Firefly | Shelha Series 5 | ✔

Chapter Seventy-Eight: Goodbye

The next day was cooler than the last few. Instead of the sun and clear blue they had been getting used to, grey clouds brooded over the sky. The Coppertails were left in their cages. Sethral noted every motion and feature of the canyon with the intensity of far premature adrenaline, trying to map her plan onto the shifting reality of guards and tunnels and the swarms of bubble-creatures that seemed to have filled the canyon overnight. Spear-knocker was more distracted than usual. Sethral, Loki and Silversand were put away early, and Sethral was able to pirate an extra pair of maggots back to the cages without getting caught. She had Taz pass them to Ryatzi.

"The storm's coming," said Taz. He could hardly stop twitching. "Are you sure Dusk's going to take care of Phoenix?"

Sethral dug out the piece of bark she had hidden in her fur and tossed it to him. Dusk's scent still lingered on it, and its back was marked with an X cut by a knife. "He left that in the tunnel entrance we'd have to take to get Pheo. Unless I'm interpreting completely wrong, we're being told to stay out of it."

Taz turned the bark over several times, then sighed. "I trust him with that more than I trust myself, but I still don't like this. What if they get caught in our half of the plan?"

"Well, I left a snip of our plan where he left this, so with luck he'll figure it out and act accordingly. Also, we're going to be drawing a crowd before I set it off, so chances are that's when he'll make a break for it."

She climbed the cage vines and checked for the dozenth time that the shell bowl was ready. It was now stocked with a ball of tinder and a sheaf of dried herbs—the cataract grey knockout smoke mix they had robbed off the pair of would-be ship robbers Watersinger had encountered in the Lowlands. She had been carrying it around ever since, just in case.

"I'm really glad you're a hoarder," said Taz.

"I'm going to take that as a compliment." Sethral jumped to the ground as a white Watermouse appeared on the path by Silversand's cage. The creature just climbed the cages and ran up the wall. She had a bow at the ready.

"Buckthorn, what are the creatures here scared of up there?"

"Aria and Coppertails," said the big Saggitayria with a yawn. "They severed a major Canyonlander route when they set up this colony here, and the Coppertails have been fighting them for it for generations." He knocked a claw on the stone. "This ledge we're on right here used to be Coppertail territory."

"Why would Coppertails live in the canyons?"

"Because it's safer than the ground."

That was fair. Sethral checked for white Watermice again and meandered over to the cage wall she shared with Buckthorn. She tugged the vines gently, breaking the sap that had started to harden and seal their severed ends back together. In the far cages, Firebrand kept watch while Loki worked covertly on the last cage wall separating the renegades.

It started to get dark earlier than it should have. Loki got through the wall and passed Sethral's knife back. She had already picked the spot on the front of her cage: a more loosely woven section where a single severed vine would open a gap large enough for Whipper to get through. He wriggled into her cage just as the vine parted with a pop.

"You ready for this?" said Sethral.

"I think so."

She hugged him to test that statement, but he did feel ready. She handed him her tiny knife with its flint attached, and her tinder bag with the last of her tinder. "You remember where I told you to go?"

She heard him nod. He was a shadow in the darkness, dropping to a flowing slink as she pulled back the vine on the cage front. In a heartbeat he was gone. Sethral began to count heartbeats. No alarms were raised as a hundred passed, then two hundred. At three hundred, she smelled the smoke in the air. Someone in the canyon shouted, and the guards along the cage ledge disappeared.