The Water Thief

by Jane Kindred

  “So you have money at your disposal after all,” said Sven. I put my foot out beneath the table and stepped on his with my heel, but he was undeterred. “I see no reason you can’t give Lady August a reasonable pension—not some pittance of an allowance—to handle her own affairs.”

  “And I see no reason you should have any such interest in her affairs.”

  “Not to be indelicate—”

  “No, of course.” Macsen snorted. “Who could accuse you of being indelicate?”

  “—but I’ve been providing Lady August’s medical care without compensation for some time. I haven’t liked to bring this up before, but in light of your cousin’s words last evening, I’m afraid I must. Half of the Cantre’r Gwaelod fortune belongs to her.”

  “And you’d like it to belong to you, wouldn’t you, Rees?” Macsen sneered. “It’s not enough for you to take advantage of my sister physically when she is clearly in poor health. You must take advantage of her financially as well. You’re the worst kind of leech, Mr. Rees. You’re a parasite.” He rose and delivered a parting volley to me as he went to the door. “And you’re a fool, August, if you continue to let this scoundrel use you for his own ends.”

  But there was no time to dwell on his words or to argue with Sven about them. Macsen had evidently run into Emrys in the hall, and Emrys was furious about something. I rose and went to the doorway to peer out.

  Emrys was red in the face. “When I find the culprit, I’ll string him up by his damned balls!”

  “If the culprit has balls,” said Macsen, resting a lazy boot on the wooden support between the legs of the hall table.

  Emrys’s reaction stunned us both. He turned and backhanded Macsen so swiftly that the latter lost his balance and stumbled backward into the wall with the force of it. “It’s time for you to start taking your damned role seriously, boy. I want you out there tracking this fiend down as if you give a damn and putting a stop to it. And in the meantime, I’ve issued a decree in your name that unless the ungrateful tenants who’ve been the recipients of this thief’s bounty renounce him and reveal his identity, I’ll hold them responsible for his crimes. I’ll see every last one of them hanged, with their heads impaled on spikes in the village square as a message to anyone else who considers benefiting from his miscreancy.”

  Emrys strode away without noticing that he’d had an audience for this outburst of violence, but Macsen saw me before I could duck back into the solarium.

  He straightened and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Care to take a shot at me next? I doubt you can match Emrys’s enthusiasm, but you’re welcome to try.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him I had no desire to take a “shot” at him, but Macsen turned and walked away. Evidently, it had been a rhetorical question.

  * * * * *

  Macsen avoided me for the next few days, spending long hours out on his surveillance of the property to satisfy Emrys, leaving me no opportunity to press him about my inheritance. I busied myself consulting with Mr. Baines, while Sven grew increasingly restless, threatening to take matters into his own hands if I didn’t act soon. I did my best to mollify him, including making good on my end of our longstanding bargain. I wasn’t above using my charms to keep the peace—not, I supposed, unlike a wife with a hot-tempered husband.

  I also steeled myself to endure Emrys’s indignities—much less pleasurable than making peace with Sven—and began to teach myself to relax and let the magic flow through me. This made the sessions with Emrys mercifully quicker and went a long way toward softening his mood after the rash of well breaches.

  And as August had said, I began to feel an ethereal connection with the water all around me. I knew the precise moment when it would rain in the afternoon, and I had the urge to be outside in it, energized by my connection. Even the mist from the moors was compelling, and I used my planning for the garden as an excuse to take morning walks to feel the moisture on my skin. And in the midday humidity, it was all I could do to refrain from riding off to the lake and stripping out of my clothes to bathe in it. If it weren’t for the impossibility of undressing and dressing myself, I might have given in to the temptation.

  Disturbing news from the village, however, curtailed my urges. Two of the tenants who had benefited from the generosity of the Water Thief had disappeared along with their families, and there were rumors they’d been lured out to the lake by the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod and drowned. I was hard pressed to imagine Macsen could be doing this on Emrys’s orders, but unbeknownst to Macsen, I had witnessed him coming in early in the morning on both occasions during my walks in the garden. He’d been behaving secretively. And he’d been soaking wet.

  The one factor in the equation that didn’t fit my hypothesis was Emrys. Instead of seeming satisfied by the news of these disappearances, he became angrier, ranting that they’d scurried away to hide in Thievesward like “cowards and cockroaches”. Sven, Abigail and I took exception to such a description when we were in private, but the idea seemed plausible, so Abigail was given the day off to investigate with Ifan and the others to see if they’d heard anything about these disappearances. She returned, however, to report that no one in Thievesward had any idea what had happened, and people were becoming jittery, fearing a crackdown on the entire district.

  While Macsen continued to dodge me, I finalized a plan for the redesign of the garden and left Mr. Baines to it, which meant a crew of workmen had descended upon Llys Mawr and my morning walks in the garden were over. I couldn’t bear to be inside during that potent hour of the day, so I took another path from the front of the grounds that led through a grove of alder. It was here, under the cover of the alder trees, that I spied Macsen disappearing into a hole in the ground like a fairy child.

  I made my way to the spot and found a sort of man-sized rabbit hole hidden among the bracken, with natural steps of stone that led into the darkness below. I could hardly follow Macsen dressed like this, but I could come back to investigate in my own clothes. The easiest way to sneak about dressed as myself, I determined, would be to have Abigail join me out here in the grove with a change of clothing and wait for me while I climbed below so she could help me dress before I headed back to the manor, once more the ladylike August.

  By the time I recruited Abigail and accomplished the change from walking skirt and jacket, petticoat and corset, to trousers and a linen shirt, I knew Macsen would be long gone, but I wanted to investigate the little warren on my own anyway rather than confront him. Armed with a torch, and with my hair tucked back in a serviceable bun, I made my way down the mossy steps with care and emerged at the bottom into a long tunnel. The catacombs. I’d completely forgotten them. August and I used to play hide and seek in these tunnels, and used them to sneak about when we were going places we had no business going. Where was Macsen sneaking about to that he needed to use the catacombs?

  I followed the path without diverging from it for some yards, knowing I might wander for miles if I took a turn and lost my bearings. There was no sign of where Macsen might have gone. While I stood and considered, I gradually became aware of a prickling on my skin, like a charge in the air when lightning is about to strike. It was the same sensation I received from the mist or rain when I stood in it, but much stronger. But there was no water here. And yet there had to be. It was calling me.

  I went farther, thinking I must be heading toward the north side of the cantref and the coast, perhaps drawn by that largest body of water though it was still so far away. After a few more minutes, however, I recognized the path as it began to widen. I was heading straight back toward the castle. The passage led to an opening directly beneath the kitchen cellar. Why would Macsen need to sneak into the castle from out in the grove? Perhaps he’d realized he might be noticed coming back—from wherever—soaking wet, and wanted to avoid questions.

  I paused when I neared the cellar opening.
The electrifying sensation intensified here. It made no sense. There was no water anywhere near here, unless you counted the cistern pumped into the kitchen.

  While I pondered it, a door opened directly across from me, and Macsen himself stepped out. His look of shock was almost comical.

  “Well, hello, brother. Not expecting me?” I smiled sweetly. “Or not expecting me?” I made an exaggerated gesture with the torch, indicating my attire.

  Macsen tucked something into his back pocket and pulled the narrow wooden door shut behind him, holding up his own torch to see me more clearly. “You can’t be here.” He didn’t say this with a tone of incredulity or denial, but one of stern insistence. “What are you doing in the catacombs? And why are you wandering about dressed like that? What if somebody saw you?”

  “Who would see me down here?”

  “Emrys might. This is his cellar.”

  I raised my brow. “And would he expect to see you coming out of it?”

  “He thinks no one knows it’s here.” His dark eyes held a steely, uncompromising threat. “Now turn around and go back the way you came. And stay out. You have no business down here and no business following me.”

  “Llys Mawr is my business. More than it is yours.” The prickling feeling was intense in this spot, and I was seized with the desire to see what was behind that door.

  Macsen’s arm shot out to grab mine when I tried to pass him, and he spun me about. “What do you think you’re doing?” His grip was hard. He was all lean muscle. Macsen hadn’t been sitting about idle for the past nine years enjoying the benefits of being the lord of the Lowland Hundred.

  I raised my eyes to his. “I have to go in there.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Why were you in there?”

  “I told you, it’s none of your business.” He tried to push me ahead of him, and I used a maneuver Sven had taught me to twist out of his grip. Hard-muscled or not, it was all about leverage. Slipping beneath his outstretched arm, I grabbed the handle of the door, but Macsen was quick, and he tossed his torch down and hooked me around the waist with one arm to lift me and spin me behind him once more, as though we were dancing. His arm pressed against my ribs, and I sucked in a sharp breath at the sudden pain.

  He seemed to realize immediately what he’d done, and he released me with a coarse oath, unbefitting a lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod. I echoed it, clutching my palm to the bruised spot, though all that did was make it tenderer.

  “Sorry.” The apology was a begrudging growl. At least, I thought the rough sound was begrudging, until Macsen pressed me back against the stone wall and took the torch from me to toss it beside the other. “I don’t like you,” he growled, but the hard flesh pressing against my hip said otherwise. Macsen flattened both palms against the wall beside my head. “And I’m not your kind, do you understand me?”

  I blinked up at him, overwhelmed by the heat and scent of him so close to me. I didn’t like him either. He’d stolen my life. He was a coarse, uncouth bastard. And worse than I’d ever wanted anything, I wanted him to touch me. “I never suggested you were.”

  “Then why do you look at me like that?” He cursed again and grasped me by the back of the neck and kissed me. His thumb stroked my skin softly while his hand held me firm, his tongue seeking entrance between my lips, and finding it.

  I moaned into his mouth and grasped the front of his shirt in both fists to keep myself standing, weak-kneed at the taste of him. He took my breath, as if he didn’t dare take his mouth away to draw his own, pinning my thigh to the wall between both of his as he ground his erection against me. Before Siors, no one had ever kissed me. Siors’s kisses had been intensely pleasurable because of their novelty, but they were nothing like this. This was need and desire and madness all rolled into one, magnified by the knowledge that it was the same for him. We were the last two people in the world who ought to want each other. We were enemies, despite our fragile truce. He was a threat to me. I was a threat to him. And I wanted him to turn me around, yank my pants down and enter me so forcefully that I screamed like a wildcat while he had his way with me.

  There was no way that was going to happen. Macsen tore his mouth away from mine and swore again, looking like he wanted to punch me, but he didn’t pull back his hips from where he had me pinned, still rocking into me with a slow, unconsciously sensuous rhythm.

  “I want you to leave Llys Mawr,” he growled.

  My fingers were still curled tightly around his lapels, and I relaxed them. “Give me my inheritance, and I’ll go.”

  With both palms once more against the wall, Macsen shoved himself away and turned his back on me, drawing his fingers roughly through the hair at his temples and gripping it. “And where the hell are you going to go? Back to Thievesward? With a monthly pension from the man who stole your title and your land? And I’m to believe you’ll demand no more of me?”

  “I’m sure it would be easier for you if I simply drowned and joined August in the bog.”

  “Shut up.” He looked over his shoulder at me, real conflict distorting his features. “You put me in an impossible position.”

  I shivered, wondering if that position were one of truly contemplating sending me to join August. I glanced down to avoid his gaze, and mine fixed on the glint of glass at the edge of his back pocket. The shape was a cylinder just the size of one of the vials Emrys used to bottle what he took from me.

  “What’s in that room?” I demanded. “Is that my magic in your back pocket? Is this where he keeps it?”

  Macsen turned to face me once more, his hands lowered in fists at his sides. “Leave it be, Sebastian.”

  “I will not leave it be. What are you doing with it?”

  When he didn’t answer, I ducked past him, this time evading his grasp, and threw the door open. I picked up my torch and held it up. Inside was a honeycomb of storage chambers, dozens—hundreds—gleaming with iridescent vials. This was what had called me. My own molecules singing to me. I felt faint at the knowledge of it, and at the same time, a wild, thrilled beat was pounding in my heart.

  “What in the name of the Fates does he do with it?” The words breathed out of me faintly.

  “I told you. He uses it to control the water. He amasses power through extortion from his tenants.”

  I turned to face him. “Control it how? How does he use these vials?”

  “Sebastian—”

  “How?”

  “By drinking it,” Macsen snapped. “Now come out of there before he finds us.” He grabbed me by the arm and marched me out, shutting the door on the glittering vials of power.

  “That’s…” I wasn’t sure what it was. I shuddered. “That’s somewhat disturbing.” He’d picked up his torch and began walking me back through the tunnel from whence I’d come. I went along without protest, my mind whirling with this knowledge. I glanced up at him. “Is that what you’re doing with it? You’re stealing some of my power…and drinking it?”

  “Please stop asking questions. Just forget about it. He’d kill us both if he knew we’d been down here.”

  “You are. You’re drinking it. You’re drinking me.”

  “For Fates’ sake, Sebastian! Stop making it sound as if I’m drinking your piss!”

  “I was thinking spit, actually, but interesting of you to go there.” And crude. He was always crude, as though his status depended on shocking me. At least he hadn’t gone a step further. But I needed not to think about that. At once. “So what’s it like? What do you do with it? That’s how you’re stealing from his stores and giving it back to the tenants?”

  “Yes,” Macsen answered between gritted teeth. He let go of my arm and rubbed his defensively as he continued walking without looking at me. “And if you bloody have to know, it’s like…kissing you.”

  I kept my head down so he wouldn’t see the heat in my cheeks. “
Is that why you kissed me? To take more?”

  “No! I don’t know. Stop talking.”

  I did, pensive now as I considered that his desire might not have been for me but for my power. It was a disappointing thought, and a bit humiliating, since I had demonstrated wholeheartedly that I’d enjoyed it, and there had been no equal exchange of power for me.

  We were nearing the opening where I’d first seen him descend. Once I climbed up through it into the world, I would lose something, some momentary connection I’d had with him—purely mercenary on his part though it might have been. Before I could say anything else to prolong the moment, Macsen spoke.

  “You wanted to know what Emrys is doing with your magic.” He turned to face me at the base of the stairs as I paused with one hand on the step at chest level for balance and one foot on the bottom step. “He’s crossing to the other realm.”

  I stared, dumbfounded. It was absurd. Why would he make up such a story when he’d already told me Emrys was using the vials to control and hoard the water of Cantre’r Gwaelod?

  “You don’t believe me, but it’s true.” He took the vial from his pocket and held it up in the light from above. “A full vial of this will open a door between the realms. Or not so much a door as a vortex. I don’t know what he does there, but I’ve seen him use it. And I’ve been on the other side.”

  “You’re telling me you’ve left this world and gone to another.”

  Macsen nodded seriously. “Just as you could at any time. That’s what it means to be the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod. You could, I suppose, even take Cantre’r Gwaelod back with you and restore it to where it once was, though I’m not sure you’d want to.”

  I wanted to dismiss it as nonsense, but he’d told me incredible things before that had turned out to be true. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because.” He glared at me. “Because you make me do stupid things, and this is one of them.” He turned and disappeared into the darkness of the catacombs, leaving me to climb up to the surface alone and bemused.