They slid out among toppled pillars and the half-sunken ribs of some old monument, the sea was a white roar somewhere below. Ruins, indeed—hat-topped statues, algae-scored, the bones of a hall where hands once carved names into the stone.

  The cover here was good.

  From the broken crown of the one statue, Idalia could see the skiffs: three low-hulled boats tethered to posts, bobbing in a small cove where the reef kept the worst of the surf at bay. Two watchtowers loomed along the northern spit; a half-dozen men paced along the beach, lamps swinging.

  "Two towers," Kelix noted. "Three skiffs. Sentries are spaced every twenty paces along the sand. The central skiff appears to be a supply run. If we take its mooring lines, the others will drift. Take one net and two oars each, and don't sing the tide."

  Idalia's eyes went straight to the nearest skiff. It smelled like salt and rope and wax and, faintly, the iron tang of the men who used it. Her claws scraped the ruin's floor. "Can I—" She started, voice soft as a cave whisper.

  "No," Kelix cut in, faster than her hope could form. "No eating the skiff. No climbing the hull and biting it. Not until we reach the island."

  Idalia's shoulders hunched. "You are still a meanie," she hissed.

  He looked at her, then at the patrols. "I know what I'm doing. Listen to me now. You do the distraction, and I take the boat."

  "A distraction?" Her brow furrowed. "You mean—make them look at me?"

  Kelix's lip quirked. "Exactly. You will use something loud and terrible that doesn't bite anything alive. Roar the cliff, topple a statue, make the sand shake. They come running. They leave the skiffs lighter."

  Her face split into a grin the size of a canyon. "Roar?" she breathed. The word was a promise. "I can make a roar so big the sea will hold its breath." She imagined the sound, a yellow-tinged shockwave in her throat. A portal-roar the size of mountains. It made her tail twitch.

  "Not a Portal Roar," Kelix said, hurried now. "Not that loud. A cliff-shake. Enough to look like the ruins are giving way. They send a cordon to the rocks for safety, not to boats. You can do that without opening a second hole in space."

  Idalia's tail thumped the stone in a tempo of consideration. "Okay," she decided. "I will make them run like small lizards. But if one of them has a smell of cinnamon, I will eat it. You cannot stop me forever."

  Kelix's fingertips sparked, a faint curtain of white. "Try me," he said, flatly amused. "And if you eat one, we will not leave by skiff. We will leave on foot. You won't like that either."

  She gave a mock-sob, high and dramatic. "No! I hate walking!"

  Kelix's mouth softened for half a breath. "Good," he said. "Then let's keep our teeth for the island."

  They crept down the moss-dark steps toward the broken stair that led to the cove. Idalia's feet barely made sound against cracked stone. The world smelled close and huge: tar, algae, the faint metallic current of Kelix's own small lightning bleeding from his rod. The men on the beach were mere silhouettes—two leaning over a rope, one checking the hull—human shapes hunched and very mortal.

  Kelix squinted, reading the currents, gauging the angle of the patrols like someone reading weather through a glass. "On my mark," he breathed. "You stomp the north buttress. Make it believable but not a ruin. Make them think the ground is falling."

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  Idalia's claws dug in. She prepared a small, controlled thunder in her belly, the kind that vibrated stones but didn't open holes in the sky. Her mouth formed the shape. Her heart thumped in a rhythm like a drum again.

  He watched her, expression unreadable, then nodded once. "Now."

  She let the sound out. It wasn't her biggest feat—Kelix had forbidden that—but it had weight enough to push a flock of birds out of an old column and make the sand at the tide-line tremble. A low, rolling thunder that sounded like a giant rolling a boulder as a plaything. Lanterns swung. Heads turned.

  The two guards nearest the cliff spun, shouting. Footfalls pounded as the patrol alarmed toward the ruins.

  "Now," Kelix said in a whisper.

  As Idalia retreated into a portal to avoid detection—Kelix slid down the last stones, moving with the soft precision of someone who'd stolen sleep from danger for years. He reached the skiff, a narrow thing with a low gunwale and a shallow keel, and slid into the shadows beside it. The ropes were taut and old; he worked them like a wirer—knot, slack, pull. He was a shadow, a hand of lightning, cutting lines.

  Idalia felt the pride in her chest like a fresh hare. The taste of victory—salt, victory—brushed her tongue. She listened to the men shout and the drum of boots moving inland. Her claws twitched with the temptation to leap into the surf and tear the boat in two and show the men what happened when rocks fed on their supplies.

  But she didn't. She gnawed the wind and held back. She'd been given three rhinos; she had grown; she wanted the island.

  Kelix hauled the skiff free, nudging it to angle with the current. He glanced back once at Idalia, half-expecting betrayal.

  She only smiled and watched the men go. The north watchtower's light swung away. So did their attention.

  Kelix stepped into the skiff and pushed off. The movement sent a ripple across the cove. The skiff drifted, then caught the undercurrent between two black reefs and slid like a shadow toward the deeper water. Kelix rowed with the slow, sure strokes of someone who had learned to use the current instead of fight it.

  Idalia bounded behind him on the rocks for one last look. The mouth in her chest that had wanted to eat everything was quiet, full of new metal-taste and the memory of the three meteorhinos. She scraped her claws along the hull but stopped short of biting.

  "Come on," Kelix murmured. "In the skiff. Now."

  She considered the taste of Kelix's hair again and shuddered—pleased not to have to repeat that lesson. Then she leapt, compact and solid, and landed with the kind of soft sound a falling boulder makes when it chooses not to crush.

  The boat dipped, and Kelix set oars. The reef scraped like a whisper. Behind them, the patrol's shouts were rising—discovery, not yet panic, but getting there.

  Idalia felt the water's breath against her snout and the spray on her scales. Her chest filled with salt, and an excited growl rolled up from deep inside.

  "Next stop," Kelix said, eyes forward, "a short ride, a few tricks, and then the island. Like the strong ones you sensed—there's an orange—will be on the dock or in the command tower. I'll find him. You—" He looked at her, half warning, half promise. "You keep your teeth under your tongue until I say otherwise."

  Idalia scowled delightfully. "You are the worst with snacks, Kelix. But I will be a very quiet thunder. For now."

  Kelix's smile was small and something like fondness. "Good. We'll need you quiet—and alive."

  The skiff slipped past the reef, into shadowed open water. Lantern fire winked behind them as the guards turned back toward the ruin. The island rose like a dark tooth on the horizon, its lights small and suspicious.

  Idalia settled low in the skiff, her tail folded tight, pulse thrumming with anticipation. Her belly hummed too, but it was quieter now—full of the taste of meteorhino and the memory of the runes, and something else: the hunger for a fight that Kelix could not satisfy with hair or ash.

  She watched the island grow closer, the men on the docks small and precise, and thought of the dark-yellow life force she had seen in the tent. Her teeth tingled at the idea of it.

  But orange, Kelix had said.

  Kelix's hands tightened on the oars. "When we land," he said softly, more to himself than to her, "we do it clean. We get to the base and we leave with what we came for."

  Idalia leaned her head against the gunwale and let the night salt wash her. "And then I eat everything on the island," she said.

  Kelix's laugh was a flash like a star. "No. Not everything."

  She stuck out her tongue at him. "Then we'll take turns. I take the island, you take the maps."

  "Agreed," he said. "For now, be quiet."

  She closed her eyes and listened to the tide—an impatient, hungry song—while the skiff cut the dark toward the mercenary docks and the bright, dangerous heart of the island.