It’s all going too well, really. Cel’s bombs and potions are even more effective than usual; Azu, resplendent in her new armor, deals out a serious amount of hurt to anything coming remotely near her; Zolf, his glaive blazing hotly, stands far enough back that it’s not easy for him to be hit in melee combat but near enough that ranged attacks aren’t very effective, which is good because he’s still carrying Babbage. Skraak weaves in and out of the horde, taking out the ones Azu or Zolf miss with a well-aimed stab to the kidneys, while Hamid flies overhead and blasts anyone looking too healthy with fire, acid, or electricity as he sees fit and Wilde keeps up a constant spell to boost them.
Azu’s shiny pink armor and massive size would make her an enticing target to most enemies, but these enemies have figured out it’s really hard for them to damage her, so except for a few that seem to just be there to keep her from sneaking up on the rest, they’re mostly leaving her alone just yet. Same with Zolf; it’s not that he’s all that hard to damage, although he is a bit, but that he’s just so steadfast and strong that he’ll probably outlast them all. Cel is both agile and protected and seems to avoid being hit too often, and Skraak is so good at hiding in between his own attacks that Hamid keeps losing sight of him. Even Wilde, despite looking like a peacock that’s lost a fight with an artist’s studio, has woven a wall of protection around himself that seems to be holding up well.
Which leaves Hamid. In theory, he’s able to get out of the way relatively easily, as he’s able to swoop in, do some ranged damage, and back out of range of being attacked himself; he’s fairly fast while flying. He’s also small, which makes him harder to hit. In practice, he’s not only the only one these guys…things…Hamid isn’t sure what degree of sentience or independent thought they have left, or ever did…can really safely attempt to hit with ranged weapons, but also faintly glinting in the late-afternoon sunlight. He can’t go but so far away or he won’t be able to get back into combat in time to actually be effective. He’s also uncomfortably aware, in a way he wouldn’t have minded what to him was only a few short months ago, that he looks very dragon-ish, or in other words enough like a Meritocrat that it’s going to raise the ire of anyone involved in a counter-organization like the Cult of Hades. That, combined with the fact that his more powerful spells can do quite a bit of damage when they make contact, means that Hamid appears to be their favorite target.
And, unfortunately, as someone (he’s honestly forgotten who now) once put it, Hamid is also extremely squishy.
But they’re winning. The end is in sight. Hamid has no idea how long they’ve been fighting—it feels simultaneously like forever and only moments—but the tide is turning in their favor. Which is a good thing. He’s starting to run low on spells, and if they have to fight anything else today he might be in a bit of trouble. He’s also been hit a couple more times than he wants to admit; he’ll probably need Zolf or Azu to help him out a bit when this is all over, especially if they don’t have a lot of time to rest. Which they probably won’t. It’s as if there’s some all-powerful force in the universe that derives some sort of sick satisfaction from shunting them through encounter after encounter without time to heal, plan, or breathe.
Awareness ripples over him as he swoops in, intending to fire his last scorching ray at a particularly objectionable-looking enemy, and he looks to the other side of the rather large rooftop they’re fighting on. None of the others are looking at one another, all focusing on the enemies they’re immediately engaged with, except for Wilde who stands singing and casting with his eyes closed. The point is that only Hamid is looking in the right place to see the cowled figure coming up behind Zolf, the red light of the setting sun glinting off a blade in its hand.
And even if it’s not after the brain in a backpack, Hamid has fought alongside enough stealthy fighters to know how much more damage can be done on an enemy that doesn’t see you coming.
No.
Hamid doesn’t yell out a warning. There’s no time. Besides, he can’t risk the figure knowing it’s been spotted and acting too fast. Instead, he banks to one side, flies as fast as he can around the edge of the battle to avoid drawing fire by coming too close, and blasts the scorching ray at the enemy threatening Zolf. At the last second before he casts it, he activates the present poor Augusta procured for him, ensuring that the spell will do as much damage as it possibly can.
It works, not that he expected otherwise. He hits the figure square-on, and it crumples into a smoking heap on the rooftop, far too close to striking distance of Zolf for Hamid’s comfort. He’s going to be limited to smaller, less effective spells for the rest of this fight, but he would have been anyway, and at least Zolf isn’t the one lying on the roof.
As the thought passes through his mind, Hamid also notices the figure aiming a crossbow him and realizes, in the split-second before it fires, that he’s not going to be able to get out of the way in time.
The bolt thudding into his shoulder hurts rather a lot. The three subsequent bolts from crossbows he didn’t notice that tear through his wings like tissue hurt more. The pain stuns him, just for a moment, but more importantly, his damaged wings aren’t able to support his weight any longer and fold up behind him. For a split-second, he hangs in the air unsupported, just long enough for Zolf to turn in his direction and make eye contact.
Then he’s dropping out of the sky, and the last thing he hears is someone yelling his name before the rush of wind blots out all other sound.
Pain makes it hard to concentrate. Not that it matters. Hamid doesn’t have it in him to cast anything more powerful than prestidigitation right about now, and what good will it be to clean up the blood if there’s just going to be more in a few…however long it takes for him to hit the ground? It’s not like anyone is going to care how he looks in the seconds before he looks like a smear. His wings won’t magically heal themselves if he vanishes them and pops them back out—at least he’s pretty sure they won’t—and even if they do, he won’t be able to do more than slow himself down a little. Not enough to save him from any damage. And he’s hurt enough already that, at this distance, the fall will kill him instantly.
So be it.
Hamid relaxes, going as limp as he can with the constant pressure of gravity, and turns his gaze upwards. It’s a gorgeous sunset, probably leading into a glorious evening. The clouds are the color of Azu’s armor and the shape of Cel’s hair, and the sky around them is as red as Skraak’s skin. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, he thinks, remembering the low, reassuring rumble of a voice over the sussuration of the waves.
That’s where he’s going, he’s suddenly sure in a vague and dreamy way. If the afterlife, if paradise, if whatever waits beyond this life is a celestial version of a place he was happy in it, then that’s going to be where he ends up. His eternity isn’t going to be an endless feast, or a society event, or a night at the opera. Nothing like the dream he had. It’s going to be a beach strewn with debris and a clear night sky and the knowledge that the people he cares about most in the world came through the storm safe and sound.
A hand suddenly shoots out in front of him, brushing his arm. Surprised out of his thoughts, acting on pure instinct, Hamid grabs for the hand and somehow manages to catch hold. A second hand latches onto his wrist tightly, squeezing hard enough to hurt, and arrests his fall. Hamid can’t help the faint gasp of pain as his shoulder is wrenched violently. He’s a dead weight dangling beneath his savior or captor or both, but he manages to hold on.
“Not letting go, mate,” a too-familiar voice says from just above him. “Not this time. Not again. Just hang on.”
Hamid sucks in a sharp breath of surprise and looks up, wide-eyed. A face looms over him—a face you wouldn’t look at twice if you didn’t know what, who lay behind it. A face he never expected to see again.
“Sasha?!”
It isn’t until the moment Hamid falls that Zolf realizes how much he truly cares.
He feels the rush of heat at his back and then the whiff as an arrow or something speeds past him, and he turns quickly, expecting to see an enemy. What he sees is the remains of an enemy fried to a crisp—Hamid and his proclivity for fire again—and then he sees Hamid, a couple feet away and a bit up, his wings looking like inexpertly-made lace. Zolf only has time to meet his eyes and see the look in them before gravity takes over and Hamid falls almost gracefully backwards.
No.
Zolf whirls around, rage and grief swirling up inside him, and spots the nearest enemy with a crossbow. He takes a step forward, not even caring about drawing fire from anything that might be in range, and swings, bisecting the figure in a move almost worthy of Azu or (gods forbid) Bertie. Not waiting for it to hit the ground, he turns towards the next one.
The fight’s over quickly after that. There aren’t that many left, comparatively, and between Azu’s howling greataxe and Cel’s bombs, Zolf doesn’t actually manage to make more than one or two attacks before there’s nothing left to attack. Azu lowers her axe to the ground and straightens up, the light of battle leaving her eyes. “We did it!”
Wilde stops singing and opens his eyes, a small, faintly smug smile on his lips. It dies down slightly when he sees Zolf, leading him to wonder, in a very distant fashion, what his face must look like. “Are you all right, Zolf?” he asks quietly.
Sudden movement almost makes Zolf go back on the attack, but fortunately, he recognizes the shape zipping past him as Cel, their bestial face creased with anxiety and wings beating frantically as they fly over the remains of the fight and go into a sharp dive. Skraak comes up beside him, frowning. “Uh, what are they doing?”
“Is there something more to fight?” Azu sounds either worried or hopeful, Zolf honestly isn’t sure which.
“Cel,” Zolf calls, and even he can hear the absence of emotion in his voice. There’s a numbness spreading through him he hasn’t felt in ages—not since Wilde told him the party hadn’t come back from Rome.
Wilde obviously remembers that, too, because his voice sounds genuinely concerned. “Zolf,” he begins, and then suddenly he sucks in a sharp breath and his voice tightens. “Where’s Hamid?”
Azu gasps. Before she can say anything, though, Cel comes back up to where they are, looking seriously distressed. Through their mouthful of fangs, they mumble, “I couldn’t, I couldn’t see where he landed from up here, I didn’t get close enough, but you called and I thought—d-do you, you know where I should look? Is there—”
“We need to go,” Zolf says flatly, cutting them off. “We have a job to do and not a lot of time to do it.” He turns away from the edge and starts in the direction they need to head, trusting or assuming the others will follow him, insofar as he’s thinking about them at all. And if they don’t, sod it. He’ll keep moving forward because that’s the only way he can move, especially now.
As he said, they have a job to do.
There’s…stuff. Challenges to overcome, a couple small things to fight. Zolf deals with them all mechanically. He lives through them because he has to. He can’t die yet, he has a job to do. He makes sure the others survive because they have to. He’s not losing anyone else. Not now. Not ever.
“Zolf,” Wilde says quietly, not touching his shoulder but hovering near enough that if Zolf doesn’t spook or bristle or bite his hand off, he can. “I know we need to get this done as quickly as possible, but it’s dark and not all of us are equipped for that. Besides, Cel’s almost out of bombs, and we’re all getting low on spells. We need a rest.”
“Fine,” Zolf says in the same flat, emotionless tone as before. “Where?”
Wilde hesitates. “I might know a place.”
It turns out to be Hamid’s old flat, because of course it is. Not that Wilde says that. It’s just that Zolf steps in and instantly recognizes it. Even with a layer of dust on everything, shouting to the world that nobody has been here in close to two years (of course, a detached part of his brain says, Hamid’s parents bought it for him outright, he wasn’t paying a monthly rent on it, of course nobody would have thought to sell it), it’s still neat as a pin, faintly expensive, and familiar in a way that would probably be painful if Zolf wasn’t completely numb.
“Will whoever owns this place mind us…breaking in?” Azu asks cautiously.
“No,” Zolf says, but doesn’t elaborate. “Bedroom’s over there. Get some sleep. We have to finish this tomorrow. I’ll take first watch.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary—” Wilde begins.
“Wilde.” It’s all Zolf says, but it’s enough.
Something flashes through Wilde’s eyes, too fast for Zolf to identify on a good day, but he simply nods. “Of course.”
Zolf watches them go into the bedroom, then stumps over to the window and looks out it. Wilde’s right, a watch isn’t really necessary, but he’s going through the motions at the moment. And anyway, it’s a good excuse to be alone.
He tunes out the sound of raised voices coming from behind the closed bedroom door and tilts his head back to look at the sky above London.
It’s surprisingly clear, in a way London usually isn’t, or wasn’t before they—before he destroyed the world. Not as clear as on a ship or out in the country, he can’t see the sweep of the Milky Way, but he can see the stars readily enough. Out of long habit, he picks out those stars that can tell him their position, even though it’s bloody London and he knows where they are, but then his eyes fall on the North Star and he has to remind himself that he is completely numb and not feeling anything.
If you can find that star, you can find your way anywhere. Keep an eye on it and it’ll always bring you home. His own voice comes back to him, the crashing of the waves echoing faintly in his ears. He crosses his arms over his chest and rubs at his shoulders, feeling the phantom weight of a pair of dark heads resting against them as he mixes lessons with stories.
They’d trusted him. They’d followed him into a rickety boat instead of taking the train because they trusted him to keep them safe. Zolf remembers standing on the beach with them, all of them soaked to the bone with rain and seawater, and hating himself for dragging them into it. No amount of reminding himself it had been their choice has ever managed to ease that tiny, tiny kernel of guilt at the center of his stomach. He was the responsible one, in every sense of the word, and they’d trusted him, and he’d almost let them down. But they’d never blamed him.
He grips the windowsill, fingers leaving gouges in the dust, as he tries to fight back the memories of Hamid’s shining eyes and Sasha’s bright grin as they stood on the beach south of Calais. He thought the lowest moment of his life was when he met up with Wilde again and learned the party, his party, his kids, went missing in Rome. He was wrong. This is worse. This is so much worse.
He can’t face the idea that he’ll never see either of them again. So he just pushes it out of his mind as best he can.
He doesn’t do a very good job of it.
Sasha is an old, old woman, far older than she ever thought she’d get. Between her childhood not leading to the sort of profession people survived in for long without turning into something like Barret, the botched resurrection, and what Rome looked like when she first arrived, she always figured she’d be dead before she turned thirty. Yet here she is, really and truly old. Old enough to have lost her flexibility, old enough to have her fingers ache when it gets cold or damp—all but the one Eren Fairhands grew back for her, which hasn’t ever troubled her for a minute—old enough to creak too much to sneak around. Old enough to have seen her children’s children grow.
Amidus and Sagax are there with her. They’re old, too, or at least older. Sagax, whose temper has mellowed as he’s aged, holds one of her hands tenderly in both of his as he sits beside her bed; Amidus, his once-dark hair now a distinguished silver, grips her other as tightly as he dares. A single candle burns on the table.
This is a death-watch.
She extracts a promise from them to look after their family, not that she needs to; these two especially she’s always been able to count on. She makes it a rule not to have favorites, but there’s no denying she’s always been closest to these two, which might have to do with their namesakes. In return, she assures them that she loves them both, that she’ll never forget them, and that they’ll all meet again someday. She’s never had any doubt about that.
It won’t be a paradise for her without the ones she loves.
Her window faces north; she’s always been insistent about that, and as they’ve grown older, she’s told some of the kids why. Now she turns her head and scans the sky with eyes that once spotted a single out-of-place shadow in a room full of them and now blur when they try to look across the room. Still, she’s able to locate the single bright, shining light that’s been a fixed point for her from the first night she spent under it.
“Keep an eye on it,” she whispers, in English and not Latin, “and it’ll always bring you home.”
And then, with a sigh, she closes her eyes and sinks back into the bed.
She opens them again and finds she’s standing on a grassy ledge, on the edge of a forest. For the first time in ages, she feels young and spry again. All the aches and pains are gone, and she’s full of energy. She looks down at herself and finds she’s wearing, not the wool togas she’s worn for the last few decades, but her old, familiar black leather, and when she pats herself down, she can feel daggers in all the usual places.
Turning her gaze to the landscape in front of her, she sees what looks like a very small city masquerading as a house. It’s the strangest amalgamation of her Roman villa, the maze of buildings on the edges of Other London where she and Brock used to play, and that one part of Cairo where she tried to hide from her emotions. The courtyard in the center has a pool you can swim in and a few places to hide. On the outer edge of the building are a few targets like the ones she set up to teach her kids how to throw knives. There are even a couple of gargoyles and sphinxes on the rooftops, which are spaced out just enough to make leaping from one to the other a bit of a challenge but not so far that she’d be likely to fall. It’s all the things she loves taken from all the places she cares about. A paradise.
But Sasha stays where she is, feet rooted to the ground, and stares at it. It might be paradise, but it’s missing something important. Even from where she is, she can see it. There are no signs of life down there other than the rooftop guardians. No faces in the windows, no movement in the courtyards, no smell of cooking food or sounds of voices and laughter. If she goes down there, it’s going to be just her.
She tries to tell herself it’ll be all right. She’s the first to go, that’s all. Grizzop’s paradise is an eternal hunt, the Artemis lot told her that and she’s always believed them, but maybe this wood at her back is where he’s hunting and he can stop by every once in a while to visit. And the others—obviously her kids are still alive, she fought hard to keep them all alive, and the others haven’t even been born yet. Time will pass, she probably won’t even feel it passing, and one by one they’ll come to her and have their rooms here and she’ll have her family around her again and it really will be paradise.
Something makes her look up at the sky. It’s…black. Completely black. Not like a cloudy night, but empty, like someone…erased the sky. Which isn’t right. Sasha may have grown up underground, but she’s always loved the idea of stars, and it’s not going to be a paradise without them, especially now. She twists and turns, almost losing her balance, but there’s nothing…until, suddenly, there’s something. A single star, shining brightly overhead. The North Star.
Sasha stares at it for a moment. Again, she hears Zolf’s low, gentle rumble in her head: If you can find that star, you can find your way anywhere. Keep an eye on it and it’ll always bring you home.
She takes a step forward, then another, and starts following it.
She doesn’t want to risk going into the forest, she might lose sight of it, so she skirts the edge of the forest and the ridge until she comes to a place where the ridge curves to one side. There’s a space between two trees, though, and another valley on the other side, or at least that’s what it looks like. She steps through the gap and comes out the other side, and she’s suddenly in a clearing in the middle of a forest. She can sort of see signs that someone or something has been through here, but she’s not really all that good with forests. It’s almost enough to put her on edge.
But there’s enough of a gap in the trees that she can still see the North Star shining overhead, this time with a few more stars, so she keeps following it. The forest is thick, but there’s always just enough space for her not to lose sight of the star. There’s a bend in the path, but she doesn’t dare take it and risk not being able to get back on track, so she ducks under a low-hanging branch to push through the undergrowth…
…and suddenly she’s not in a forest at all, but in a city. It doesn’t take her long at all to recognize Paris, bustling and busy and cheerful as it was when they first arrived, not dark and oppressive and on edge like it was when they left. Eiffel’s Folly still stands, looming unfinished over the city, but not really looming. More standing sentinel. Just watching.
It’s harder to see the stars with the lights from below, but not impossible, and Sasha picks out the North Star easily enough. She threads her way through the crowds and buildings, keeping an eye out for the others.
It takes her two more abrupt transitions to figure out what’s going on. She’s following the North Star from paradise to paradise, afterlife to afterlife, and she’s pretty sure these are places she should expect to find the others. She starts slowing down a little, looking around and poking into buildings, but she doesn’t feel anyone. It’s the same feeling she got looking at the villa—the feeling that it’s just her. Even when she’s surrounded by people, or seems to be, she feels alone because the people she loves aren’t there.
She keeps looking. Cities and towns, countrysides and villages, forests and fields. Once she winds up in what she’s pretty sure is the British Museum, and she shouldn’t be able to see the North Star from in there, but either the ceiling is made of glass or the star is inside or they painted it on the ceiling, because she can still follow it. She passes through a doorway that should lead to the MacGuffingham Wing—where she really doesn’t want to go—and steps out onto a sandy shore strewn with debris.
This place she knows, and a feeling of security and rightness settles over her shoulders. This is the beach in France, the one south of Calais and across the channel from Dover—ish—the one where they managed to come to land after crossing in that rickety boat from the Poseidon lot. The one where she first learned about the stars and the sky.
Sasha is sure she’s found it. This has to be where she’ll find Zolf and Hamid, at least, because this is where they’re supposed to be. She knows in her bones that they came through the storm safely and that they’re whole and well and waiting for her…but they aren’t anywhere to be seen. She searches, looking in places no one could logically hide, even someone as small as Hamid, but she’s desperate. She wants, needs, her family, and those two especially she’s spent sixty-two years aching for. She won’t give up.
At last, though, she has to concede they aren’t here. Or at least, they aren’t here yet. She sits down on the beach and cries in a way she hasn’t for years.
One hand slips off her knee and comes in contact with something hard, half-buried in the sand. At first she thinks it’s just more driftwood, but it’s smooth and cool to the touch. Sasha pulls it halfheartedly out of the sand, dully curious, and it comes away all at once, bigger than she expected.
It’s a trident. Zolf’s trident. She’s sure it’s his. She spent a whole week guarding it for him, and she knows weapons. This is his.
She stares at it for a moment. Then, slowly, it goes light and insubstantial and dissolves away in her hands, leaving nothing but fine grains of sand that blow away on the wind.
Sasha wipes her eyes and looks up at the sky again. There are so many stars, all the stars she remembers from that night, but there—there’s the North Star again, shining bravely across the water.
There’s no boat. Sasha’s not a great swimmer. She doesn’t care.
She plunges into the water at a run, eyes fixed on the star, until she’s out too deep and her head goes under.
She surfaces with a gasp and discovers that she’s indoors. She’s bone-dry, too, despite the fact that she can still feel the burn in her lungs from having to hold her breath, and kneeling on a flagstone floor. Slowly, her breathing evens out and her heart rate slows, and she gets to her feet and looks around her.
It’s some kind of lab. Not like the one where Mr. Ceiling held her and Zolf and Hamid, but more like the place where she learned to make bombs. There are things that click and whir and things that bubble and churn and things that are brightly-colored and papers everywhere, and it’s a bit of a mess but a happy one. It’s not the kind of place Sasha would expect anyone she knows to be, though, and she pauses, a bit bewildered.
She hears voices. Just two, which is unusual, and it takes her a second to really be able to make out what they’re saying, but after a bit she’s able to understand. Someone with a kind but uncertain voice and an accent Sasha’s never heard before is attempting to convince someone with a squeaky rasp of a voice that the problem, whatever it is, will still be there later. Sasha presses herself into the shadows and creeps forward, then peers around the corner.
This is the main lab, she guesses. There’s a board with writing on it all over one wall, numbers and letters and all sorts of things Sasha doesn’t understand, and projects spread out over so many tables. And standing in the center is a person with sticking-up hair and goggles and leather and a red-skinned person that looks a bit like Hamid after Kafka hit him with that spell, but only a bit.
Sasha listens, and before long, she realizes what’s going on. This is the red person’s paradise, but they have a chance to go back, to go somewhere else. The other person knows the way, but it has to be the red person’s choice. After a moment, the red person nods and takes the other one’s hand, and they walk out. Just before they do, something glints off the back of the other person’s head. A star.
There’s no North Star in the sky, or painted on the ceiling. That must be it. That must be the way forward, down that corridor.
Sasha counts silently to ten, and then follows on tiptoe.
“And that’s it, really,” Sasha concludes, legs crossed beneath her. “I came out into a big room full of sand that was open to the sky, and at first I thought it was another paradise, but the sky was blue instead of full of stars. And then these big people with spears found me and rounded me up and took me to a chamber and started asking questions, and it turned out I wasn’t in the afterlife anymore at all. I’d come back to life-life.”
Hamid studies Sasha. He feels a lot better after—apparently—a good night’s sleep, and he can think more clearly. She looks good, almost exactly like he remembers her, save that the burn scar creeping up her face that she’s carried since the very first job they worked together is gone. What startles him is that her hair, unlike all the others who came back, is still dark. Completely dark. Even the white patch she got in Damascus is gone.
“They have a—a ritual,” he tells her. “They…the airship crashed. Four people died, and Sohra and their people offered to help us bring them back.”
Sasha gives him a lopsided grin, revealing that she has all her teeth again. “I know. They told me all about it. They were asking me where I came from and how I got there, so I told them about everything, and they stopped me and asked me to wait, and I thought about escaping but I didn’t know where I’d go if I did, so I made myself wait. And then they came back with Earhart and Barnes and that little sneak Carter and asked them about me, and they vouched for me.” She pauses thoughtfully. “Carter seemed a lot more…”
“I know,” Hamid says. “He is. He’s been a valuable companion and a great help.” He pauses. “How did you get to London?”
Sasha frowns. “The people—the council, I guess? They asked if I’d do them a favor. I reckoned since they brought me back to life, it was the least I could do, so I said yeah. Then they told me one of their members and ‘my companions’ had gone off to investigate something and they’d lost touch, so they wanted me to go after and see if I could find you lot. I wound up at this big forest thing—”
“The Garden of Yerlik.”
“Yeah, that. I guess you know what it’s like, huh?” Hamid nods silently, and Sasha continues. “I found those three big plants and signs that there’d been fighting, and there were all these trees about that were trying to kill me and all these statues and such, and one of the plants started chiming. There was a hole in it, so I just…jumped in. And here I am.”
Hamid can’t help but smile. “Here you are. How long have you been here?”
Sasha shrugs. “Couple days? It’s a madhouse out there. Well, you know that…how long have you been here?”
“About the same. Three, four days? We left briefly. We were at Svalbard.”
Sasha brightens. “That seed thing we found in the notebook? It was Tesla’s notebook, right? You finally found out about that?”
“Um—yes.” Hamid stares into his cup for a minute. “How…how much did they tell you about what’s been going on?”
“Not a lot. Just that things went a bit weird. Barnes said if—when I found you, you’d be able to explain better.”
Hamid does his best. He tries to keep it to the bare minimum, but he’s sure he goes into a few too many details. Sasha’s blue-grey eyes are intense and interested, though, and he does want her to understand about the blue veins and the plants and the kill switch and Tesla.
“So they did build it for him,” Sasha says slowly when he comes to a halt. “Good. Means Grizzop still has a part in saving the world.”
“Sasha, of course he does. And so do you. So would you, even if you hadn’t come back,” Hamid corrects himself. “We wouldn’t have made it—I wouldn’t have made it this far without you.” He manages a smile. “And I’ve missed you, so much. It—it hurt. Losing you. Realizing we came back and you didn’t. I—I’m sorry.”
Sasha gives him another smile in return, tinged with a bit of sadness but still genuine. “’S not your fault, mate. Just bad luck. But I survived, and I’m here now. We’re here now.” She reaches into a pack at her side and hands him a potion. “Here. You still look a bit…” She wobbles her hand.
“Yeah,” Hamid agrees. He takes the potion and examines it—a potion of cure moderate wounds—then sniffs it. It smells okay. “Where did you get this?” he asks before draining it. Instantly, he feels a hundred percent better.
“Nicked a few from a shop down there. Looked abandoned, but the potions were still good.” Sasha indicates her pack. “Thought I might need some—well, thought we might need some. I never doubted I’d catch up with you. Feeling better?”
“Yes, thank you.” Hamid flexes his fingers experimentally. “How are you feeling?”
Sasha smirks. “Ready for anything. C’mon, let’s go save the world.” She pauses. “You know where the others are? Or, like, how to find them?”
“I know what the plan is. Assuming they haven’t had a chance to put it in place yet…and we’d know, I think, because…” Hamid gestures at the outside with a flick of the wrist.
“Got it. So where are we heading? And how long is it going to take us to walk there?” Sasha stands and stretches. “There’s a lot of stairs between us and the ground. Unless you want to try going the rooftop route. Might be safer, actually, but…I always forget how far apart some of these buildings up here are, and you don’t jump too good, if I remember right.”
Hamid stands, too, then pauses. “Sasha. Do you trust me?”
“’Course,” Sasha replies instantly. “How’s that even a question?”
Hamid can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. “You’re going to love this,” he promises.
He casts fly on Sasha.
She gives a whoop of delight as she lifts off the ground. Hamid grins wider and lets his wings unfurl, then goes over to the space that was once a wall and a window and takes Sasha’s hand. “Let’s go. Our friends need us.”
Zolf manages—barely—to avoid another strike and grits his teeth. This isn’t going well. The creature hasn’t landed many hits, but it’s huge, and the blows it has landed have been pretty powerful. And they haven’t managed to hit it much at all. He and Azu only get so many spells, and it’s so early in the day; if they have to use them all now, they might not have any left later when they need them.
He can’t risk that.
But Cel took the mobile setup, he remembers. Cel has the backpack and Azu can heal and Wilde can protect and Skraak is agile. They’ll be fine if they get out of here, and he…
“Azu!” he yells. “Get them out of here! I’ll cover you!”
“What?” Azu yells back.
“That’s an order, Azu!” Zolf snaps, shooting her a glance. She looks somewhere between annoyed and upset, but as long as she gets the other three away safely, he doesn’t care.
He meets Wilde’s eyes, just for a second, and the stricken look in them hurts, but they know each other well enough that they have an entire conversation just in that second’s glance. Wilde nods slightly. It’s enough. Zolf knows that Wilde knows how he feels, and why he’s doing this, and why it’s so important to him. And he knows how Wilde feels, and what Wilde’s going to do next, and that if Zolf doesn’t at least make an effort to survive Wilde will have him brought back to life solely to kick his ass.
Turning back to the creature, trusting that the others will listen, he takes a swing at the bit of it that’s close enough for him to reach with his glaive. And misses. Gods, he’s fighting like rubbish. At least he’s annoying this thing enough that it won’t attack anyone else.
On the other hand, he thinks as the creature draws back and readies itself for an attack, if this thing has ranged attacks—which it seems to—it’s going to be a miracle if the others get away before it kills him and goes after them, too.
Before the thing can actually attack, however, a line of fire shoots from somewhere over Zolf’s head, striking the creature dead-on. It screams in pain or anger, Zolf’s not sure which. He looks up quickly, and his breath catches in his throat.
Swooping overhead and banking to one side is Hamid.
For just a moment, the creature wobbles on its feet. It drops to its knees, then crumples to the ground, causing a minor tremor as it lands. It’s dead. Really most sincerely dead.
Hamid lands a few feet away, stumbling a bit but managing to keep his balance. His hair is windswept, but other than that, he looks completely unharmed. “Is everyone all right?” he asks, his voice slightly breathless.
Zolf runs towards Hamid, dropping his glaive somewhere along the way, and hugs him, probably hard enough to hurt. He doesn’t care. Relief floods his entire body, because Hamid is alive. Hamid hugs him back just as hard, which isn’t that much of a surprise; Hamid’s hugs are usually like that. It’s something Zolf’s never fully appreciated until now.
Something slams into them, nearly knocking Zolf off his feet and squeezing him tightly against Hamid. Before he can fully comprehend that he’s being grappled, let alone do anything about it, a voice he still hears in his dreams chokes out, “You came back. I knew you’d come back.”
Zolf gasps in absolute shock, but he doesn’t question it, doesn’t doubt the evidence of his senses, doesn’t stop to think it might be a trick or a trap. He feels the light of his god—or whatever—filling him, and he has the sense to trust in that. It’s her. It’s really Sasha.
He frees one arm and throws it around Sasha, pulling her closer, and he senses rather than feels Hamid do the same. Zolf clings to them both and feels a sense of rightness settle over him. A feeling that all the pieces are finally snapping into place.
“I thought I lost you both,” he says, his voice breaking.
Hamid makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a whimper and tightens his embrace. For a long moment—probably longer than they can really afford, but Zolf doesn’t give a crap—the three of them hold onto one another. The other two are warm and solid and real, and Zolf is actually struggling to hold back his tears.
He can’t remember the last time he actually cried.
At last, they draw back from one another, and Zolf gets his first proper look at Sasha. She looks…good. Really good. The burn scar is gone from her face, which he expects if she’s been resurrected, but it strikes him as a bit odd that her hair is every bit as dark as it was the last time he saw her. She looks healthy and happy, and she’s got a dagger in one hand with blood still smeared on the blade. A bit self-consciously, Zolf feels his back to make sure he’s not bleeding.
Sasha scoffs at him. “Give me some credit, boss. I know how to hug someone without sticking ‘em. This is all monster blood.” She fishes into her pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, then looks off to one side and gives an uncertain smile. Flipping the dagger around her hand, she says, “Knife to see you again, Oscar.”
Zolf glances over at Wilde, who stands near Azu and Cel, looking a bit shocked. He does, however, genuinely smile at Sasha’s comment, and Zolf is struck once again by how good it is to see him able to use his full face to smile. “Still as sharp as ever, Sasha.”
Sasha laughs—actually laughs—and slides her dagger into a sheath as she crosses over to hug Wilde, much to his surprise. As she turns to Azu and holds out her arms uncertainly, Zolf slides a little closer to Hamid. “Really, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Hamid assures him. “She caught me before I hit the ground, and she had a couple potions that helped. Are you okay?”
Zolf almost says I am now, but realizes that isn’t really what Hamid is asking. “I’m fine. Thing couldn’t hit worth a tinker’s damn.” At Hamid’s pointedly raised eyebrow, he adds, “Did a bit of a wallop when it did hit, but I’m okay. Look.” He casts a cure light wounds on himself and feels a lot better. “Be a different story if you hadn’t shown up when you did. Thanks for that.”
“Of course.” Hamid looks up and braces himself. Zolf’s about to ask why when Azu is suddenly immediately in front of him and sweeps Hamid off his feet and into a hug. Hamid lets out a squeak that might be surprise and might be delight and might just be the air being forced out of his lungs.
“Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” she orders.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Hamid wheezes.
Zolf rolls his eyes at the others, but Wilde is the only one who notices; Cel and Sasha have evidently been introduced to one another and are comparing bombs, which seems like a dangerous precedent to set, but he allows it for a minute anyway before finally clearing his throat. “Sasha, did Hamid tell you what we’re up to?”
“Yeah, he explained it good and proper,” Sasha calls back.
Azu lets Hamid slip to the ground. Hamid clicks his fingers and casts prestidigitation, tidying up his appearance with a familiar gesture that makes Zolf smile, if only to himself. Once he’s satisfied that Hamid is ready, he picks up the glaive he dropped and shoulders it. “Right, then. Let’s get to it.”
“Lead the way, boss,” Sasha says with a cheeky grin and a sweeping bow. Her eyes are sincere as she adds, “I’ll follow you anywhere.”
Zolf stands up a little straighter without even realizing it, swings his new cloak a bit more securely around his shoulders, and strides out in front of the group. They’ve got this.
Sasha never dreamed this moment would come. Not after the first few months in Rome, anyway. First she was in shock, then she started relaxing and just kept hoping Hamid would figure out a way to get her home quick-like. By the end of the first year, though, she gave up and just knew she’d spend the rest of her life stuck in the past. She never doubted she’d see her family again, but she thought it would be after her death.
Well, technically, it is, but this is…this is different. Unless this is all an elaborate sort of afterlife, but the pain in her shoulder tells her it’s not. (She waved off Zolf’s offer of a healing spell of some kind; it’s such a minor thing, really not worth wasting a spell on, and she’s used to it. Magic in Rome wasn’t what it is now. She’s saving the potions she’s still got in her bag for if one of the others gets hurt.) She’s really alive, really back to life, really back in the time she was born in. She’s really standing in London. She’s really standing shoulder-to-shoulder—well, side-to-side at least—with Hamid and Zolf.
And they’ve almost done it. She’s still a bit shaky on the actual plan and what that backpack thing is really for, but they’re so close.
“Okay, I’m activating the relay now,” Cel calls. “The Babbage array will take control, and then he should be able to activate the kill switch, and then immediately pull that control back, and when he does that it will—”
“Just do it, Cel,” Zolf interrupts, sounding impatient, and Sasha exchanges a grin with Hamid because it’s just like she remembers. A few feet away, Wilde watches, too, his face mostly implacable but his eyes shining with something a lot like hope. Azu stands guard over Cel, axe at the ready, just in case something tries to stop them.
“Okay! Three, two, one—” Cel does something Sasha can’t quite make out.
There’s a weird rush of energy or something that fills the air. Sasha tightens her grip on her fire dagger with one hand and starts to reach out for Zolf with the other, but stops herself. It’s fine. It’s just the switch working. She doesn’t need to—it’s fine.
Something crackles, and the hair on her arms stands on end. Just when Sasha is about to scream, just when she thinks it’s all gone wrong, everything sort of…sucks back, and the energy and crackling dies abruptly, and the world goes still.
Zolf’s grip on his weapon loosens, just a bit. “Is that it?”
Cel speaks into the microphone they’re holding, then grins and lifts off the gigantic clunky things that let them listen to whatever’s in the backpack. “It worked perfectly! The kill switch did what it was supposed to and, and the blue veins should all be dead and everything is fine and it worked!”
Azu’s smile lights up the whole tower. “You did it! We did it!”
Wilde sighs in obvious relief and turns towards Zolf with a broad smile. Zolf relaxes further and actually smiles back. There’s something going on there and Sasha would trade every bit of money she ever earned with this crew to know what it is.
She feels something…familiar, eerily and painfully and uncomfortably familiar, just at the edge of her senses. Zolf doesn’t seem to notice, but when Sasha looks in Hamid’s direction, she sees that his smile has frozen partway and he, too, seems to be sensing something unpleasant. He glances up, and Sasha does, too.
Just in time to see a purple-black tear appear in the sky above them.
Sasha curses in Latin and drops to a defensive crouch automatically, flicking the adamantine dagger into her unoccupied hand so she’s fully armed, even though she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to fight that, but maybe anything that comes out of it. Hamid’s hands turn into claws as he slides his feet to brace himself for a fight and cries in a shrill, frightened voice, “Azu! Cel! Look out!”
Azu looks in completely the wrong direction, but Cel looks up and yelps. Zolf and Wilde both look up, too, and Wilde sucks in a sharp breath. Zolf, like Sasha and Hamid, shifts almost instantly into combat position. “Poseidon’s breath! What is that?”
“It’s—th-there was one like that in Rome,” Hamid stammers, the words tumbling over one another in his panic. “It’s where our—s-stay away from it!”
“Right,” Zolf half-sighs, half-mutters. He concentrates for a second, and then his eyes widen. Raising his voice, he yells, “Run! Get back!”
Azu finally notices the rip, swears extremely loudly, and backs away, axe at the ready. Cel scrambles backwards, dragging the backpack with them as they go, and Wilde takes a long step back, eyes fixed on the rift.
“Zolf?” Hamid’s voice sounds small and frightened, and it makes Sasha scared in a way she hasn’t been in a long time. “Where does it go?”
“I don’t know,” Zolf says quietly. “Nowhere good. Get back, both of you.”
“What about you?” Sasha asks, fighting to keep her voice calm and steady.
“I’ll be right behind you, but right now—” Zolf begins.
Something shifts. Zolf’s beard lifts away from his chest, and he grits his teeth, but there’s a slightly panicked look in his eyes, just for a second. “Go!”
“Zolf!” Hamid lunges, not back but forward, and grabs for Zolf’s arm, barely remembering to put his claws away before he hurts him. Sasha’s about to yell when she realizes that Zolf is lifting off the ground, that something in the rift or maybe the rift itself is trying to pull him in, and that he’s not able to fight it back.
Hamid’s not heavy enough to make a difference. Sasha dives forward, too, letting both daggers fall from her hands as she does so. They’re her favorite daggers, she’s carried them with her for a lifetime and then some, but she just lets them fall away as if they’re nothing.
You are more important than a thing! An angry voice echoes in her mind. She didn’t believe it then, not really, because she grew up in a world where life was cheap and things were precious, and if she’s being honest, she’s still not sure she thinks of herself as being more important than a thing. Family’s different, though, and she drops the daggers without a moment’s thought and grabs Zolf’s arm to try and anchor him to the ground.
It occurs to her, as she feels her feet leave the ground as well, that she and Hamid combined probably don’t weigh as much as Zolf, so this is probably not going to work. She meets Hamid’s eyes and sees the realization hit him at the same time.
Neither one of them relinquishes their hold, though. In fact, as the draw from the rift gets more powerful and it seems to suck them in like slurping up a jellied eel, Sasha reaches out desperately with one hand to grab for Hamid, who meets her halfway, tightening her other grip around Zolf’s arm as she does so.
She’s not letting go. Not this time.
Zolf aches, which is the only reason he’s pretty sure he’s not dead. Not that that’s necessarily a recommendation. Getting sucked into a rift between planes means he could be anywhere, and he doesn’t have any spells to help him prepared. It may or may not be safe for him to take the time to prepare them, either.
He keeps his eyes closed for a moment, listening, hoping to glean some information about where he is and what he might be opening his eyes to. There’s a gentle soughing, a steady crunch and a hiss, that he instantly clocks as the sounds of waves breaking on a shoreline, and come to think of it, it does feel like he’s lying on sand. He also hears…voices, he thinks. Soft murmurs he can’t quite make out, but it does sound like he’s not alone.
Opening his eyes, he finds himself staring into two pairs of worried brown ones and remembers Hamid and Sasha trying to keep him from getting dragged through the rift.
“I told you two to get back,” he croaks out.
Both of them visibly relax, even as Hamid says, “We were trying. We were just trying to bring you with us, too.”
“Fair,” Zolf admits. He tries to lever himself up and, unsurprisingly, his hands sink into the sand. Sasha and Hamid both assist him to sit up, and he can’t help the groan as he does so. “Where are we?”
They look at each other for a moment, and then Sasha says, “We’re together. And we’re alive.” She pauses and adds, “Pretty sure we’re alive. I was dead before and it didn’t feel like this. This place looked different. I mean, maybe it’ll be different because you’re here, because when I was dead you weren’t and I kept looking for you, but I don’t—I think we’re still alive, anyway.”
Zolf blinks at Sasha. “You’ve been here before?”
“We all have,” Hamid says. “This is that beach we washed up on after—after the storm. I mean, if—if we’re right about it, but I’m pretty sure we are. The stars…look right, anyway? And I’m pretty sure—isn’t that Dover over there?”
Zolf follows Hamid’s finger. It’s dark, mostly dark anyway, but the moon is full. And sure enough, it reflects off of something huge and white in the distance. Probably the Cliffs, carved with the face of a god Zolf no longer has any faith in or truck with.
“I think you’re right,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “Blimey. How long have we been here?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe an hour?” Hamid hazards. “Maybe a little more? We’ve mostly just…been trying to wake you up.”
“Are you okay?” Sasha asks anxiously. “I remembered to close my eyes, so I didn’t see what happened, but I could tell when you passed out and I don’t know why.”
Zolf struggles to remember. “Honestly, I think it was just…too much. The mortal mind’s not made to cope with the space between planes.” He looks over at Hamid. “Are you okay?”
“Just tired. I closed my eyes, too.” Hamid smiles faintly, but the worry is still etched into every line of his face. “I didn’t want to see where we might end up. But like Sasha said, at least we’re together. And it’s not—it’s just the three of us. I’m pretty sure this is…you know, real.” He gives a small, humorless laugh. “Nobody accusing this of being all my fault.”
Zolf winces, remembering the encounter in the mines. “If we’re here, and it’s anybody’s fault, it’d be mine.”
“We didn’t die, mate,” Sasha reminds him. “When we crossed the channel. Hamid and me, we didn’t die because you didn’t let us. If someone was going to blame you for getting ‘em killed, it wouldn’t be here.”
Zolf and Hamid both stare at Sasha, who stares at her feet. It’s Hamid who finally speaks, gently. “Sasha, when you—you told me you jumped through one of the plants in the Garden of Yerlik. Did you…did someone blame you for them dying?”
Sasha nods, a single dip of her chin to her chest and back up again but without raising her eyes. “Eldarion. We were standing on that—that platform thing, the one that was in the rift, and she was lecturing me like she used to. Said if I’d only listened and been sensible, she wouldn’t have had to let go because there wouldn’t have been too many people for her to get us all back—and then I went and wasted the chance she gave me.”
“Sasha, no.” Hamid hugs her tightly, and for a wonder, she lets him and even hugs him back. Zolf watches, a lump in his throat. “You didn’t—it wasn’t your fault. If that was anyone’s fault, it was mine. I-I panicked and—Grizzop was right, you were right, we shouldn’t have gone to Rome, but—”
“No, you were right. We needed to go. We had the tools and the skills to save them. Lots of people could have destroyed that factory, but we were the only ones who could have found our families. Eldarion chose to do what she did, again and again and again, and I didn’t let go on purpose.” Sasha sighs, lets go of Hamid, and runs a hand through her hair, which is already sticking up in all directions. “Wasn’t anyone’s fault but the—you said it was the Cult of Hades, right?”
“Yeah,” Hamid says softly. He rubs a hand over his face, which is smeared with dirt and blood and the gods know what. “We still have to deal with that as well, don’t we?”
“Not sure how much good we can do here,” Zolf grunts, although he knows Hamid’s right. “If we’re not already too late.”
“Well, the stars are all there,” Hamid says. “As far as I can tell, anyway. It’s not—I mean, the skies aren’t raining blood or burning with green flame or, or blinking at us or anything, so…I don’t think the world’s ended?”
“What kind of ridiculous apocalypse would involve the sky blinking at you?” Zolf tips his head back to look at the stars. Hamid’s right, they all seem to be in the proper position, and there are so many of them. More than that, he has a sense of…peace, a feeling that all’s right with the world. It might be a false hope, or it might just be that he has two of the people who mean the most to him right here with him, but he chooses to trust in his god, his faith.
Sasha tilts her head back with an odd smile on her face. “Different. Not much, but…they’re in a bit of a different place, you know? Most of them, anyway. I’m used to Andromeda being a bit further from the horizon anymore.”
“Right, you’ve—been a bit further south.” Zolf’s tongue catches on his teeth to keep from mentioning Rome. “And the stars move a bit over the centuries. But yeah, it…looks like it’s all where it ought to be, more or less.”
“Yeah.” Sasha turns to look at Zolf, frowns slightly, then reaches into a bag and pulls out a potion, which she hands him. “Here.”
Zolf studies the potion. “Cure moderate wounds? Where’d this come from?”
“Found a bunch of ‘em in London. They’re still good, we checked. And you’re hurt.”
Zolf wants to argue, but can’t really. He necks the potion and feels most of his aches and pains disappear. He’s still bone-weary and wrung out, but at least he’s not as badly hurt as he was.
“Thanks,” he says, corking the bottle and stowing it out of habit. He brushes a hand through his hair and winces at the tangle of knots and dried blood on his temple.
“Here, let me—” Hamid makes a familiar, practiced gesture and casts prestidigitation, producing the usual flurry of handkerchiefs. They set to work on Zolf, Sasha, and Hamid with a brisk efficiency. Zolf thinks for a second to catch one and wipe off his glaive, but a quick glance around reveals it’s nowhere to be seen.
He sighs. “Either of you got my weapon?”
“I think you dropped it when you passed out?” Hamid says, sounding a bit uncertain. “I mean, I didn’t see, but the weight shifted a little and…”
Zolf nods glumly. “Yeah, it’s probably lost somewhere between planes then.”
Sasha shrugs. “It’s just a thing. You’re more important than a thing.”
Hamid’s smile is genuine, if tinged with pain, and Zolf feels like he’s missing something. Still, she’s right. “Thank you, by the way. Both of you. For trying to hold me back, even if it didn’t…I’m glad I’m here with you.”
Sasha gives him a crooked grin. “Same here.” She glances up at the sky. “You think the others were able to stop whatever that was? Azu and—Cel and—what’s the little red guy’s name?”
“Skraak,” Hamid supplies. “And yes, I—they’re all immensely capable and brilliant. I’m sure we—we wouldn’t be able to sit here talking if they hadn’t.” He glances in Zolf’s direction and adds, “Especially with Oscar’s help.”
Zolf’s lips twitch slightly in a brief smile. Wilde’s magic has meant the difference between success and failure time and again, and even though Zolf never meant to bring him back to fix things, he’s glad he’s been able to help.
Sasha’s grin gets positively wicked. “I knew you fancied him,” she crows, and Zolf’s face catches fire.
Hamid laughs—actually laughs—and tugs at his sleeves, half-turning away as he does so. The magically-created outfit melts away, leaving Hamid clad in only the purple-and-gold robe he first showed Zolf in Japan. Zolf idly skims the list of names branching along Hamid’s back, then winces as he notices something.
“Robe’s torn a bit,” he observes, trying to keep his voice calm. “That going to affect…whatever it does?”
“Oh. It shouldn’t,” Hamid says. He pulls off the robe and studies it, leaving him in nothing but a pair of surprisingly well-worn trousers. Zolf guesses Hamid hasn’t worried about new clothing in a while, since he’s got those sleeves that will do the heavy lifting for him.
His breath catches in his throat, however, at Hamid’s now-exposed skin. His back is a ravage of scars, injuries healed over that Zolf’s never seen and didn’t realize were there. A splash of what might have been some sort of burn tissue calls to mind the mold that attacked in the basements below Kew Gardens, but Zolf has no context for the thousands of tiny gashes mottling him from shoulder to waist. What he’s fixated on, though, is the perfectly straight, nearly surgical gash in the near-center of his back, just by one shoulder blade, its edges still slightly raw.
Sasha lets out a low whistle, tilting her head. “That looks nasty, mate.”
“What?” Hamid looks up at her in surprise.
Sasha circles around to his front, studying him. “From the back—you ought to know better than to let someone get in behind you, you know. Always watch behind you when you’re fighting, people can do a lot of damage if you don’t know they’re coming. Broadsword, right? Anything special about it?”
Hamid glances down at his chest and touches it lightly. “I—I don’t—know. I don’t remember.”
“He was unconscious at the time,” Zolf says, with difficulty. “Broadsword sounds about right, but it was—this…thing had swords for arms. The rest of it was made of…goo or something like that. It was bad.”
“Oh,” Hamid says softly. “The thing in the lab?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t—realize—when, when Azu and Cel said…” Hamid takes a deep breath and swings the robe back over his shoulders, then pops the sleeves back on. Instantly he’s wearing the same outfit he’s worn almost since Zolf met him. “I thought it was just…Oscar. Well, a-and Augusta and Sumutnyerl, but…”
“No, it came damn close to killing you, too.” Zolf’s voice cracks slightly, and he fights to get his emotions under control. “There was a poison in the air—Cel called it ‘Sweet Dream’—and it knocked you out, you and Oscar and Sumutnyerl and Augusta. We were going to drag you all into the lab, get you out of the bad air, but…then that thing appeared at the end of the hall and hit us with a chain lightning before we could really react properly. Hit everybody, really. Then it started attacking and…I dunno. Might’ve been worse for you if Cel hadn’t been trying to drag you through the door to the lab when it stabbed you, but…”
“Thank you. For saving me,” Hamid says softly, touching Zolf’s hand lightly. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“We worked together, really. Azu hit it with a holy whisper, and I probably wouldn’t have had a chance if she hadn’t. But if you’re asking if I was the one who did the heal on you, then yes.”
“Then thank you double. That’s—I know that’s a fairly high-level spell and…seriously, Zolf, it means a lot to me that you thought I was worth that.”
Zolf has to try twice before he can answer. “We might’ve had our differences, Hamid, but you were never not worth that.”
Hamid’s smile is only matched by the brightness of Sasha’s.
They drop down into the sand on either side of him, barely disturbing it, and lean into him. Hamid’s head falls against Zolf’s shoulder almost immediately, and Zolf wraps an arm around him, then does the same for Sasha on the other side, for all she’s a foot taller than him. She leans into him anyway, sort of sliding down into the sand so she can rest against him, too. Zolf feels the weight of them against him and feels right, in a way he hasn’t felt in ages.
The thought comes to him unbidden that if Wilde were here, this would be perfect.
“As nice as this is, you think the Poseidon lot might send us a boat?” Sasha murmurs. “Or something like that? You know, so we could get back to England?”
“Doubt it,” Zolf says. “I ain’t a Cleric of Poseidon anymore.”
“How come? Did he get mad at you or something?”
“No, I got mad at him. Told him to sod off, him and the rest of the Church. Well, more or less.” Zolf blows out a puff of air. “I fell into following him because I was a sailor. Makes sense, you know, you’re on a ship, you want to worship the Sea God ‘cause he’s the most likely to make sure you have safe passage if you do everything right. That was the whole point of them making me cross in that rickety old thing, was to test my faith. But the more I thought about it later on, the more I realized that Poseidon didn’t have all that much to do with us getting across. I didn’t…if it had been just me? Maybe I would’ve put more faith in him, and I don’t know, maybe it would have gone over worse. Probably it would have gone over worse. But with you two there, I didn’t…I realized later, I didn’t have enough faith in Poseidon to believe he’d keep you two safe. Especially after you got swept overboard.”
“I knew I’d be okay,” Sasha says softly. “I think we both did. We knew you’d keep us safe.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the point, isn’t it? You trusted me, not Poseidon. And I didn’t have enough faith in him to just…assume he’d save you when you fell, which I think is what I was probably supposed to do. So I pushed him away and…I figured that was it. Figured I’d just lose my ability to cast magic, but, well, I didn’t.”
“You found something else to believe in,” Hamid says.
“Basically, yeah. Didn’t realize that for a good long while, but…yeah, I did.”
“Did you just fall in with another god without realizing it?” Sasha asks curiously.
“Not exactly.” Zolf touches his chest where he keeps his “holy symbol,” such as it is, tucked inside his shirt—and freezes when he realizes it’s missing. He can’t help the sigh that escapes him. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” Hamid and Sasha both ask in unison.
“Nothing, just—lost something. It’s not a big deal.” Zolf swallows on the slight lie; technically he can cast just fine without it, but it means something to him. “I’m a Cleric of…well, Hope, I guess. I asked myself what I believed in. Didn’t exactly pray about it, but I meditated on it, you know? And every single time, I would fall asleep and I’d be…here. With you two. Or sitting in that cell in Dover, handing over my trident for you to keep hold of. Or in the catacombs under Paris, or back at La Triomphe, or…you get the idea. I asked what I believe in, and the answer I kept getting was that I believed in you two. My friends. The people that I trusted to be at my side, no matter what.” He tightens his arm around Hamid in particular. “Even when I got mad at you, Hamid, I never didn’t have faith in you. You know that, yeah?”
“I do,” Hamid says softly. “Now. And even when I got mad at you…I never didn’t trust you.”
“I know.” And Zolf does know that. Even at his angriest, even when he was ranting to Azu about Hamid’s naivete and seeming inability to take anything seriously, he could feel the weight of Hamid’s trust and faith. Which, honestly, probably made him angrier, because he didn’t feel worthy of it then. He left Hamid, left him and Sasha to deal with some of the worst things they could have faced, so to have Hamid come back and be genuinely delighted to see him—at least at first—and still look at him with the same trusting expression…hurt.
Now, though, he’s grateful for it. He’s glad to be here with Hamid, and with Sasha, at the end of everything. At least, he hopes it’s the end of everything.
“You didn’t lose your holy symbol or anything, did you?” Sasha sounds worried.
Zolf hesitates, but…they’re being honest. Or trying to, anyway. “I don’t think it counts as a full-on holy symbol, really. It’s just…a thing.”
“Okay, that’s not a ‘just a thing’ situation. That’s a thing you need. My Grizz grew up to be a Paladin, I do know how that part of things works. You need your holy symbol to…do stuff.”
“Usually, yeah, but this is different. It’s just…I was already still able to cast magic when I got it. It’s just something Wilde found or made or…I dunno. Something he gave me. He said it looked like me, looked like something…hopeful? I wore it to make him happy, but it was the memory of him giving it to me that gave me something to draw on.” Zolf shrugs. “Just one more person to believe in.”
“I don’t think he’s just one more person,” Hamid says, and while there’s a slightly teasing note to his tone, there’s a lot of sincerity too. “You brought him back from the dead, Zolf. Twice.”
Zolf wants to argue that he only technically brought Wilde back once—Sohra and their people cast the spell that brought him back the first time—but if he’s splitting hairs, he has to admit that he did bring Wilde back that time. Nobody else would have been able to give him a good enough reason, but the fact that Zolf needed—needs—him is what made him decide to come back.
“Promised him we’d go on holiday together,” he mutters, more to himself than anything.
Hamid hums thoughtfully. “How far across is the channel?”
Zolf frowns. “I don’t know, twenty miles? Thirty? Something like that.”
“So that’s…no, never mind.” Hamid sighs. “I was going to say that I could cast fly on both of you, and we could probably cross the channel, but I don’t think we’d get all the way across before the spell ends, and…”
“I still can’t swim,” Sasha confesses. “Not well. And since we’re not dead, me running through the channel won’t make me wind up—well, I mean, I would wind up in the afterlife, but by the slow, painful route.”
“It’s fine,” Zolf assures them. “We’ll figure something out. Maybe we’ll just…go up to Calais and see if the train’s running again or something. But that can wait until morning.”
“Yes,” Hamid says with a long sigh. “One more night won’t make that much of a difference, I suppose.”
“Yeah, we’re not on a deadline anymore. Probably,” Zolf amends. “Dunno what’s going to be waiting for us when we get back to civilization, such as it is, but like you said, the world’s not ending right now, so a good night’s sleep can’t hurt.”
Hamid hums. “Then we can go hunt down Barret.”
Sasha stiffens at Zolf’s side and actually sits up. “Barret? Didn’t you give him to the Artemis lot to be put in prison? Didn’t they say—”
“He got let out,” Zolf interrupts, keeping his voice as gentle as he can. “The Cult of Hades was using him, and he was doing work for Tesla and the others, some. But we’re pretty sure he’s responsible for that…goo assassin thing that got into the lab, the one that murdered…basically everybody.” His arm tightens around Hamid without conscious thought.
Sasha’s eyes suddenly blaze with an anger Zolf doesn’t think he’s ever seen in her. “Barret did that? How?”
“We don’t know. He was…he disappeared from the facility, and the next thing we knew, Tesla was dead, and then the lights went out and the facility filled with poison and that thing showed up and started killing people. Either Barret let it in or it was a transformed Barret. I dunno. But I said that once everything was over I was going to hunt him down and wring his neck, and I meant it.” Zolf hesitates, looking over at Sasha. “I know you—Azu said you didn’t want to kill him, but—”
“Not when he was tied up and helpless. That’s too much like him, you know? I don’t ever want to be him. And I don’t like killing. But I don’t—Barret got a second chance, and he used it to do that. So no. He can die.” Sasha sighs, the anger visibly draining out of her. “Besides. I said I wanted him to live so he knew he’d lost, but…I guess he didn’t, right? The only way someone like Barret is going to lose is if they’re not alive to win anymore.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Hamid says lightly, “one of the only things Zolf and I have been in complete agreement about since he found us again is that Barret deserves to die.”
Zolf chuckles slightly, but Sasha pauses. “Actually, that does help a lot.”
Before Zolf can respond to that, he hears a noise, faint over the sounds of the waves but familiar—a bell, tinkling gently. It sounds so much like the doorbell in the lab that he has a moment of confusion before he shakes it off. “What is that?”
Sasha frowns, tilting her head to one side. “Hamid, you still got that mobile stone thing Einstein gave us?”
“Oh!” Hamid starts and reaches for his bag. “Yes, I—he had one for each of us when we got back to Rome. I forgot about that. Somehow.”
“There’s been a lot on,” Zolf offers. He watches Hamid dig around. “You think it’s Einstein?”
“Or Azu, maybe. She’s got one too. If she remembers.” Hamid emerges with the stone Zolf’s seen him with once or twice, which is indeed emitting a ringing tone. Holding it up near his mouth, he says, “Yes? Hello?”
“HAMID!” The explosion of words that erupts from the stone, slightly hollow and tinny but perfectly clear, is definitely not in Azu’s or Einstein’s voice. The voice is young, high, and frantic, and after listening for a few seconds, Zolf concludes that either it’s too fast to be understandable or it’s not in English. Possibly both. Either way, he can’t comprehend a word of it.
“I-Ishaq. Ishaq. Ishaq!” Hamid finally manages to wedge a word into the panicked babble and says something in, Zolf presumes, the same language.
“Hal ant bikhayr, Hamid?” the voice asks, small and pitiful.
“’Ana bikhayrin,” Hamid says softly. He nods, rubbing a hand over his face, and—Zolf presumes—repeats, in English this time, “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” There’s a mighty sniff from the other end of the mobile stone. “We didn’t get hurt or anything. It was kind of scary for a few days there, but everything worked out okay.”
“Good. That’s good,” Hamid says. There’s a gentle smile on his face and a bit of pain in his eyes, and Zolf suddenly has to look away, a lump in his throat, as he realizes Hamid is talking to one of his brothers. “H-how is everyone else? Mother and—and Saira and—you’re all okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re good. Everybody’s good. There was a big party, kind of, but I didn’t—I said I wasn’t going to celebrate until you were here to celebrate with us too and everyone’s been kind of leaving me alone since then.”
“Where are you? Back at the house in Cairo? Or—”
“Nah, we’re—we got brought to this city, it’s on the back of a bear—well, I guess you know about it, ‘cause there were lots of people there who knew you, but that’s where the party was. Kind of. Then Captain Earhart, she’s wicked cool, she said she was leaving and anyone who wanted to come along she’d at least get us home before doing whatever she’s going to do, so I’m on her airship now. It’s pretty neat. I like flying.”
“So do I. You’re not getting in Captain Earhart’s way, right?”
“She says I’m not in the way. She’s teaching me how to steer the ship a little, sometimes anyway, and she put me on the duty rotas, so I’m helping with all that and the—the kobolds, they’re showing me stuff. It’s nice, and I like it and—it’s just, I miss you.” The voice on the other end wobbles a bit. “And I keep thinking about how much you’d enjoy it, and how much better it’d be if you were here to show me some of this stuff too, but I can’t talk to anyone about it because I don’t—I mean, Azu’s nice and all, she’s really helping Saira, I think, but she just keeps saying I should be proud of you because you died a hero. I don’t want you to die a hero, Hamid. I just want you to come home.”
Hamid inhales sharply, and Zolf flinches as it occurs to him that of course everyone assumes they died. Just like everyone assumed Hamid and the others died in Rome. Everyone but Zolf, because he couldn’t let himself believe that. He mourned them because they were separated from him, because he couldn’t get to them, but he never let himself lose faith that they were still out there somewhere. He wasn’t wrong, that’s the hell of it.
“Ishaq,” Hamid says, slowly and carefully, but Zolf can hear how hard he’s fighting to keep his voice steady. “How—how long has it been?”
“Since when?”
“Since we—since the last time I talked to you.”
“Six weeks,” the voice—Ishaq—says with the instant recall of someone who has kept a careful tally of an important event.
“Six weeks?” Hamid repeats, unable to keep the distress out of his tone.
Zolf doesn’t think that’s too bad—the last time Hamid used the mobile stone, as far as he knows, they were just leaving Shoin’s institute—but then Ishaq says, “Yeah, ‘cause we talked and then there was a day or two where I felt better ‘cause I knew you were out there and okay, and then Einstein showed up and said we had to go because it wasn’t safe anymore and…and things got kind of bad for a while, but it got sorted out in the end, Emeka and Vesseek showed up and got us out of it, and Emeka said he’d talked to Azu and that you’d all managed to save the world, and they had a thing that got us to where everybody else was, the bear city, you know? And that was about a week or so after we talked, and Cel—they’re wicked smart, I like them a lot, but they don’t believe me either so I don’t talk to them much right now—they said the sky ate you and that you—that you weren’t coming back.” His voice hitches again. “But you are, right? You’re really okay? You’re not just saying that?”
“I’m fine, Ishaq,” Hamid reassures him. “I promise. I’m not hurt. I’m safe and well. We’ll talk about it more when I have a chance to get to—where exactly are you? Wh-where is the ship?”
“I dunno. I think—um, Captain Earhart said we might be near London soon? B-but I don’t know. I’m up in the crow’s nest because everybody was—Azu was going on again about accepting you died a hero and Cel told her to leave me alone because everybody’s got to grieve their own way and—I knew you weren’t dead, I knew it, but the only one who’s been taking me seriously is Wilde.”
Zolf has to turn away for a second, eyes closed. He knows that feeling all too well, too. Hamid takes a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, if you’re—are you going to be staying in London? We’re not…too far away from there, we can probably get there in a couple of days, so if you wait for me—I-I have, had, a place in London that might still be there if you—”
“Wait, where are you? You’re not in London right now?”
“No, we—there’s a beach in France, just across the Channel. Getting back across is—”
“We can meet you! If you’re not too far away, we can—hang on, hang on, I’m gonna go talk to—whoa!” There’s a faint rattling sound, barely audible over the waves around them.
“Ishaq, be careful! Are you okay?” Hamid asks anxiously. Zolf exchanges a glance with Sasha and sees her grinning knowingly.
“Yeah, I’m good, I’m good, I’m all strapped in and everything.” Ishaq’s voice gets a little faint as he says something to—presumably—someone nearby. Zolf at least recognizes the language as Draconic from having spent so much time around Hamid, Cel, and the kobolds, but he hasn’t managed to pick it up himself. Whatever he says makes Hamid smile, and he says something in the same language but much better accented.
Zolf strains to hear. Ishaq hasn’t broken the connection on the mobile stone, and there’s a lot of noise going on in the background, a babble of voices he can only just make out the tones of. He’s not even completely sure who Ishaq might be talking to, until a voice speaks, crystal clear but also cold and closed-off. It hurts to hear Wilde like that, in a way he hasn’t been since the last time Zolf had to quarantine without him. “What did you tell Grizzop was the worst and best part of working with me when we first met?”
“I said the worst part was how annoying you were, and the best part was that you weren’t around very much…then. Sasha said you made all the violence, loss, and trauma seem mild in comparison.” Hamid rubs a hand over his face. “And while I realize you’re probably asking that at least partly, if not mostly, because you don’t want to risk being hurt by a pretender, I do appreciate you trying to protect my brother, too, Oscar.”
Wilde’s ragged exhale is more familiar to Zolf than his own breathing, and when he speaks next, he definitely sounds more like himself. “A little of both, really. After Einstein—never mind, I’ll tell you about that in person. I think we can persuade Earhart to swing by and pick you up. She seems to have taken a liking to your brother…you’re in France, you said?”
“Yes. A few miles south of Calais, it’s…not really anywhere in particular on a map, I don’t think. Ah, we’re right—we can see the Cliffs of Dover from where we’re sitting, if that helps?”
There’s a short pause, and then Wilde says in a different tone, “‘We’?”
“Zolf and Sasha are here, too, Oscar,” Hamid assures him. “We were—we held on this time. We’re together.”
“We’re okay,” Zolf says, leaning a bit closer to be sure he can be heard. “I promise. We’re fine.”
“Zolf.” Wilde manages to pack a lot of meaning into the single syllable of his name. “I-I—hold on, hold on, I’m going to—we’ll be there to get you all as quickly as we can, I—let me find Earhart—”
“We’re not going anywhere, mate.” Sasha sounds amused. “Calm down and take your time.”
“Right. Right.” Wilde takes a deep breath. “Look, it might be—we’ll get back in touch with you once we know how long it’s going to take for us to get there. I’m not sure if we should leave this connection open indefinitely.”
“You don’t need to,” Hamid says, surprising Zolf, who was thinking the same thing but wasn’t going to say it. “We know you’re coming, and like Sasha said, we’re not going anywhere. We’ll be here whenever you arrive.”
“Stay safe. We’ll see you soon,” Wilde says. He murmurs something Zolf can’t quite hear. There’s a rustling noise, and then a voice that’s probably Ishaq’s says in a whisper, “My turn to save you, Hamid.”
Then the stone goes silent.
Hamid stares at it for a long moment, then slowly puts it back into his bag. The smile on his face is wistful and tinged with just a bit of pain. “Six weeks?”
“Least it wasn’t a year and a half,” Zolf sighs, but he agrees with Hamid. The idea that the others have been having to…deal with whatever came next, alone, for this long…and thinking they’re dead the whole time is a lot. “When was the last time you’d talked to him? That’s the brother that—”
“That got kidnapped, yeah. I talked to him when we first got back to Other London, while we were waiting for Barret. Oscar said it couldn’t hurt at that point.” Hamid takes a deep breath. “So…from our point of view, a little less than a week ago.”
“So really, we’ve only missed about five weeks,” Zolf says, struggling to stay positive. It doesn’t come easily to him, but he’s trying.
“Oh, yeah, that’ll make a huge difference,” Sasha scoffs. “Only five weeks? Nothing could’ve happened in five weeks. I mean, ‘s not like that’s how long it was between us meeting in London and you getting so overwhelmed with everything that you thought you had to quit to keep us safe.”
“That’s not the point, Sasha,” Hamid says gently. He reaches over and grips Zolf’s hand, like he knows about the lance of pain that’s just gone through him—which, well, he might. Hamid’s pretty perceptive about people. “The point is that everybody’s spent the last five weeks thinking we’re dead, except for Ishaq and Oscar, who’ve spent the last five weeks constantly being told we’re dead. That’s…that’s not an insignificant amount of time. And the fact that it’s only been an hour or so for us is going to make it worse. Like how Zolf spent eighteen months mourning us and you spent, what, sixty years missing us, but to me it was only about fifteen minutes and everything was different. It’s…not going to be easy for any of us.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Sorry,” Sasha mumbles.
“’S not—you don’t have to apologize,” Zolf says, his voice a bit thick.
“You don’t either,” Hamid tells him, looking him dead in the eye. Okay, maybe sometimes he’s too perceptive about people. “Nothing that happened to us in those couple of weeks happened because you weren’t there to stop it. It was all Kafka and the Cult of Hades and…our usual luck, I suppose. If you had been there, you’d have blamed yourself for what happened by saying that none of it would have happened if you’d walked away in Prague.”
“And Hamid would be telling you that it’d be so much worse if you had,” Sasha adds with a small, humorless grin.
Zolf laughs tiredly. “Or I’d have ended up in Ancient Rome with you, too.”
“I wouldn’t have survived that,” Hamid says softly. “I was…I was having a hard enough time when we first got back, and I was glad to see you again, Zolf, even if…”
“I know.”
“But if you’d both been gone forever? If I’d got back and they’d sent Azu and me to work with a team of completely new people?” Hamid shakes his head. “I’d have broken. I’d have done what I had to do, but…I don’t think I would have cared if I lived or died.”
“That’s about what I did,” Zolf admits. “That year you were…between finding out you two were missing and finding you and Azu were the ones in that quarantine cell? I didn’t care what happened to me. I was saving the world for you two, but…for a while there, I didn’t think I’d have anything left to live for once that was all over.” He sniffs. “Genuinely don’t know what I would have done if it weren’t for Oscar.”
“He’s good for you,” Hamid says with a crooked smile. It’s almost a smirk, really. “And you’re good for him. He’s himself when you’re around.”
“What is going on with you two, anyway?” Sasha asks, crossing her legs underneath her and giving the posture of settling in for a good story. “I want to hear everything you’ve been up to since we got to Prague. And you, too, Hamid. You only told me about the—the world-changing stuff. I want to hear about what you’ve been doing.”
Zolf and Hamid look at one another and smile—Hamid broadly, Zolf slightly, but that’s a lot for him these days. He scoots himself back a bit so they’re in a rough triangle, so they can see one another better.
“We’ve got a few hours yet,” he says. “Might as well.”
They’re up, broadly speaking, all night, just talking and reminiscing. Sasha tells them all about her life in Rome, and Zolf and Hamid in turn fill her in on their experiences since then. They don’t sugarcoat their differences or arguments, but they’ve come out the other end stronger for it, Hamid thinks, and Zolf seems to agree. And it’s hard to deny the emotion in Zolf’s voice when he describes the battle in the lab, even if it’s mostly for Oscar.
Once they run out of things to talk about, they end up stargazing for a while. Hamid remembers a handful of stars and constellations from his abbreviated university career; Zolf, however, shows both of them how to recognize more than a few, and Sasha fills in the stories she’s a lot closer to than they are. She’s also the one to point out a constellation she’s particularly fond of—the Archer, bow held at the ready and aiming at the North Star.
The stars have begun to vanish, but the sun hasn’t quite risen, when something appears on the horizon.
Sasha spots it first, unsurprising as she’s spent her whole life having to notice these kinds of things, but Hamid sees it easily enough when she points—the looming bulk of the Vengeance coming over the cliffs, still gleaming white in the grey of pre-dawn. At least, he assumes it’s the Vengeance. There are other airships out there, but the modifications they made in Hiroshima are…somewhat unique.
“Do they know we’re here?” Sasha asks. “I mean, do they know exactly where we are?”
“Probably not. Shouldn’t be too hard for them to find us, though,” Zolf says. “Whoever’s on lookout probably has darkvision, so once they get close enough, they’ll be able to see us.”
“Yeah, but they’ve still gotta get close enough to be able to see us, right?”
“I can help with that,” Hamid says. He casts dancing lights, the orbs flickering and floating over their heads. Zolf gives him a nod of approval, which makes him feel a lot better.
Whether it’s the Vengeance or not, the lights do seem to make a difference; the airship hones in on their location and starts bearing down on them. Hamid’s never actually seen it approach, so it’s not until now that he can appreciate just how fast it actually goes. The only time he’s really ever been aware of its speed on a visual level was the crash, which he’d rather not think about, thanks.
“Easy on the ingress,” Zolf mutters under his breath, and Hamid knows he’s trying not to think about the crash, too.
Hamid bites his lip, but doesn’t say anything; there’s nothing he can say to make this better, for either of them really. He just watches silently as the ship comes ever closer, until it’s near enough that they can just make out a couple figures on the deck. Zolf gestures for Hamid and Sasha to back up, probably to give the airship room to land. Hamid lets the lights linger where they were, not that they’re going to help the landing all that much, but it’s worth a try.
The airship banks to one side, and a familiar dry, gruff voice calls down, “Well, Mr. Smith, I see you’ve managed to get yourself marooned.”
Zolf rolls his eyes at Hamid and Sasha, but there’s a faint tone of amusement in his own voice as he cups his hands around his mouth and calls up, “Permission to board, Captain?”
“Permission granted, if you can figure out how to do it without making me land first.”
Zolf raises an eyebrow at Hamid. “I might have an idea or two.”
Hamid grins, feeling lighter than he’s felt in ages, as he realizes exactly what Zolf means. He casts fly on Zolf and Sasha, then lets his wings pop out and takes an experimental flap before soaring upwards with his friends.
He crests over the railing. Unsurprisingly, there aren’t many people on deck. Earhart stands by the rail, arms folded over her chest and smirking; Carter, surprisingly, is at the wheel, looking genuinely pleased with himself and his task. One of the kobolds is up in the rigging—Sassraa, who gives him a toothy grin as he passes her. Wilde stands by the mast, looking up at them with a smile, and beside him is Ishaq, grinning ear to ear as he jumps up and down and waves.
Hamid swoops down and lands gracefully on the deck, arms already outstretched. Ishaq practically flings himself at him, hugging him tightly around the neck, and Hamid hugs him back just as hard. Over his little brother’s head, he sees Zolf land rather heavily in front of Wilde, who looks a bit more awkward than Hamid would have expected. He clears his throat and pulls something out of his pocket, holding it out. “You…seem to have dropped this.”
It’s a wooden disc, carved with the image of the Nautical Star in relief, and Hamid realizes it’s probably the not-exactly-a-holy-symbol Zolf was talking about last night, the one Wilde gave him in the first place. Zolf reaches out like he’s going to take it, then seems to come to a decision, surges forward, and hugs Wilde instead, who practically melts into him. Sasha, stumbling a little as she touches down on the deck herself, exchanges a sly grin with Hamid.
Earhart’s own smirk broadens as she moves towards the wheel and takes it. “Mr. Carter, pipe all hands on deck.”
“Aye, Captain!” Carter relinquishes the wheel and heads over to set off the signal.
Ishaq rests his chin on Hamid’s chest and smiles up at him. His eyes are extremely wet, but he sounds just as enthusiastic and delighted as ever. “That’s wicked cool, Hamid. Is that a spell? Can you teach me how to do that?”
Hamid realizes Ishaq is talking about the wings. “Not exactly a spell. It’s just an ability. You might be able to do it when you’re older, but—”
The “all hands” signal starts up, momentarily drowning him out. Ishaq doesn’t seem to mind. “But you’re okay, right? You’re sure you’re not sick? Your skin’s gone all scaly and you look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I’m fine. It’s—it’s just something that’s been…happening. I’ll explain later.” Hamid’s not about to say I’m slowly turning into a dragon this close to Earhart, even if she’s better about the whole thing than she was. Apophis didn’t want it broadly known, and while that’s something that definitely belonged to…before…Hamid still doesn’t want to bandy that about until he’s had a chance to talk to his family privately.
Sassraa drops onto the deck between Hamid and Sasha, rubbing at her ears. In the Draconic she still prefers to the English she’s less comfortable with, she says, “It’s a lot louder down here than it is up there.”
Sasha snorts and replies in perfectly fluent Draconic herself, “Always is, mate. Gotta go real high or real low to escape it, but sometimes noise makes a good cover, you know?”
“Sasha, when did you learn Draconic?” Hamid asks, both surprised and delighted.
“When did I what?”
Before anyone can reply to that, the first figures emerge onto the deck—Skraak, at the head of the other kobolds, all of them armed and ready. They stop in some confusion when they see the people already up there, then hastily move to one side as others start coming up behind them. Barnes is next, holding the sword Sasha admired so long ago, and a half-step behind him is Cel. Their face goes from concern to joy as they catch sight of Zolf, who’s let Wilde out of the hug but still has a hand on his back, and Hamid, still clinging to his little brother, but they don’t actually come forward to do anything. Instead, turning their head, they call, “Um, hey, little buddy, I think you should be next up here, actually.”
Hamid can’t hear the response, but the next figure that comes out is one that takes a second for him to recognize—a neatly-dressed gnome who looks confused and worried, but who spots Sasha and gives a gasp of surprise and relief. Sasha rushes forward, and Hamid recognizes Bi Ming Gusset in the second before Sasha catches him in a hug. He glances down at Ishaq, who grins up at him, and both of them chuckle a little. They understand.
He looks up again just as the next set of people come up on deck. Hamid would have assumed the next ones up would be the other two members of the crew—not Azu and Kiko, Azu’s probably going to be last since she’ll be strapping into her armor, and Kiko is probably helping her—but instead, it’s three figures who look very out of their element. Saira looks much the same as the last time he saw her—a bit more worn, perhaps, a few premature threads of silver in her dark hair, a couple wrinkles she shouldn’t have yet—but overall, she hasn’t changed all that much. Beside her is their mother, who has aged considerably since the days after Aziza’s funeral; her hair is as white as Wilde’s or Zolf’s, and she looks thin and drawn as she leans heavily on the arm of…
Gods above, is that Ismail? Hamid sucks in a breath. Of course, he’s forgotten—it’s been nearly two years for Ismail since Hamid’s seen him. He’s sixteen now, past the first awkward, gawky stage Ishaq is still in a bit. He’s the same height Hamid is now, fine-boned and handsome and looking every inch a young man rather than the little boy Hamid remembers. And there’s still more growth to come. He’s almost an exact duplicate of their father, just without the hardness.
All three of them stop and stare in shock at Hamid as he lets go of Ishaq and stares back. This is the first time he’s seen, really seen, evidence of just how much time it’s been for him, and it’s both unsettling and humbling. He hasn’t changed enough to justify the time.
“Hamid?” Saira manages at last.
“I told you,” Ishaq crows.
Saira makes a vague gesture with one hand. She manages to pack a lot of questions into that slight movement—everything from is it really you and am I dreaming to where the hell have you been and are you all right to how did you know where to find us and why do you have wings. Hamid has no idea where to start answering them, but he does suddenly realize he hasn’t put his wings up yet. Slightly embarrassed, he retracts them, then takes an uncertain step towards his family. It’s silly to be afraid of what they’ll say when he’s faced down so many horrible things in the last few weeks, including his own death, but he is.
His mother lets go of Ismail and comes to Hamid, crushing him in a tight hug as she sobs, and a moment later he’s surrounded by his older sister and his younger brother, and Ishaq’s in on it too whether he wants to be or not, although he probably does, and another piece of him settles into place.
He finds himself murmuring reassurances to his equal parts relieved and hysterical mother, in English, in Arabic, in Halfling, even in the French he speaks fluently but she knows only a smattering of, but when she stiffens and backs away slightly in obvious confusion, he sees Ishaq wince and Skraak raise an eyebrow and realizes he’s slipped into Draconic as well.
“I’ve picked up a few new skills lately,” he offers, a bit lamely.
“Yeah, we saw the wings,” Ismail says. His eyes gleam, but it’s a bit more calculated than the delight in Ishaq’s, and for some reason it sets Hamid’s nerves on edge. “Where’d you learn that trick? Can you teach me?”
“Not exactly. It’s just an ability. You’ll…probably be able to do it when you’re older, I’m afraid.” Hamid glances at Saira.
Thank the gods, she seems to understand; she’s the one person in the family who knows about their heritage. “We can talk about this later. For now…I think, finally, we have something to celebrate.” She manages a smile. “And I think we all owe you an apology, Ishaq. We should have trusted you.”
Ishaq scuffs his foot against the deck. “’S all right. You lot had all the evidence and probabilities and all that. I only had hope.” He glances over his shoulder with a slight grin and adds, “’Cept there’s nothing only about hope.”
Hamid follows Ishaq’s glance to see Wilde smiling, broadly and genuinely, as he squeezes Zolf’s shoulder. There are tears in his eyes. “There certainly isn’t.”
From the direction of the stairs, Hamid hears a familiar cry of surprise, and suddenly his world is full of gleaming pink as Azu appears in front of him and pulls him and Sasha both into a tight hug. Cel lunges over and hugs them from the other side, then frees an arm for a brief second and beckons towards Zolf and Wilde. For a wonder, both of them come over and add themselves to the group hug.
Hamid starts laughing in mingled joy and relief. Sasha joins in, and soon all six of them are laughing and crying all at once. Ishaq attaches himself to Hamid, Bi Ming joins the hug as well, and pretty soon it feels like the entire crew of the Vengeance is clinging together in one massive, messy hug, with Sasha right at the center of it all where she belongs.
This is what comes next.