Stix’s heart broke in two.
She should have seen it coming, of course—it was the one thing she had desperately prayed would not happen, so therefore Lady Fate would have to make it so: a prisoner sacrificed to the Ring.
The person was still alive when they toppled into the pool, and Stix felt the person sinking. They were weighted by stone, prey for the sea foxes. Bait to draw Stix away. And bait she was going to take because she would never leave another human to die.
With a strangled scream at Noden and his Hagfishes, Stix let her column vanish. Instantly, the water stopped pushing. Instantly, the water slung toward its siblings in a joyous reunion that tidal-waved over Stix. Crushed her, beat her, shoved her back into a swim.
The sea foxes didn’t notice. They were charging for the weighted prisoner, now struggling upon the pool’s floor. Stix loosed more water, cannonballs of power to pummel the foxes. But she was too slow and the foxes too fast. She felt their jaws snap into bone, felt blood unravel through the water, strands of heat that sang with an ended life.
“No.” The word escaped Stix’s throat on a bubble of air. No, no. Currents keened against her, thrashed by foxes writhing and twirling as they fed. No, no.
The sea foxes had almost finished their feast when two more bodies plunked into the water behind her. She sensed the splashes and the displacement of water that spoke of two more lives sinking too fast. Stix would not fail them.
She kicked off the Ring floor, sucking power to her. She needed air—oh Noden, she needed air, but there was no time. She would have to make what little still seared in her lungs suffice.
She raced across the pond, fast as a shark. Faster even, and behind her, the foxes gave pursuit. They’d finished their meal; they were always, always hungry for more.
She reached the first person, and as she’d sensed, they were roped to a stone far too heavy for her to move. They flapped and bent and strained like a worm on a hook, and when Stix grabbed their shoulders—shoulders she could not see—they only fought harder.
I’m trying to help you! she wanted to scream, but she had no breath left and no sound beneath the waves.
She needed to cut these ropes, and she needed to do it fast.
She froze a strip of water in her right hand. An ice knife, complete with handle and edge for slicing. Sharp, sharp, she told the water. Cut, cut. In seconds, the rope snapped. The person was free—and the foxes had arrived.
Stix slung out her knife, and as it hurtled toward the nearest fox, she froze a hundred more. Freeze, freeze. Cut, cut.
The foxes screamed, a piercing burst of sound as every ice blade made contact. As Stix carried herself and the prisoner away. They sped through the water, and though the world was dark, worse shadows were creeping in. Stix needed air. She was going to have to surface. Unless …
Back away, she commanded the closest water—the water that haloed her head. Back away.
A small funnel formed, and the water parted. It sucked strength from Stix because, like before, the water did not want to separate. But Stix let it have her strength in exchange for blessed, beautiful air.
Her lungs billowed, two gulps as she escalated toward the second prisoner. Her head stopped spinning; her lungs stopped screeching. Then she was to the other person, and she let the waters crush over her face once more. Again, she produced an ice knife, and again, she carved away until the second prisoner was also free.
Now she had two people to protect, and three sea foxes pummeling this way. But the exit must be near. The stall she needed to reach to end this fight and claim victory.
Stix grabbed hold of the prisoners, her fingers digging under their arms, then she used every piece of power that still remained inside of her to shoot for the sky. Up, up, they flew through the water until they broke the surface.
And up, up the foxes flew too. Three sets of fangs, of fur, of bloodied entrails from a prisoner lost. They were clever in their ascent. Cleverer than Stix had been, belying a sentience she hadn’t realized they possessed.
One rushed beneath her. One swam behind. And one moved between Stix and the exit.
She and the prisoners were trapped. Rain fell against her face while she treaded water. Clean and new and surprising—she hadn’t noticed the storm clouds rolling in.
The sea fox below Stix was readying for an attack: diving low where it could then build momentum toward the surface. Even if Stix could build an ice wall between her and the monster, such raw animal power would ultimately win. These creatures were too huge, too ancient to be contained, even by the Water Brawler.
So of course that was the moment the voices decided to come. So sudden, so clear, Stix didn’t have time to be surprised. They simply sang, No whistling when a storm’s in sight. No whistling when a storm’s in sight, and the water and the Ring burst away.
* * *
“I can stand by no longer,” Stix says. “The people can stand by no longer. We have to end the Exalted Ones’ reign.” She pins her eyes on Eridysi, as does everyone else in the room. Bastien, Midne, Rhian, Saria, and the Rook King’s damnable bird.
Eridysi, a willowy woman with pale hair and paler skin who spends more time lost in her head than she does speaking or even acknowledging that the Six are in her workshop, curls in on herself. “I am working as fast as I can.”
Stix believes her; her workshop, never tidy on a good day, has descended into utter chaos with heaps of paper or books or, lately, dusty stones.
“Work faster,” Bastien growls, and Stix cuts him a sharp look. He only glares in return from behind his mask. He is the least patient of all of the Six and has been urging Eridysi to hurry for weeks now.
“What is it you lack?” Saria asks in her quiet, still way. She is becoming more distant each day, more statue than human. Stix understands. She herself has become more and more mercurial like the tides. It is the only way to endure what the Exalted Ones make each of them be: to sink more deeply into the magic Sirmaya gave them.
“There is nothing you can do,” Dysi says. “I must solve this myself.” She shuffles her gold-backed cards absently. “I will solve this myself. When next you come, I will have an answer. I swear on the Sleeping Giant.” Her silver eyes meet Stix’s, then each of the other Six in turn. Even the Rook, who squawks and ruffles his feathers.
“Good,” Stix says, lifting a warning hand at Bastien. He has become as harsh as the cyclones on the Windswept Plains, and Stix finds him harder and harder to manage. He loves her just as she loves him, but love is not a cure for what he has endured from the Exalted One called Lovats. Nor is revenge a cure, though Bastien won’t listen when she tells him that.
“We will leave first,” she tells the Six and Eridysi. “And we will see you in a sevenday.” Then she hooks her arm in Bastien’s and tows him toward the door.
A familiar orange tabby follows.
* * *
Like yesterday’s fight with the hawk, when the waves and the Ring and the barrage of the crowd punctured into Stix again, almost no time had passed. The sea foxes were coming for her; it was time to move.
Or time to whistle as the voices so clearly wanted her to do. Stix wet her lips, licking away salt and mud. Then she exhaled a weak burble of air while her heart thumped and her magic held the prisoners afloat.
The sea fox was still charging up from the depths. The crowd was now chanting—some had even started to boo. Why wasn’t the Water Brawler moving, they wanted to know? Why wasn’t she fighting back? “Ditch the bodies! Toss ’em down!”