“I go to lose myself in it,” she whispered.
She stepped toward the Sea. Her feet neared the edge, and she peeled her boots away, letting her toes flatten on the cool precipice, letting them curl just so, curling and holding. The multitudinous grasses of the Sea filled her vision, and she opened herself to them, enraptured.
She loosed her hands into the Sea, holding her arms up and out like a worshipper, feeling a part of the prairie as it chafed and stroked her skin. That same fragmented music in her mind became her hymn, swelling and fading behind her eyes as she leaned forward into the Sea.
Dew coated her arms, an embarrassment of water running down to her shoulders, and Kindred drank, slurping and sucking at her sleeves.
Her weight shifted dangerously, and she swayed like the grasses in a storm, and still she drank. Perhaps she would fall forward, but in that moment, Kindred found she didn’t care. The water tasted sweet on her tongue, and the Sea was a gentle instrument she played with her hands. All was as it should be.
“Pass!” came a shout from behind her, and Kindred looked over her shoulder to see her watcher, a wide smile stretching his face, standing and working the lock on her cell door. Two others flanked him, their smiles directed at Kindred.
The Sea pulled at her, jealous of the watchers entering her cell, and Kindred felt herself falling forward.
“I go to lose myself in it,” she said, drunk on the Sea’s gift, delirious. The Marchess had followed the Sea’s invitation down, and so Kindred would too. It all sounded so simple, so easy. Why hadn’t she done this before? Why had she led captain and crew so far off course when she could have done this all along? What nonsense to dream of a safe, measured descent, one step to the Roughs, another to the Once-City, and a third to what? A staircase she would discover leading below? A ship capable of diving to the bottom of the Forever Sea? Some magic powerful enough to transport her to the Sea floor, so many thousands of lengths below?
Why should she wait when she could leap, and before the end, she would see what lay below, would fall through a world long ignored.
In the prairie wind, out the prairie wind.
Arms wormed around her waist, yanking her back, stealing her weightlessness. Kindred’s feet slapped hard against the floor, and her breath, so steady and even, tripped to a near halt.
“Welcome to the Once-City, citizen,” came the watcher’s voice in her ear.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kindred was drag-carried out into the hallway, the tiny remnants of her strength fading even as her confusion grew. She’d passed? How?
Citizen?
The watcher had wild hair and a weak jaw accentuated by a thin, curling beard. Dirt and grime streaked along his face and neck in uneven bands. He was the same man from the docks, the one who had listened to her beg sanctuary. He was grinning.
“So sorry about this. All of this nonsense is nearly done. I wish I could’ve just allowed you in on the dock, but rules, you know. With so many words mixed up, I just couldn’t . . . although your pronunciation was quite good! Well, it’s all past now. Sorry about this,” he said again as he pulled a strip of cloth from his pocket and gagged Kindred with it. He looked genuinely sorry. “We can’t have you giving away how to pass!”
Kindred could only stare at the man. She wouldn’t have been able to give anything away even if she’d been ungagged, even if she had any clue where her crewmates were located.
With an effort that felt heroic, she turned her head first to the left and then the right. Punctuating the length of the hallway were a few more watchers, more than a stone’s throw away from where Kindred stood. She felt her brain sloshing through confusion and exhaustion as she counted them.
Three.
Which meant only three of her crew remained in the cells.
Long Quixa. Cora the Wraith. Scindapse.
“It should be over soon,” the watcher said, patting Kindred on the shoulder. “It’s been quite some time since we’ve had a group so big take the test all at once. Normally, it’s just a few, so we don’t have to follow these brutish rules about keeping you quiet.”
The man gestured to the other two who had helped pull Kindred out of the cell.
“You both can go. I’m sure the others will need you soon.”
They went, one in either direction, leaving Kindred alone with the man.
“Your friend, the big one, she did not take her welcome well.” He shook his head and frowned, though his eyes widened as he saw Kindred’s look of concern. “Oh, we didn’t kill her! She’s fine. Took four guards to subdue her, but she’s fine! But a gag wouldn’t quite do it for that one. Far too big. And far too . . .” He cast about for the word a moment and then, as if disgusted by what he’d found, said, “. . . angry.”
He shook his head and then smiled again at Kindred. He smiled like someone with practice.
“And so, I’m pleased that you’re taking it better! Once this is all over and that gag becomes unnecessary, you will have to tell me all about your controlled dive at the end of the passage through the reef! I don’t normally sit in on these tests, but I simply had to know how you would do it. The hearthkeeper who dove her ship below the waves!” He clapped his hands with delight, eyes alive. “I was looking through a longsight, but I’m sure it was much more dramatic aboard your vessel.”
“What about the crew who failed?” Kindred asked, not even trying to follow what the man was talking about.
Or she tried to say that. The words grew together into a sopping mess as they hit her saliva-soaked gag. It took three more attempts and a host of sluggish gestures for him to understand.
“Ah. Right.” The excitement was gone now, disappeared faster than it had appeared. “That, I’m afraid, is the unfortunate part of this test.”
Kindred peered at him, bleary. The dew she’d slurped was sitting uncomfortably in her stomach, and her head had begun to hurt again. She shook her head, suddenly understanding the worst.
Dead? Killed?
“Oh, no! No, no, no!” the man exclaimed, reading her sudden revulsion. “Gods, no. They’re fine. Everyone is allowed to stay, of course, but some are given . . . other tasks.” He picked his words carefully at the end, speaking lightly and with meaningful glances at the ceiling. “You won’t be seeing them around as much—except occasionally when they’re back from voyages. Those who can’t pass the test are given tasks on long-range vessels: the mappers and harvesters who sail far, far afield. They’re usually happier with that sort of task anyway, but it does mean you won’t see them as regularly. I’m sorry about that.”
He ran a dirty hand through his frazzled hair, looking at Kindred as if he desperately wanted to say more but didn’t know how to, or couldn’t.