The Water Thief

by Jane Kindred

  “No. I’ve done it with Sebastian’s magic.”

  Sven made a move toward us, halting abruptly as Macsen pulled a knife from the strap at his belt.

  “I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you, diawl. Sebastian knows. And Sebastian will decide for himself if he wants to take the risk. Either way, I’m going.” Macsen tightened his grip on my hand. “You have to decide now. We’re out of time.”

  Sven held his hand out toward me. “Sly. Come with us.”

  I met Macsen’s eyes, trying to discern whether the brief connection we’d had this afternoon was still there, and real. “You’ll force me to give you the magic if I say no.”

  “If you say no to coming with me—and no to giving me what I need to escape—I have to have it, Sebastian. I’d rather you gave it willingly. And I’d far rather you open the portal yourself. Please. Come with me.”

  That “please” and the desperation in his eyes went a long way toward easing my mind. I didn’t want to find out if he’d force me. And I didn’t want him to disappear into some other realm where I would never see him again.

  “I haven’t forgotten what I owe you,” I said to Sven.

  “Don’t.” The blue eyes flashed with anger, but there was hurt behind it. “You can’t go with him.”

  “I’ll find a way to repay you. We won’t stay on the other side forever.” I glanced at Macsen, who squeezed my hand with a grateful nod. “But I have to trust Macsen in this. He knows Emrys better than any of us, and he knows my magic.”

  “And he’s been impersonating you and living off your riches—and damn near destroying Cantre’r Gwaelod for almost a decade!” Sven raged. “He’s the sodding architect of Thievesward and all its fucking misery!”

  I cringed at his language, unused to hearing even Thievesward denizens speak so crudely—at least in front of me. “It’s Emrys who did those things. Macsen was just a boy, manipulated by him as much as I was.”

  Sven’s pale complexion was red with fury. “He’s no bloody boy now, though, is he, Sly? You let him fuck you, didn’t you?”

  Macsen pressed my fingers. “Sebastian, it has to be now. There’s no more time. Say good-bye to him.”

  “Don’t you fucking tell him what to say.” Spittle flew as Sven snarled the words.

  “Give me one minute.” I let go of Macsen’s hand and hooked my arm in Sven’s against his furious resistance, leading him a few paces away. “I have to do it, Sven.” I looked up at the bitter blue eyes. “Please don’t hate me.”

  Sven quieted and brushed his thumb against the side of my face. “Don’t do it, Sly. You’re a fool to trust him.”

  I closed my hand over his at my cheek. “I might be. But I have to go. I have to find out for myself. Please know that I’m so grateful for everything you’ve taught me.” I nodded to Abigail hovering beside him. “To both of you. You took me in and gave me a family after mine had been taken from me.”

  “By him,” Sven growled, pulling his hand from mine.

  Abigail took the opportunity to fling her arms around my neck and kiss me on each cheek before squeezing me tight. “You take care of yourself, milady.”

  Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. “You know I’m not really a lady,” I said with a forced laugh to keep the tears at bay.

  “I told you, you’re my little lady.” Abigail sniffled. “Always will be.”

  When she released me, Sven stood regarding me, the anger having given way to sorrow. “Please be careful,” he said, his voice stiff, and then embraced me, lifting me off the ground. “You come back to us, Sly.”

  “I will,” I promised breathlessly as he set me down. The tears had escaped of their own accord, and I brushed them away.

  Macsen brought his horse about and held the reins out to Sven. “You should be able to fetch a good price for these two in the villages on the coast. Keep clear of Llys Mawr.”

  Sven let the reins fall. “You bring harm to him, and I promise you—I will cross over myself and hunt you down to serve you justice.”

  For once, Macsen didn’t sneer and call him “devil”, merely nodded and took my hand to lead me away.

  “So how do we do it?” I asked, my body beginning to tingle with nervous energy.

  “We jump. I hold my breath. You don’t.”

  “We jump?”

  Macsen had led me to the side of the road, and I looked down to see the sheer drop over the ocean. Some yards to the right of where we stood, the northernmost of the ancient causeways pointed out into the waves toward the land of another realm we couldn’t see. It wasn’t so high that there was a danger of striking the rocks or being injured when we hit the water—perhaps ten feet, and the tide was high—but I balked at the idea of leaping only somewhat metaphorically to my death.

  “How do we know how deep it is this close to the shore? There could be rocks under the water.”

  “There aren’t. I surveyed the waters beyond the borders of Llys Mawr land for the best spot. This is it. Straight down and clear.” He was drawing me to the edge, and I tried to hang back.

  “What’s on the other side, Macsen?”

  He looked back at me over his shoulder and his dark expression wasn’t reassuring. “It’s too late to change your mind. We’re going.” Macsen pulled me to him by the waist, and without warning, he flung me forcefully over the edge of the cliff.

  I howled in surprise and fear as I flailed my limbs in empty space, but it was only an instant before I plunged into the frigid water and it took my breath away. Instinctively, I tried to kick upward toward the surface, but the water surged beside me as Macsen dove in, driving me downward. Even with the pull of the water’s affinity and the knowledge that I could breathe it, I began to panic. I’d already swallowed a mouthful of salt water when I landed, and my gag reflex fought to expel it. As I floundered, Macsen’s hands grasped mine, and I clung to them tightly. I was still struggling to thrust upward, but Macsen held me steady, and as my lungs heaved and rebelled against the counterintuitive impulse to take in the dense element, I realized he was at my mercy. He hadn’t taken any of my magic. He couldn’t breathe. He would drown. Unless I did.

  I opened my eyes in the brine and Macsen’s eyes were open as well, fixed on mine. With the same unavoidable despair that always accompanied the surrender to breathe when Emrys held me trapped in his apparatus, I let go.

  I choked. I convulsed. I breathed.

  I’d never had the luxury before of relaxing into a natural rhythm. I floated weightless with Macsen as the rush of power began to circulate through me. All around us, the water seemed to glow with the same blue luminescence as the substance Emrys had captured in his vials—my magic, extracted, as Macsen had said. It outlined him, highlighting every snaking strand of his hair as it floated around him, limning his skin. He tugged one hand free from mine and made a gesture of filling my lungs, and I nodded and took a deep breath of ocean water, salty and sublime. He was struggling to hold his own, but nothing was happening yet. Could he have been wrong?

  At another nod and a somewhat more frantic gesture from him, I exhaled as though breathing into one of Emrys’s glass tubes. The pale blue light around us exploded into a blinding corona. We plunged downward, and I screamed into the water, the sound lost in the density. A maelstrom was opening at our feet, thundering around us and spinning us madly in its maw until we were being sucked into it headfirst. The light went with it, as though we pulled all the light of Cantre’r Gwaelod’s sun downward in our wake.

  Direction seemed to tilt as though the poles of the earth had begun to reverse. In the rushing, thundering sound around me, I heard the distant mournful peal of ruinous bells. And then we were surging upward, breaking the surface, and floating in the calm, swelling waves of an unfamiliar sea.

  Chapter Seventeen

  My gift notwithstanding, I was not the best of swimmer
s. Macsen pushed the wet hair from his face and began to swim toward shore. It wasn’t the shore we’d leapt from, but a long, flat stretch of pebbly beach under a cold, iron-gray sky. To the south, a sandy ridge of boulders and clay formed a stark arrow from the shore—the other end of the causeway I’d just seen disappearing into our own Cantre’r Gwaelod Môr.

  As I struggled to keep up with Macsen, strange forms appeared in the receding tide, like dark, misshapen figures huddling in the shallow water. They grew no more distinct as I came closer, and I supposed they must be rocks, for they were certainly no animals I’d ever laid eyes on.

  Macsen, apparently realizing he’d left me behind, paused, treading water as he turned to scan the horizon for me. “Sebastian!” He swam toward me against the resurging tide. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I gasped, but it was all I could manage, and in a moment, Macsen was beside me, slipping an arm under mine to hold me up in the surf.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t swim?” he chastised as he pushed toward the shore with a sort of one-armed breaststroke, with me mostly in tow.

  “I can swim.” I dogpaddled beside him. “I’m just not—used to it.” We were nearing the skulking shapes. “What—are those?”

  “Cantre’r Gwaelod’s forest, I suppose. The tree stumps were under water until storms eroded the shoreline.” He steered me carefully between them as the water grew shallow and we climbed out onto a peaty shore littered with stumps and stones.

  I collapsed onto the first soft, sandy spot I could find, staring up at the unwelcoming sky, and Macsen sat beside me, ringing out a kerchief he’d taken from his pocket.

  “I didn’t have time to tell you anything before we left.” Macsen tied his hair back with the twisted kerchief, looking like some kind of swashbuckler. “But this place…it’s not like home. Things move more slowly in Cantre’r Gwaelod. The land might look similar to what you’re used to, but the people and villages—well, I suppose you’ll have to see for yourself.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows. “See what, exactly? They aren’t—they’re human, aren’t they?”

  “Of course they are. That’s not what I meant. It’s just a bit disorienting the way change has happened here and passed Cantre’r Gwaelod by. And there’s more—”

  “Sebastian!”

  A chill went up my spine at the sound of August’s voice. My ghost—or my madness—had followed me. I tried to ignore her call from up the beach. I could see her out of the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t have Macsen see me talking to myself. Not now. I was too tired to play the game of layered realities.

  Macsen rose and helped me up, studying me with a veiled expression. My demeanor must already be peculiar. Why did August have to appear to me now?

  She called to me again when I seemed not to notice her, and I couldn’t stop myself from turning in her direction.

  She looked different, dressed oddly in men’s clothing with a woolen cap pulled down over her hair, and I couldn’t help but note it as she ran to me. I stumbled back, standing awkwardly with my arms at my side as she threw her arms around me. Macsen had to think I was out of my mind. I’d have to tell him.

  “I can’t believe you’re here.” August let go of me and stood back with a pleased smile on her face, brushing away a tear at the corner of her eye. “I felt the shift in the waters, and I came as soon as I could.”

  I turned to Macsen. “I have to tell you something.”

  But August had spoken over me. “So. Macsen Finch. Have you been taking good care of my brother?”

  “As much as he’s let me,” said Macsen.

  I gaped, incredulous, looking from him to August. He couldn’t possibly be responding to her.

  Macsen put his hands in his pockets. “I think you’d better tell him before he faints dead away.”

  Chapter Eighteen: Macsen

  True to the prediction, Sebastian’s legs wobbled beneath him, and his sister reached out to steady him. Macsen took a few steps away to give Sebastian room to breathe. This was a reunion Sebastian had obviously never expected.

  August tucked her arm around her brother’s. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before. I couldn’t take the chance that Emrys would discover I was still alive.”

  “You’re…?” Sebastian shook his head. “You can’t be.”

  “Fates, you’re freezing. Let’s get you home and dry first, and then I’ll tell you everything.”

  He let his twin lead him up the slope of the sand dune, clearly in a daze, while Macsen followed a few paces behind. August’s car was parked at the side of the highway, and Sebastian slid into the seat beside her after she unlocked the door for him, looking utterly overwhelmed. Macsen took the back, wondering once again if he’d made a mistake. Maybe he should have tried to flee within the Lowland Hundred. Sebastian was already under so much strain from Emrys’s extractions and the revelations of his magic. They could have holed up somewhere together and explored whatever it was that had happened between them. There wasn’t likely to be any further “exploration” now that Sebastian had discovered August was alive and well.

  “I don’t understand.” Sebastian leaned his head back against the seat in exhaustion as August drove toward Aberystwyth. “I don’t understand any of this. You’ve been here all this time?”

  “When I drowned, I discovered what you’ve recently discovered. That we can’t drown. I was unconscious at first, drugged most likely, and when I came to under the water, it was very confusing, to say the least. I thought I must be dead, that it was the underworld. But I could see light above me, so I swam to the surface—and found myself here. A local family took me in. They thought I was a runaway, that I’d been abused, so they didn’t try to persuade me to go home. They were very kind to me. They’re gone now.”

  Macsen closed his eyes. He’d heard this story before. August was just as insufferable now as she’d been when they were children. He didn’t believe a word out of her mouth, but it was none of his business what tales she wanted to tell Sebastian about her life. He’d met her here on one of the first occasions he’d crossed over, the same way she’d come to Sebastian’s side now: the magic had drawn her. Needless to say, she’d been rather surprised to find Macsen wielding it.

  The meeting, however, had been fortuitous. She’d agreed to help the tenants he was smuggling, finding them lodging and new identities, and getting them acclimated in this strange world. It was apparently something she already had considerable experience with, having crossed back and forth on her own for some years helping those who needed to flee Emrys’s rule for one reason or another. Why she’d never told Sebastian or tried to contact him on those brief occasions she was in Cantre’r Gwaelod, Macsen had no idea. She’d claimed it wasn’t safe for him to know, just as she’d told Sebastian himself a moment ago, and she had sworn Macsen to secrecy.

  “But I saw you,” Sebastian said, rousing after a silence. “How did I see you—feel you—in Cantre’r Gwaelod if you’re here? And when you were insubstantial as a spirit—did I imagine all of that?”

  “No, you didn’t imagine it.” August turned her head and gave him a warm smile. Macsen found it unnerving that she could take her eyes off the road traveling at such a speed, but she seemed quite at ease with this world and its modes of travel. “It’s our magic. You were quiet for so long. I actually believed you were dead. And then something woke you that night of the storm. Perhaps all that water pouring down on you through the hole in the roof of your room at the asylum. There was a storm here, as well, and I ‘saw’ you huddled in front of me, as clearly as if I were in All Fates myself, and when I spoke, you responded. But I could tell you didn’t see me as I was. I thought it would be best to let you believe what you’d invented to explain the unexplainable. That I was a ghost.”

  Sebastian closed his eyes once more. “You were a child. No older than you were the day
of the drowning.”

  “I suppose that’s how you saw me in your mind. And I was in your mind. Our connection as twins, along with our magic, allows us to commune that way.” August turned off the highway onto a narrow street, slowing the car to a less alarming rate as she neared her flat. “But let’s get you dry and rested, and then we’ll talk about it all.”

  She parked on the street, no carriage house to board her vehicle. Her life here was a far cry from that of the pampered heiress she’d been in Cantre’r Gwaelod. Not even an entire house to herself, just the top floor of a small stone apartment building. Macsen followed as she led Sebastian up the stairs, admiring the contours of the lithe body accentuated by the clothes pasted to Sebastian’s skin with seawater. It was a refreshing change to see him in more customary garments, though it was rather distracting after having just gotten to know precisely what he looked like without them.

  Not surprisingly, August gave them separate rooms to stay in. She couldn’t know, of course, that they’d been intimate. Damn, he hoped she couldn’t know. She did seem to have an uncanny awareness of what went on inside Sebastian’s head. Macsen changed into the clothes she provided, his skin prickling with the drying salt and the discomfort of wondering whether August had been privy to their intimacy.

  She’d promised a late tea as soon as he was dressed, but Macsen thought the wisest course of action would be to let brother and sister reacquaint in private. It gave him plenty of time to lounge on the bed and mope over his stupidity in bringing Sebastian here.

  * * * * *

  He awoke to the sound of the door opening. The sun had gone down, though pale twilight still glowed through the window facing the beach.

  “Macsen?” Sebastian stood in the doorway, framed by the delicate light. August had dressed him in the same coarse blue canvas trousers she’d given Macsen, with a soft white cotton undershirt of the sort folk wore here with nothing over them. Sebastian looked like a damned angel in it. He wore everything with such oddly feminine grace. Macsen wanted to see what it looked like coming away as he peeled it from Sebastian’s body. His skin prickled with warmth, even though Sebastian couldn’t know what he was thinking.