by Shannon Hale
“Well, I thank you, then. Your, uh, river fingers saved my life. My friend Isi would call it the gift of water-speaking.”
“It does not seem like a gift. It killed my grandfather.”
“What? Killed your . . . How?”
Dasha searched Razo’s eyes, and he straightened, tried to look as trustworthy as possible. The walls of the shack groaned again, a creak of wood as hard and distinct as a word. Dasha led Razo to the center of the room, sat beside him, and told her story.
“When I was six, after the death of my mother, I lived in the country under the care of my grandfather. That was the year he first told me about river fingers. He told me one had to be born to the talent in order to learn, and he sensed that, unlike my father, I had ability. His own mother had taught him; then before she died she forbade him to use it. He had obeyed her until he had a companion in the art.”
Dasha harvested another water drop from the air, and she watched it sadly, as if it were a dead thing. “Grandfather could touch the dry creek shore and call the water to flood the banks or on a cloudy day ask the rain to fall. How it used to make me laugh!”
Razo became conscious again of the torrent on the roof, like fingernails scratching metal.
“When I was ten, my father brought me to Ingridan, where I was always afraid someone would guess what I could do. Even then, I sensed the wisdom in Grandfather’s insistence on secrecy. Three years later, I returned to the country to find Grandfather looking haggard. At first I thought he was simply sad because he missed me.” Dasha’s laugh was bitter. Her fingers plucked at her skirt.
“One morning I sat at my window and saw Grandfather sneak away toward the creek. I thought he was off for a bit of fun!” Her voice cracked.
“So I followed . . .” She cleared her throat. “I followed him. Quietly, in bare feet. I stayed behind a bush, excited to catch him at some new river fingers trick. I remember he was sweating, or at least his face and arms were drenched, and he was muttering, ‘Coming, I’m coming. . . .’He did not hesitate, just walked right into the creek and let himself fall. Not like he was going swimming, more like he was going to bed. The current pulled him down.
“I chased after him, Razo, I did, and when I couldn’t find him, I ran into the water to listen—it sparked images in my mind of an otter upstream, of fish and crawfish and grubs, and trees that bowed themselves into the creek. No whisper of Grandfather. At the time I didn’t understand. Now, I believe the river could no longer detect a difference between him and water.”
Razo put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned in to him, her head resting against his neck. It made him sigh in relief—he did not like listening to someone else’s pain without doing something to make it better. “Did you ever find him?”
“Downstream,” she said blankly. “His body had washed ashore, drowned. The water had lied. He had sought to join it completely, but dead, he was still just a man.”
Razo listened to the rain trying to find a way in. “Could that happen to you?”
“Yes.”
“Soon?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what happened to Grandfather. Maybe he used his talent too much, so I avoid it. But I want to use it, all the time, and it feels so natural when I do. A relief. But I’m afraid, too.” She sat up so she could see Razo’s face. “I know it’s Enna, Razo.”
Cold rushed from his belly up into his face. It was hard to play casual there in that scrap of a shelter with the storm tearing at the roof, Dasha’s story still slumping around their shoulders, sad and strange, a tired ghost.
“What’s Enna?” he asked.
“Enna is the fire-witch. I’d hoped your fire-witch might come with the Bayern, and so I volunteered to be the liaison. When I get close enough to touch, the water in the air can tell me who has a peculiar heat swirling about. I wanted . . . Please, Razo, don’t think ill of me, I can see that little frown between your brows and your thoughts full of doubt now. . . . I wanted to meet the fire-witch, I thought she might give me a chance. Am I a fool?”
That was not a question Razo was eager to answer. Dasha sighed.
“My grandfather collected books with any mention of river fingers. I’ve been studying them and found out about the fire worshippers in Yasid, people who could spark fire from air. One author believed they could also call rain down.”
The parchment in her room, he thought.
“They lived without struggling against the call of water, in harmony with water and fire. I thought if Enna could teach me . . .”
“You want Enna to teach you fire?” He did not try to deny it anymore.
“These past months, I have been hoping to make her friendship. I try to be where she will be, but I also fear that she will sense in me the river fingers as I sensed the fire in her. It’s funny, I feel at ease addressing the assembly, but around Enna I am all shaking knees and dry mouth. It’s easier when you’re around. You make people relax, you know that?”
“Really?”
First Talone tells him that he has the keen eye of a spy, then he is the best slinger Finn ever saw, and now he makes people relax. Why did everyone take so long to tell him these things? The best any of his brothers ever said was that he did not stink as sour as their third oldest brother, Thein, who after a day chopping wood reeked like a twice dead skunk.
“I was so happy when she came on that beach ride with us, but I guess . . .” Dasha shrugged. “For many, the war is hard to forget.”
“So what were you doing by the river today?”
“Following Tumas. One night when I was trying to get up the courage to go to Enna’s room and talk to her, I saw him climbing a tree, peering into her window. I fetched a palace guard, but when we returned he was gone. His intent might have been pure lechery, but I was afraid he might know what I know. I daydreamed that if I could figure out what Tumas knew and was able to tell Enna, then she might be grateful, she would think me . . .” Dasha shrugged, shy. “I was in the heart today and saw him heading down a side street alone. I’d lost him and was walking back up the Rosewater when I came upon you. Did Tumas kill that person?”
“I don’t know.” He had never told Finn and Enna his mandate from Talone, but inside that small, dry space, surrounded by an invasion of rain, telling Dasha felt like the safest thing in the world. “It’s the sixth one found like that, burned, abandoned, though usually they’re left near the Bayern, to cast suspicion, I think. To incite the people and push the assembly to vote for war.” He sighed. “I’ll talk to Enna. I’ll ask her to teach you.”
“Thank you, tree rat.”
Razo leaned his cheek into the top of her head, smiling at how nice it felt, trying to ignore how his stomach pinched together at the thought of his intended conversation with a certain fire-witch.
In the sundown after rain, the eastern horizon was pale yellow and the clouds rich blue, as though the sky had pulled inside out. Razo walked home, his arm still around Dasha’s shoulders, and thought he rather knew how the sky felt.
20
One Week
Are you insane?”
Enna paced. The night air that blew through her slatted shutters was cool with the memory of the rainstorm. It did not calm her much. “She’s Tiran! They’re trying to kill us, already succeeded with Veran.”
“Enna, please,” said Razo. “Dasha figured out you’re a fire-speaker on her own, and the fact she hasn’t told anyone’s a good sign, right? She could get overwhelmed by the water speech, just like you were with fire. She could die. If she had the balance of both water and fire like you do with wind and—”
“Razo, I spent weeks prisoner to a Tiran who had a prettier tongue than your Dasha, and he flattered me and took care of me and made me believe I was his friend, his . . .” She glanced at Finn, then hurried on. “What he wanted in return was to learn fire speech, said it would make the Tiran general trust me, that it was for my good, for Bayern’s good. I almost did it! He didn’t really care about me or Bayern, n
one of them do. If you’re set on being the fool, Razo, I’ll not stand by and watch. I can’t”—her voice broke—“live that nightmare again.”
Finn frowned. “Maybe she could go to Yasid. . . .”
“What, do you want a Tiran to learn fire and come burning down our doors? Besides, the people I met there, they were very particular about who they would teach. Go ahead and send her to the desert and tell her good riddance.”
Finn took Enna’s hand. “Enna, you don’t have to teach her anything, but if you just talk—”
Enna ripped loose from Finn’s grip and stormed out the door, Finn at her heels.
“That went well,” Razo muttered to himself.
He met Dasha in the courtyard under the grasping sweet scent of lime trees in their autumn bloom. She stood when he approached, clasping her hands.
“And?”
Razo rubbed his hair. “Dasha, Enna is, she . . .”
“She is not going to help me,” she said, her tone empty.
“Enna’s not a bad sort. It’s just that she’s been hurt before, betrayed in a foul way by a Tiran fellow—”
“I understand. How can she trust me? Of course she can’t. Well, it was just a hope. Maybe there will be some other way.”
Her tone was light and sincere, her smile full of enthusiasm. Razo knew Enna had been overcome by fire nearly to the point of death before she and Isi could get to Yasid and find balance. He did not have much hope for some other way.
“Listen, Enna may change her mind . . . well, maybe she’ll . . . that is, if only . . .”
Dasha laughed lightly. “Razo, you’re a mess! Don’t worry about me.”
But he could not help it. Besides, if Dasha was innocent, a murderer was still out there, unknown. He felt an unpleasant, squirmy prickle, not unlike when his brothers dropped a fern spider down his shirt.
“Enna’s loyal, deep as her bones’ bones,” said Razo. “If she knew you, she’d trust you. Help me figure out who’s behind the burning and stop them, and Enna’ll change her mind. She’ll believe then that you’re a friend to Bayern.”
Dasha’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. “Will it be dangerous?”
“Oh, I guess, now that you mention it, that it might—”
“Sounds like fun.”
When Razo reported to Talone in his chamber the next morning, he ended his story after rolling the body into the river, omitting the part where he confided his role as spy and the discovery of six bodies to the most likely suspect, who also happened to have water-speaking and knew about Enna and quite possibly was Bayern’s biggest threat. Razo swallowed nervously, then belched air. He knew he was a terrible liar, but Talone seemed too preoccupied to notice.
“The assembly has decided to vote on the war matter in one week.” Talone stood, resting his arms on the windowsill. “Despite a shift in public opinion with those who remained in Ingridan over the summer, the majority of citizens are still angry about the end of the war, still chanting for a second chance. There have been six burned bodies so far. Unless there’s a dramatic change, unless the public turns against Manifest Tira and the body burner is found and stopped, Lord Belvan believes the assembly will vote for war.”
Razo opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Talone nodded, agreeing with what Razo did not say.
“And if in the meantime another body is discovered,” said Talone, rubbing his eyes, “Belvan suggested we depart Tira in the night.”
“One week?” The cost of telling Dasha the truth just rose, higher than Razo could pay. He stood beside Talone, resting his elbows on the sill, and stared at the strips of outside activity he could see between the shutter slats.
His fingertips and toes were tingling. Usually this would be the moment where he would tell Talone everything and sit back while the captain decided what to do. Was it only yesterday that Razo had won a wrestling match against that Manifest Tira dagger boy? He felt the possibilities of other victories ticking the pulse in his neck, making his muscles long to run.
“One week.” Razo looked Talone dead in the eye. He felt excited and hopeful, and at the same time terrified and unsure, but for once he knew his expression betrayed nothing but confidence. “I’ll do it, Captain. Before they vote, I’ll figure it all out.”
It was a ridiculous promise, and he felt like a little boy sticking a ring of pinecones on his head and declaring himself king. But he’d said it, and now his blood sped with the hope of, What if I really can do it? What if I do?
He left without another word and went to find Dasha. An ache like a lead ball in his gut told him that Dasha could be playing him like a harp, nudging him to sing out just the tune she wanted, making him think he was creating his own music. But he believed she was innocent. He had made his choice.
Razo took Dasha to the most private place he knew in Thousand Years. While trailing Tumas last spring, he had discovered an empty barracks. The inside smelled fusty and sour, of spilled wine and bedclothes abandoned in a rush, a patina of dust drowsing over everything. The building stood white and cold and barren, a memorial to some of the hundreds of Tiran soldiers who would never return from the battlefields of Bayern. Had they been burned? Razo scratched his calf with a toe. A footstep in the dirt of the training circle meant someone had been here recently, but on looking again, Razo thought it might have been made by his own sandal.
On the abandoned training ground, he began to teach Dasha the sling, having noticed that people talk more easily when their hands are occupied. While she tried out a few stones, he stayed behind her, his arm across her back, his hand around her wrist. His chin touched her hair. The first time the stone left the sling in a more or less straight line, Dasha screeched with joy.
“You’re not doing something tricky?” asked Razo. “Making it fly straight by using water . . . somehow?”
“No.” Dasha’s fingernail traced the middle of the braided sling as she thought. “I wonder if I . . . if the water . . . No, I don’t see how. I might be able to do the reverse—weigh down a stone with water, make it go off course.”
“That was a pretty good shot, then. Try it on your own.” Razo kept his hand on her waist a moment before stepping back. “I’m uneasy about the body we found by the river. Usually they’re dumped near the Bayern barracks or stable, and once by our camp. Seems like Tumas—if it was Tumas—got interrupted. That means he’d some other plan.”
“You don’t think it was him?” Dasha winced as her stone slumped out of her sling.
“Seems likely, but neither of us actually saw him with the body. Do you know him? Any reason why he’d want to pin burning deaths on Bayern besides that he’s just a nasty-fingered, putrid-breathed, nose-breaking mud eater?”
“None that I know of, though that list of attributes alone might be enough to convict him.”
“The location of the bodies, especially the first one, makes me think it might be someone in Captain Ledel’s company.”
“What about the captain himself? Fly straight, you stupid stone! He lost a brother in the Battle of Ostekin Fields.”
Razo sat up. Dasha’s stone hit a tree stump. “Good shot! A brother? Was he killed by soldiers or burned?”
“I’m not certain, but that was not all. Captain Ledel was the leader of the southern forces in Bayern and stood to advance considerably when Tira occupied. I had heard some rumors that he would be second in command over all occupation forces—that was, of course, before the war was lost. The leader of Tiran forces in Bayern, Captain Tiedan, was executed for his failure. I suppose Captain Ledel is lucky he was just demoted to a twenty captain.”
“I wonder if he’d consider himself lucky.” Razo scratched marks into the dirt. If it smells like bacon, it’ll taste like bacon, his ma used to say. “But Ledel swears by order, following the proper rules of war and all that. Wouldn’t sneaking and murdering during peacetime be against his rules?”
“I would think so,” said Dasha.
“He just doesn’t strike me as the kin
d who could murder people, burn them like that. And he’s got a tight leash on his men. Even Tumas seems afraid to jump without his approval. I can’t imagine his soldiers would do something as involved as burn other Tiran and blame it on the Bayern without their captain’s permission. It all doesn’t click together in my head.”
“What about Victar, Assemblyman Rogis’s son?” said Dasha. Thwack! went her stone against wood.
“Uh, are you aiming for that particular tree?”
She looked at him over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “I am now.”
“In that case, excellent shot. Why’d you ask about Vic-tar? He seems like a good sort, and he’s been friendly kind with me.”
“I don’t know him myself, but my father mentioned once that Rogis was one of the loudest voices in support of invasion.”
“Aw, not Victar. I like him,” said Razo, jumping up to put more stones in Dasha’s outstretched hand. “But he does have a touch of the radical in him, does Victar, goes his own way, never looks at Ledel for approval.” Razo scratched his chin a bit harder than needed. “Wait, um, he didn’t go to his father’s country estate this summer, did he? I think I heard that he and his father are estranged. Maybe they disagreed about the war.”
Thwack! “That actually was the place I was aiming for! Heard it from whom?”
“One of the girls in the pastry kitchen.”
Plop, her stone fell to the ground. “Heard it how? Did you just ask them?”
“We talk, me and the pastry girls. We’re friendly.” Not that he’d been there recently, what with pastries that killed large dogs.
“Friendly?”
“As in friends. I’m friends with the girls in the kitchens, friendly kind of friends.”
“Oh, I see.” Dasha flicked the sling over his shoulder. “Thanks for the practice. I’ll ask around, see what else I can find out about Captain Ledel and his men.”