The jet bird spreads her wings protectively in front of her pebble nest. Of course she does this, there is a stone mage a stone's throw away, however unconscious he is, and the pebble nest needs protecting from his vengeful magic. Where would she sleep, if he destroyed it?

"If he wakes up, you can attack his legs," I say, lowering the child to the sand and practically collapsing on limp knees. His head I lean carefully on the round rock where he would sit stringing bones into necklaces. "Just leave the important parts of him intact."

The soft waves chuckle, why would you deem legs the least important, the first to go?

I peel my boots off, discard them in the sand, and swish across the beach to kick the laughing waves. Maybe that will change their mind.

The child sleeps. Somehow. He stayed awake, humming or shaking or staring for as long as gravel knives were trying to kill us. But here under the buzz of insects and the babble of waves, his heart pumps steadily, his lungs fall and rise like the most regular things in the world.

The child sleeps. Somehow. My skin prickles with the presence of the stone mage, my eyes stay peeled to an ever-present danger I just haven't spotted yet.

Distractions: sloshing in cold water to my ankles, rushing salt waves, soft sand. The black or maybe creeping gray on the horizon's edge.

But no, we have no time for distractions. We have burners approaching.

If we had a canoe, we could sail out into the middle of nowhere. All that emptiness, four beating hearts and nothing else to those senses. A stone mage would only have a distant seafloor, a faraway beach to drag across a water and try to kill us. I could stop him with a word.

The burners, if they could swim, would have no fire to scorch us. The child, he could sleep, dream of gentle things like soft insect wings and sticky fruit juice weeping. We could paddle our way into the middle of nowhere. If my arms were strong enough, that is, to guide one little canoe against the ocean. Aukai would be so proud of us.

Except Aukai wasn't a child of canoes, paddling oars, tiny floating boats. His people were true seafarers, they sailed ships and mapped stars and traded goods down whole coastlines. One little canoe against the ocean, three hunted mages, one royal avian far from her home--Aukai was never a child of that.

I kick the incoming waves. They splash, but otherwise continue unperturbed until the beach ends them. "What are we doing here?" I ask of them. Water recedes, tearing the beach with it. An endless war. "What do I do with a stone mage who wants me dead?"

And if he dies he will haunt me. I leave that unspoken.

I pace down the beach, leave the jet bird defending her nest beside two sleeping magic wielders. It is a small beach. The sand ends in a wall of stone, pricking my outstretched fingers. Out into the water the rocks extend, contours in the night unbroken.

I am a better death mage in the dark. Why wait until noonday for the burners to come, to eat up cabins with fire tongues like dancers lost in a beating drum, why wait for the sun? I am a better death mage in the dark.

Against the wall of stone, gray twilight strikes the stars invisible. Waves crawl up my ankles. Nobody knows what the burners look like, but I know the frost-texture of their blood. Too distant to cling to properly, twist up and tear apart, but I know.

I retreat from the lukewarm waves caressing my ankles. I pick the child up in my weak arms and trod barefoot to the gravel path. The jet bird's blood goes stormy, there's still a stone mage beside her nest. "I'll be back," I say. Her blood still rises in storm clouds.

We tread to the town of cabins, gravel scraping wettened sand off the soles of my feet. The sloshing of waves fades into clicking of insects, something sharp and sulfurous burns from the rock pedestal left solid in the street.

Still, no one sleeping in the cabins has woken to ask what all the fighting was about. I would worry for them more if I did not also fear a mob at the magic from our fighting.

I take the child to the cabin. The one with inked pools of blood ribboned into the ground, slowly spreading. We, two figures at the door to a drafty cabin, two silhouettes in a circle of blood dots.

I carry the child inside, I set him on his cloak on the sandy floor. He stirs, faintly, and I fold the cloak into his fruit-sticky fingers. In my backpack, I line up the clay bottles, the thread, the woven sacks, the needles, the bandages. My cavernous bag, it seems it should hold more. Hang heavier. Remind me of different times.

Like paltry armor I put on my cloak. I hoist the backpack onto my shoulders, tie it around my hips and pick up the child in his cloak.

I leave the cabin, senses tingling with the ring of wet dots quick to rot in the muggy heat. No evidence of mages will linger here, in the cabin drafts, in the doors, in the buzzing insects.

"Come, burners, set our home on fire," I whisper, sliding the door shut. Satisfy the freezing hollows of your hearts. Warm them on the smoke of where mages once slept, our magic tucked in tight to our bones and our throats. Come burn our homes where our veins never bloomed enough to scrawl out memories into the floorboards, for our petals would only have been scoured from the earth in your wrath if we did.

Your flames cannot harm us in our lonely oceans, burners.