Victor stopped with the spear a finger's width from his shirt. The woman holding it stood on the water beside Tidehaven's gate, as dry as Felicity on the road. Blue hair hung in a thick braid over one shoulder. Small scales caught the light along her temples. Frost got a better grip on Voss's pant leg and looked at Felicity as if he expected her to have a good explanation for that trick.
"We're looking for work and somewhere to feed our family," Felicity told the woman. "We can clear a road and we can keep people alive. If you need references, you're welcome to ask the folks at the bank about us, but I'd pick my witness carefully."
The spear moved aside. "Pia, acting commander. What levels am I letting through my gate?"
"Fifty," Victor answered. When Pia looked at Felicity, she felt for the number herself. That little certainty under her ribs had grown clearer since the bank. It had been easy to ignore while there were bodies in the road. Asked out loud, she knew the answer as surely as she knew how many fingers she had.
"Forty-eight," she said. The guard winding up the gate leaned right out of his little booth to get a look at her. "Is there something wrong with that number?"
Pia let the point of her spear touch the ground. "Most of the people I feed are under ten. The men I pay to fight usually come in somewhere in the twenties. By forty, people get particular about who comes within reach of them. Fifty means I'd prefer to find out what you're capable of before you and my guards get off on the wrong foot."
Felicity liked her better for telling them what the numbers meant. She liked her less when she saw where Pia meant to find out. Behind the gate, ringed by walkways, was a basin with a dry floor on one side and water churning beneath thick glass on the other. Chains rattled behind a steel gate at the bottom. Whoever had built this place had carved channels through the sea wall to turn the harbor current into power. The lights stayed steady overhead even as the winch began to turn.
"Before you open that," Felicity said, "where do our children go?"
Pia indicated a screened gallery. Felicity waited until Finch sat down behind the screen with Frost and Luna and she could see the stuffed mouse waving through the mesh. Then she went down with her team. She stood between Victor and Voss, one hand on Victor's arm and the other against Voss's chest where she could feel how calmly his heart beat.
The animal that came out had scales as thick as floor tiles and bits of machinery sunk into its body. It rushed the grate, dragged a torn cable across the glass and turned its armored head toward the sound. One hind leg swung wide. Metal had grown into the flesh above the joint. It was favoring that leg and guarding the other with the sweep of its tail.
"Can you turn it toward me?" she asked Voss. Victor gave her a look. "You can take the bit with the teeth, darling. I'm interested in the part considerably farther back."
Voss formed a spear and drove the point between two plates in the floor. The tail caught the shaft and swung the animal's good side toward him. Felicity fed a short burst of light into his shoulders while Victor iced the glass under its forward foot. It slipped. Rose's vines pinned the bad leg, and Sarge ran a charge through the loose cable. The animal rolled onto its side, broad chest exposed. Victor ended it with fire before it could get its feet back under it.
Pia came down herself when the steam cleared. She had questions for all of them, but she asked Felicity the hardest one. "How did you know how much stronger to make him?"
"I could feel his heart. When that spear started to bend, I felt him hold his breath, too. I gave him enough to hold on." Voss had a red patch across his palm where the shaft had rubbed him. She touched it and let a little warmth into the skin. It pleased her how readily he opened his hand for her now.
Pia also noticed the basin water gently following Tommy along the rail. His ears went pink when the commander asked about it. He'd been pushing little waves over the glass because the cubs liked seeing the fish come after them. Apparently half the watching mercenaries had mistaken that for a show of strength. Frost looked immensely pleased that he knew better.
In the quarters below the waterline, a man in well-kept armor introduced himself as Calder of Breakwater, level fifty-three. Pia had a job for a team that could handle dead things working together, he told them. He'd seen the bodies stacked on the dead-zone road himself. "You bring everybody home from the dead zone tomorrow, I'll buy you a drink."
"If it's a reward for everybody coming home, you'll be buying a round," Felicity said. Victor's wing brushed her shoulder. She was still smiling when she saw the man in Breakwater colors coming toward them. She knew Rhys by the way he took up exactly enough of the corridor to force her to turn sideways.
"Careful, pearl," he said, clipping her shoulder. Felicity put herself between him and the cubs. She'd last seen him at the bank. The seam around his new Breakwater patch still had the loose threads where he'd cut his old one off. Behind him a guard told him to stand clear. Rhys went for the knife at his waist instead.
Water came through the vents with a force that drove him into the stone. A guard's spear met him there. The knife hit the floor. Victor drew Felicity back while the guards checked Rhys, and she knew from the way the nearest one covered his face that there was nothing left for her to heal.
He'd been the man who'd given her bread, and the man who'd blocked her on the stairs. She wished she'd known he was going to die before she decided how she felt about him. Voss walked her back to the children and answered Frost's questions when she couldn't.
Pia held out a map across the table. The abandoned streets marked in red belonged to tomorrow's job. "I watched your level the whole time you were down there," she told Felicity. "When you came through my gate this afternoon, forty-eight was the right answer. I'd be interested to hear what answer you give me when you get back."