Angel stood in the fire line, passing buckets full of water in one direction and empty ones back in the other. It was tiring, and her arms ached after five minutes. The fire was still blazing, though, so it looked like she would have to do this for a long time. Then someone appeared next to her, and it was Andy. She stepped in and took over for Angel, and then after five more minutes they switched places again, and they just kept working like that without speaking. Sometimes they looked at each other. With the fire burning and the smoke in the air and burning embers falling and people shouting and running they looked at each other, and for a second there was nothing else but them. Then one of them looked away to catch a bucket or something and it was back to noise and chaos.

  When they had been working for an hour an old woman wearing a ragged dress came walking along the quay, ringing a small bell she held in her hand. Standing about twenty feet from Angel and Andy she stopped and let out an awful wordless scream. It went on and on, longer than Angel could hold a note, an amazing feat of screaming. Then she stopped, and Angel felt a great relief, but then she did it again. It was torture to hear it. When she finally stopped Angel noticed that everyone was staring at her, which made sense, but nobody seemed angry or like they might walk up to her and hit her or something. People were looking at her nervously, like they wanted to get away but were afraid of missing what she might say. The bucket line slowed nearly to a stop.

  Then she began to speak, but that was a lot like her screaming, just broken into words. She said, “Woe to men who crawl by the sea! Woe to women who smile at strangers! Woe to judges who drown justice like an unwanted kitten! Woe to merchants who cheat the poor and workers who break instead of mending! Woe to millers with two different measures! Woe to killers and bandits and thieves! Woe to the rich in their heavy stone mansions that sit on the backs of the poor and crush them! Woe to the rulers who fail in their duties! Woe! Woe! Woe!

  “Rotten is the world! Rotten! Rotten! It died twenty years ago, and now we live in its corpse! Look how it rots around us! The blood clots, the flesh putrefies, the blind eyes dissolve, the belly distends and bursts. We are worms! Worms! Worms in the rotted meat! We crawl through putrefaction, we eat decay, we drink foulness! You, all of you, stink of death! You stink of ruin! The sight and smell of you makes me retch.

  “But soon enough the corpse of the world will be picked clean, and there amidst its bones you worms will crawl, starving, until you begin to eat each other, and you will devour your neighbors and your parents and finally your children until there is nothing left but death. And only then will the world know peace.”

  Then at last she moved on, passing down the quay to scream at others. But still no one approached her, no one tried to stop her. The buckets began moving again. After what felt like hours the word finally came down the line that their work was done. Angel walked away and Andy followed her, and they walked halfway around to the harbor until they found a quiet place where they could sit and watch the ships and boat and the moonlight on the water.

  Andy said, “Do you know who that woman was?”

  Angel shook her head. “No. I thought I knew all the lunatics on the waterfront but she was new to me.”

  “Why didn’t somebody shut her up? I think where I came from she would have been beaten up.”

  “She might have been beaten up here, too. I’ve seen it happen. Maybe it was the fire, that already had everybody scared.” There was silence for a while, then Angel said, “What she said was creepy. About us living in the corpse of the world.”

  Andy scoffed. “Priest vomit, we used to call that.”

  “Where?” Angel said. “Where did you grow up, that they talked like that?”

  “A long way from here.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Really? What’s there to tell about your life?”

  “I was born in my father’s inn. My mother died when I was little, so little I can barely remember her. Ever since then I’ve been helping my father and singing. I did go to school for a while, to learn to read and do sums.”

  “You can read?”

  “Yes, in Calyxian at least. Now you have to tell me something.”

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  “I grew up in a cursed place and both of my parents are dead.”

  “What was it like? Was it a very big town?”

  “Eight houses. One well.”

  “Wow. That’s little.”

  Andy didn’t say anything, so Angel said, “Do you want to tell me why you left home?”

  “The war came.”

  “Came how?”

  “Riding horses and carrying torches and swords. They burned everything. And that’s all I’m going to say.”

  “Ok. Do you know any songs?”

  “Just little kid songs.”

  “Sing me one.”

  “I’m not going to sing to you, you’d laugh at me. You’re famous, everybody in the neighborhood knows about Angel and how she sings.”

  “I won’t laugh at you. Unless it’s a really funny song.”

  “I don’t think so. If you want to hear a song, you sing.”

  Angel thought, and then she sang,

  The frog and the hedgehog

  Went down to the water,

  Down to the water to play,

  They swam and they frolicked,

  They dove and they pattered,

  All through that warm summer day.

  The bee at her flower,

  The fox on the prowl,

  The crow in the hazelnut tree,

  They all stopped to listen,

  They all had to watch,

  To see how much fun life can be.

  Andy said, “You sing so pretty.”

  “It’s just a little kid song. My father says my mother taught it to me, but I don’t remember that.”

  “I’m glad you sang it to me.”

  “I should go home. My father is probably worrying that I burned to death. Would you like to walk with me?”

  “Sure,” said Andy.

  As they walked, Angel told Andy the story about the Man with Two Wives. It happened about a month before. A man came into the Inn with a woman, and they were sitting together when another woman came in and said, “What are you doing with my husband?” And then the first woman said, “What do you mean? This is my husband.” And they started yelling at each other and then one jumped on the other and they started fighting, and then people pulled them apart and then somebody noticed that the man was gone. He just snuck out while the women were fighting. And one of the women says, “That’s just like him, that cowardly puppy!” and the other woman says, “Yeah, you’re right,” and the next thing you know they’re sitting together telling stories about what a loser their husband is, and they start laughing and eventually they leave together like they’re best friends, and we never saw the man again.

  And Andy laughed long and loud, and Angel said, “It’s really good to see you laugh,” and Andy said, “It feels good, too. It’s been a while since I had much to laugh at.”

  When the fire was finally out most of Calyxia dragged themselves off to bed, hoping to get an hour or two of sleep before they had to begin their days. But Mercutio found that he had never been less sleepy in his life. He was poking through the ruins of the destroyed buildings when Aurelio Zen found him. If Zen thought it strange that the Viscount of Calyxia was stomping around a burned-out building in his nightshirt, he did a very good job of keeping this out of his face.

  He said, “My lord Viscount, you are covered with burn marks and soot. Should you not rest, and perhaps see your physician?”

  “Later. This place is burned so thoroughly that I can’t even tell what they made here.”

  “Barrels.”

  “Barrels?”

  “Yes. We ordered two hundred from them for the fleet. And they had all our stock of barrel staves.”

  “Aren’t barrel staves just pieces of wood?”

  “Yes, but they must be aged. If you use young wood, they leak.”

  “So you’re telling me that we no longer have enough barrels for our fleet, and no way of making more?”

  “That is the situation, yes. Besides having lost a ship that should have been ready, and several sails that captains were counting on.”

  “You make it sound like this was done by our enemies, and rather cleverly.”

  “Or one could call it an act of desperation. It is only four days to Malovana, and we can carry enough water for four days in clay amphorae, of which we have a great many here.”

  “Harassment.”

  “That would be another way to see it.”

  “I feel–” Mercutio stopped.

  “My lord?”

  “I feel like they are trying to make us think they are desperate. That they are playing some kind of game with us. That everything they are doing is some kind of distraction from their real purpose, which they are keeping carefully hidden.”

  “I have thought the same. But it might also be that they want to fill us with doubt. To make us worry that they must have some deep plan when really they have nothing.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And if that is the case,” said Zen, “the most important thing for us is to keep firm in our resolve and attack them just as we have planned.”

  “My instinct tells me the same,” said Mercutio, “so that is what we will do. But we must–”

  Mercutio did not finish that sentence, because he had found something in the burned wreckage. It was a human skeleton. It was sitting on the floor in an attitude of prayer. Two curved steel knives sat on the ground next to it. Around its neck was a chain, and from it hung a silver amulet. Mercutio reached for the amulet but Zen stopped him.

  “Careful, my lord. The metal may be hot.”

  Mercutio wrapped his hand in his borrowed cloak and lifted the amulet and chain from around the skeleton’s neck. The amulet was shaped like a letter or rune but he did not recognize it. Showing it to Zen, he said, “Do you know what this is?”

  Zen nodded. “It is a letter in a very old alphabet. From the time of the Servants. I believe it is much like our letter S.”

  “What would that stand for?”

  “I do not know. But do you see that this was a monk?”

  “The knives?”

  “Yes. I have never known any others to use them.”

  “Why is he here? Did he fall, or was he caught?”

  “The way I read these signs, he burned himself on purpose. He is in a pose of prayer.”

  “He could have gotten away, but chose to die instead.”

  “Yes.”

  Mercutio shook his head. “Every day that passes, I am more certain that we must attack the monks and destroy them, but every day I feel more uncertain about what will come after.”