The Water Thief

by Jane Kindred

  “I drowned, Sebastian. I believe I know what it’s like.”

  “So you’d have me drown nightly. For what? How will that stop him? It’s giving him what he wants.”

  “To give you time to devise our revenge and to build your strength. If you reveal yourself to him now, he will never be stopped, never be made to pay for what he’s done. He will put you back in All Fates, and he will take our power from you by force just as he’s always done. And you will still drown every night—for the rest of your life. Think, Sebastian. Could you endure it?”

  I thought of the prospect of knowingly submitting to what I’d experienced tonight, facing it consciously, even once more. It was unbearable. “If I were drugged and didn’t know it was happening, perhaps I could. Perhaps you should have left me at All Fates. All of you should have just left me alone.” I was too dizzy to keep standing and pacing. I collapsed onto the bed, once again willing down the surge of bile rising within me.

  “Sebastian.” August leaned forward and placed a hand on my knee—a very solid hand. She hadn’t touched me since that first night of my escape. I thought I’d imagined it—in those moments when I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced I hadn’t also imagined her. “You called me. You conjured my ghost. I came because you needed me. Because you were dying in that place. Giving up. I will not abandon you. Nor will I accept that I have died in vain and allow Emrys Pryce to triumph.”

  I put my head in my hands. “I don’t understand what you want me to do.”

  “I want you to be patient.” She removed her hand. “It will all come together. Take this time to learn to use our gift. You’ll feel the water now, all around you. You’ll hear it speak to you, wanting to do your bidding. You are no longer sleeping.”

  “I wish I was,” I murmured fervently into my hands. “I wish I’d never awoken.”

  “Milady! Are you ill?”

  I raised my head at Abigail’s startled voice. August was gone. Abigail hurried in and came to my side, feeling my pulse at my wrist and putting the back of her hand to my forehead.

  “I’m fine, Abbie. Please. Don’t fuss.”

  Abigail let go of me. “You feel all right.” She observed the front of my nightgown and the dampened coverlet. “Was it something you ate didn’t agree with you?”

  “Must have been.”

  “Come on. Up. Off with that.” She drew me to my feet and began working the nightgown up to my shoulders. “By the Fates.” She shook her head as she pulled the gown over my head. “Look what that no-good diawl did to you.” I started, thinking for a moment she knew everything, but she gently prodded the massive bruise that now looked like a hideous, misshapen flower in a palette of yellows and greens with a deep purple stigma at its center—the point, no doubt, of Siors’s riding boot.

  “It only looks worse now it’s healing,” I assured her. “It doesn’t hurt as much.”

  “I just hope he didn’t bust something inside you. If you’re bleeding inside, if something ruptured, that’s very bad. Could be why you were ill.” She continued to prod, more firmly now, moving her fingertips lower and applying pressure against my internal organs.

  I moved her hand away. “I’m fine. I promise.” Thin rays of light from the sun just beginning to peek over the horizon in the shuttered window at my back reflected in the mirror over her head. “What are you doing up so early?”

  Abigail made a disgruntled noise as she fetched another nightgown for me and helped me put it on, though I needed no help. “The servants in Llys Mawr are up before dawn every morning, milady.” She gathered up the coverlet and my nightgown, tying the bundle off at the top to take it to the wash. “I believe there’s another blanket in the chest. I’ll put it on the bed for you when I get back.”

  “There’s no need, Abbie. I’ve got it.” I opened the chest and found the blanket for myself. After climbing back into bed, I pulled the warm covers up to my chest, trying to ignore the panic that lying in this bed induced, bringing back the memory of what Emrys had done to me in it less than an hour ago. How could I ever close my eyes and sleep again?

  “Get some rest, dear,” said Abigail softly from the door. “I’ll handle everything else.”

  My eyes closed despite my fear. The drug was winning, and there was nothing I could do about it. “You do know I’m not a little girl?” I murmured.

  “Ah, hush, milady.” Abigail’s voice was warm with affection. “You’ll always be my little lady. I don’t care what else happens.”

  * * * * *

  Mercifully, I slept without dreams—at least none that I remembered—and didn’t wake until almost noon.

  Sven sat reading beside me, and he set the book down when I stirred, peering at me with concern. “Abigail says you fell ill this morning. Think maybe we should get you to a real doctor?” He looked a bit uncomfortable. “Maybe I got a little too eager with you too soon.”

  “Don’t worry. It wasn’t you.” I hadn’t thought about what I would tell him, or whether I would tell him. “Do you believe in magic, Sven?”

  “Magic?” He gave me a puzzled smile, trying to follow my seeming change of subject.

  “The old legends say Cantre’r Gwaelod was swallowed up by the sea because of the negligence of a well spirit. Do you believe there are people who can…affect the elements? The water?”

  Sven shrugged and sat back. “Don’t know about affecting elements, but I believe the legend. Cantre’r Gwaelod did disappear from the upper realms.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  He smiled a bit secretively. “It’s funny. No one ever asks me where I’m from. But I’ve been there. The upper realms. It’s where I come from.”

  I sat up straight, studying his face sharply to see if he was ribbing me. “How could you be from some other realm? What do you mean?”

  “There are ways to travel between them, sinkholes that open up in the limestone bedrock in that other place. Can’t always get back, though. Maybe can’t at all. Doesn’t matter to me. I found it agreeable in Cantre’r Gwaelod, so I never tried to find my way back.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “I’d never lie to you, Sly.”

  “What’s the name of your realm?”

  “I came through from a place called Great Orme in the north of Wales—that’s the realm Cantre’r Gwaelod was lost from. But my people are from Sweden. It’s cold country, and dark during much of the winter, but very long days in summer. Some things I miss about it. Some I don’t.”

  I shook my head, dazed by this new revelation and these unfamiliar names. “Your family?”

  “My family’s here. Abbie and Jewel. Ifan. Glyn and Bryn. And you, Sly.” For some reason, this made me fidget with discomfort. I’d never been anyone’s family except August’s. Sven smiled. “You’re looking at me like I’m some sort of alien creature. Suppose I am, though, eh? In a manner of speaking. It’s not like we’re a different race.”

  “No, of course not. It’s just…strange. I never thought I’d meet someone from the mythical upper realms.”

  “Was that what you meant by magic, then? Traveling between the realms?”

  Upon reflection, it didn’t seem wise to tell him everything I’d learned last night. There was still so much I didn’t know myself. “I suppose so, yes. It was just something Macsen said about commanding the waters of Cantre’r Gwaelod. He was teasing me about this Water Thief everyone’s talking about.”

  “Commanding the waters.” Sven was thoughtful. “Imagine people would pay dear for that power, wouldn’t they? Give that Emrys something to think about, anyway. Maybe even open the passage to the upper realms.”

  Opening the passage… Was that what Emrys meant to do? Had he done it already? Though it went against every instinct I had and terrified me like nothing I’d ever experienced, I would have to do as August recommended. I would have to let the
violent theft of my magic continue if I was going to understand what was happening at Llys Mawr, and I would have to be conscious for it, pretending to take the tincture in my tea and brandy. I would have to find a way to endure it.

  * * * * *

  That night, however, I didn’t have to. Once again, the Water Thief had struck, and Emrys was livid. He retired to his private quarters and locked himself in, swearing and throwing things about, as Sven and Abigail reported to me later. I lay awake after pretending to drink my toddy, waiting in dread for the sound of the door being unlatched, but it never came. I slept at last from sheer exhaustion, and when I woke in the morning realizing Emrys hadn’t come, I began to look forward to more breaches by the Water Thief.

  It was a temporary reprieve, of course. The following night, Emrys was back, and I steeled myself not to react as he began his ritual. This time he spoke to me as Macsen had while he prepared me, apparently hoping it would seep into my subconscious and make me more amenable to what he meant to do to me.

  “Swallow it, August,” he ordered. “Don’t fight.”

  I did my best to remain passive and submit, pushing down the fear as he pushed down the glass tube. As repugnant as it was, if I thought of it as an unpleasant sexual encounter being forced upon me at All Fates, perhaps I could get through it. Don’t fight. Always the same advice.

  He muttered as he worked on me, as if to himself. “I suppose you’re my Water Thief.” It was an effort not to react. “Somehow you must be doing it. Maybe you’d be best kept in a cage like your brother.”

  The water flowed in, and it took all my concentration not to resist. I could do this. I’d done it before. No matter how contrary to my instincts, I could do it. I had to. Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes from the effort and ran down into my ears, but Emrys didn’t seem to notice. I tried to focus on feeling the power instead of the violation as the sensation of something leaving my body coiled through me. I was relinquishing that power—for now. But it was mine. And now that I’d felt it, I knew with certainty I could conjure it again if I needed it. This was not finite. This was a part of me.

  Emrys took only a single vial from me this time, apparently distracted by his obsession with the Water Thief. “I’ll find out how you’re doing it.” The tube came away, and he wiped my chin of the last of the water I’d coughed up from my lungs. “Despite your sex, it seems you were the stronger of Aled’s whelps. Even if you’ve forgotten, your subconscious mind hasn’t. But Llys Mawr and its assets are mine, and I will put a stop to your meddling, however you’re managing it.”

  * * * * *

  Macsen didn’t grace me with his presence for the rest of the week, but by Saturday, he reappeared, somewhat subdued.

  “My absence from my dear sister’s bedside was being noted,” he said when I glanced up at his entrance. As if I’d asked or cared why he’d chosen to return. His hair was tied back in a kerchief and the curls in back were damp as if he’d been riding in the rain that had been falling all morning. “You’ve been taking the brandy.”

  “No.”

  Macsen’s eyes widened. “But Emrys has continued his visits. I’ve seen him.”

  “Yes, I’m well aware.”

  He took a step closer to the bed. “How can you stand that? Why not take the drug and not think about it?”

  “I can’t not think about it. I’d rather know what’s being done to me.”

  “I’m sorry I told you at all. I don’t think I should have.” Macsen’s skin seemed pale and clammy.

  I changed the subject. “You’ve been riding in the rain?”

  He glanced down at his muddy boots as if that was what had given him away. “Emrys has me patrolling the grounds to try to foil these water thieves. A fifth well has been replenished, and he’s spitting mad.”

  “He thinks it’s me,” I said. “The Water Thief.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “He talks to himself now while he…” I swallowed, and skipped over it. “He thinks I must know how to command the water myself, that I’m doing it somehow without being consciously aware of it.”

  “That’s absurd.” Macsen’s self-satisfied sneer had returned, replacing his temporary humility.

  “Why, because I couldn’t possibly be that powerful?”

  “Because you didn’t even know the power existed a week ago. You were a somnambulant.”

  It was the same thing August had said, that I’d been asleep.

  Macsen pulled the kerchief from his hair and threaded his fingers through the damp curls. “Emrys is a pompous fool who doesn’t have a clue what he’s dealing with.”

  “He certainly underestimates you, doesn’t he?”

  The dark eyebrows lifted with amusement. “Does he?”

  “You’re the Water Thief.”

  “Am I?” He wound the damp kerchief around his wrist, idly tying it with a yank of his teeth.

  “How long do you think you can antagonize him before he figures it out?”

  Macsen smiled. “I’ve been antagonizing him since the day I was born.” The curve of his lips brought to mind the moment he’d kissed me. I looked away, hoping he wouldn’t somehow realize what I was thinking. There was something about the sight of him in the kerchief when he’d arrived that made him look different, more relaxed. A little sensuous. Oh, hell.

  Sven, entering behind Macsen, saved me from myself. “Lord Swift. Invigorating rain, eh?”

  Macsen turned, his smile dissolving into frank hostility. “Dr. Rees. Or whoever you really are.”

  “Didn’t realize it was in question.” Sven bared his teeth in a smile that was not remotely friendly.

  “Glad to see you looking better, August.” Macsen nodded in my direction without taking his eyes off Sven, stepped around the larger man and went out the door.

  Sven came to the bed and sat on the edge. “We should be giving him our terms, Sly. We’ve wasted enough time.”

  “Our terms?”

  “For payment. I’m thinking a monthly salary for the three of us, though I haven’t settled on the amount. He can keep us in style.”

  I rubbed my elbows in the chill beginning to seep in through the window with the lack of afternoon light. “Blackmail?”

  Sven eyed me peculiarly as if he thought I’d taken ill. “What did you think we were doing here, Sly?”

  “Claiming my inheritance. Or August’s, anyway.”

  “Yes, and do you want to do it by sitting around here in this moldy castle with him for company, or set up nice in a villa on the shore where we can enjoy it?”

  I hadn’t thought of just demanding my money and leaving all this behind. Let Macsen keep my title and land? Let Emrys keep it? I didn’t think so.

  “I want what’s mine,” I said firmly. “Llys Mawr, and my title. Even if it has to be countess of Cantre’r Gwaelod. And I want Emrys to pay for what he’s done to me. And to August.”

  Sven’s brow furrowed. “Don’t get too comfortable here, Sly. You don’t belong here anymore. No more than I do.” He made a soft hissing sound through his teeth. “Do you think I plan to be your servant for the rest of my life so you can have what’s yours?”

  “You’re not my servant.” I looked up in surprise as he stood, his eyes dark with anger, and scowled down at me. “Sven—”

  “Don’t forget, I can sell my information without your leave.”

  I shivered involuntarily, the cold now seeping into my bones. “You’d betray me? For money?”

  His stern expression softened, and he put his hand on my head as though I were a child. “Course I wouldn’t, Sly. Just reminding you how you got here. That you’re not the only one in this, and we’re here for a reason. I imagine it’s easy to think of this place as home, but it isn’t. Your home is with us.”

  He was smiling kindly, his hand softly stroking my hair, but
I was quite certain he’d just issued a threat.

  Chapter Twelve: Macsen

  The bandanna was a necessity for carrying out his continued campaign of liberating Emrys’s precious water. Macsen had almost been caught the third time out, with tenants on the verge of eviction beginning to look for the Water Thief’s reprieve. He wore the kerchief tied over his nose and mouth to keep from being identified. They cheered him now in the village, drinking to him in pubs. It was more satisfying than any false deference he’d been given as the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod.

  Officially, of course, he had to swear to put down anyone caught helping the Water Thief, but if he kept a low profile in a booth at a pub, he could hear his praises being sung. He chuckled to himself as he drank his ale. It was all very self-indulgent and silly, but what else did he have to do with his time? Knowing it was driving Emrys to madness, however, gave him far more pleasure.

  He scowled and swore with Emrys in his den in the evenings, trying to figure out how this damned thief was tampering with the flow from the reservoir without being seen. Armed patrols had been stationed around the perimeter of the lake, but that had no effect on Macsen calling the water to him after taking a hit of Sebastian’s power. The water obeyed him and found a way out however it had to.

  And then he ran when it reached him in the catacombs, ran like a thundering flood himself. It was exhilarating, even if it took it out of him later. There was a consequence for ingesting power that wasn’t his, as he’d known from Emrys for years. He couldn’t do it too frequently, or Emrys would begin to notice his fatigue. But feeling Sebastian’s essence in his veins was almost as addictive as the thrill of defying Emrys. When he swallowed the drop of power that had been generated inside Sebastian, he couldn’t help but think of it in sexual terms. There was no denying it, even if he wanted to ignore the symbolism. The power aroused him.

  He surrendered to it and let it take him, trying not to think about the implications of this arousal, or to dwell on whether it was a manifestation of genuine desire. There was time enough for that lying in bed. Whether the attraction was the result of his magic or of a purely mundane nature, Sebastian had gotten under his skin. The missing spark Macsen had lamented in his prospective brides had been raised at last. There was someone now—someone he couldn’t stop thinking about.