Smoke found the stairs before the words did.

  Penthesilea didn't look up. She pointed at Damon with the spear, then at the door. Pointed at Anaktoria, then left of it. Took right for herself.

  "Center," she said to Ryanne.

  Ryanne didn't move.

  Penthesilea picked her up by the back of her shirt and set her between Damon's legs like another sack of grain. Ryanne stayed where she was put.

  Cassandra was already standing. She looked awful. She looked ready.

  "You're rear."

  "I know."

  "Do you know what rear means?"

  "Don't die there."

  "Close enough."

  The smoke was thickening. Athena rolled off the pallet and hit the floor with boneless grace. She resumed snoring.

  "Leave her," Penthesilea said. "She'll be fine."

  She was already facing the steps.

  "Damon."

  "Anaktoria."

  Anaktoria pulled her blade. It came out quiet. She tested the weight once, rolling her wrist.

  The smoke was getting into Ryanne's eyes. She buried her face against Damon's back. He smelled like sleepy iron.

  Daylight filtered down the tunnel. Through it, legs. Shadows stacking wood at the entrance. The crackle of something catching.

  Penthesilea took the steps three at a time.

  Anaktoria was half a beat behind her. Damon scooped Ryanne against his chest and went.

  The first Amazon at the fire didn't turn fast enough. Penthesilea's spear shaft caught her across the temple and she sat down in her fire. The woman beside her got the butt end under the chin. Teeth hit dirt.

  Anaktoria came through the smoke low. The blade opened the nearest arm from wrist to elbow and the sword it was holding clattered against the gate stones. She kicked it behind her without looking.

  Daylight. Air. Ryanne's eyes streamed.

  Damon cleared the entrance with her still pinned to his ribs. A spear came at his face. He caught the shaft with his free hand and pulled. The woman on the other end chose the spear over her footing and came with it, skull meeting knee.

  Thirty-some Amazons in the street. Some in formation. Most not. The fire detail had been the front line and the front line was already on the ground.

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  Penthesilea split the gap between formation and chaos and kept moving. An Amazon with a shield stepped into her path. Penthesilea went through the shield. Through. A crack ran along the grain and then the arm holding it.

  Sound came back. Screaming. Orders. Melanippe's voice above it all, trying to organize something that was already over.

  Anaktoria flowed. A woman swung at her head and she stepped inside the arc so the handle hit instead of the blade. Her knife went into the space between breastplate and shoulder. The woman spun in a bloody arc and Anaktoria was already past her.

  Damon was a problem. He had a child on one arm and a stolen spear in the other hand and it just didn't fucking work. A sword bit into his shoulder and Ryanne felt him grunt more than she heard it. He reversed the spear and drove it into a face.

  Ryanne looked. She shouldn't have.

  One of her mother's soldiers was sitting against a wall holding her own throat. The woman's eyes were confused. Not afraid. Just confused.

  Cassandra came out last. She had nothing. No weapon, no air, no plan. A young Amazon turned on her and Cassandra dropped flat, which wasn't a technique but worked because the sword went over her and into the doorframe. Cassandra crawled between the woman's legs and came up running, which was a better technique, since the Amazon was still trying to free her blade from the wood.

  Penthesilea had reached Melanippe.

  Her sister had the girdle on and her sword up and her stance was perfect and none of it mattered. Penthesilea feinted left. Melanippe committed. Penthesilea hooked her ankle with the spear butt and Melanippe went down on her back for the second time that morning, the air leaving her in a sound that carried across the whole street.

  Penthesilea planted a foot on her sister's sword hand. It broke with a wet snap.

  The formation collapsed inward. It was getting hard to argue with losing twice in a row.

  Anaktoria had blood up both arms and a cut on her cheek that she hadn't noticed. She put herself between Damon and the nearest group still holding weapons. Damon's shoulder was leaking steadily and Ryanne's face was pressed into the wet of it and she could feel his heartbeat in his blood.

  Cassandra was on her knees in the street, coughing up smoke.

  The street went quiet in pieces. Swords lowering one at a time. A woman in the second rank sat down and put her weapon across her knees like she'd just remembered she was tired.

  Penthesilea looked down at her sister.

  Melanippe looked up.

  "You can have the girl when she wants to go."

  Melanippe's jaw worked. "She's my daughter."

  Ryanne tapped Damon's good shoulder. He put her down. She walked between the bodies and the dropped weapons and the women still deciding whether to fight. She stopped between Penthesilea's feet and her mother's back.

  "I'm hungry," she said.

  Melanippe's face did something terrible. Amazons don't cry in front of the rank. This was not crying. This was the thing directly before it, held by nothing except the thirty women watching.

  Penthesilea took her foot off her sister's hand.

  "Everybody eats," she said. "Then we talk."

  She pulled Melanippe up by the wrist.

  Penthesilea cooked in the street on a fire that had been meant to kill them ten minutes ago.

  The Amazons sat where they'd fought. Some held their wounds. Some held each other's. Nobody had gone far.

  Anaktoria was cleaning her blade on a dead woman's cloak. Cassandra sat against the wall with her eyes closed, counting breaths. Damon let Ryanne hold the cloth against his shoulder.

  "Press harder," he said.

  She pressed harder. The cloth went dark.

  "Good."

  Her hands were shaking. His blood was warmer than the sun on the seawall.

  Melanippe sat apart from her soldiers with her sword hand curled against her chest. She hadn't spoken since Penthesilea pulled her up. The girdle sat on her hip.

  Penthesilea put bread on the fire. She'd found oil somewhere. The smell hit the street and nobody talked about what had just happened.

  She brought food out on a plank. She put portions in front of the wounded Amazons first, then the ones who could still hold things. She put bread and oil in Melanippe's lap without looking at her.

  Anaktoria ate standing up, watching the street.

  Damon ate with his left hand.

  Cassandra didn't eat.

  Penthesilea came to Ryanne last.

  She put the bread down. Oil and herbs.

  Ryanne reached for it.

  Penthesilea's hand stayed on the plate.

  Ryanne looked up.

  "Earn this."

  She let go.

  Ryanne ate.

  Below, Athena snored on.