They took the sewers to the Banks, quick as they could manage. Ori was the turtle to the others hares. While the booze seemed to rouse the others to rise to the occasion it left the beaten thief sore and woozy. Halfway through the tunnels Owl tried to tak Ori on his back to the consternation of their companions.

  “It’ll be dawn if we wait for him to catch up and you know it.”

  “I don’t care if it will take the time, if he walks we all walk.” Wisteria sneered, rubbing his eyes and stomping his feet against the chill of the storm sewer. “There’s a mission to do, and we all rise or fall based on it.

  “Owl’s got it right.” Crane said as she stretched against a wall. “They’ll probably be in their cups by now celebrating the attack on some lord’s boy. If we can catch them on the street, in an alley? This will be quick work. If we have to track them home?” she paused, her hand raised as if in a question.

  “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. I can hustle along, get us there in half the time. No need to let me worry you, Owl.” Ori said, trying to push his stout new friend away. Owl stood sturdy, and Ori realized it was like trying to push a tree and tell it to move.

  “You’ll do as you’re told. If I’m going to take a knife for your beating, I’m going to take it tired from carrying your ass or tired from waiting for it. Might as well let me make my own decisions, you’re no King Oriole.” Crane’s words cut him, but Ori took her words to heart and accepted the ride.

  They ran over the Banks, the light of the Mother’s flow illuminating all in a pale green glow. They hopped past a group of riverfolk dancing their strange dances. Ori kept himself from being sick by focusing on the dancing. They carried what looked like baskets of flame, the women raising and lowering them in dizzying patterns, tossing the fires out from them then pulling them back in. It was controlled danger, each girl taught from walking to carry the bowl, to toss and dance with it. The fires stayed inside, always threatening to spill to the earth.

  “It’s beautiful. I love when they do it on the water, pouring into the Mother. The whole river alight, dancing with all of those shades and flames.” Crane said, looking to the tight group as they spun again, breaking into two circles hopping and twirling about.

  “It’s a heresy, what it is. The priests would cull them all if they didn’t ply the river, and keep the Takrim to their trade boats and the cove. Fool people with fool ideas of our gods.” It was the longest sentence any of them heard from Owl, and they saw his eyes in the flickering light and decided not to press the issue.

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  The Banks had sleepers and lovers, qishi addicts and traditional drunks lining them. Some said sleeping on the Banks used to be dangerous due to large beasts who called the old valley their home, but no one had seen one since long before the children’s memory. There were still terrors for the people who slept rough; the swelling of the river led to washouts, and the fear of theft or abuse from those preying on the people of the Banks was a constant fear. Every hundred feet the children passed another guard, self-appointed, his or her eyes wide from taking the pulverized roots of the trees that grew in the high mountains..

  “Damn Wakers. Don’t they know they’ll die?”

  “Everyone takes Wake from time to time Ori. Nothing wrong with it.” Wist replied, brushing by one of the twitching fools. They were paid in Wake for their troubles, and ate themselves to death in their constant vigil. “If they decide to overindulge it’s their business.”

  “E’s right, you know. They make their bed, now they refuse to sleep there. No skin off of us for them making poor choices.” the stoic Owl said, huffing through the sand. On cobbles or dirt Ori was easy to bear, but on sand the poor ghoul turned King had trouble not being borne down into the waste.

  They passed another Waker, this one dressed in finery fit for a Tannery wedding or a day above the Kingsbridge. By the light of the Mother they saw her gnawed fingers, the twitch of the jaw, the hollow eyes. This one was on her way out, and for the first time Ori how a family could take a twig of a member and cast it off to burn in the Barrow.

  “A mask! A mask and a trickery! The soft white moon and the grey of his soul! The cries of the children and the moans of the men! Fire, burning, and through it She walks carrying a dead lover’s bauble! Once dead, twice-dead, the one who has an empty head, the folly of their works and the work of the folly, to tear the sky and pull her down through soft words and power!”

  “Well, I believe she’s gone round.” Wist said, putting himself between the group and the odd former maven.

  “She’s babbling, sure. Maybe we should do something?” Ori asked, looking to the others. When they didn’t move to do anything the boy reached into his pants, breaking a hidden seam. He tossed the silver to the wasting woman, and they ran off into the night.

  “He hears them in cups, in holes and pipes! They find him when he’s weak, he hides when they are strong! A lord born in blood, a child born free! The fool is a killer, and the knight is a killer, and the lady a killer! They dance together, and she wants no partner for time has taken them! They come to burn the children, and they come to run from their sins, and they brace against it all but only the shadow remains, all go and the shadow remains, all goandtheshado-