The signal had been a blade, clean and useless. The cannon's three notes had turned a theft into a stage. Now the stage moved like a thing that wanted blood.
Aminah tightened her grip on Nina as if she could hold the world together by pressure. The girl's breath was quick, the ash still in her hair. Around them the Northstar had become a machine: soldiers snapping into ranks, sailors hauling ropes, the kiln woman smiling like someone watching a ledger balance itself.
"Hasb," Aminah said, very quiet, "get men on either side of the hatch. Two blades, no fire. Dzeko, find me the ladder rope."
He answered with motion—fast, aware. The boat below was a chaos of nets and splintered rope; half the crew was coughing, half was working like automata. Hasb's eyes were knives. He shoved through sailors and caught a hand up the ladder, feeling for weight.
Aminah listened for the Empire's officer—he was a steady hum of civility and threat—and then she looked for an angle, anything that wasn't a flat wall. Her choices were short and mean: she could scream for witnesses and force formal boarding, which meant the Empire would parry with men and paper and maybe send soldiers ashore; she could try to trade a name and watch the city get cut open by the same hands that made signatures; or she could act, violent and quick, and risk being the illegal story everyone would talk about.
She chose action. Politicians could hold a battlefield; militia saved people when the law slept.
"Dzeko," she said. "You and Leto make a show below. Throw a crate off the rail and start shouting that the Northstar's crew is smuggling—something loud, something that makes noise and witnesses look. Hasb, Meren—you take the lower hatch. I get the ladder."
Dzeko's grin was thin. "You want a circus," he said. "I'll bring the clowns."
Leto's face went tight. He liked direct orders. He sprinted to the rail with a heavy hand and kicked a crate over the side. It fell with a roar; men down at the quay turned. The kiln woman's smile ticked toward irritation—disruption was a hazard—but it also opened a seam.
The officer barked, and two soldiers swung toward the commotion. Lanterns flared on the quay. The Empire's men shifted their posture, because people looking meant records and records made the Empire careful.
"That's the slit," Hasb muttered. He and Meren shoved through a small crew of sailors who'd been steady but now looked nervous. The ladder rope was thick and greasy; Hasb wrapped both arms and climbed with a kind of desperate grace.
Aminah's hands found the ladder like muscle memory. The wood was slick. Men above cursed in the officer's tongue and the kiln woman laughed, soft, because she liked how confident people become when they think they own the ending. The officer's launch had pulled back a little to make room for discipline; he stood on the stern like someone who'd been trained to treat all scenes as boxes to be stamped.
She crawled up the ladder, each rung a small theft of time. She saw a flash—a familiar braid as a sailor shoved past, a token glinting in someone's palm. The kiln woman's fingers were stained with ash. The scarred man moved like a predator that didn't hurry; his face showed no surprise at anyone's decisions except when they were foolish.
At the rail, Hasb dropped down beside her. He didn't speak. His jaw was a folded thing. He grabbed her arm and hauled, and they slipped onto the wet wood together, boots landing heavy. The crew smelled of tar and the metallic tang of salt and trade.
"Nina," Aminah hissed. She shoved through a knot of sailors and found the hatch, ropes bristling at the opening. A sailor tried to block her and Hasb shoved him aside like a man clearing a ledger. They went down into the hold with two lights and the world became low and close—canvas, rope, the sticky smell of oil.
They found Nina breathing shallow, wrapped in a wet sail, wrists unconsciously at the seam where the braid had been bound. Her eyes flicked up and for a moment she tried to smile and the thing broke like a shard. "Ami," she whispered.
"We're getting you out," Aminah said. Short sentences. No poetry. There was no room for it.
Meren was at her shoulder with a small knife and a lamp. He worked like a man who'd been practicing mercy. Hasb cut the twine. Nina's hand came free and the small motion looked like a miracle no one had promised.
Aminah lifted Nina, and for a split second she felt like she could hold the world in place just by moving—then the hatch above slammed and boots thundered. Men shoved into the hold in a line, steel ringing against wood. Soldiers with the Empire's braid moved down like a blade.
"Stand down!" the officer barked from above. His voice carried paper and law. "These people are under imperial custody."
Aminah pivoted, Nina in her arms, and ran. There were narrow alleys of crates that made paths and traps and she shoved through them, swearing and moving with the heavy, imprecise power of someone used to force. Hasb covered their rear, blade flashing, while Meren fumbled with a rope to make a handhold. The kiln woman's laugh followed them like a soundtrack.
They reached an inner seam of the hold where old tar had been spilt and dried into a black map. A sailor tried to reach for Aminah's heel and caught surprised air as she twisted into a crawlspace barely wide enough to squeeze through. Nina slipped against her chest, coughing ash, eyes blinking hard.
For a breath, they moved like thieves without the romance. Then a hand closed on Hasb's shoulder like a clamp. He hadn't seen the soldier who grabbed him; he smelled of iron and empire and the cold civility of men who follow orders. Hasb tore and cursed and tried to twist free, but another grip locked his wrist.
Aminah pushed further into the crawlspace and found herself inside a small maintenance tunnel that ran under the decking. It smelled like old rope and stale breath and possibility. She could hear the world above—footsteps, commands, an officer's voice bargaining with a kiln woman. The sound of the city was not comfort but a metronome counting down options.
She came out through a narrow door onto the Northstar's lee side, pressed flat against the hull. The rain-slicked rail above looked like the teeth of something that could bite. She clutched Nina tighter and noticed the token—small, polished—that the kiln woman had used as leverage. It lay on a bench nearby, half-hidden under a coil of rope. Its mimic sigil winked as if asking if she wanted to be fooled.
Amanih reached for it without thinking, fingers brushing wood. Her hand closed on the token and she felt a prickle—nothing like the earlier numbness, just a static that moved through her palm. The token had weight. It had history. She could smell ash and coin and someone's careful work.
A shout cut across the deck like a blade. "To the rail! Alarm! Attack from the outer quay!" Someone screamed something about flags, and footsteps pounded as men ran up.
Aminah looked up. Lanterns flared and men rushed the rail. On the quay, in the distance, a dark shape cut a new silhouette—another ship, hull low, sails closed, a band of lights darting like fireflies. Men in cloaks leapt and moved with a coordination that made her stomach fall into a place reserved for bad omens.
The Empire's soldiers froze, split by the new movement. The kiln woman's face lost some of its composure and she muttered a string of words like a player losing a card. The scarred man swore. The officer's lips tightened. The Northstar turned its prow, hands fumbling with orders.
"Now!" someone cried from the outer deck. The word meant many things—assault, escape, signal. Boats shoved off and oars dipped. The city's tense line on the quay became noise and the night filled with men's shouts and metal.
In the madness, Aminah had one clear aim: get Nina off the ship. She saw a narrow launch being manned at the rail—two oars, one stern, a small chance. Hasb was still tangled somewhere below, struggling against grips. Meren was coughing, half-unconscious. Dzeko's voice came muffled from some path.
Aminah moved. She wrapped a rope around Nina and slung her across her shoulder like a bundle and ran. Men shouted. Lanterns swung like angry eyes. The kiln woman grabbed for the token and tried to pull it free from where Aminah had dropped it on the bench; her hand brushed it and she cursed as if burnt.
Aminah slid down an improvised rope and dropped to the waiting launch with a thud that made the oarsmen jump. The launch lurched and two men shoved off. They pulled hard. The water closed like a mouth around them, spitting them toward the quay. Behind them the Northstar was a silhouette in motion, its lines a tangle of men and orders.
They were three rows from the quay when a shout split the night—an officer's voice this time, yelling in the Empire's tongue. Then a bell—sharp, savage—rang from the Northstar and someone on its rail fired a pistol. The crack slashed through the air.
Aminah didn't feel the bullet. She felt a hot wind and a sound like a struck drum. Nina's body jerked against her shoulder as if someone had hit her. The oarsmen shouted, panic in their tones.
Aminah realized with a cold clarity that the shot had been aimed at the launch. Someone had meant them not to leave. The launch lurched. The water around them bulged. A heavy splash rose near the stern of the Northstar like someone had thrown a bucket of darkness and light.
A second shot cut a hair from her ear. The world narrowed to the slap of oars and the presence of panic. The men rowed like devils. The quay climbed nearer like salvation.
Then something hit the side of the small launch with a blunt, sickening force. The launch shuddered as if struck by an unseen fist. One oar snapped with a sound like a twig. Men cursed. Water poured over the edge, cold and eager.
Aminah's vision blurred for a second—sea spray, echoing thunder. The launch listed. One of the oarsmen screamed as a splinter slid into his palm. A second figure leapt from a higher rail with the grace of someone born to danger and landed like a stone in the water, right beside the launch. He reached up, grabbed the gunwale, and slammed his weight against it. For a beat Aminah thought she knew the silhouette—broad shoulders, a cloak that had been soaked by sea. Then the man turned.
His face was not familiar in the way she expected. His eyes were like two cold things and his mouth had the tightness of someone who'd been taught to hide feelings. He grinned, quick and ugly.
"Drop the token, Captain Theodore," he said in perfect Common, voice flat and pleasant. "Or we take the girl and leave your city to the ash."
Aminah's blood turned cold in her throat because the token in her bag—she'd tucked it into her belt when she climbed—felt suddenly like the only thing that could either burn or save everything. The man's hand moved toward the weapon at his hip and the sky seemed to fold into a small, taut thing.
Behind him, on the Northstar's rail, the kiln woman cupped her hands and shouted as if in triumph: "Trade! Trade! Now!"
Aminah's mind did the math faster than she wanted: oars damaged, launch listing, enemy boarding nearby, Empire soldiers between them and the quay, a second ship's crew tightening like a noose. The stranger's grin widened by the degree of a man who'd scored before.
She had one move left, loud and absolute, and no clean way to make it hold.
She spat a curse and then, with the kind of calm that only comes when a person stops imagining outcomes and just acts, she reached for the token at her belt.
The stranger's hand hovered. Men breathed. The sea slapped. The Northstar's musicians of violence were tuning their instruments.
Aminah drew the token out and held it up like a small, compromised god.
"Don't," Hasb choked from the launch's stern. "Don't—"
She looked at him—his face was red, ash-streaked, knuckles white where they gripped rope—and then at Nina, whose eyes were wide and hollow with fear and trust. The token gleamed in the lantern light like an accusation.
She opened her mouth to speak a word that might bind men or break them, and the stranger's other hand flicked at the pistol.
The sound roared through the night.
Everything spun.