When the escort wagons got back to Tidehaven the morning after Felicity disappeared, Victor found Rose on the apartment floor. She said three men had taken his wife. The void opened under his hand and took a bite out of the doorframe. Frost's small fingers closed over his wrist, and he forced the dark shut. He had two cubs, an injured woman, and a door that would still open for the men who'd hurt her. He put Finch outside that door, gave the cubs to Tommy, and knelt beside Rose. There was dried blood behind her ear. Somebody had kicked her in the ribs after putting her down.
"Which way did they carry her?" he asked. His hands still knew how to check a head wound even when his mind kept showing him Felicity fixing Luna's travel straps beside the wagons.
"I saw three men go for her before one hit me. When I woke up, the chair she'd wedged in the door was on the floor." Rose tried to draw a full breath and got about halfway. "They walked right in, Victor. She heard the lock go before I did."
Voss pulled up the list on the door console. There was their own arrival from the escort job and a visit from the staff with clean towels before they'd left. One entry among all those small ordinary things had the commander's override beside it. Three minutes later, the eastern freight lift had gone down with the same seal. Voss took the tablet from its dock and tucked it under his arm.
"She kept a record of everyone who came through our door," he said. "Pull up a chair, Silver. I think we can follow her men."
The camera over the lift doors had recorded Felicity twisting in a man's grip. She caught the man behind her in the shin before the drug dragged her under. His cuff slid back enough to show Pia's crest. Victor paused it there. His wife had found the strength to fight in a room built to give the other side every advantage. He touched one finger to her face on the screen, then let Voss wind the picture forward.
The cubs were watching him. Luna had her shore treasures held close to her chest. Frost held a little shield between her and the broken furniture. Victor put his arm around them both. "Your mother got a good kick in before they carried her into the lift. We've found where they took her next. You're staying with Tommy until we're all outside these walls."
"Somebody should take her blanket," Luna said. Victor opened his space and let her feel the soft edge of the one he'd put away for Felicity. That was as much as he could promise his daughter until he had her mother back.
The lift came up from the docks empty. They rode it down, left Ash to cover the doors, and came out in a market still opening for breakfast. Morning sunlight caught the water running through the channels. A woman selling fried fish held one up for her first customer, and Victor remembered Felicity putting a hand against the glass to get a better look at a live one. He wanted Pia to look at that same water when he asked her where his wife was.
Voss found the freight entry on the dock tablet. Their wife's captors had taken an ashland truck out through the east gate, past the coast road. No destination appeared on the slip. The commander's seal appeared on it twice. He used the open freight controls to lock the loading docks and hold the city boats at their moorings. Pia was going to answer for that missing address before her people could send a warning ahead.
Her guards blocked the steps to the command hall. Victor put ice under the front rank and fire through the wooden barricade behind them. Across the market, Tommy got Rose and the cubs behind the stone wall of the east service passage. Finch took up a position at its mouth. Sarge went to the outer gate with orders to cut off the armed men coming in after them. As soon as their way up was clear, Victor went in with Voss at his back.
Pia stood beside the harbor controls with her trident in her hand. "You brought a mercenary company through my front door and took my money. Do you think you can bring this city down over one woman?"
"I think you sent me to earn your money so you could get her alone. Tell me which gate that truck was headed for." Victor could feel cold running down his fingers. Across the room, water stopped flowing in a pipe as the frost reached it.
She drove the trident toward his throat. He caught the shaft with both hands, and the whole length of it froze solid. Voss stepped in behind her and drove his knife between her ribs. Pia went to the floor with her fingers still hooked around the frozen shaft. Before Victor could get another word from her, the first warning bell sounded outside the hall.
The dead were coming through the outer gate. Sarge had pulled a horde into the path of the reinforcements, and by the time the gate began to close there were already bodies wedged under it. A guard went down trying to wrench a small dead thing out of the track. Its teeth caught his wrist, and the next dozen piled through the space he'd left.
Fire rolled along the docks. People ran from the smoke straight into water pouring through the broken canal wall. Victor lifted a fallen beam off a group on the steps and pointed them up toward the terraces. Some went where he pointed. The last man disappeared under a weight of dead hands before Victor could reach him. The freight tablet hit the stones beside Victor and cracked. Voss held it together long enough to release the dock locks and send the people still on the boats out to sea.
Pia lay dead in her hall. Her men had the start of a whole night on them, and his wife was somewhere in the ashlands. Victor found Frost waiting behind the passage wall and scooped him up. Tommy braced Rose's injured ribs, Voss took Luna, and they cleared the far end before the water filled it.
Beyond the causeway, truck tracks split around a ruined tollhouse. Someone had pulled over on the left road and dropped a dirty wad of cloth where the tires had stopped. Victor took one breath and smelled the drug. Beneath it, faint enough that he had to breathe again to be sure, was the scent he'd woken to every morning beside his wife. He turned left before Voss could ask which way to go.