The Water Thief

by Jane Kindred

  August seemed almost to have forgotten my presence, lost in her story. “It was then I began my own crossings. I’d crossed once by accident. It ought to be easier to do with purpose. It took practice, of course, and at first I never stayed for more than a few minutes, just as Emrys had done on our side. When I became accustomed to the journey, I brought others with me.”

  This surprised me. “Others?”

  “We needed operatives who would stay in Cantre’r Gwaelod and keep watch on Emrys’s affairs. That was when I discovered his deception. I’d received news that the earl of Cantre’r Gwaelod was alive and well and ruling over the land, having just come into his inheritance. For a brief moment of hope, I rejoiced. But the news was also troubling. They said you’d been under Emrys’s guardianship those five years, and his influence had apparently changed you. And Cantre’r Gwaelod had changed as well, for the worse.

  “I made the crossing, eager to see you and to let you know that I too had survived, but cautious, given the stories of your iron-fisted rule. Perhaps Cousin Emrys was influencing you, but I knew you. Once you learned our fates had been manipulated by Emrys and that he was stealing your power, you’d strip the bastard of his title and turn him out, and we would keep our birthright safe together.”

  August sighed and brushed the hair from her eyes as the landward breeze began to tangle it. “I chose a public venue, where Emrys and you—Macsen, really, of course—were dedicating a well. But when I made my way through the crowd toward the front, close enough to see you, I saw it wasn’t you at all. I didn’t make the connection then that it was Macsen. I mourned again, returning home to Aberystwyth. Dafydd understood my frustration, but it was my duty, he reminded me, to protect the magic of Cantre’r Gwaelod from being abused, not to protect its people from the despotism of my family’s rule. I wanted to return to expose them, but he convinced me of the folly of my desire. What we needed was to find out how Emrys had tapped into your power and where he kept what he’d stolen. What we needed was an ‘in’ to get close to Emrys and the imposter, someone who could infiltrate Llys Mawr itself.”

  A tingle of misgiving began to flutter across my skin with the mist delivered on the salty air. I drew my knees up to my chest with my arms locked around them. It was getting cooler, rapidly, as the day began to wane. I listened intently as August continued, now thoroughly engaged in her story.

  “I was at a loss for ideas until a late winter storm rolled over the bay. The coast was wild at Aberystwyth, waves crashing on the promenade, boats torn from their moorings and dashed to pieces against the pier, the wind and rain strong with the scent of Cantre’r Gwaelod magic. The mournful notes of the lost church of the Lowland Hundred clanged like ghost bells in the storm.”

  Goose bumps had risen on August’s arms, and mine followed suit.

  August continued, her focus on that other moment on another beach. “Dafydd had transferred to Cardiff by then, while I’d stayed on at Aber to guard the well of magic. I spoke to him by phone and told him what I sensed. This was no ordinary storm. He agreed, but surmised it was Emrys. He had contacts here now, we knew, though we hadn’t yet discovered how he communicated with them. There was no breach—both Dafydd and I were in agreement on that—only some turmoil in Cantre’r Gwaelod itself that was significant enough to echo across the causeways. We would wait and monitor, and do what was necessary to fight Emrys if he came. I slept fitfully that night while the storm still raged, and I dreamt of drowning—held down in an icy bath.” She glanced meaningfully at me. “The feeling that I was with you was strong. In the wee hours, I woke and ran down to the water, so certain you’d be there that I couldn’t resist the impulse. This was your storm. I was sure of it.”

  I nodded, eyes wide, seeing the night now through August’s eyes.

  She tucked her hands beneath her arms, both of us full of the tension of her words. “The beach had disappeared. Massive waves rolled and crashed along the promenade, exploding like bombs against the pier in bursts of blue and white, for a few moments swallowing whole buildings like the fists of a giant sea god raining down in anger. Bricks and stone were casually ripped from the seawall and scattered by the receding waves before another blow rose from the sea. I stood in the onslaught, hands cupped around my mouth, and called your name.”

  August shuddered slightly. “And then a door seemed to open before me on the waterlogged pier onto nowhere, and you appeared on the other side, huddling and dripping in the corner of an asylum cell in your sodden gown like a neglected child. And I told you to get on your feet and come with me.”

  I let out a soft gasp. “You were there in the flesh that night? But how?”

  She shook her head impatiently, as if I’d interrupted her flow. “I thought at first I was bringing you through to my world. Nothing looked familiar, but the storm had changed the landscape. If we got to high ground, we’d be safe together at last. But it soon became clear that you hadn’t come to me in Aberystwyth at all. Instead, I’d come to you through the magic of our shared connection, in the heart of Cantre’r Gwaelod, though physically, I was still here in this world.”

  August paused for a breath, emotion in her voice when she continued. “You couldn’t see me as I was, and you couldn’t feel the magic of the water all around you. You were as lost to me still as if you lay under the lake in a boggy grave. I sensed you teetering on the brink of shock. If I tried to tell you the truth of what was happening, I might lose you forever. The best I could manage on that mad night was to deliver you to the door of someone I hoped would take you in and do right by you.”

  She turned to me at last, her eyes red from the wind. “I kept things from you only to protect you, Sebastian. Please understand that. I let you believe I was what you saw, just a ghost. It seemed the right thing to do…until Macsen Finch complicated things. I ought to have stopped him that day on the beach in Aberdyfi when I discovered what he knew. You’d still be safe and blithely unaware of everything had it not been for him. But I could tell the moment he stood before me in this realm, eyes bright with your magic, that he was in love with you. Even if he didn’t yet know it himself.”

  My cheeks felt warm, but for the first time since August had woken me this morning and rushed me out of her apartment, I began to relax. “So you do believe him.”

  “Against Dafydd’s advice, I chose to trust him. He seemed to be acting out of a good heart, whether he realized it or not, in helping the people of Cantre’r Gwaelod. I believed he could keep you safe—he’d already proved that he’d risk Emrys’s wrath to do it—and I thought to use him for the good of Cantre’r Gwaelod. He was our best hope of finding out what Emrys was engaged in and where he kept what he’d stolen, if only I could find a way to convince Macsen that stopping Emrys and destroying his ill-gotten gain was in his own best interest. I thought we had time.”

  Her eyes were tearing as she met my gaze. Maybe the wind. Maybe not. “I never dreamed Macsen would bring you to this realm and put you in even greater danger before things at Llys Mawr had run their course. He did it out of love. Anyone could see it—in both your eyes. Macsen might still aspire to be lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod, might still be hopelessly poisoned by Emrys’s greed, and irreparably damaged by his cruelty. But he loved you, and I saw that you were equally smitten with him.” The tears weren’t the wind after all, and August’s breath caught. “Fates help me. I thought I could continue to allow you to suffer torment for the greater good to give you a chance to learn control before we took Emrys down.”

  My own eyes were burning now, tears prickling at the corners that I didn’t want to shed.

  August wiped at hers. “I went to see Dafydd after I dropped you boys off at your room at the hotel the other night. I had to tell him you were here, and about what I found out at Helmont House, what Emrys was planning. We had an argument.” Her shoulders seemed to sag as she breathed out in a sigh. “But he was right.” The tears had begun to stream do
wn her face, pushed back to her temples by the rising wind. “I didn’t want him to be right.”

  “About what?”

  “As long as you’re alive, Emrys will stop at nothing to take your power. He’s obsessed with it. Anyone who’s tasted it would be.” Her eyes darted to mine as if to say the unspoken: like Macsen. “He’ll use you to destroy everything we know of Cantre’r Gwaelod, to pervert the magic of our heritage. And I can’t allow it. I cannot fail as Mererid did. I have to be strong.”

  A chill ran up my spine. “What do you… What are you saying?”

  “It was my fault.” Her words came out in a choked whisper. “I sent you to the Eagle that night. I sent you into the world without preparing you with the knowledge you needed to keep yourself safe. Because I loved you too, and you’d spent so many years without companionship or happiness, I wanted to let you have it finally. One night to be who you ought to have had the chance to be, without the burden of our birthright hanging over your head. And I killed you, Sebastian. My softness has destroyed you and sentenced you to death.”

  There was something in her hand that hadn’t been there before, something she’d slipped from the little pocketbook she wore slung across her shoulder, hanging at her hip. I’d wondered why it had seemed weighted down, but dismissed it as “women’s business”. But I’d seen the instrument she held in her hand before—in the movies she’d taken me to, and on television. I knew how different it was from the ones I was familiar with in Cantre’r Gwaelod.

  She was holding a pistol.

  “August, what are you doing?”

  The tears were streaming steadily now. “I have to, Sebastian. It’s my sacred duty. I can’t fail Cantre’r Gwaelod.”

  “No.” I tried to stand, but she was too quick, leaping to her feet before I could straighten, and training the pistol on my skull. I paused on one knee, as though I were waiting to be knighted. “You don’t have to do this. August, I’m your brother. We came into the world together. I love you. There’s no greater duty than love.” Her head shook silently. “Dafydd made you believe this story of being responsible for Cantre’r Gwaelod. He’s manipulated you, for some reason I can’t fathom—”

  “Dafydd loves me. He was brokenhearted at what he knew I had to do. If there were any other way…” She wiped her eyes resolutely, and I started to my feet once more, but the pistol swiftly pressed to my forehead, August’s face hard and intractable. “Stay where you are. On your knees.” I dropped to both knees reluctantly, staring up at her. She shook her head in resignation. “Don’t make this harder for me, Sebastian—”

  “Don’t make it harder for you?” A burst of rage shot through me. “Why shouldn’t I make it harder for you? I should make it easy for you to murder me?”

  “It’s not murder. I’m protecting you from what he’d do—”

  “Oh, fuck you, August!” We were both shocked by my language, but we were beyond propriety and decorum now. “You’re not protecting me. Stop lying to yourself. This is your choice, because you could put that damned pistol away right now and let me go.”

  “It isn’t a choice. You don’t understand. Emrys will use you, and you’ll wish you’d let me do it quickly, the way I must. Why couldn’t you have used the names I gave you? You led him straight to us. I could have kept you safe.” She was crying again, but the tears no longer moved me.

  “If I’m so dangerous, how are you any less so? Won’t he try to use you for his scheme? We share the same blood.”

  “No one knows that I lived. I’ve never used my name in this world.”

  “We put down your address on the roster.”

  August’s eyes darkened. “Yes, and destroyed the only home I’ve known here. I can’t go back. There’s no evidence that it was I who lived there—my papers are impeccable as Alis Green—but I’ll set up somewhere else and give myself a new identity. It’s what I do. It’s what you should have let me do.”

  “So this is my fault. You’re going to kill me, and it’s my fault.”

  August let her arm drop, and after a moment, she sank to her knees in front of me. “I know you can’t understand this, sweet Sebastian,” she whispered. “I do love you. I love you too much to let you become what Emrys would make you. You think you understand what Emrys is capable of, but you don’t. You can’t.”

  “He tortured me every night for eight years, and then began again when I returned to Llys Mawr.”

  “And he would do far worse to achieve his aims in this world. He’d not only be able to raise Cantre’r Gwaelod with the magic he’s stolen from you, but he’d have you to keep generating that magic—like a battery—the power source that runs my automobile, only magic. He would drain you until you were nothing but a hollow shell, and with your help, he’d have power over this entire world. You thought we could control the waters in Cantre’r Gwaelod? You should have tried it here. It’s magnified a thousand times. You could cause tidal waves, hurricanes, droughts that would destroy entire continents. And he would discover that as soon as he had access to your power from within this realm. Could you live with that? Can you imagine the torture it would take for him to maintain his power once he had a taste of it?”

  Could I live with it? I wasn’t proud to admit to myself that I was willing to live with anything, so long as I lived. The preservation instinct was stronger than rational thought.

  And the thought that I would never see Macsen again, that he might never even know what had happened to me, made me feel my throat was being crushed under the weight of the tears I was trying not to shed.

  “August,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to die.”

  Her face crumbled, and she threw her arms around me, and we both began to sob. “I don’t want to do it,” she gasped as she tried to control her voice, and then spoke again when she’d calmed a bit. “Maybe I should do us both. Maybe you’re right. I’m too great a danger.”

  “No.” I clung to her, weeping, unable to stop now that I’d started. “Please, August. We’ll find another way. Please don’t do this.”

  “There is no other way,” she whispered, and I felt the pistol against my side, under my rib, aimed at my heart. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding tight to her, waiting for the jolt of fire to strike me, wondering how long it took to die from a shot straight to the heart. Not long, I thought. My heart would stop beating. Behind me, the ocean washed against the sand in its eternal lullaby. Droplets of moisture danced around us in the wind. I breathed in, felt the moisture rush into my lungs. The magic whispered inside me. August had said I should have tried it here.

  I took another breath, deeper, filling my lungs, and held it a moment.

  “Sebastian.” August was still. “What are you doing?”

  “Breathing,” I said as I exhaled. I took another deep breath and felt the thundering power of the ocean behind me, as though rushing into me through the droplets that scattered over my back from the spray of the rising tide.

  August pulled back the slide on the pistol, setting a round in the chamber. “I’ll go with you,” she promised. “I won’t let you die alone.”

  I held the breath I’d taken in as the tide washed out. Held it. Held it. Time seemed to stop as we stared at each other without moving.

  And then the tide rushed in again, and I brought it into me, breathing out with every ounce of magical energy I had. The wave crashed over us, much higher than any that had teased the shoreline before my breath, and I heard the muffled sound of August’s pistol discharging in the surf. I slipped from her grasp, and we were sucked into the undertow, tumbling head over heels in a white wake of brine.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Macsen

  Birdsong in the garden below Macsen’s window was the first ordinary and pleasant detail to enter his awareness outside the fog of pain.

  Memory, unfortunately, followed. Memory of the beating he’d taken after all, the ambush Emrys had carefully
crafted for him in order to take his revenge upon Macsen for his betrayal. But worse was the memory of Emrys revealing that he knew the entirety of Macsen’s deception. He knew the person Macsen had betrayed him with was actually Sebastian, and he knew Sebastian still lived. And he knew precisely where Sebastian was.

  Emrys intended to bring Sebastian “to heel”.

  Macsen rose, every muscle protesting, and forced himself to put on his trousers. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed while he’d lain moaning in bed, but from the relaxed demeanor of the household staff, it wasn’t difficult to surmise that Emrys was presently away from Llys Mawr. And Macsen intended to take full advantage of that fact. There was no telling how long it would be before Emrys was back. Macsen had to act now, even if it felt like his clothing was made out of sandpaper and sharp rocks.

  His valet paused on the way upstairs, a tray of breakfast things in his hands, as Macsen attempted coming down.

  “Lord Swift. I’m surprised to see you out of bed.” He glanced at Macsen’s bare torso and grimaced at the profusion of bruises. “Are you sure you’re fit to be walking about after your fall? I have your breakfast, and the morning paper.” Apparently, Emrys had explained Macsen’s state as the result of a fall from a horse. Judging by the number of times that story had been told by Emrys during Macsen’s youth, Macsen was apparently the worst equestrian who’d ever ridden—or the unluckiest.