by Jen Williams
There was paper and sand between her fingers, and nothing beneath her feet.
Wydrin took a breath, whether scream or curse she wasn’t certain, but the violence of her descent stole it from her. She was aware that she’d managed to snatch part of the Red Echo away – a handful of torn parchment and the dusty innards that made up the poor creature – and she’d heard Estenn’s sharp cry of outrage before she’d jumped, but she knew it hadn’t worked. Even as she fell the air was full of pain and heat, and then she hit the water hard enough to drive all the air from her lungs. The black-and-red sand she still clutched in her hands was washed away and she plummeted into the sea.
I failed.
The water was freezing against her fevered skin, unbearably so, but she made no real effort to swim to the surface. The weight of her weapons was bearing her down, and for the time being she felt happy for it to do so. The water was dark and silent, and above its sheltering roof there were men and women and children dying, because she had failed. The shifting light above her head was filled with the red and orange of fire, so she turned away from it, looking down into the black. Her chest was burning already, and her body ached all over from the impact with the water. Somehow, she knew that her nose was bleeding. Blood in the water, she thought, twisting down into the dark. It’s all just blood in the water.
You called? The voice was three voices in one, the sound of waves breaking against shingles, a distant roar of a forgotten tide, the silence of the undersea chasm. Three sinuous shapes slid towards her through the growing darkness. She felt no terror at the sight of them: only relief that it would be faster than drowning. Daughter of the salt, daughter of the sea. You join us again.
Even as her vision grew dark Wydrin felt some confusion at that. You haven’t met me, she said. You came to me at Sorrow’s Isle, but none of that has happened yet. Not to you.
There was a swift gurgling noise, like the sound you hear when you are dragged under by a riptide. It was, Wydrin realised, laughter of a sort.
It’s all the same to us, said the Graces. They were circling her now, an escort down into the dark. The sea doesn’t change, Wydrin of Crosshaven. The salt is ever the same. And you never listen.
Listen? Why should I listen? Wydrin watched their arrow-shaped heads, their empty eyes. You gods are all the same. I’ve had enough of it. It doesn’t matter now anyway. Let me go.
Gods? We are older than gods, salt-child. Abruptly, one of the sharks swam closer, its tawny striped hide briefly illuminated by the last of the light from above. It bumped into her, none too gently. You smell wrong. You have some sort of taint on you. We cannot abide tainted water. And you cower, and hide, and wish for it to be over.
I’m done. I failed, and now there is a city up there suffering for it. Enough is enough, and … Wydrin paused. Tainted blood. Feveroot had told her there was an infection in her blood, that it was clouding her judgement. She had turned away from Frith because of it, she had been lost and disorientated on the streets of Raistinia because of it, and now she was drowning because of it – hiding and mewling for peace like a coward, because of the madness Estenn had passed on. Abruptly her heart was hammering in her chest, and her mouth was full of water. It could already be too late.
Help me! She kicked wildly in the water. Take it from me! Quick, before I bloody die down here.
That sounds more like Wydrin of Crosshaven. The voices sounded amused now, but they were still circling, unconcerned. Salt in your blood, a storm in your belly.
You’re right! She reached out for them. There was almost no light left at all. I’ve been tainted, infected by something, but you can take it away. I demand you do this! She thought of Frith’s grey eyes. I am a child of the salt, remember? But something else has put its mark on me. Can’t you taste it?
The atmosphere in the water abruptly changed. Wydrin felt it as a drop in temperature, and her mouth was so full of the taste of salt she nearly choked.
It is true, came the voice of the Graces. The tone was considering, edging towards angry. Who would dare to take the sea’s own?
Oh some bloody idiot, I expect. Take me back! Before I bloody die down here!
It was too late. The burning in her chest had spread down her arms, and her legs felt as though they were made of lead. She tried to kick against it, to struggle against the oncoming darkness, but there was no energy left even for that. The light faded, and the Graces were lost in shadows.
There is a mark. The voice of the Graces. No, child, keep still …
There was a rush of movement through the water, and Wydrin felt her aching body buffeted by unseen shapes. She felt the roughness of their skin under her fingers, and then there was a burst of bright pain across her right cheek as the shark hide abraded away the skin there. She had lost all sense of what was happening to her, but she felt mildly aggrieved. Who was pushing her? Where was that light coming from?
You’ve a way to go yet, child of the salt.
Suddenly the roar of the sea was the roar of the wind, and Wydrin found herself lying face down on cold wet bricks. She tried to push herself up, only to find a rising torrent of seawater in her throat. When she had finished throwing that up, she stumbled to her feet and touched her fingers to her cheek. It was burning still, but it was the good clean burn of salt in a wound, and when she took her fingers away, they were bloody. And her head was clear. For the first time in what felt like an age, she was free from the spectre of Estenn’s madness. Wydrin pushed her hands back through her hair, squeezing out what water she could. She was standing on one of the stone walkways that criss-crossed the sprawling harbour of Raistinia, and ahead of her she could see the watchtower she had leapt from. Beyond that, the city was on fire. There was no sign of Y’Gria’s floating palace.
‘Right,’ Wydrin spat the last of the salt from her mouth and grinned. ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers.’
Y’Gria’s palace had left quite the dust cloud.
It had settled somewhat now, but Sebastian found that his eyes were drawn to it again and again. It was at least less painful than looking at the city of Raistinia – Feveroot had managed to bring them to the outer wall, and deposited them by what looked to be a small abandoned trading post, devoid of people but overrun with a creeping purple plant that coiled around the dusty bricks and the remains of market stalls. Beyond the wall, they could hear the chaos of the city as the mages struggled to understand what had happened. The Red Echo hadn’t been deployed with complete success – they had seen half of the deadly shadow fall away – but apparently it had been enough to cause a great deal of pain and suffering. The fires were being brought under control quickly at least, with those mages still alive producing blizzards and walls of freezing ice to control the flames. Feveroot had reported this much to them after the brief flight he had made alone over the wall. Now the demon was curled on the sand and rocks in the form of a small fox, although before it had slept it had assured them that Wydrin still lived, and was making her way to the edge of the city – he could sense her blood, apparently. After Y’Gria’s monstrous plant form and everything else they’d seen, Sebastian didn’t have the energy to question this knowledge.
Frith was sitting on a low wall, his head down, trying to regain his strength. Sebastian was reminded of their night of drinking in Two-Birds, how Frith had stumbled from the last tavern of the evening and sat down heavily, drunk as the lord he was. Reluctantly, a smile touched his face.
‘I am glad to see you alive,’ he said. ‘After we were captured by Y’Gria, I wondered if you had met a similar fate.’
‘We almost did,’ said Frith. ‘Y’Ruen, in all her terrible glory, and what appeared to be a new clutch of brood sisters.’ He paused, then shrugged. ‘An old clutch, I should say. They did not bear much resemblance to Ephemeral and her kin.’
‘Truly?’ Sebastian swallowed hard. This news chilled him for reasons he couldn’t name. ‘The magic you used back there. It didn’t look like the magic you’ve summoned from the staff before.
’
‘It wasn’t. It appears to be something I’ve been given by our journey through the Eye.’ Frith frowned, as though he would have been just as happy not to receive this particular gift. ‘A combination of the strange magic that pulled us through to this place and time, the Edeian of Euriale, and the latent knowledge I carry from Joah Demonsworn.’ Frith shrugged. ‘It is likely I will never understand it.’ He stood up, and restlessly pulled at one of the purple fronds sprouting from the wall behind him. ‘We saw Joah at Lan-Hellis. He is little more than a student now, but his ambitions are building. He is already experimenting with demons.’ He glanced down at the curled form of the being he had named Feveroot.
‘Joah? Here?’ Sebastian pushed a hand back through his hair. ‘This was his time, I suppose, and in his day he was a greatly respected mage. Even so …’ He looked at Frith, who was glaring at the brambles. ‘That must have been strange for you.’
‘An understatement,’ Frith snorted. ‘What of Oster? Do you think he lived?’
Sebastian winced at the baldness of the question. He turned back to look at the distant dust cloud, now little more than a red smudge on the horizon. He could still feel that silver thread between them, and through it he knew that Oster was still alive. For the first time, the connection felt like a blessing rather than a curse. ‘He lived.’
Frith cleared his throat. ‘Do you wish to go back for him?’ Meeting Sebastian’s surprised look, he raised an eyebrow. ‘You are fond of him, are you not? And he fought for us?’
‘Oster has his own decisions to make. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, he needs to make them on his own.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I think I’m finally starting to realise that I cannot always be responsible for those I love. They must stand or fall on their own.’
‘How touching.’
The voice came from the purple brambles. As Frith and Sebastian moved rapidly away from the broken wall, the branches began to writhe and turn in on themselves, becoming a huge, unsightly knot. And then a dark hole opened in the middle, and Sebastian saw that it was a face: a wild face of sharp thorns and thin, bruise-coloured bark. The spreading branches on the wall behind it were its unruly hair, and when it spoke again he recognised the voice.
‘My dear Oster is licking his wounds,’ said Y’Gria through bramble lips. ‘This happens with the younger ones sometimes. They become confused. They become confused, and they turn against their own families. And Oster wasn’t given his songs and stories like the rest of us were, the poor pup.’
‘What do you want?’ Sebastian was surprised by the heat of sudden anger in his own voice. ‘Do you wish us to tear you apart again?’ Next to him, Frith stood ready with his staff.
‘That? If that is your best, then you are as weak as the mages,’ said Y’Gria, although Sebastian thought her tone was too casual. ‘It was rude of you to destroy the gardens though, especially after I had shown you such hospitality. No, I only wish to tell you three things. First, that Oster has seen the error of his ways and will not be debasing himself with mortals any more.’ Sebastian looked away from the thorny face for a moment. ‘Second, that we know of the Citadel, and what your mage friends had planned. Estenn was kind enough to explain it all for me.’ The thorns writhed and twisted in on themselves, scoring the thin bark with white lines. ‘And third, we will be coming for you. My brothers and my sisters and I will descend on the fetid hole that is Krete, and we will burn you all to embers. Every person, every child and animal, every brick and stone and piece of glass will be ground down to blood and gristle and dust, in vengeance for the insult that is the Citadel. And when that’s done, we will come for the rest of your kind.’
‘Oh, do give it a rest,’ said a familiar voice. Sebastian turned to see Wydrin stalking up to them. She looked as though she’d recently taken a dunk in the sea, but the heat of Relios was rapidly drying her off.
‘You! Thief! See how your city burns now?’ crowed Y’Gria. ‘This will be nothing compared to Krete! The mages there will suffer like no one on Ede.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Wydrin. ‘Because your time is over here. Ede doesn’t need your kind any more. I don’t think it ever did.’ She walked up to the wall and unceremoniously kicked at the bramble face, thumping her big leather boot into the bricks over and over again until the branches broke into pieces and scattered onto the dry red ground. There were a few outraged squawks from Y’Gria, but within seconds her face of branches and thorns was gone, and she had no mouth to speak with. When it was done, Wydrin carefully wiped the bottom of her boots on a clean patch of ground. She turned back to them, looking sharp, amused, and very, very angry.
‘You know, I always thought she was supposed to be the nice one. That’ll teach me.’
82
Ephemeral awoke to a cloud of pain and misery. Gasping and flailing against it, she turned over, curling up into a ball. There was water soaking into her clothes, and there were small stones poking into her all over, but it was nothing to the silvery web of grief that held her. She made a choked noise, trapped by it. What is this?
‘Ephemeral?’ A cool hand on her arm, a familiar voice. ‘By all the spirits, you are alive.’
She opened her eyes. It was daylight again, a weak washed-out sort of light, and Terin stood over her. He had a nasty graze on one side of his face, and his long hair was tangled with leaves and sticks. They were in a sparse-wooded area, the flat ground covered in standing water. ‘Where is everyone?’
Terin helped her to her feet. There were a handful of dragon-kin in the clearing with them, huddled together. She reached out to them, but the pain there was still raw. Inky was at the centre of their group, holding them together, and Ephemeral felt a tiny flicker of gratitude at that, before pulling her mind away from them. It was too much.
‘You two, are you all right?’ Devinia staggered towards them. The woman looked pale, her red hair plastered to her back with black mud. ‘Have you seen …?’
Her voice trailed off, her attention caught by something Ephemeral couldn’t see. Devinia strode past them and knelt by a shape lying in the water. She went very still.
It was Augusta. The old woman had taken a hard blow to the temple, and even the floodwater hadn’t been able to wash away all the blood. Her eyelids flickered, and incredibly a ghost of a smile passed over her face.
‘Nan? Nan, are you all right?’ Devinia sounded very young. Ephemeral swayed on her feet, and she felt Terin’s arm loop around her waist.
‘Come on,’ he said, his voice a quiet breath in her ear. ‘Let’s give them some time alone.’
They moved a few steps away. Ristanov the Banshee was nearby, half leaning against the trunk of a tree. She no longer looked like anything human, but her eyes were moving wetly in her head, looking around at the saturated ground as if she didn’t know where she was. Perhaps she didn’t.
‘This is wrong,’ said Ephemeral quietly. ‘I do not like this. I can’t … There is too much sorrow.’ She shivered once, and looked around. There were other dead bodies here, the bodies of the pirates they had killed, but no sign of the great golden figure, or the red one that commanded it.
‘Any sorrow is too much,’ he said. After a little while, Devinia lowered her head and sat unmoving for a time. Terin left Ephemeral then and went to the red-headed pirate’s side, speaking soft words. Together, they moved Augusta’s body, finding a raised piece of ground the water hadn’t reached. There, Terin spoke more words – Ephemeral couldn’t hear them, watching instead the sorrow and the kindness on her husband’s face – while Devinia collected rocks to cover up the body. Eventually, Devinia stood alone over Augusta’s makeshift cairn, her face set and still, while Terin returned to Ephemeral’s side, his head down.
‘Augusta Grint was kind to me.’ Ephemeral felt like the words floated from her mouth, strange and inadequate. ‘She was curious, and she did not think we were monsters. Why would this happen? Why?’
Terin just shook his head. After
some small time had passed, Devinia left the cairn and, splashing through the water, went over to the sorry shape that was Ristanov the Banshee. Without saying anything to her, or to either of them, she wrapped both hands around the woman’s head and twisted sharply to the left. There was a brittle crack, too loud in the dripping forest, and Ristanov the Banshee, Mayor of Two-Birds, slumped lifelessly to one side. Devinia stood up, wiping her hands on her trousers. Her eyes were dry.
‘We carry on to the centre,’ she said. ‘We go there now.’
83
‘You are looking better.’
They had made a small camp away from the abandoned trading post and its collection of brambles, building a fire as the sun turned the west into a confusion of red and orange light. The city appeared to have its own flames under control, and the thick pall of smoke was gradually being blown out to sea. Frith thought it likely that the people of Raistinia would never know how close they had come to being wiped out in one terrible moment. And perhaps that was for the best.
‘Do you think so?’ Wydrin smirked at him, her green eyes merry, and it was so unlike the Wydrin who had turned away from him on Umbria that he felt his heart soar. ‘Because I feel like every inch of the sea lined up to give me a beating.’
‘You look more yourself,’ he said firmly. ‘And the mark on your face has changed.’
The livid red mark on Wydrin’s cheek had been replaced with a silver smudge – it looked as though she had been dusted with the powder of some exotic moth’s wing. Much of the time it looked to be the colour of steel, but then she would move and it glittered faintly, like starlight on the sea.
‘It has?’ She reached up to touch it, and looked faintly puzzled. Smiling, he pressed his own fingers lightly to the mark. It felt no different to the rest of her skin.
‘It is silver now,’ he said. ‘What is it?’
She smiled back at him ruefully. ‘A warning, or a promise, or just a way of saying I belong to them. Probably all of the above.’ When he opened his mouth to ask more questions, she leaned forward and stopped him with a kiss. ‘I am sorry about everything that happened before,’ she said when she drew away. ‘It wasn’t me, not really. I mean, what Estenn did to me, it took a small part of me and made it blot everything else out. I was full of fear. Frozen with it.’