When it is time, call the banners and look for me in the sky.

Dark shapes blot the morning horizon. They drift, hulking creatures that hover in the dawn, seven airships floating toward Thalassa City.

But the ruler who descends an hour later from the center ship's shuddering, clanking metal ramp is not the thin framed, and owlishly bespectacled Qui Wren; it's stocky, solid Aren Dost.

She marches toward them, made somehow even more imposing with the armor, hewn in thick red leather and encased in carved gold bone guards, her pepper gray mane tied back in a loose knot.

"'Ren," Ruben calls happily, eschewing formalities and stepping forward, embracing the Chieftainess as her squadron clambers down the ramp behind her. "How was the trek?"

Not: "what a surprise," "what are you doing here?" Allayria notes, glancing between the old friends. General Jin also does not look surprised either, and Allayria thinks back to the empty tent on the plains of southeast Keesark long before Thalassa, of standing at its border and turning, watching the new way Ruben watched her.

He is keeping secrets.

"Chieftainess," she says instead, stepping forward, hand extended. "You are a very welcome sight."

The Chieftainess of Roften fixes her brown gaze on the Paragon, clasping one callused hand onto Allayria's and bowing, curt and perfunctory, over them.

"Your Excellence," she says. "A little bird told me it was time."

"I'm probably an owl: nocturnal, better in the air than on the ground," Qui Wren had said before, set against a blood red sunset. "I'll be your sight."

"So it is," Allayria replies.

The Chieftainess comes bearing supplies, and while they unload some food in Thalassa, Jin's troops load weapons and gear for the front.

"The brunt of your forces will have to march to the war," Dost tells them as they walk amongst the commotion, "but we can touch down at baseline ahead of them, organize everything so we can set out to Vatra as soon as possible. Four of our ships are outfitted to carry supplies; the other three have room for some additional troops—"

She goes on, but something else preoccupies Allayria's thoughts.

You take pieces off my board, I'll take pieces off yours.

It's a thought that murmurs, low and sinuously, through all the bustle and noise, senseless, ringing noise.

This is how we play.

But it's not how we win.

It's toying with her, cloyingly, perched neatly in a backpack, a sliver of silver tinted red. It's whispering, low and muted, like burst eardrums, or the slow, suffocating silence of water. The voices are just bubbles in the dark, heard through a glass casing of ice and they reverberate, echo just like the voices before, the voices that come when she points to a brow, presses fingers to a crown. They are the only thing she hears in the deep.

This is the heist. It's Fort Morgalth, a long walk in the dark to find the path, a low questioning of lidless, knowing beings to acquire the key. But like Morgalth she needs a prison break, a distraction.

Like Morgalth, she needs a thief.

But it's not a thief of boxes and codes she needs, not the sly, slippery skill of deft hands and sharp eyes, she needs someone who can crack a network, someone who can break the linchpin while she barters for the key.

"You're getting in the way."

Allayria blinks, looking down at Finn, all wide, brown eyes, staring at her in that mild, curious way. He's right; she's stopped in the middle of the shipping path and soldiers are darting around her, glancing nervously back as they do so.

"Did you see a ghost?" Finn asks seriously. "Hiran says they're not real but Tara thinks they are and some of the soldiers say they've seen them here, after all the flooding and fighting. Did you see one?"

"No," Allayria answers, staring at Finn hard. "No ghosts."

The boy's head tilts.

"Have you ever seen one?" he asks.

The dead have no power over the living, Allayria, a man who feels like a ghost murmurs in her memory. If there's anything in here, it's just echoes from the library's bones. It can't hurt you.

"No, Finn," she answers. "There are no ghosts."

Hiran and the others find them, and Allayria watches how he and Tara flank the boy, how they watch without staring. Amidst the chaos of plans and news and reactions she had not noticed it before; funny how now, as they stand, packs at their feet, heads swiveling around, observing the madness unfold, she sees it. Her gaze flickers up, meeting Lei's watchful one.

There's something in this, something about the simple way they stand around her, her team, small and rag-tag, but sharp and nimble, known by names, not by rank. It's something she doesn't want to pin point, something she can't quite look at directly. It feels like the warm glow of sunlight, but it is sunlight set low on the horizon, bleeding into the land. There's salt here, salt whose origins she can't yet see.

We'll never be the same, she thinks. We'll never come back to this.

They break apart eventually, Finn wandering off for food, Hiran and Tara soon following. Lei is pulled by Jin and Marron; he's been put in charge of allocating troops, with his ordered, analytical mind, and it's just Allayria, gazing around alone, until a familiar face emerges from the crowd.

"Quite the sight, isn't it?" Ruben asks, a smile on his face.

He leads her back to their makeshift headquarters, talking as they go, about the news Dost has brought. He talks about the levers of war turning in Quersido, resulting in the entourage they see today, and then he talks about the murmurs out of Solveigard City, of a trial of people like Brezkin, of its bloody conclusion, and then an equally bloody aftermath. She thinks of Fae, of Keno, and most of all, Caj. But she knew it was an ugly command when she sent them there; she knew there might be a price. She only hopes the Smith-caller is strong enough to pay it.

"Have we heard anything more?" she asks as they enter the planning room, touching the curling corners of a map as she moves around the main table, sending flickers of light into the surrounding lamps.

The Skill master opens his mouth to answer, but there's a knock on the door. It's a messenger, slipping in with a thin letter in hand. Ruben takes it automatically, even as her hand outstretches, and she has to clench her teeth against it.

"Might that be for me?" she asks evenly, shaking the sensation off with the twitch of her shoulders, glancing down at the figurines set out on the map instead.

Play for time inside this polite cage.

"No," Ruben says, and his hands are already breaking the seal. "It's mine, it's from—"

But he pauses, and the silence stretches for so long that Allayria looks back up from the board. Ruben's face is white in the warm, morning sunlight and his fist suddenly collapses around the letter.

"We can't leave," he says and he's suddenly moving, striding over to the door, and she half-jogs to catch up to him, watching the letter crumple further in his fist.

"What's going—?"

"We can't leave yet," Ruben repeats. "There's someone I have to get— I have to— We need to wait."

"Ruben," Allayria murmurs, hovering nearby as the Skill master yanks a city map off the table. "What's going on? What was that? I can help—"

"No," he states quickly. "No, you can't. You— Stay here. Settle things with Dost. Prepare for launch, just... wait. Until I return."

"Of course," Allayria says dubiously. "Are you sure I can't—?"

But he's already out the door.

A/N: Ruben, this is less than helpful. Sharing is caring. Fess up or we'll mess you up.

Chapter notes: Allayria breaks into Fort Morgalth with our favorite sass queen and resident thief extraordinaire Keno in Paragon's aptly named "Fort Morgalth;" Ben, no one's favorite anything, tells Allayria that ghosts can't hurt you (very suspect) in "Dead Man Talking." Qui Wren tells Allayria to send out the bat signal and he'll Lucius Fox her some digs in Partisan's "Veins Aflame" and he proves book smarts don't quite translate to street smarts when he confuses himself with an owl in "The Fox and the Owl." And the loss of my sanity and sense goes all the way back to Paragon's "Beginnings," because let's be honest, no one is reading this and I only do this as some kind of sick game with myself to see how much useless information is stored in my brain when I barely know how to open a can of peas.