To Granny, for inspiring me to rove the great wide and knowing the sea like you were Sea-Tribe.

First published in Great Britain 2017

by Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © Sarah Driver, 2017

Illustrations copyright © Joe McLaren, 2017

Additional interior illustrations by Janene Spencer

First e-book edition 2017

ISBN 978 1 4052 8468 4

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1764 9

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication and Copyright

Hackles

Trianukka

Skybrary

PART 1: The Great Wide

1: Sea Urchins

2: Bragful Boastings

3: The Dread

4: Witch-work

5: The Mountain

6: Hackles Rising

7: The Dredging

8: Sawbones

9: The Star Door

10: Abomination

11: The Runesmith and a Borrowed Longbow

12: Hidden, Secret

13: Swift Feathers

14: Stench Songs

15: Trespass

PART 2: Hidden Places

16: Bedraggled

17: Yapok’s Iceberg

18: Tea and Books and Butterballs

19: Owl-weather

20: Crow and the Dream-dancer

21: Debauchery

22: The Wild Tastes like Old Blood

23: Dead Runes

24: Black Rain

25: Quiet Warriors

26: No Hearth-welcome

27: One Tribe’s Poison

28: Monstrosity

PART 3: Unity

29: Spirit Battles

30: Da

31: Naming Ceremony

Acknowledgements

Back series promotional page

I stand on the deck of the Huntress, blinking snowflakes from my eyelashes. In the palm of my hand rests a green jewel. When I peer inside it, my own grey eyes stare back, jolting ripples of shock through my chest in time with the oarsman’s drum.

The jewel turns cold, wet and blubbery. Then it grows a spotted skin, like a whale shark. Gills wheeze open in its surface, oozing foam.

I know, sure as the Sea-Tribe blood in my veins, that I’m holding the Storm-Opal of the sea.

And I know I have to protect it, with every stitch of me, but the burden presses on my shoulders, heavier than the beat of the drum.

The jewel splutters and a speck of saltwater prickles my lips. It needs the sea.

We need the sea.

I raise my arm to throw the Opal overboard, its gills struggling against me, but freeze when an urgent voice coils through the roots of my mind, like fog.

Keep this hidden, Little-Bones. I cannot return, there is grave danger. Seek the scattered Storm-Opals of Sea, Sky and Land, before an enemy finds them and uses them to wield dark power. Take them to the golden crown before all Trianukka turns to ice, trapping the whales beneath a frozen sea. Remember the old song? The song will make a map. Keep your brother close by your side, and know you’re never alone. I will find you when I can. Da.

A ragged breathing makes my skin shiver, as though spiders are tiptoeing along my spine. As I turn my head towards the noise, my ship begins to shift – until her deck is slick with blood and her flanks are studded with huge, fire-spitting guns.

A face blurs into focus. The eyes dark and full of rage, the brows heavy and black, the thin lips pulled into a sneer.

The face belongs to the murderous-false captain; the man in a red cloak and boots with brass buckles, the navigator who stole our ship. The one who took Grandma away.

Stag.

Even in the dream-world my muscles squirm to run from him.

A stooped man in a cloak of purple lightning appears by Stag’s side. Stag whispers in his ear. Then the two of them raise their arms slowly to point at the Opal in my hand.

I close my fingers around the jewel and tuck it close to my heart. My bones feel scalded. I wish their greed-filled eyes never touched the Opal.

There’s a flurry of movement and when I look up Stag’s pointing a gun out towards the plank. My eyes follow his to a bundle of rags huddled there.

Grandma.

Before I can move, or shout, or anything, fire explodes from the gun and the grey world is streaked with splashes of red. The sky blinks, and the edges of the dream wobble like air above a flame, and then my hand’s empty. And the loss makes me stagger. The Opal spins away and suddenly it’s in Grandma’s eye socket. But she’s falling, crashing into the sea, wrenching out my heart as hers drowns.

Mouse!

The pull to her is oar-strong but when I strain to reach her, hands hold me back.

I’m hollow. Cold and numb. I’m too small. My voice is trapped under layers of ice. I’m frighted. I can’t get to Grandma. She’s gone.

The hands loosen and I’m sprawling on the deck. I run, painful slow, then pitch fast off the plank, diving through the sea, stretching my fingers into the blackness. She should be here. Where is she? Grandma!

For the first time ever, the sea is a dead place where naught lives. A crust of ice shuts out the light from above.

Do you remember, when the sea, lay, still, in wait for me? drifts a voice.

Don’t you remember?

I thrash, reaching for the surface. The dream pinches my brain. I struggle in the grip of the dream-sea, fighting the water, clawing until my muscles scream . . . then finally rising up, up, up, through ice that thickens with every thump of my heart.

My spirit thuds into my body and I jolt awake, gasping, neck stiff and sore.

I’m slumped over a creature’s back, and my legs are hanging in thin air. As I scrabble to clutch onto something solid, my fingertips scrape a scaly hide – and the memory of where I am seeps through me.

The young terrodyl streaks through a sky fat with snow. Fastestfastestfastest, gabbles his beast-chatter. Fastest beast of all! I dig my knees into his bristles to keep from falling off. My little brother Sparrow’s arms are wrapped round my waist and his head’s pressed against my back. Hunched behind him is Crow, the ship-wrecker boy who I still ent heart-certain we can trust, though he helped me rescue Sparrow from Castle Whalesbane.

I remember flying all day; over a sea, a forest and a smog-shrouded city. Then I must’ve dozed off. Now the sun’s barrelling for the horizon again.

Dream fragments are still thudding around my head like trapped moonsprites. The Sea-Opal! I quickly pat down my pockets, whistling in relief when I feel the bump of the gem through the cloth. But my dream-dance has left me drained and hollow. I remember for the thousandth time that Grandma’s dead, and it’s the same sharp, sick pang, followed up with guilt that I ent told my brother yet – and I don’t know how.

‘Finally, the rat awakes!’ calls Crow. ‘Any clue where we are?’ He snorts loudly and then spits into the air.

I twist round to reply, and wince as the bandage on my face pulls at the wound that slashes down my right cheekbone to the corner of my mouth. ‘I don’t know,’ I shout, as a fresh wave of pain sears through me. ‘Happens the world’s a flaming bigger place than even a Sea-Tribe girl could’ve guessed!’

‘Ain’t it just,’ Crow bellows.

The terrodyl thrashes his head from side to side. Where go where go now? he rasps.

I tell the beast what I’ve been telling him since we took flight. All I know is we have to fly as far and fast as we can from Castle Whalesbane. My tongue wraps itself around the raw, earthy words, tasting the wildness of my beast-chatter.

Castle my nest home. Not bad place!

I suck in a deep breath. Stag was controlling your nest-mates and sending them after us. And the mystiks there wanted to hurt my brother!

Where go? chatters the terrodyl. The fearsome-foul stink of his breath hits me right in the face.

I bite back a wave of impatience. Hang on. I need to think. I chew my cheek, trying to rid my brain of the last dream-tangles. The beast is right to ask – we need to head for somewhere, cos we can’t just fly forever. But we can’t go back to my ship either, cos it’s just as dangerous as the castle.

Seek the scattered Storm-Opals of Sea, Sky and Land . . . remember the old song?

Da’s message floats into my mind again. When my brother sang the old song, his notes stirred the message into a magyk map that showed me the three Storm-Opals. Now one is safe in my pocket, and I wish I could check the map again, but now it’s in Stag’s grimesome clutches. I just have to hope he won’t unlock the magic of the Opals himself. All I know is there’s an Opal waiting somewhere in the realm of Sky . . . could we reach it, somehow?

‘I need to pee,’ snuffles Sparrow, breaking into my thoughts.

‘Gods, what I wouldn’t give to stretch my legs!’ grumbles Crow.

‘Pipe down, would you?’ I shout. ‘I’m trying to think.’

‘Should we make a plan?’ calls Crow. ‘You don’t have to do all the thinking by yourself, you know. Are you telling this thing where to fly?’

I hunker closer to the terrodyl’s skin, against the wind. Should I tell Crow about the Opals?

Before I can gift him a reply he tuts and I feel angry spikes throbbing from him. ‘You still don’t trust me, do you?’

This boy’s even more impatient than me. ‘Course, I just—’

‘Whatever!’ he snaps. ‘Just keep us away from your ship, for the time being.’ Then he yawns. ‘Anyway, now you’re awake I’d say it’s my turn to catch a few winks.’ He falls silent, and soon enough his breathing’s sleepy-soft.

We zoom further and faster through the sky. Ice-cold snot is stuck to my lips, and I keep ’em moving so they don’t freeze shut. ‘My name’s Mouse,’ I mutter. ‘I’m thirteen Hunter’s Moons old.’ My teeth chatter. ‘The Huntress is our ship. The home of our Tribe. And we’ll claim her back from Stag.’

My sea-hawk, Thaw-Wielder, snoozes between my belly and one of the terrodyl’s spines; a warm bundle of sleek feathers. She’s grown again, but she ent realised she’s got to be more gentle when she lands on me – I’m still sore from the last time her huge claws thudded into my shoulder. I rub her head, feeling the delicate bones of her skull beneath her feathers. Then I pull my hand back as a shock stabs into my fingers – the Opal in my breeches pocket has made Thaw puff up into a ball, crackling with heat and smelling like the sky before a storm.

I scan the horizon. On the shore, stretched from east to west, a beach of black sand wears a skin of ice, and beyond glints a dark sea hissing and pluming into jets of water that are fighting not to freeze solid.

I hum under my breath. You must remember what waits there, you’ll find it at the point high in the air.

Then I stop, cos the song brings my dream-dance crashing back over me like a wave. Thaw stirs and stretches out a brown and white wing, uncovering her eyes and watching me curiously. Remember how that line of the old song once gifted us the idea of searching at Whale-Jaw Rock, Thaw? I say when I can breathe again. It’s east of here, and marked by a great plume of water, that looks like a whale breathing through its spout.

Sea-breather, she babbles, eyes glinting.

I nudge the terrodyl’s right side with my heel. We should bear east! I call.

My gut lurches into my mouth as the creature twists in the air to change direction. He chuckles. Long-flying since asked crawler where go. It answers almost at end of world!

I grin at the beast’s cheekiness, and turn back to Thaw. Reckon we’d better find the place soon, I tell her. Cos the world’s ready to crunch up our bones and spit us out if I don’t get all three Opals to the golden crown.

She blinks slowly at me, a shiver rippling through her feathers. Remember home, she warbles softly. Remember name. Tell Thaw feather-truth, bone-truth. The fierceness in her eyes gifts me the heart-strength to dredge my truth from the depths of my bones.

My name is Mouse. I’m thirteen Hunter’s Moons old, I mutter between chattering teeth. Sometimes my Tribe call me Little-Bones. I love to howl and dive for pearls and shoot arrows from my longbow. There’s fire-crackle in my heart, Grandma always said. There’s fire-crackle in the hearts of all my Tribe. It’s a fight that blazes inside.

Thaw gurgles a quick battle-squawk and puffs up her feathers.

My home’s been thieved, and now I’m out in the wild. My Tribe are in danger. I need my fire-crackle more than ever. Cos the fight’s only just begun.

We fly east, the sea curving from our left and spilling into the distance ahead. The wind buffets the terrodyl and tries to claw off our skins. I’m watching for the Huntress without even meaning to, cos my heart pangs whenever I glimpse movement below.

I picture my friend, chief oarsman Bear, battling furious waves and shivering at his post. Forced to be one of Stag’s oar-slaves, chained and half starved. I have to make things right and claim our ship back – there ent a beat to lose. Can you keep watch for the geyser – the sea-breather? I ask Thaw, as we fly over a landscape of cracked brown earth, abandoned dwellings and ripped out trees that lie on the ground, roots grasping for the sky. My belly twists like I’ve swallowed a nail – seems like the world is brimming with chaos.

Thaw-Wielder flicks open one bright yellow eye. Thaw watches! She hops out of my lap onto the terrodyl’s head and fans out her striped wings, shaking the frost from them. Then she huddles down, head twitching to right and left as she watches for the flicker of the geyser.

Heart-thanks, Thaw, I tell her. Then I cough, cos my beast-chatter always comes from the very back of my throat, and I’m proper parched to boot. Long icicles hang from the terrodyl’s wings. Wonder if I could snap one off for drinking water?

I stretch out my arm, eyeing an icicle, but then a fizzing finger of lightning stabs from the sky into the black sand below, exploding black arrows up into the air. The terrodyl hisses and swerves away from where the lightning struck. Then a sparkle catches my eye, and when I glance again we’ve crossed the shoreline and a glittering forest has opened up below us.

A forest of shapes.

Scores of towering blue icebergs shoot upwards from the sea. Glowing balls of blue zip between the bergs. I squint down at them and then my chest riots. ‘Berg owls!’ The feathery bundles thud into caves they’ve burrowed in the ice. ‘We’re flying over the great Iceberg Forest of the Wildersea!’

When I turn to grin at the others, a slip of moonlight skitters out of Sparrow’s tunic pocket and streaks silver footprints up his neck, over his ear and onto my shoulder. Where where what-huh-what black-hair chatters? Thunderbolt chimes eagerly. The moonsprite swings from my earlobe with a tingle-cold grip.

I chuckle. Icebergs. You can’t miss ’em. It means we’re flying over the border of the Wildersea! Now all we need to do is follow the icebergs east towards the Bay of Thunder, and I’ll know how to find Whale-Jaw Rock from there.

She gifts me a short chirrup of approval before zipping back to Sparrow. Not so long ago me and the sprite couldn’t stomach the sight of each other, so I’m heart-glad she still wants to be friends.

‘What d’ya reckon, Sparrow? Ent these bergs something?’ Then I remember he can’t see much, cos of the creeping white film on his eyeballs, and I chew my tongue.

‘I’m thirsty.’ That’s all he says, and proper quiet.

‘Don’t worry, we’re on the right path, so we won’t be flying much longer. And I’ve got an idea,’ I call to him, eyeing the icicles on the terrodyl’s wings.

‘Can I have a story, too?’ he whimpers. ‘My nightmares are more stronger. They keep giving me the brain-aches.’

I squeeze his hand. ‘S’alright, they’ll soon stop now we’ve got you away from that place.’

‘But I feel like something bad’s gonna happen.’ He bangs his head against my back. ‘I dreamt a golden lightning bolt shot us down.’

‘We’ve left the bad stuff behind, too-soon,’ I tell him softly, panicking inside about what to do if he has more shaking fits. ‘How about that story?’ I clear my throat. Stories grow twisted over time, especially if you tell them without story pictures etched in bone to guide you. But I remember one so well that I can taste the words, ready to spill out. The story everyone knows, but I never knew the heart-truth of when I used to tell it before. Now the truth of it rattles through my marrow.

‘One hundred moons and suns ago, long after the first oarsman beat his drum, the last King of Trianukka had an ancient golden crown and three powerful Storm-Opals.’ As I tell the story, I feel Sparrow relax against me the tiniest bit. I clutch the terrodyl’s spine tightly as it navigates the Iceberg Forest. ‘The Opals were to be set in the crown, to heal the trouble between all the Tribes of Sea, Sky and Land and let them live in peace together. The first Opal held a foam of sea, the second a fragment of sky, and the third a fracture of land. But before the gems could be set in the King’s crown, it got gobbled up by a great whale. The Opals had to be kept safe, so the crinkled old molluscs—’

‘You mean mystiks!’ murmurs Sparrow.

‘Aye, same difference. The mystiks of the Bony Isle guarded them, deep within the walls of Castle Whalesbane, where the King dwelt. The King blamed the Sea-Tribe captain, Rattlebones, for hiding the crown in the whale’s belly, and that brought a hundred years of war, and gifted all the power to the land.’

That’s where the story always ends but now I’ve got more to tell. ‘Sparrow, we can hammer in our own iron rivets, can’t we? How about this?’ I sniff away the sticky ice inside my nose. ‘Somehow, after moons and moons, the three Opals were thieved from the castle and scattered, setting grave danger loose on the world. Sneaking ice tiptoed ahead of the winter, and the seas threatened to freeze and trap the whales. Trianukka was at risk of ripping apart altogether. But heart-luck was waiting to save the day, in the form of a girl. One Hunter’s Moon, this girl – who was the best at longbow shooting, amongst other things—’

‘No bragful boastings!’ yelps Sparrow.

‘– aye, she’d packed most skills under her belt as it happens. Well, she found a note telling her to find the scattered Opals and to take them to the golden crown before the world turned to ice. And – get this – the girl found the Sea-Opal, right under her nose.’

Crow splutters. ‘I think boasting might be putting it mildly, mate.’

My heart clangs, whooshing blood into my cheeks – I’d reckoned him still asleep, and I ent certain if I want him to know all that stuff yet. Grandma always did say my big mouth would be the end of me. ‘Shut it, you.’

‘Interesting how you make everything about you, ain’t it? And you do realise the whole thing’s just a kids’ bedtime story?’ He sniffs loudly.

‘You’re wrong, I reckon!’ pipes Sparrow.

Crow scoffs.

I tug my cloak tighter around me and will Sparrow not to utter another word. If the wrecker boy thinks it’s just a story, I’ll let him think that, for now.

But Sparrow thumps my arm weakly. ‘When you gonna tell the bit of the story that’s about me?’ he croaks.

Mememe, croaks Thaw-Wielder, feathers trembling with wanting to be part of the story, too.

Then one of the icebergs looms through the sea-mist and the terrodyl dodges, then pulls higher into the sky. Some of the bergs are so tall their heads are lodged in the clouds.

‘Hold tight!’ I scream. I grab Sparrow’s hands and pull his arms tighter around my waist. When the terrodyl’s finished climbing his wings settle again into a steady, whooshing beat. The air’s thinner up here and my lungs suck at it greedily.

We keep flying east, taking it in turns to nap, until another thin, wintry dawn cracks the sky from black to grey to white.

I stare down at the last iceberg, on the very edge of the forest. Then it’s behind us and there’s just a blend of grey-white sea and sky, before clouds seal us in. My belly gurgles loudly. Me and Crow ent munched a morsel or glugged a drop since we sailed to the Bony Isle to save Sparrow – and the gods only know when he last filled his boots. Then a low rumbling spreads through the terrodyl.

Hungerhungerhungerrrrr, empty belly, he chatters mournfully.

Maybe we could land, and Thaw and the terrodyl could catch some fish for us all? Fear-Beast, Thaw-Wielder, land to catch food? I ask. Thaw hoots her approval.

First time Crawler not utter soft-shell babblings. The creature’s spines ripple happily as he starts to drop lower in the sky. Through a cut in the clouds I glimpse a flash of dark, rocky earth.

‘I can’t be doing with those weird noises that bubble outta your throat when you talk to the thing,’ Crow calls. ‘What did you say to it?’

I roll my eyes. ‘He’s a he,’ I shout back. ‘Least I think he is. He ent a thing, anyway. He’s gonna catch some fish to eat.’

‘Why’s it going to bother doing that, when it can just crunch us up and spit out our bones?’ he yells.

I twist to look at him, laughing. ‘Calm your fright-blubber, this one’s just a bab.’

Crow glares at me with contempt so thick it’s like he’s slapped it on with a tarring brush.

Sparrow’s hands feel cold and sweaty. Keeping hold of them tightly in one of mine, I lean right, along the terrodyl’s hairy wing. I reach out slowly, towards the icicles hanging underneath it, until I can touch one of them with a fingertip.

‘What d’you think you’re up to?’ bellows Crow.

Ignoring him, I lean out a smidge further, wrap my first two fingers around the ice . . . then fright tingles in my chest as Sparrow’s hand starts slipping from my grasp.

‘Sparrow! ’ I lurch back into my seat, making the terrodyl sway and flap for balance, and grab Sparrow’s arms with both hands. ‘Nonononono! Don’t you dare fall!’ His filmy eyes roll back as he passes out and slumps over the left side of the creature’s back.

I swing the other way off my perch, too fast, grabbing hold of the spine in front of me just before I topple into thin air. Blood rushes to my head as I hang almost upside down.

‘You’ll get our bones smashed to splinters!’ Crow yells.

‘Shut your face and grab Sparrow!’

He gives me a stare like death, but he stretches to grab my brother.

‘Don’t let him slip out of his cloak!’

‘I know !’

Sparrow’s arm drops from my waist. I grab his hand, but he slithers further to one side, eyes sunken and blackening. ‘No! ’

Thunderbolt squeals, plucking strands of his hair in her fists.

We’re all leaning heavily over the terrodyl’s left side. Sparrow’s hand turns hot in mine, and a smell of burning weaves into my nose.

‘Pull him back into the middle!’ shouts Crow.

‘What do you think I’m trying to do?’ I hiss through gritted teeth, fighting not to let go of my brother as painful shocks zap into my palm. I squeeze my knees hard against the terrodyl and clench my belly to stay on its back. Purple lightning flickers at the ends of Sparrow’s fingers. Last time I saw it, he was having a shaking fit. Hell’s teeth – please don’t let him have one now!

The beast panics, flapping in circles. Crackle-bolts throw off throw off get to nest-home!

Steady, steady, brave beast! I yell.

The lightning stabs into my wrist and I curse, moving my grip from Sparrow’s hand to his arm.

It’s the one he’s been cradling since we rescued him. There’s a loosening, and a gruesome crack-thunk as the arm flees its socket. Sparrow slides heavily off the terrodyl’s back and I grab for his other hand but miss. My blood thrums in my ears as I fight to keep hold of his arm. I hate the world for letting this happen when I’d almost got my brother safe. I swore to Ma that I’d always protect him, and I ent about to break my promise now.

The terrodyl flails wildly, plunging lower in the sky. I haul at Sparrow as hard as I can. Crow wedges a hand into his armpit and slowly starts lifting him up.

Sparrow’s almost back in the middle. The terrodyl rights itself, grumbling. It’s gonna be all right. It’s gonna be fine.

I’ve just let out a pinch of breath when a golden beam slices through the air, thumping into one of the beast’s huge wings. The wing crumples with a sickening crunch.

Then we’re plummeting; one screaming tumble-blur of arms, wings, teeth and legs.

The beast is falling.

Falling.

The world drops away.

Purple lightning splurts from Sparrow’s fingers into the sky, shocking him awake. I reach for him but the force of the wind thieves my strength. I can’t get us back onto the terrodyl, and the broken wing flaps loose as a sail.

My belly pulls free, lands in my throat. Nails tear at my wrist. Thaw-Wielder shrieks, digging her talons into my hair. Her chatter is torn by the falling and I can’t catch her words.

The terrodyl’s scream rips the world apart. He scrabbles at the air with claws like daggers.

It was a spear. My brain rings dully with knowing. We’ve been shot down. And now we’re falling into death like none of what’s happened even matters.

Everything turns oddly slow-but-fast, like the world’s rushing forwards and backwards in a sickly tangle and we’re strung up in the middle of it. A heavy silver mist settles, and a storm of spooked birds cranks through it towards us.

Bloodseekerssharptoothhuntershuntersfleefleequick! gabble the birds. Shouldbenestingnestingnesting!

I try to move but it’s like I’m stuck in a nightmare and my muscles don’t work.

Crow stretches his fingertips through the air and brushes my cheek. His mouth shapes words, but the wind punches my ears too hard for me to hear.

Mother, screams the terrodyl’s beast-chatter. Brothers. Nest-home. Wing hurtful, don’t let me go, get me home!

With the word home, all the sound in the world fades, in one heartbeat, like an explosion of nothing.

Are we dead?

The silver mist darkens into a pulsing shadow. A foggy tendril snakes away through the sky. Then the world speeds up again in a stuttering rush and our terrodyl crashes through the cloud. We plunge after it. A scream surges up my throat and the wind peels my eyelids back and I pedal my legs in the air and

SLAM.

I smash into a mess of sticky webbing that flings me up into the air with a sharp, wrenching jolt. I somersault

once,

twice,

then finally land sprawled on my front inside the mist-shadow. I scrabble to my knees as Sparrow and Crow plunge, shrieking, from the sky. I grab my brother and hold him still while the sticky mist hurls Crow up again before he tucks into a ball and rolls to a stop. The shadow seals shut over our heads, blinking out the sky.

Shock-waves judder through my body as I stare at a dark, throbbing world of cold and damp, its edges tightening around us. We’re caught in some kind of springy net. I touch the wall, then jerk back my hand. It’s like the whole thing is made of hard, sticky clumps of wet, spinning pearls.

My blood leaps. It’s woven from raindrops.

The walls close in until we’re hanging in the sky, tangled together in the bottom of the net, the raindrops pressed against our faces. Crow curses, flailing and jabbing me with elbows sharp as knives.

‘What – how is – it’s raindrops !’ I gasp.

‘Some vicious magyk, don’t touch it—’ babbles Crow over my words.

‘How can I not touch it, kelp-brain?’

We tumble around like seastones, and I keep Sparrow close, my feet almost slipping through gaps in the bottom of the net.

The Opal falls from my pocket and a spear of panic stabs my gut until Thaw snatches it in her beak and drops it in my hand. She folds herself into my cloak.

Ugghhhh, foulness, she warbles, feathers quivering.

Horror clutches at my chest. Whose path have we stumbled into now?

Far below comes a thud and a splintering crack. I peer through the spinning raindrops to see our terrodyl sprawled across a rock, his beast-chatter filled with hurts. A trickle of inky blood fizzles from his crumpled wing and gnaws holes in the snow. Guilt stings me like a ray, cos the beast’s just a bab and I lured him from his home to help us escape.

Sparrow weeps, curled in a trembling ball, his moonsprite trilling inside his pocket. My gut clenches. If I hadn’t let go of one of his hands, he wouldn’t have slipped and maybe we would’ve been too quick for that spear. It’s my fault something bad happened – again. I thought I could grab one of them icicles, thought I knew best, but I didn’t.

Suddenly the net starts moving. Crow stares at me. ‘What is this thing? What’s going on?’ he whispers.

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’ I shut one eye and peer through a tiny gap between the drops of water. The net is dragging towards a brown smudge that’s growing bigger and bigger. I squint. My belly squirms. It ent one smudge – it’s a gathering. A flock. ‘Sparrow,’ I whisper. ‘Crow.’ I try to swallow but my throat catches. ‘Look!’

Crow puts his eye to the wall. ‘What are they?’ he asks, voice half choked.

‘How would I know?’ I grip the net in my fists and the raindrops wriggle against my palms. ‘How about we stop gabbing and get ready to fight?’

But my fire-crackle dims to embers as the smudges slice the sky, closer, closer, filling the world, until we can see what we’re facing – a flock of giant, shaggy beasts. Between each one’s wings sits a proud-faced warrior. They wield golden bows, blades and spears. I tear my gaze away and stare down at Sparrow’s tangled yellow hair, a howl of fright and heart-sadness brewing in my chest.

‘They look like huge winged foxes,’ says Crow, squinting and then twisting to look at me.

I force myself to look again. They’re more like . . . bats, but with the orangey fur and long muzzles of foxes. ‘Whatever they are they’re proper frightful.’

The creaky slick-click of their skins and bones mixes with the beat of their wings against the wind, like a war-drum.

Huntsaltbloodfish? Dragcatchriptaste! HuntHuntHunt – BITE – tongueraspslithertear!

Their beast-chatter is ravenous. Their teeth snap against the metal bits in their mouths, and lanterns swing from poles fixed to their heads.

The warrior at the front clutches a spear in one hand, and in the other a staff with a tendril of the raindrop net wrapped around it. All the warriors’ faces are draped in gleaming mail – as the net drags us closer, I realise their armour’s forged from raindrops, too.

‘But . . . the Sky-Tribes are dead!’ I stutter.

‘They look dead to you?’ murmurs Crow. He clenches and unclenches his fists.

When we’re within spitting distance of the warriors, the net stops moving and sags in the air, making us stumble. The staff clutched by the leader keeps us skyborne – but what if she lets go? My fingers fumble for the amber amulet hanging around my neck; the one that Bear gifted me for protection.

Scores of accusing eyes pierce the raindrop mail. My voice feels trapped, deep inside. I pull my face away from the wall and stare at my hands – they’re shaking. I curse, biting my nail, and press my eye to the gap again.

The leader stands with her feet planted strongly on her bat’s bare back. She points her staff at the net and jerks it and we’re whipped into a dizzying circle that makes us snatch for each other’s hands. When the net is still again, the top of it has unravelled to join the silver tendril wrapped around the staff.

Ten riders crowd the open net, staring down at us. Their bats’ wings slice the night, stirring a breeze of greasy flesh and dung.

‘The birds were fleeing from you,’ I breathe. A flicker of fright shudders up and down my spine.

The leader’s blue eyes narrow. She peels back her raindrop headdress. It melts into a loose cowl around her neck, revealing a white-haired girl of about fifteen moons, with a mean, neat face and a gold ring through her nose like she’s a bull. Black eye-paint slashes down from her brows to her jaw. She lifts her pointed chin. ‘We are much feared.’ Her thick, knotted accent is brushed through with disgust.

I struggle to my feet in the net and stand as arrow-straight as I can. Thaw pokes her head out of my cloak, ice-crusted feathers bristling with fury, but before she can bolt I clutch the cloak tighter, muffling her chattered protests. Ent no way I want this lot laying their mitts on my sea-hawk.

A second rider folds back their raindrop armour, swiftly becoming a girl with dark red hair, a big chin and widely spaced brown eyes. ‘These creatures stink of seaweed and fish guts,’ she says, wrinkling her forehead. ‘My draggle was the first to sniff them on the wind.’ She leans down to stroke the thing’s ear and it clicks an oily purr. Her words are laced with triumph and there ent a thing I wouldn’t give for the chance to knock her sideways into thin air.

‘Well scented, Pangolin,’ says the white-haired girl, squinting at me like I’m a speck of grot. ‘The Protector of the Mountain will reward you.’

The girl gifts her a snaggle-toothed grin. ‘Thanks, Lunda.’

‘Who are you?’ Crow glares at them through matted locks of hair.

The rider called Lunda twirls her spear, knuckle-rings flashing. She stares, a tight smile curling her lips but never touching her eyes. ‘I ask questions. What are you doing here? Were you sent to perform witch-work?’ The other riders flinch and write symbols on their chests with their fingers.

Me and Crow swap looks. Witch-work?

She sighs, then barks a sudden command. ‘Take them to Hackles. The Protector will sentence them for their crimes, whether they speak or not.’ Her draggle’s wings carve the air as it swirls away from us.

‘What crimes ?’ I yell. ‘And what’s Ha—’

Crow reaches up and tugs my cloak.

I stumble, glance down at him and my brother, and fear stabs through me. ‘Sparrow!’ He’s lying limp as a gutted fish.

Crow rubs Sparrow’s arm. ‘Wake up, little mate!’

Sparrow’s breath is ragged and when I shake him and call his name he won’t wake. A chewed-up cry worms through my lips before I even know it’s brewing.

‘You have to help us!’ I shout. I keep my hands on Sparrow’s shoulders, squeezing the tender part like Grandma showed me, to make pain and wake him up. But naught happens. I look up towards the flock of riders and they’re blurring cos my tears are falling fast.

When I look back down Sparrow’s lips are tinged blue and that’s when I notice the way his arm lies, the angle of his elbow all crooked. Beads of sweat stand out all over him and his forehead burns under my touch. His arm must’ve had what Grandma called a ‘skinny break’. That loosening I felt was the arm breaking good and proper.

‘Riders!’ I call. ‘You get over here and help me. My brother won’t wake up!’ The salt of my tears prickles on my tongue.

I lift my chin and howl, like I’m warning my Tribe of danger.

And somewhere, in the distance, a creature howls back.

The howl leaves a gloopy silence in its wake.

Startlement stretches my eyes wide. That howl pulled at my chest like it knew me.

Lunda halts her draggle and twitches her head this way and that, alert and ashen-faced. ‘They’re coming,’ she mutters.

‘Who?’ asks Crow, jaw flickering as he grinds his teeth.

Riders fidget, a crackle of fear passing between them. Lamplight glances off the rings in their noses, making them look like a tangle of stars. Their whispers crowd the air, until the wind fizzes with one word.

‘Wilderwitches! ’

Then the howl comes again. Closer. It cracks the sky like a throatful of death and rings eerily off the distant icebergs. I hunch low, digging my nails into my palms, breath tattered. This must be witch-work.

‘They’re pack hunting again!’ shouts Pangolin.

‘Shushhh!’ orders Lunda.

Pack hunting ? I turn to Crow. ‘Have you heard of Wilderwitches? Are they sky-hunters?’

But Crow’s answer is knocked from his mouth when a rider thwacks him in the back with the butt of their spear. He opens his cloak, presses his face inside and lets out a muffled stream of growls and curses. Then he sits with his hood pulled up, glowering face shielded by folds of cloth.

Lunda steps along her draggle’s back as easy as I would in the rigging. ‘Which direction are they coming from?’ she hisses.

Pangolin glances around. I watch her face; all the tiny workings of her muscles, the tenseness.

Then I spit. ‘Help me, right now, or I’ll summon that thing closer!’ I say it with all the bluster I’ve got, cos I ent the foggiest whether I can summon it or whether I’d want to, but if this Tribe think I can, maybe they’ll help my brother.

‘You will not summon anything!’ Lunda thunders. ‘You are the Protector’s prisoner !’

‘Ha! You try and stop me.’ I check Sparrow again – his breath comes weak and flutter-quick, but it’s there.

Then I stand. My howl’s brewed hot and stormy so when I send it up it’s the fiercest I’ve ever howled, and proper loud.

The horde of riders flinch in their saddles, and Lunda guides her draggle towards the net, raising her knuckle-ringed fist.

Crow moves to shield me but he stumbles, nearly stepping on my brother, so I shove him out of the way and he curses at me, eyes like fire-arrows.

Before I can gift him a sorry, the strange witch-howl comes a third time, closer still. It rattles through my marrow and cloaks the threats Lunda hurls at me. A deep hush follows it, like falling snow. Lunda freezes, her fist still raised.

In the silence I duck low again and put my face close to Sparrow’s mouth, feeling a tiny hot flutter of breath touch my cheek.

‘Lunda, we need to hide,’ says Pangolin, two spots of heat blooming in her round cheeks. ‘We cannot outpace them.’

‘No.’ Lunda smiles, white hair wispy-wild. ‘We will smash them for daring to threaten us – we were made for this fight.’

Riders whisper and write symbols on their chests with their fingertips again. Pangolin’s breath gushes out like she’s winded. ‘But there aren’t enough of us. We’ll be dragged to our deaths!’

DeathdeathdeathdeathDEATH! screeches one of the draggles, and fright bolts through the flock. They jostle, the riders grapple with the reins and Lunda’s thrown face down on her draggle’s back. She scrabbles to grip the staff holding our net, almost dropping it. Before I can stop myself, I’m staring down at the snow, stained black with terrodyl blood.

Lunda jerks to her knees, spitting out a mouthful of orange fur. ‘You idiot !’ she gasps at Pangolin, purple-faced. ‘You’ve spooked them!’ She uncoils a black whip from her waist and starts furiously lashing her beast to try and control it. The others do the same, but still the creatures buck and writhe in the sky. The net judders and Crow groans, clutching his belly.

Finally Lunda gets her draggle turned around. ‘Pangolin has forced us into a cowards’ escape, despite the fact that this is our rightful sky-territory!’ she calls. ‘We must get the sea-creepers to Hackles before the Wilderwitches swoop. Douse the lamps and follow the stars!’

Pangolin’s draggle wobbles for a beat, and she fights with the reins until it steadies. Then she pulls her raindrop cowl over her tear-stained face and vanishes from sight.

The riders smother their lights. A velvet darkness snuffles close.

Are the Wilderwitches a Sky-Tribe, too? What kind of Tribe hunts and howls like wolves? My mind soars, fast as a hawk. Until now I’d reckoned there were no Sky-Tribes at all.

The riders flit after their leader. The wind bites my hands and face as we’re pulled through the air, the opening in the top of the net sealing again as the tendril unravels from the staff.

A damp mist begins to rise. It presses against the net. ‘They’re coming closer!’ yells a voice.

My ears fill with the sharp cracking of whips. I squint through the raindrop net and watch the mist thicken. It bristles like fur, then separates into ghostly shapes that streak through the air, uttering yips and howls. I croak Crow’s name but my voice is drowned by the yells of the riders.

‘Hurry!’ one cries. ‘The sky-wolves are almost upon us!’

We’re flying fast, too fast for me to try to help my brother, and the mist is a stew-thick fog that the riders try to brush from their eyes. ‘Faster!’ shouts Lunda. ‘Don’t swallow even a wisp of this witch-fog!’

When the howl comes again it’s splintered into a hundred fragments that throb all around us and set my teeth rattling. I clamp my eyes shut.

When I look again, the fog has furred and toothed and clawed itself into an army of wolves, some with white or grey fur, others black or red. I wrap my arms around myself and think of bolting along the Huntress ’s deck, her salt- and snow-dusted boards crunching under my boots, sunlight dancing in Da’s hair. I will us home with every stitch of blood and bone, but naught happens.

‘There’s summat fearful wrong about these wolves,’ mutters Crow.

I raise my ice-stiffened brows. ‘They’re prowling through the flaming sky, for one thing.’

‘It’s more than that,’ he snaps. ‘Their faces are more human than animal.’ He stares at the wolves as they race closer and closer. ‘Can you hear their – what do you call it?’ He flails for the words.

I squint at him impatiently. ‘Beast-chatter?’

‘Aye. That’s the one.’

I listen again, hard, but there’s a silence. I shake my head.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he whispers. ‘They’re shape-changers, not wolves.’

I stare at Crow as his words wash a memory over me – when he was Stag’s spy, hiding aboard our ship in bird form. If I listened for his beast-chatter there was just emptiness, cos he weren’t really a beast at all.

We lock eyes in the gloom and I quickly look away, watching the sky-wolves for as many beats as I dare while Crow’s gaze burns my skin.

The fog’s closed over us like a shroud, poking up our noses and worming into our lungs. Far below, slices of land and sea chink through it, then vanish again. Our path curves to the right, towards a wall of blackness. Storm clouds? My gut twists, but soon we’re close enough to see that it’s not cloud at all.

We’re headed for a bulk of pure, solid mountain.

A mountain range that makes me know that others I’ve seen were just hills. This mountain is a place so huge, of so much old power, that I’ve never felt so small in all my life.

The wolves howl, one by one, ’til their voices join into a long, throaty wail. They lope through the sky, snouts carved open into eager snarls. Their eyes are a mix of blues and greens and greys. Human, like Crow said.

Suddenly one lunges from the mist to the right and snatches a draggle and its rider clean out of the sky. The rider plummets towards the valley below with a strangled scream, and the sky-wolf shakes the draggle by the wing, like a rag doll. The rest of the flock shrieks and swerves, and I’m dimly aware that I’m screaming with them. Crow reaches for my hand. His cheeks are blotched red with fright.

Just as another sky-wolf springs, a bone-splitting BOOM throttles the sky and echoes off the mountain, almost shaking my spirit loose.

‘Riders, low! Hackles is spewing!’ yells Lunda. The draggles swoop suddenly and our net falls through the air for a beat.

Then huge ice-boulders slam overhead. They smash the front ranks of the sky-wolves to pieces of mist, leaving only the splintered ghosts of their howls.

The sky-wolves fall back, becoming a grey, snarling wall behind us. And when another marrow-shattering boom rocks the sky, they turn tail and race away, the rear ranks torn apart by massive clumps of ice. Shock tugs at my mouth.

We’re dragged higher and higher still, until we’re level with the clouds. Crow turns grey and cradles his head in his hands.

The mountain looms.

Sparrow moans, soft as a bone pipe, but when I call to him he don’t open his eyes and shakes wrack his body.

‘Stay in the waking world, too-soon,’ I murmur in his ear. My little brother was born before he was baked proper. I ent letting him leave me too soon as well.

The mountain is a black wall blotting out the world beyond. A great wound in its side oozes ice. A churning sound buzzes in the air, and I can feel a bowstring-tenseness that tells me it’s waiting to spew again.

We dip and swerve to the right, towards a chink in the rock. Behind us, ice boulders thunder through the air, spat out by the mountain range.

Then we’re hovering, trapped between the ice-bombs behind and the bleak cracked mountain ahead. The gap in the rock is packed with raging winds and swirling snow.

Lunda and the other riders shout into the wind and raise their arms high. They urge their draggles through the gap in the mountain. I squeeze Sparrow’s hand as we fly between two of the mountain’s jags, through a mass of cloud.

We’re only halfway through when the cloud begins to freeze around us, tightening, icing our garb to our skin, squeezing . . .

Up ahead, the riders shout panicked words that are lost in the storm.

Then we’re through the gap and the storm’s behind us and we can breathe. When I look back, there’s just a broiling mass of lightning, fog and frozen cloud.

The mountain echoes with the high shrieks and open-throated grunts of eagles. Inside my cloak, Thaw hisses.

There’s no trace of the world we came from.

We plunge downwards. My belly flips. I peek through a gap in the raindrop net and the ground is rushing closer. Closer. Closer.

I squeeze Sparrow tight and tuck my face into his neck, bracing for the hit. Crow grabs onto Sparrow too, and our wide eyes fasten together in panic.

Snow squabbles in the air. A snowflake pastes onto my eyeball – I scrub it away – and when I look through the net again there’s a smoky shape pressing up through the snow. My heart clambers into my throat.

The mountain is a jagged, ring-shaped fortress surrounding a settlement, like a bristling beast squatting gleefully over a kill. Spiny turrets are chiselled into the rock.

We thud into a snowdrift that guzzles sound. The net sags heavily onto us, sticking to our faces. I reach up to push it off, scraping my scar, and curse, sucking my teeth against the pain. Wind rushes overhead, snagging the raindrops in its grip, as the draggle flock glides past to land nearby. ‘Did the storm-barrier keep them out?’ calls a fretful voice.

‘Of course!’ snaps Lunda.

Crow wrestles with the net. ‘Help me get this thing open.’ He pushes his fingers between the raindrops and wrenches open a small hole.

As soon as he’s made it the hole shrinks, so I tug a merwraith scale out of my pocket and try to snick a proper cut. The raindrops buzz and rush to knit back together. ‘Bleeding cockle dung,’ I mutter.

I take Sparrow’s face in my cold-numbed fingers, whispering to him. He moans, but he won’t wake up. I tighten his cloak around him and pull his hood over his face. Then my ears twitch, and a prickle spreads up my neck. Boots are crunching through the snow.

I nuzzle my face close to the tough web of clamouring raindrops, and through the drifting whiteness a long-limbed girl has appeared, swamped in a cloak of brown feathers.

Her copper hair is bundled on top of her head like a tangled nest and her long red skirts billow around a pair of fur-trimmed boots. There’s something bare about her gaunt face; the flash of raw hope she wears is the only light on the mountain.

She steps nearer, then catches herself and glances around sharply, face turning dull and closed. She fits wooden snow-goggles over her eyes and melts into the snowstorm.

Lunda scrunches towards us. The raindrops slowly unravel into a thread that slides away along the ground and slurps into her staff.

Me and Crow thrash upright, pulling up our hoods, and watch as the riders leap off their draggles and hurry towards a row of statues etched into the rock-face. Reckon they must be likenesses of their sky-gods – human-bodied, eagle-headed, terrodyl-clawed. The riders kneel, muttering prayers.

Other figures battle through the snow to unsaddle their beasts. Then the draggles wheel around and soar into the air. Huntsniffbloodquickscurrytheybitetheywaitheartsbeatbeatbeat, they whisper, lips stretched into gruesome grins. Their huge shadows pass overhead, together with the sweet, damp stink of their fur.

‘Don’t tell anyone your name!’ I whisper to Crow. He nods.

‘What happened back there, Spearsister?’ a man calls to Lunda, as he turns from muttering his prayers.

‘Cloud-freeze is not part of the barrier,’ says another. ‘We could have been frozen to death!’

‘We must make more appeasements to the flicker-gods,’ says a woman, twirling her blade in her fingers.

‘When did you last see their lights? Even the gods have turned their backs,’ retorts the first man, lifting his gaze to the scrap of sky pinched between the mountain’s leering jags. More tribesfolk pipe up, their grumblings swelling louder.

The flicker-gods? I think of the white and green sky-fire that my Tribe call the fire spirits. Instinct makes me tip back my head to look, but there’s no sign of life.

Lunda glares a warning look. ‘Everything is under our control,’ she hisses. One by one, the tribesfolk fall silent.

‘Welcome to Hackles,’ says Lunda, hand on hip as she watches us along the length of her pointed spear. A gloat bubbles onto her face. I tense my muscles to run, though there’s nowhere to go.

Other riders prowl to join her, staring at us with narrowed eyes.

I show Lunda the quiet and stormy look Grandma said could seek out all a person’s secrets. Grandma would take no nonsense from these slither-wings, so I hold tight onto the heart-strength that she stitched into my bones and shine it out at the girl. For a beat, Lunda’s fierceness is startled away.

Then she snarls, knocking me over the head with a spiny knuckle ring. I crouch, cursing and clutching my head.

Pangolin unwraps her raindrop headdress and stoops to touch Sparrow. I leap forwards with a growl but Crow grabs my wrist.

‘Arm’s broken,’ says Pangolin, brushing back her knot of thick braids. She watches Lunda’s face like a mongrel begging for scraps.

‘A pantry-squidge could tell that much, Pangolin!’ snipes Lunda, making the other girl flush. She straightens and peers around. ‘Pika! Hey! Over here! Pika! ’

I follow her stare. To our right is a stone hut, smoke huffing from its chimney. Up ahead a run of steps is carved into the mountain, leading to a set of wooden doors crowned with two crossed spears. A tall boy with white hair and cinnamon skin unfolds himself from the steps and slouches towards us. ‘I heard you.’ His dark eyes sweep Lunda’s face. ‘Half the mountain’s heard you. Think an avalanche must be brewing.’

‘Stopper your beak,’ declares Lunda. ‘Take the cripple to the sawbones’ nest while me and Pang get the other sea-creepers to their cells.’

Crow scowls.

‘You ent taking him anywhere without me!’ I hiss.

‘The draggles are hunting.’ Pika folds his arms wearily. ‘I have to be ready to stable them when they return, and the caves are a mess after you left in such a clamour.’

‘Do not defy me, apprentice, or I’ll have you mucking out the draggle-dung well past midnight!’ Lunda spits, flicking her stubby white braid off her shoulder.

The boy snorts but he does as she says. He bends to pick Sparrow up and my brother’s head lolls like his neck’s gonna snap. He looks smaller than it’s even possible to be.

‘Don’t take him! We stay together!’

‘Mouse,’ mutters Crow. ‘Just let them help him.’

‘Help him? You seen this place, slackwit?’

He wipes his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. ‘She told that boy to take Sparrow to the sawbones – that’s another word for healer. Know any other healers round here?’

The heart-truth of his words melts away my fight. But when the boy turns his back to carry my brother away, a hollow pit tears open inside me. ‘I’m coming with him!’ I shout. Then a wave of sky-sickness makes me so dizzy I can barely stand.

I pull away from Crow and bend forwards, gulping for air, as Sparrow’s carried towards the stone steps in the mountain. I straighten in time to see him vanish from sight.

Then there’s just all these pairs of strange eyes fixed on me. And no friend but Crow; a boy who not so long ago I couldn’t trust a stitch. Feels like my blubber’s been turned inside out.

Crow’s telling me something but his face swims before my eyes and his voice is stars away. Then everything blurs, and hands grab us. Thaw-Wielder pokes her head out of my cloak and nips at a rider.

‘Oohhch!’ the rider squeals, sucking the blood from her finger. ‘I think we’ll be having you, hawk-sister!’

Hah! Bad-blubber not have Thaw! shrills my hawk, dodging and spiralling off into the sky.

We’re forced apart. Crow’s fighting, I’m hurling threats, but we’re lost in a tangle of fists and spears and shields. ‘Mouse!’ Crow bellows. The wind roars, slashing snow into my eyes, and when I can see again he’s being shoved under the crossed spears and through the wooden doors.

I’m pushed to the right, towards a doorway etched into the hulking flank of the mountain. Shivering figures shovel snow, others snap icicles from overhanging rocks and there’s a clatter-clang-clatter as they drop them into cauldrons for melting. One lingers to warm his hands over the steam, and a rider cracks a whip, knocking him to the ground.

I’m dragged through the door and up a spiral stairway cut straight into the rock. Then I’m pushed forwards and made to climb higher, higher, higher into the mountain. ‘Please, tell them my brother gets shaking fits,’ I gasp in the thin air.

Hot breath burns my frozen ear. ‘Were you given leave to speak, sea-creeper?’

‘Please! Just tell them!’ It gets even harder to breathe, cos now the thin air stinks of rotting eggs, musty pelts and damp. ‘We made a potion of violet root but I didn’t get the dose right and—’ I’m shoved into a crooked stone passageway, my words oofed away into the bitter cold.

Grubby moon-lamps are strung along the ceiling, dimly showing how the passage weaves around a bend and out of sight. Moonsprites wail inside the smeared glass, making the lamps flare.

Letoutletouttrappedtoolong! Grrrrrrfizzlefearhelphelphelp!

Our footsteps ring against the stone. The cold stabs up through the soles of my boots. I stumble, and the tip of a spear digs into my back, jolting me forwards. The anguished cries of strangers echo from inside the walls.

Soon it feels like we’ve walked so far into the mountain that we’re gonna fall off the other side of the world. ‘Where’ve you taken my crew?’ I wheeze.

My captors don’t answer. I look back and glimpse a long, serious face and lips purple with cold, but then the spear-tip finds me again and I stagger forwards.

We reach a thick wooden door. One of the riders wrenches at it, scrabbling with her fingernails, but the door is stuck. ‘The ice has sealed this one shut, too.’

In the end she gets it open by lighting a torch and heating the lock, while I twist and kick in the other’s vice-grip.

Then I’m jabbed hard in the back and sent sprawling into a freezing cloud of sour air.

I stumble to my knees on a damp, grimy floor. The door slams with an echoing clunk, like the sealing of a tomb.

I throw my weight against the door. Sickness has robbed my voice, so when I try to scream, nothing comes. What if Sparrow shakes, or they see his lightning? What if they use his powers like the mystiks did? And – I fight the thought, but it moulds tightly over me. What if he dies?

I’m trembling, and my head swirls like there’s a storm of fog and snow blundering through my brain. This weren’t meant to happen. We should’ve reached Whale-Jaw Rock by now.

On the other side of the door, boots scrape against the frost, moving away.

I cough and rasp another empty breath. The sickness that started as we climbed higher in the sky squeezes my belly in an iron grip. I’m frighted for Thaw too, but I ent got the strength to yell for her.

I stare around the murky stone turret. There’s a straw mattress on the floor and one thin, grime-streaked blanket. Through a star-shaped hole at the top of the wall, the wind screeches in a thousand broken voices.

It hits me, in a sickening drum-boom – I ent going anywhere. I can’t look for the Opals. A picture of Da floats before my eyes – on the storm-deck, watching the sun skim the waves, his eyes smile-crinkled.

I reach into my pocket and curl my fingers around the little wooden carving of the Huntress that I made for Da so long ago. Some time between leaving our ship and disappearing he added sails to the carving, and wrote a message on them – a message to tell me what I’ve got to do. And to tell me he’ll find me when he can. The message gifted me heart-strength. And when Sparrow’s song turned it to a magyk map that showed me the Opals hope sparked in my veins. But the map couldn’t magyk the thing me and Sparrow really wanted – Da.

And now I ent even got the message. Stag’s thieved it, just like he thieved Grandma’s life and my ship.

My ship. When I close my eyes, I can almost smell her joyous stinks of fish and birch-smoke and tar.

‘Tell me we can get some rest, now?’ pleads a thin voice, startling me out of my thoughts. It’s throbbing from frosty metal pipes that criss-cross the wall.

‘We can’t,’ answers another. ‘There are trials.’

I scuttle closer to the pipes to listen.

‘I am bone-weary,’ gasps the first. ‘Have you any food?’

‘No.’ There’s a scrape and a clank and the voices are almost drowned out.

A sob rattles the pipe. ‘My sisters are not growing as they should – I need to give them more.’

‘Shhh! The Protector provides . . .’

Their voices fade. I shiver. Then a distant wolf howl pierces the night and I drop into a crouch, staring up at the hole in the wall.

My heart beats twice before the turret quakes. I cover my head with my arms and feel the explosion in my chest as the mountain spews more ice-bombs. What is going on in this Sky realm?

As the sound dies away, the Opal’s wild power sparks through my cloak pocket. I pull it free and wince as it singes my eyebrows. I can feel the gem longing for its kin, the same way I long for mine. The ache in my chest turns to a painful yearning for my Tribe. It feels like the stitching of my life has come apart at the seams, so I hardly know who I am any more.

I press my back to the wall and slide down until I’m huddled on the ice-glittered floor of the turret, arms wrapped around my knees, chin pressed into the bloody rips in my breeches.

If I don’t get the Opals back together and find the golden crown, the sea’s gonna freeze solid.

My thoughts fly and scatter and drift. I wonder if these draggle-riders – or the Wilderwitches – know the legend of the Storm-Opal Crown. I can’t believe there are two Sky-Tribes left! I remember seeing the ruined Sky Path at the Tribe meet on Dread’s Eve, lost to vines and thorns. Being in a hidden Sky realm would make for a tale my Tribe would love to guzzle. It’s like I’m living one of Grandma’s stories. But all I can feel is the heaviness of my quest.

My eyes cross and numbness steals over me. I feel my spirit pushing the edges of my skin.

I’m slipping into a dream-dance and the Opal in my hand seems to breathe, turning clammy and blubbery, just like the last time.

But the rotten stink of this place creeps into my nose, making me gag. I grind my teeth together, dig my nails into my palms. The sky-sickness hits harder and I retch bile onto the straw, then fall to the grubby mattress and drag measly lungfuls of air through my bleeding lips. Then I sneeze, spattering my wrist with black snot.

There’s a tangled wail in the sky outside. I look up, sickness spins the room and I have to get my head down again. A sorrowful beast-chatter floats into the turret.

Wherenowwherenow? Home, lost, Thaw heart-sore for her two-legs!

My sea-hawk’s searching for me! Thaw, I croak uselessly, feeling a growl of fury build in my belly. Heart-sad homesickness carves up and out of my throat, spilling hot tears onto my cheeks. The Huntress slices through my thoughts, calling me home. My ship plucks at me until an invisible cord, connects us.

Man gone, hisses a sudden beast-chatter, somewhere in the pipes. Flew low, low, low. Scribble scrap scribble scrap.

But the beast-chatter rolls off my skin like a bead of water, as the Opal grows fluttering gills and my spirit squeezes through layers of bone, muscle and skin, then sneaks through the hole in the wall, into the raging night.

I’m a ragged ghoul in the wind, high above the mountain fortress. The Opal pulses against me. Even though I’ve left my body behind I feel a smile tugging for the fun of flight.

I’m struggling to dive towards the sea when the wind catches me in its jaws. I’m flung across the edge of the mountain. The world falls away.

Across the mountainsides below streak the gleaming dream-spirits of reindeer, mountain goats and wild horses.

Swirling storm-clouds gather and skinny lightning spears the sky. Stooped red trees paint the mountain like a river of old blood, where the leaves of autumn froze before they could fall.

I fly faster and finally through the smoky fog I glimpse the sea and the jagged icebergs. Another sliver of lightning slashes down and cracks into a berg, sending blocks of ice tumbling into the water.

A coastline looms. I trace its craggy edges with glowing dream-fingers. Huge cauldrons of oil bubble on the cliff edges. I can sense my home in a rich dream-stink of tar and iron rivets. She’s pulling me closer, but where is she? The further I tumble the closer I get to a fleet of ships. My spirit pangs.

The Huntress is one of them.

I strain my spirit into the wind, wiggling like an eel, feeling a pull between my body and my ship. Panic jangles from me into the night air, sizzling a flurry of ghostly sparks. The air thickens with the grey, moaning spirits of whales and the cold vast depths of the sea flood into my mind; the depths that swallowed Grandma. I shrink back from the whale spirits, fighting the memory.

The ship’s anchored over the spot where the great warship from the Icy Marshes, Frog Witch, is said to have sunk ten moons ago. The sea is slicked with a thick cloak of ice that crunches as she tries to throw it off.

I drop through the sky, treading air like it’s water. Below, Stag stands on the storm-deck, bellowing at the crew. His voice stabs into my dream, making me growl. Polar dogs sprawl beneath the rail. Their chains clank as they twitch their muzzles to the sky and whine, spooked.

Thingthingthingnomarrow? chatters one.

Nofoodhungryhungrywhatit? Deadthinglurking! replies a pack-mate, snotcicles hanging from its snout.

Stag glances at the dogs. Their white clouds of breath puff into the air and his narrowed eyes follow them, until he’s looking right at the spot where I’m hovering, my dream-toes bathed in dog breath. My spirit flares, turning jagged and spiny with horror.

Can he see me?

But then he turns his attention back to the deck, and my spines of fright retract.

‘Heave!’ commands Stag. There’s a creaking of ropes and a strange squealing noise. Then a huge bone claw winches into the air, trembling like a held breath.

‘Shipwrecks mean merwraiths. And merwraiths mean riches.’ Cold mirth curls the edges of Stag’s voice.

Merwraiths? No. He can’t!

My nerves stretch tauter than a bowstring, but still I glide closer to the ship. Cos even with evil lurking, I can’t waste the chance to glimpse chief oarsman Bear.

The tar-blackened ropes that tether the dredging claw snake down in front of me. The crew lower the claw towards the sea. When the waves gulp it, dread bites me.

‘It’s reached the seabed!’ someone cries.

‘Hold steady!’

One of Da’s sayings fills my head. ‘Are we not all the gods’ little creatures?’ My sluggish dream-blood simmers. I’m voiceless, but I wish I could roar. I flutter towards the deck and the polar dogs tense, then riot, thrashing against their chains, gifting rough barks to the sky as they watch me shimmer.

The claw shudders from the sea, spitting a clatter of long, curved whale bones across the deck. I know I should look away. Terror squeezes my throat. I don’t want to watch.

But I have to.

Tangled on the claw’s bony barbs are three merwraiths, the scales of their long, drooping tails flashing bright. One’s got a tail of rusty bronze; the others gleam storm-cloud grey. Sodden flame-red hair is plastered to their heads, and pearly globs of fish eggs web their fingers and lace up their arms, chests and throats. My mind flits to Rattlebones, the ancient Sea-Tribe captain who turned to merwraith long ago. My guiding ancestor. These wraiths are our kin. Once they proudly strode their decks, fire-crackle in their hearts.

The merwraiths’ eyes are glazed behind a foggy layer of film. But they’re awake, and they’re frighted.

I whimper, my voice trapped in the space between the worlds, ringing off the masts and round my brain. The horror turns to bony fingers that wring my belly until I gasp.

The merwraiths begin to wither. Their hair becomes seaweed, their fish eggs turn to strings of black slime that drip onto the deck. Only their scales stay bright. The crew snick their knives open.

Get away from them! I scream, but no one hears me ’cept the polar dogs. They howl, frenzied, until Stag blasts a gun into the air, forcing silence.

I flutter, tangled in the ropes, a ghost filled with heart-fury. The face of one of the merwraiths crumples and the eyes fall out – now plain grey seastones that roll about the deck. A shriek rips from her lips before she shrivels into a pile of weeds, slime and rocks, and only her gleaming scales remaining. Sobs rake my chest, and in the tiny gaps in between I sense another mourner. Bear, huddled at his oar, his tears turning to chips of ice on his cheeks.

Missing him and wanting to be in his arms carves my chest into a gaping hollow.

The merwraiths lie sprawled in a heap. Crew fall to their knees beside them and prise dark, rusted scales off with their blades, the two metals scritch-scraping.

Stag watches, smoking his pipe. Course he ent dirtying his own hands. My scorn pushes me towards him, until I’m hovering in the drifting fog by his side. He puffs out smoke rings, and I think of Da’s message. Does Stag have it still? I flex my dream-fingers, imagining grasping the message and pulling it back with me. Could it be possible?

I dip into his pockets, but I can’t feel anything and frustration coils around me like a tentacle.

A polar dog lunges at me, snapping starving jaws. Get back! snarls Stag in beast-chatter, kicking out at the dog.

I zoom away, making for Bear, but I’m caught in the wind, flung upwards, bashed against spangle-cold icebergs. A fright-tattered voice reaches me. ‘You are his weakness! You must help us!’

It sounds familiar. Knowing spreads through me. The voice belongs to one who has guided me.

Rattlebones!

Ancient blood sparks in my veins and I feel the link between us glowing bright and golden.

She’s the only captain I know who can show me the path, except this time she needs my help.

Help you how? I mouth, but I don’t know how to talk in a dance and the wind plucks my words away. Why? I try harder to force words out and finally they come, clumsy and thick. ‘Where are you?’

When the wind’s grip loosens I dive down through the air and skim out across the churning water. Above the sea I dip my fingers through a skin of ice, watching the surface like a looking glass.

A soft old face appears, wrinkled like the map of a long-ago life.

‘You’re safe!’ The words plink into the water.

‘Aye,’ says Rattlebones. ‘For this time.’

The word time sloshes strangely through my mind.

‘What’s happening to my home?’ I ask.

Her blind eyes stare into my marrow, and pictures begin to flash inside my head.

I see Grandma’s medsin-lab crushed to slivers of glass and splinters of wood. The armoury has swelled to twice its size, filled with unfamiliar weapons. The door to the Hoodwink where the sea-hawks nested has been wrenched off, leaving an empty socket in the mizzen-mast.

‘Evil prowls,’ whispers Rattlebones. ‘The false captain hunts whales and wraiths, making deals with greed. He seeks supporters among the lonely and the bitter, the desperate and the greedy. When he has used your ship he will break her apart. He wants to keep the Tribes at war, brew vicious battles and crown himself King.’

My spirit splinters apart and jolts back together. ‘What about Grandma Wren? Have you seen signs of her in the wraith-world?’

Heart-sadness floods Rattlebones’s voice. ‘None.’

Last hope drips from me into the water like spots of blood, and washes away.

‘There is a stillness where I try to sense her. But Little-Bones, where is your own life-blood? Why are you so long a ghost?’

She puts another picture in my head – my sleeping body, dusted with frost on the floor of the turret cell at Hackles. Then she fades – down, down, down into the depths – leaving me alone.

I fly fast as I can towards the aft-deck hatch, even though I can feel my dream-dance rubbing thin. I need to find Da’s message.

Before the hatch I reach a pulling point, where I feel like the cord between my spirit and my body is gonna snap. Maybe I’ve been a ghost too long, like Rattlebones said. Fright clangs through me and though I ent ready to give up I’m suddenly rushing through the night, terrorised, away from my ship, spirit-belly brushing against rock.

That’s when I see it – a shimmering spirit snagged on a tree root on the side of the mountain.

My dream-eyes widen ’til they feel like hollow pools. Another dream-dancer? I flit closer to it.

But this spirit is unrestful and it wails wretchedly into the wind. Every mote of my being prickles in shock. I’ve never seen another human spirit dancing free of its body. This one looks stuck. Its eyes snap onto me, huge black holes of loss. My heart is awash in darkness! it calls. It reaches out spindly-silver fingers and brushes my cheek.

I turn away but the fingers curl around my ankle. I twist to look behind and the spirit wrenches itself free from the tree root, then streaks past me. I soar quick quick quick towards the prison in the sky, where my body waits. Dimly I can hear my brother singing.

The lost spirit squeezes through the hole in the wall but I zip after it and grab a fistful of its scraggy hair. We struggle; a storm of force and feelings, slamming against each other. It thrashes away and then pings towards my body. The amber amulet of protection begins to glow in the hollow of my throat – it’s proper strange to see my own body from above. The spirit tries to pull the amulet over my head but I shove it away and my feet slip into my sleeping self and I wake up tasting blood. I’m on my back on the floor in the dark cell, shouting and cursing and crying with a voice strangled by the mountain.

My voice is the thing I could always make bigger and louder when I felt too small. Now the sky’s shrunk it.

When I’ve raked a breath the truth presses hard on my shoulders. My body ent safe when I dream-dance. That thing just tried to thieve my bones.

Crow warned me at Castle Whalesbane that things might get in while I’m dream-dancing, or I might not be able to get back. He said I needed a binding – some kind of spirit anchor.

I start to shudder, scanning the air for signs of a spirit, but nothing’s there that I can see. The Opal is still in my hand and my fingers are cramped from holding onto it so tightly. I fold into a ball, dragging the thin blanket over me.

I unlock each stiff, sore finger from around the Opal. The gem is warm against my palm and if I focus I can almost feel a pulse inside it. Then I snatch my breath. The Opal is casting swirling patterns of light on the grey blanket, a miniature dance of the fire spirits, just for me. My hair crackles with charge.

Golden flecks twist and flutter under the Opal’s skin. They settle my bones and help me remember. Rattlebones told me the merwraiths and my Tribe need my help.

But – you are his weakness. What did the old wraith mean?

There’s a sudden rustle and the sound of something scraping over the stone floor. I gasp and pull the blanket off my face. In the foggy moonlight my breath is a white cloud.

And near the far wall, another cloud steams.

Something is in here with me.

I scramble into a crouch, every muscle tensed. My pulse booms in my ears as I remember the thing that tried to steal my body, and I grip Bear’s amber amulet.

Something rushes towards me, so I whip a merwraith scale from my pocket and tuck it between my knuckles. I raise my fists. ‘Stay back!’

‘Noooo, shhh, oh the gods, no fretting,’ a girl husks. Her words have a sweet, songlike tilt to them. ‘I stole you a mug of hot goat’s milk, from the Protector’s own night-cauldron—’

‘Not that flaming Protector again!’ I splutter.

‘I’ll spice the milk,’ she begs. ‘And let you have the last cheese and garlic pancake on the mountain. But please be calm!’ Her breath has puffed closer, and the shadowy outline of a tall figure lurks behind it.

My head’s stuffed with confusion, and my wound throbs, dull-sharp-dull. Why is this shadow garbling on about pancakes? ‘Who are you?’ My lips bleed when I move them, and my teeth chatter. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘They left you with nothing to keep you warm – you could have frozen to death. I snuck in to watch over you. But what do I find?’ Her voice sharpens. ‘That you’ve been night-flying.’ She speaks like I’ve done the stupidest thing in the world, but her words are snagged with envy, too.

‘How do you know?’ I snap, before I can guard my tongue.

‘When you fly, the smell sticks to you. The memory of flight is tell-tale.’

She can smell my dream-dancing?

She strides closer. Her arms are full of shaggy white goat skins that she dumps next to me. I grab one and tuck myself into its musty folds. The warmth shocks tears of relief into my eyes.

The girl squats in front of me. She closes her eyes, a smile spreading over her face.

I shrink away from her. ‘What you doing?’ In the weak moonlight all I can see are snow-goggles and a headful of messy braids.

She lifts the goggles onto the top of her head. Her green eyes slant up and out like a cat’s. She’s the girl I saw when we landed – the one garbed in a cloak of feathers. ‘Remembering,’ she answers, weary sadness weighing down her voice.

Then comes another wrenching crack-crash-BOOM-roar-rush-splinter as Hackles spews more ice. I bury my face in the goat skin.

‘Our stronghold is more agitated than usual,’ says the girl thoughtfully, when the turret stops rattling.

I swallow. ‘Aye. There’s something making the world wild—’ I stop myself cos I don’t know a thing about this girl.

She lunges close and grabs my wrist. ‘Yes. Every beat that the draggles’ wings brought you closer, the weather raged fiercer. Something is stirring.’ Her light brown face is covered in splodgy rust-coloured freckles and she’s got the same gold bull-ring through her nose as the others. ‘Where did you fly?’ she asks urgently. ‘What did you see? What is it like ?’

I stay silent, watching her. Part of me wants to tell her how it’s like there’s two of me – the me in this world, and the me in the world of shadows. She stares back and takes a breath to say something more but I cut her off, a whip-stroke of defence burning my insides. ‘Don’t know what you’re babbling about.’

The girl cocks her head and looks at me like I’m denying the tide will come in. Then she shrugs and plucks a moonsprite from her pocket.

I curl my lip, remembering the heart-sore sprites held prisoner in the passageway lanterns. But the girl’s long fingers are gentle as she drops the sprite into a cracked glass jar.

Lamp-snoozings, it gargles, throbbing a silvery glow into the cell that shows the girl more clearly.

She’s oak-tall – might’ve gathered about sixteen birth-moons – all knees and elbows, garbed in a long scarlet dress stitched with stars and moons, and draped in the feather cloak. A bright half-band of gold circles her neck and stripes of gold paint flash on her face, from the middle of each lower eyelid down to her jaw.

‘What’s that paint on you?’ I ask.

‘It means I am a sawbones; a curer. I can only wear it when my mother isn’t watching, mind.’ She gives a low chuckle.

I flood my eyes with scorn. ‘Don’t need no healer.’

‘Would you prefer to let the rot hunker down in that wound, and eat away half your face?’ She shudders. ‘Trust me – I’ve seen it happen. Though lately, injured prisoners disappear before I can even sneak a check of their wounds.’

A flurry of arrowheads storms my blood. ‘Wait – if you’re a healer, have you been helping my brother, too?’ I blurt. ‘Did the guards tell you about his shaking fits, like I asked?’

Her smile gutters out. ‘I have not been allowed near him. But I listened at the pipes – your message was delivered. He has a broken arm, and a fever.’ She holds up a hand and signals for me to wait. ‘He may not wake for some time, but they are treating him with success. He is safe, for now. In fact, his sickness is what protects him. She wants all her prisoners well enough to be tried.’ She gabs it all in a rush, like she’s been waiting moons and moons for someone to talk to.

‘What? I ent letting some loon woman put him on trial!’

‘Be quiet!’ she hisses, fright tightening her face. ‘Hackles has ears. The Protector of the Mountain is not some woman. And all three of you will be judged. If she finds you guilty, the punishment will be – severe.’ She looks away and stands up.

I don’t wanna think too hard on what severe might mean. ‘But we ent done nothing!’ Then I fall forwards and put out a hand to catch myself on the stone floor, bile rushing into the back of my throat. When I’ve finished retching I look up and the girl’s watching me with a face full of sorrow.

‘I don’t need your pity,’ I bite out, wiping my mouth.

She chinks a tiny smile. ‘I have something better than pity.’ She rummages in her pocket and pulls out some yellow petals. ‘You have the mountain-sickness. These will help calm it.’

I twist my mouth and don’t move, but she holds them closer to me. One of her hands is sprinkled with fine white scars, and the knuckles are bloody. On the other she’s wearing a dark grey glove. ‘Take them,’ she says gently. ‘They will make it better.’

I blow the air out through tight lips and reach for the flowers. The petals are cool and smooth between my fingers. When I crunch them a bitter, earthy taste fills my mouth.

‘Heart-thanks,’ I stutter, mouth ash-dry. Then a thought squirms in my belly. She’s gifted me kindness. Maybe I can get her to help me escape.

‘Oh!’ she exclaims, making me startle. Then she winces at her own noise. ‘I almost forgot your milk,’ she whispers. ‘Hope it’s not bone-cold.’ She searches the floor behind her, then presses a steaming clay mug into my hands. A delicious warmth spreads through my fingers, all the way up my arms.

‘Wait, it’s better with this mixed in.’ She takes a vial from her pocket and pinches some rust-red powder into the cup before I can snatch it away. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says quickly. ‘It’s nutmeg and cinnamon – I’m not in the business of poisoning! You should be glad of a little flavour. These days it’s just goat’s milk, goat’s cheese, tough old goat’s meat and bog myrtle.’ She ticks them off on her fingers. ‘We’re on lock-down. No trade, because of the war.’ She speaks fast and tight, like she’s afraid someone’s gonna spring out of the shadows and gag her.

‘Ent never met someone before that can babble faster than me.’ I take a sip of the drink. It warms me from chest to toes, and the spices tingle on my tongue.

‘Suppose I have many trapped words to spill.’ She turns again and places a dented silver platter by me. There are two fat lumps of dough on it.

I raise my eyes to her face. ‘Will you help me, for real? Can you—’

‘Eat,’ she says, cutting me off. ‘The food will give you wondrous fire-in-the-belly.’

My hope fades painfully, just as one of the pipes in the wall starts to rattle and clank like a crazed thing. I scuttle backwards and my foot skids out in front of me, kicking the food platter across the floor. The noise spreads through the pipe to a small chute that enters the turret from a hole in the roof and ends in a rusty metal door.

‘Ah, here he comes, at long last,’ the girl says grimly. She turns towards the chute, skirts swirling. Her hem is fire-licked, like she’s too close to the hearth.

‘Who?’ I ask, filled with dread. ‘And who are you?’

She stares down at me, a mix of emotions that I can’t read swirling behind her eyes. ‘I’m Kestrel.’ The way she says it fills me with a fresh burst of hope that I cling onto with all my might. I can feel the heart-strength she had to summon just to tell me her name.

The chute rumbles and clangs, gives a thud, then falls silent. Kestrel scowls at it, fiddling with a chain hooked to her belt, then steps towards the chute and starts wrenching her key back and forth in a keyhole set in the door.

The chute flies open and a small, fat shape gushes out, trilling latelatelate! Latequickhelpcarryoooooooosnacks!

The creature darts for the plate of food on the floor, but Kestrel gives it a sour look, ducks low and grabs it in cupped hands. ‘Squidges don’t eat pancakes!’

They do! it chatters desperately, oozing a puddle of black stuff – like ink – into Kestrel’s hands.

‘Oh, Ettler! Calm your silly self. Anyone would think you a fat princeling, not a sawbones’ helper.’ When she lets the creature go again, it stares at me, chatters oddbeastfrightfulfeathers! and slams itself into the wall in distress, oozing more puddles of ink. I swallow my beast-chatter, cos I don’t want Kestrel knowing about it.

The beast is all kinds of oddness. It looks like a tiny round squid, no bigger than a sea-hawk’s egg, covered in shiny gold feathers. It moves through the air by wiggling and flapping, pooing ink behind it that grows an icy crust on the floor.

‘Ettler, you must learn to hold your ink!’ Kestrel scolds. ‘You know I need it. Use an ink-pan if you want letting out.’

‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘You called it a . . . squidge?’

She nods, eyeing the not-quite-squid. ‘We’ve scores of the grumblesome things, working in the pantries, but this one kept stealing food—’

Not true! shrills the offended squidge, hooting anxiously at the girl. Then mischief gleams in its round black eyes, and it chortles.

‘And so,’ she says to me, wrinkling her nose, ‘when trouble came sniffing he hid in my clothes chest. By the time I found him, all my things were covered in ink, but he was too afraid to leave my room. So I took him on, as my so-called assistant. What a fantastic decision that turned out to be.’ She turns back to the chute and rummages inside the hatch. ‘So shall we stitch that foulsome wound on your face?’ she asks, voice muffled. ‘You’ve been up to strugglings, huh?’

‘I was trying to save my brother,’ I tell her, curling my tongue over the edge of my teeth. ‘Not that it even worked.’ It don’t matter if you save Sparrow, cos you ent never gonna save him from his sickness, snickers a wicked voice in my head.

Kestrel pulls an oiled leather bag from the chute and sits cross-legged in front of me. She roots through the bag. The squidge farts anxiously around her, dripping ink into her hair. ‘Aagh, Ettler !’

He flaps stickily away and hides in the chute, whimpering.

‘Here are the things we need,’ chirps Kestrel. ‘A tear-vial, for catching your tears.’

I frown, shame prickling my scalp. ‘Tears are for weaklings and babs. I don’t need—’

‘Pish,’ she says. ‘Our Tribe used to wear these ’til our tears were swallowed by the air – that’s when the mourning has passed.’ She takes my hand and balls it into a fist, then places it against my chest. When I open my fingers there’s an empty glass vial inside my hand, with a bone stopper.

She wrinkles her nose and squints at me. ‘And . . . what else?’ she wonders aloud. ‘A spool of silk and a needle-clutcher.’ She pulls a thin roll of leather from the bag, opens it and draws out a sliver of white bone. ‘A needle and some—’

‘Why would I let you practise your pox-ridden dabblings on me?’ I blurt. My gut boils at the thought of anyone touching my face.

‘That cut is too deep to be left alone.’ She raises her coppery eyebrows. ‘Always think you know best, huh?’

I clutch the bandage tighter and turn away from her. ‘You ent touching me.’

‘’Twill fester.’

My forehead burns fierce, even worse than my sore throat. I know I’m already getting sick. I sigh, then nod quickly.

‘Good.’ She unwraps my face from the bandage I made. The cloth has stuck to the wound, so she opens her cloak to reveal a leather circle strapped to her chest, holding six daggers with leather pommels. She pulls one out and uses it to carefully slice my bandage off.

Hot, sharp pain stabs into me as the skin underneath is torn. ‘Argh!’ I hiss as she pulls the last of it away.

‘Sorry.’ She winces, and takes my chin in her hand to peer at my damaged face. ‘Claws, looks like?’

‘A terrodyl,’ I whisper. ‘Must look grim.’

‘Some folks will fear to look at you. But I say away with them! What counts is on the inside, no?’

I nod. ‘In heart-truth, a captain could use a frightful face.’ Even as I say it, I remember how I won’t be captain now, and how I don’t wanna tell her anything about me.

‘Captain?’ she whispers in an awed voice. ‘Are you to be a sea-captain?’ Curiosity shines through her.

Hawk-swift, Grandma’s face appears. A voice deep inside me whispers, over and over, you’ve got no home, you’ve got no home. The deck flashes into my brain, clear as lightning, with Grandma bundled on the plank and Stag pointing his gun at her. Sweat coats my palms and I begin to tremble.

‘I’m sorry.’ Kestrel lays cool fingers on my wrist. ‘Try to breathe. We will not talk about it now.’

My tears blur her face. She twists round and gives a soft whistle. Ettler pokes out of his hiding place and whizzes up and out through the hole in the wall. He quickly puffs back in again and thuds down beside us, a ball of snow gathered in his tentacles. Then he dumps the snow onto the floor and huffs back to the chute.

‘For numbing,’ she tells me. As she reaches for the snow, her left sleeve slips and I notice there’s something different about the arm. It’s the same dark grey as the glove, and it’s got the sleekness of a gun. I feel my eyes widen.

She stares me down, the slush dripping through metal fingers.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’ I start, but her face splits into a grin.

‘You noticed my iron-arm,’ she says, gleeful as anything. She pushes up her patched, fraying sleeve to show me. The arm’s made of a smooth metal, and when she wriggles her fingers, it’s like some kind of magyk is letting her thoughts control them, just the same as with flesh and bone.

It’s the best flaming thing I’ve laid eyes on. ‘What’s it like?’

‘Ever had a dead arm?’ she asks.

I nod, remembering the times in our bunk when me or Sparrow slept on our own hands. Sparrow proper hates waking up with a numb arm.

‘It’s like that, much of the time.’ She flexes her metal wrist, watching it in wonder. ‘Until I whisper to the runes that our runesmith keyed into the metal. Then it comes back to me in a wave of warmth and tingles. For a while I thought I’d never feel it again.’ She takes a bottle and a swab. ‘First, a saltwater cleanse.’ She starts to wash my wound.

‘What happened to you?’ I hiss through the stinging.

‘An accident,’ she replies vaguely. ‘So my mother travelled to the city of Nightfall to find a smith gifted enough to forge a new arm for me. That was before, though.’

‘Before what?’

She watches my face, like she’s quietly deciding all kinds of things about me. When she blinks, a clear membrane slicks up and down her eyeballs like on the eyes of a hawk. Did I imagine it? ‘Before the conflict sharpened its teeth.’ She dips her needle into a flame and threads it with silk, then brings it towards me. ‘Before the banning of books, and study.’ She drops her voice to a breath. ‘Before I was forbidden to leave the mountain. Before everything changed.’

‘So how long you been scrapping with these Wilderwitches?’ I ask.

‘Oh, many years,’ she answers, eyes resting on mine. ‘But there was a tense half-truce we grew used to. Then, four years ago, the tenseness exploded.’

Before I can ask why, she presses a handful of snow to my cheek and eel-quick her needle pulls through my skin. I ball my fists to keep from screaming.

She pinches the edges of my wound together with her right hand and uses the iron fingers of her left to stitch. Her sleeve is by my eyes, and I swallow back a gasp cos the stars and moons are unpicking themselves into loose strands of golden thread.

Could it be cos of her being so close to the Opal in my pocket? I pray to all the sea-gods that she don’t notice anything.

Kestrel mops my bleeding face with linen and keeps stitching, poking out the tip of her tongue. ‘I have fresh skirts for you, as well.’

‘I ent wearing no skirts!’ Despite the pain that’s making my eyes stream, a sudden laugh punches out of me.

‘Stay still!’ she commands. ‘Those are men’s breeches, and they are in tatters, and—’

‘They ent men’s breeches – they’re my flaming breeches.’ I screw my eyes tight and suck my teeth. ‘Can’t you patch them for me?’

She sighs. ‘Very well.’

Beast-chatter greets my ears. Men’s breeches. Ettler scuffles about inside the chute. Witches call to me, atop the Wildersea! he yodels. My neck prickles. That’s a line from the old song – the song that makes magyk when my brother sings it. Why’s this squidge chattering those words?

When the wound is stitched, daubed with ointment and dressed, the light has thinned to a greyish murk. Dawn is coming. Kestrel lifts my sleeve and starts washing the brand Stag cut into my arm. Heat spills across my cheeks, cos I didn’t know she’d spied it, and a deep shame crawls through my bones when I think how I’m marked for life with the sign of the Hunter, slashes for the hate Stag showed my Tribe.

Kestrel fixes me with a look that stops me wrenching away from her. But when the blood and grime are cleaned away, the antlers show even stronger and I curl my tongue.

She gently rubs ointment into the brand. ‘So. What’s it like out there, in the great wide?’ Yearning swells in her eyes.

I pull my arm away. ‘What d’you mean? Don’t you know?’

She shakes her head. ‘Used to. Well, I knew the sky above the Iron Valley, at least.’

Hunger to rove makes my toes itch. ‘The great wide is the best thing since cinnamon buns,’ I whisper.

Kestrel props her chin in her hand. ‘Our Protector says travel is dangerous.’

I shrug. ‘Travel’s how my Tribe live. It’s who we are.’

Kestrel gazes at me with a gentle, eager fierceness. ‘I think it might be who I am, too.’

Suddenly footsteps ring in the pipes. Kestrel jerks her head towards them, all the life falling from her cheeks. She hauls herself up and runs to the door, pressing her ear flat against it. ‘Oh no, no, no, not now!’

The steps bang along the passageway outside, growing closer to the cell with every beat. Then a rider garbed in raindrop mail barges inside and stares at Kestrel. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘Greetings, Pangolin Spearsister,’ says Kestrel breathlessly. ‘I was sent to shear the prisoner’s head and I thought, whilst I was here—’ Her voice trails off.

I stare at her. Is she lying?

‘So why does the creature still have a headful of rat’s tails?’ spits Pangolin. ‘Our blessed Protector will be displeased when she finds out you’ve been treating an outsider.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Kestrel says quickly. ‘Please, do not tell anyone you found me here. Remember when I helped heal your wounds so you might still be chosen as a Spearwarrior?’

Pangolin watches her coldly. Then she blows out her cheeks and rolls her eyes. ‘I won’t tell the Protector or Lunda this time. Probably.’

‘Oh, thank you, Pangolin!’ Kestrel stoops to collect her things. The light dims as she tips the moonsprite out of the glass jar, into her pocket. Ettler plops down from the chute and scurries into her bag. Then her skirts shush against the stone as she hurries off without looking at me. My heart punches my chest once, twice, and she’s sucked into the gloom.

Pangolin’s brown eyes stare dully through her raindrop armour. ‘Looks like you’re alone again,’ she says calmly.

When I rush at her, snarling, she brings her spear up to her chest to block me and then uses it to shove me roughly onto the floor. ‘I’ll be back for you tomorrow.’ Then she turns and leaves.

Fright gnaws away my insides, leaving me with a gutful of shame. Once, I was fearless – or at least I made myself believe the lie that I was brave. Now it’s like my scars have cut so deep that all my hurt shows up on the outside, and I hate it.

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