She waited until Darr was out of earshot.
The men had pushed the carriage under the shelter of a stranded hull. An entire ship lay on its side in the salt grass, too large for the boats Ruun had uncovered. Merrow's warship, from the iron ram protruding at its bow. The grass growing from its deck had flowered.
“What does that mean?” Selka asked.
Ruun followed her gaze to the flowers. “You understood it.”
“I want you to say it.”
The god leaned back against the broken hull. There was rainwater in the hollow above its collarbone. A fly landed there and drowned.
“When the iron is gone, I will go to your city. I will take what they have kept of me.”
“The warmth. The barrier over the city, keeping the winter storms out.”
“Those. And the parts in living bodies.”
She pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth. It was a trick she used before translating something that would make soldiers draw their weapons.
“People who were healed?”
“A healed wound is flesh. I cannot take flesh that has learned to live. But the wound still held shut by my movement. The blood still moving because mine moves. The breath.”
Selka looked down at her hands.
“You remember what you asked for,” it said.
She did. Voss had brought her to the negotiating tent with Anet bundled against her chest. The baby scarcely cried; crying required air. Through the cloth Selka could feel the small, fierce efforts of her ribs.
Ruun had agreed to a season under the city's roof. A guest while the river was opened. Selka had said forever in trade speech and, when it asked about the bronze being lowered, said only a hearth.
It had believed her because she held a child.
“My daughter is twenty,” she said.
“You have had twenty years.”
“She didn't do it.”
“I did not build your ships.”
The ship above them creaked in the wind. She had never understood how wood could still be moving long after its life was over.
“Will you come for her yourself?”
“I will come for myself.”
The answer was plain. That was the cruelty of it. There was no pleasure in frightening her, no promise she could attack. It would reclaim the motion held in Anet's damaged lungs, and those lungs would have to manage without it.
“They'll kill you if I tell them.”
“You saw what my dying does.”
She glanced toward the soldier with the supported shoulder. He was chewing a twig, his band tucked under his sleeve. Beyond him Darr stood facing downstream, looking for Reedgate as though it could be hurried into view.
She had spent the night after the surrender watching Anet sleep. The child had drawn one full breath, then another. Selka had laid a finger beneath her nose to feel the warmth. She had not thought about the god in the hearth. She had made herself not think about it.
Now she could hear her daughter saying, I know.
“There's nothing at home for you but us,” she told Ruun. “What you want is down there.” She pointed toward the ruined estuary.
“What I want is also in your daughter.”
She stood too quickly and struck her head on the ship's rib. Pain flashed across her eyes. Ruun made no movement to help. She preferred that to kindness just then.
Darr called her. The yoke had split farther; they had to find a forge before it tore apart. She walked toward him, wiping at her face with the wet sleeve.
“What did it say?” he asked.
“About the road. There used to be another channel.”
He studied her. “Useful?”
“No.”
She could have told him. He had earned it, standing beside her in the shrine. But she pictured his sword at the god's torn throat and Anet falling over her bell, the handles of that little bellows out of reach.
The lie was smaller than the first one. It came more easily.
Selka took the bridle of the limping horse and led it back onto the road. Behind her the carriage moved with a long metallic shriek.