Down, down, she swam. Like a crocodile carrying its prey, like the Hagfishes bearing the souls of the dead to Noden’s court. The water was not deep here, but it was deep enough for darkness to reign, and the current at the bottom to slow to near stillness.
Come! the water cried. Come and stay!
Yes, Vivia told it, and she released the young man. He lashed with his own power, tried to mark this river as his own. But these waters were too headstrong to be controlled. They preferred Vivia’s requests to his commands, and so her requests won. Ropes of current pulled him down. Chains of water held him there. Vivia felt him sink, sink, then hold fast within the silt. Her blood caressed him as she awkwardly turned her body toward the surface.
Carry me, she told the higher currents. Her strength was fading fast, and she still had one very important thing to do. One final request for the magic that lived inside her, around her, around the man now drowning in an ancient bottom below.
The water would release him eventually. Though if that happened before his last breaths faded into nothing …
Vivia had no energy, no mind left to care. There was only the boat approaching fast, and a Well that could fix the mess that her body had become. Vivia reached the boat, and a wave dumped her to its floor. Vaness stirred nearby.
“Vivia?” she seemed to say, though perhaps Vivia imagined that. The Empress never called her by her name.
“Hold … on,” Vivia told her, dragging herself around to face the tiny craft’s bow. Then she lifted her arms and asked the current to go.
It agreed, and soon, she and the Empress of Marstok were speeding toward the sea. Alone save for the stars and the forest, alive and unconcerned by the chaos that had come this way. The crickets still chirped. A raven chuckled. And soon enough, a roar built in Vivia’s ears, in her bones. It was not the roar of the ocean, rhythmic and reliable. This was a steady, endless crash from a waterfall toppling down.
A waterfall that had not moved in centuries and had been dead the last time Vivia had come here.
Please, she asked it as the river bent and the first white churn of rapids came into view. Please carry us to the Well. Her blood was draining too fast, and pain encroaching even faster.
But she couldn’t focus on anything that was not the water, not the falls. She had to reach the top. She had to reach the Well.
Then the water was carrying them, reversing course to allow this boat to rise and ascend and reach for a double-pointed plateau high above. It wobbled, it pushed. Vivia wanted it to lift, so lift it did.
Almost there. Vivia sensed the waterfall’s lip even if she could not see it. Even if her body was fading fast, the fire too much. The blood loss too much.
“Stay awake,” Vaness said from somewhere far away. “Please, Vivia, stay awake.”
Vivia. She’d said her name again and it pierced through the pain. Through even the water’s domineering will, trying to tip the boat in any direction it could. Vivia.
They reached the top of the falls. The boat pendulumed up, up, over a lip of man-assembled stone, then finally into the Origin Well, where it splashed down, bouncing, bobbing, listing, and spinning. Vivia couldn’t hold on any longer. Take me, she told the water, and she let its warm, pure touch embrace her. Then haul her overboard and down.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The walk back to the palace was a smear of cobblestones and cold, filthy feet. Of night revelers and bored guards. Other than a few pointed questions to Leopold—How do you know Iseult is in danger? How do you know where she is?—Safi strode in silence.
It would seem Leopold’s spies had discovered a Wordwitched map used by Hell-Bards, and it would seem that the young Nomatsi girl named Owl was marked upon it. “If Owl is near the Solfatarra, we can assume Iseult is too—and Hell-Bards are right behind them.”
“But how can they be inside the Solfatarra?” Safi asked once they were ensconced inside the torchlit tunnel again. She and Leopold had grabbed their slippers from the chest, deposited their cloaks, and then continued onward in bare feet toward the baths.
“I do not know.” Leopold’s cheeks ticced slightly in the torchlight. “Pray they change course before they reach the lake and find all routes cut off.”
“Damn it all,” Safi snarled. “We need one of those Hell-Bard maps. Can your spies get one?” Each of her steps was long. Several times, she even kicked into a half jog—and Leopold kept pace with her. Yes, Hell-Bard shadows still splintered her bones, but they were a cursory annoyance. A weak pain compared to the bright, flaring light of Iseult at the Solfatarra. Iseult surrounded by Hell-Bards.
“Maybe.” Leopold’s skin shone from the moisture in the air. “But if they cannot get one, then we cannot risk asking a Hell-Bard. You must remember that they can, at any time, be controlled and punished.”
Safi’s pace stuttered. She had not considered this. In her usual self-centered conceit, she had completely forgotten that as soon as she vanished from the palace, Henrick would turn his wrath on the people he could hurt in her stead.
The first people Henrick would punish would be Safi’s own guards—her lead guard, Lev. Then he would turn to anyone else who’d ever contacted with her. Caden. Zander. The healer at the Keep.
Her feet stopped beneath her. Mist coiled, while ahead, the first pillars of the bath shimmered in wan light.
Leopold’s pinched expression told Safi he understood. “As long as we tell them nothing,” he said gently, “then Henrick’s torture will yield nothing. He will stop as soon as he realizes that.”
Safi didn’t agree. Henrick might be an adept leader and a strong emperor—she couldn’t deny that—but he also did whatever he needed to maintain power. She had felt it, she had seen it.
She had also felt and seen his temper. It would infuriate him enough to have Safi escape his clutches, but how would he react when he realized his prize nephew and only heir was gone too? Deep beneath all those masks, Safi suspected, Henrick cared for Leopold. Perhaps even loved him.
“This is bigger than the Hell-Bards.” Leopold opened his arms, a wide, fluid movement. “You and Iseult are bigger than the Hell-Bards or Cartorra or any wrath Henrick might unfurl. All that matters is uniting the Cahr Awen, Safiya. All that matters is getting you to the final Well.”
Safi’s eyes narrowed. Something in his words did not ring true; something he said made the Truth-lens scratch across her skin.
“If uniting us is all that matters,” she asked slowly, “then why did you let Iseult leave?” She had already asked this question; he had already given answers. Yet now, those answers seemed inadequate. False, even. And now she had enough of her magic to prove it.
She advanced on Leopold and thrust her face close to his. He was a graceful, beautiful man, but not a tall one. Safi’s nose almost touched his. “You let Iseult go. Why, Polly?”
He drew in a long breath, but did not back away. Did not avert his eyes. “I told you—” he began.
“Tell me again.”
“I could not risk being caught.”
“Why?”
A slight twitch on his cheeks. He preserved his silence.
“If you expect me to travel with you across Cartorra, Polly, then I need to trust you. So far, you have helped me—I won’t deny that. But nothing you’ve done has given me reason to believe anything you say. You are manipulative, you play games, you were trained by Henrick to be just like him.”