur. Her voice was a small, trusted thing. "A—Ami—"
Above them, the Northstar's deck changed—the Empire's men moving into place like a tide. The kiln woman's silhouette appeared at the hatch, token in hand, looking down on the scene with that terrible, patient smile.
"You see?" she said. "You see what you saved. She is safe, kept above harm. But safe in the way a cage keeps a bird."
Meren scrambled down beside Aminah with a lamp. He sniffed the air like a man smelling the composition of danger. "The ash binds," he said fast. "It slows muscle response and dulls—" He stopped because words failed him. He had the look of someone watching an experiment that had become a murder.
A sailor pushed past them, intent to tug the bundle of Nina closer, and Hasb, freed by one of Aminah's men, lunged. He grabbed the sailor's wrist and twisted. The sailor snarled and struck Hasb hard across the face. Hasb stumbled and the world swam.
Aminah shoved a hand into the sailor's throat and forced him back. "Let a hand near her and I will cut you," she hissed. The sailor sneered and spat, but his eyes flicked to the hatch where soldiers were pouring up the ladder and decided discretion.
Amanih had Nina in her arms for half a heartbeat. The ash made Nina's limbs a sponge; she clung to Aminah like a child that had learned to fear falling. Aminah felt the desperation of that hold—the small, fierce animal thing that is not politics but love.
Then a voice—close, polite and terrible—spoke from above, and it was not the kiln woman or the scarred man. It was the Empire's officer, calm as a blade.
"Captain Theodore," he said. "The Empire will accept no blood on its decks tonight. Stand down."
Aminah looked up. The officer held a paper she recognized; the wax bore the imperial seal and in the margin an extra notation: Prime Head Yuta Colin—sanctioned.
Hasb's jaw dropped. "No," he rasped. "You can't—"
The officer's hand moved, and a small rope fell into the hatch like a law. "This is not a negotiation," he said. "The envoy's hold is sacrosanct. Any attempt to force the issue is an act of rebellion."
Aminah's hand tightened on Nina as if to brace for the world to split. She tasted salt and ash and the metallic tang of a ledger closing on the wrong page.
The kiln woman laughed softly. "They will not fight you," she said. "They're paid to keep the seals clean."
"Paid by whom?" Aminah demanded.
The woman's eyes were cold. "By those who profit from obedience."
A drum rolled on the Northstar's deck like a verdict, and the soldiers' boots sounded like a law. The officer's voice slid back into civilized tones. "Captain Theodore—stand down. The Empire will handle custody."
Aminah's body wanted to launch into the officer's throat and tear out the paper with its comfortable signature. Her hands wanted to rip up the deck and pull sunlight through holes. Instead she held Nina, who smelled like fear and the sea, and she realized something sharp and small: the Empire's paper could be held up and counted; the city's blood would be counted later in ways they could not choose.
"You hold her," she said to no one and everyone. "We will not be the ones who give her away."
The officer's jaw flexed. He looked at her like someone calculating whether her head was worth a war.
"Then stand down," he said. "Let the Empire board. Interference will be treated as aggression."
A lantern swung and for a second Aminah thought she could see someone on the Northstar lazily adjusting the rigging, the boredom of a man who knew his orders were not about mercy.
Behind her, someone shoved through the hatch. The kiln woman stood in the shadow like a promise. "One name," she said. "Call it and she walks."
Aminah tasted ash again and felt something move under her skin like a thin, cold hand. The kiln woman dipped the token into a small bowl and a thin line of gray smoke curled off it. It smelled of old books and punishment.
"You have ten heartbeats," the kiln woman said. "Decide."
Aminah's head filled with the sound of her own blood. Breath and choice narrowed to a single, ridiculous question: what name does not cost you your people and does not make you a liar? Every answer tore something.
She breathed, one slow intake, and then—
—someone above the deck screamed. It was a sharp animal sound that made men freeze. The Empire's officer snapped his head up and a dozen eyes turned to the railing.
A figure stood on the Northstar's upper rail, silhouetted against the sky, one hand raised. It held a lamp. It held something else too; Aminah couldn't see it at first, then it gleamed—a small ribbon caught in the light.
The figure threw the ribbon into the air. It spun like a small comet and then flared—white, bright, like a signal cut into the dark. The Northstar's deck erupted into motion.
In that moment, as lantern light flared and men shouted, a single, terrible sound cut through everything—a cannon on the outer quay had fired once, twice, three times in a measured staccato, not aimed at the little boat nor the Northstar but at the sky itself.
It was a signal.
The kiln woman's face went white for the first time. The scarred man snarled. The officer's jaw worked. Aminah's hands tightened on Nina as the world tilted.
Someone had just declared the night open.
The hatch slammed shut above them. The Northstar's crew roared into action. The Empire's soldiers drew sabers. Men moved like curtains being pulled.
Aminah had a child in her arms, a city behind her, an empire in front of her. The choice that had seemed narrow widened into a war.
She felt her chest split between a dozen small axes. She breathed in and out, and the last thing she heard before the deck went all noise was the kiln woman's voice, very close, as if pressed against her ear.
"Choose, Captain," she whispered. "Choose before the bell tolls for your city."