It was well past midnight when they finally found a better mode of travel: a dinghy wrecked upon the shore. Vaness spotted it; Vivia confirmed it through her spyglass.
“Can you sail it?”
“Hye,” Vivia replied, and she grinned. Her first grin in over a day. One that built up from her belly and spread across her lips. “Though we’re both going to get wet.”
Vaness smiled back, a sight Vivia wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before. So rich, so real, with her forehead smoothed and the barest glimpse of teeth.
Vivia clacked shut her spyglass. Then cleared her throat, and without waiting to see if Vaness followed, she hurried down a runoff groove in the cliff. Scree loosed beneath her feet; she almost fell twice in her haste; but soon, she was on the rocky shore and peering down at the dinghy. The heat that had built within her moments before was now replaced by the heat of exertion.
Broken, half decayed, sodden, this boat wouldn’t stay afloat for long—unless you were a Tidewitch. “I hope you trust me,” she said as the Empress finally caught up. Vaness offered a grimace in reply, and to Vivia’s surprise, she found herself laughing. As real as the smile on the cliff top, it loosed from her chest and softened in her muscles. She would find the Fox ship. She would find a way to protect her people.
She squared her shoulders to the sea, arms opening and magic reaching. The sparkle of the Well had worn off, but now she had the sparkle of the sea. Always flowing, always alive, always ready to be what Vivia needed.
Come, she summoned, and her fingers and toes curled in. Come and take us. Then she hopped into the half-buried boat, her feet squelching on damp sand, and offered a hand to the Empress.
Vaness took it, though her gaze was on the water. It rivered upward, following creases and seams worn into stone. Then covering sand and seaweed it had already abandoned until the next tide. By the time it reached the dinghy, Vaness was seated on the crooked remains of a bench and Vivia stood at what little remained of a stern.
Take us, Vivia said, half request, half command, and as always, the water obeyed. It licked around the boat’s skeleton, careful to remain outside even when holes welcomed it in. Then it tugged, it lifted, it lurched the vessel to sea.
Vaness yelped at the first jerk. Vivia only smiled. Two more jerks as the water forced the wreck from its longtime home. Then they were sailing. Up, over the shore, and finally into the dark, lapping waves.
A few kicks from the tide, but otherwise, the ride was smooth. Like attendants carrying a litter, the water aimed to please Vivia. It aimed to keep her safe and comfortable—and fast. Within moments of clearing the last breaker, the dinghy accelerated to a wild speed. Spindrift sprayed. Waves snuck in through cracks. But never did the boat falter, and never did Vivia’s magic. These past days, she had felt more connected to her power than she had in her entire lifetime. These waters were hers. These waters were home.
Time became meaningless as the boat sailed on. Her Tidewitchery was one with the sea. It navigated by instinct. It set course by timeless truth. Coral reefs older than humanity, shipwrecks ancient but new, and creatures that lived so very briefly but that the water intimately knew—each piece told Vivia where she was. Each piece guided her true.
It was midmorning when they reached the Hundred Isles. A record time, Vivia thought in that vague part of her mind that was still human. Now if she could just find where the Fox ship was meant to be.
The water knew, though—of course it knew, and it guided her with ease toward the heart of the Isles, where only the cleverest of ships could sail. Where only Nubrevnans dared risk the fickle seas and shallow shoals.
When she finally spotted Baile’s Blessing anchored in the hidden harbor of a crescent-shaped isle, the sun was just beginning its ascent. Golden light flickered against Vivia’s right side, and a warm figure leaned against her left: the Empress of Marstok, soaked by sea spray yet stiff and strong. She had her arms looped around Vivia, as if propping her for support. As if Vivia might have collapsed at any moment, and only Vaness’s iron spine kept her in place upon the dinghy.
It was as Vivia finally allowed the waters to slow—as the dinghy took a sudden lurching dip into the sea—that she realized she was about to collapse. Vaness was the only thing holding her upright.
“Thank you,” she tried to say, but words would not come. It was as if she had become the sea, and all she could do was bubble and froth.
Vaness seemed to understand, though, for she gripped Vivia more tightly and said, “Do not sink us just yet.” She lifted her voice next and shouted at the Blessing, at sailors now scurrying to the railing, “I have brought you your queen, Vivia Nihar. Help us. Please, help!”
* * *
Stix had never sprinted so fast in her life. Ryber was in danger, Ryber was in pain.
And Ryber was right. Kahina had returned after one day away, and now she was already back to claim what Stix had hidden from her.
Stix pounded through stone hallways, following the screams, always just out of sight, just out of reach. Until at last, she reached the wooden stall that led into the arena. She stumbled through, where she found the Ring had been drained, leaving a muddied basin that dipped down.
Kahina stood at the heart, watching Stix through half-lidded eyes, her pipe clutched between her teeth. No tobacco burned, no smoke puffed. Her hair was looser than usual, the tight curls free around her face, and her skin shimmering with sweat as if she too had just been running.
Though she was fifty paces away, Stix’s spectacles sharpened her, revealing a furious edge Stix had never seen before. This was not the Admiral who controlled the Ring. This was a Paladin thwarted.
“Where is Ryber?” Stix panted, stalking nearer. Mud squelched beneath her feet.
“Where are the blade and glass?” The jade around Kahina’s thumb flashed.
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
The pain began.
Once, as a girl, Stix had been swimming on the beach when fire had suddenly wrapped around her arm. It had moved down her torso and onto her leg, a spiraling line that had quickly flamed throughout her body from a jellyfish tentacle tangled across her skin. The jellyfish itself was gone, but the danger of its tentacle had lived on. A tiny, autonomous weapon that had needed no master to ensure pain.
The blister on Stix’s thumb was the same. A fire so sudden, so pronged, Stix didn’t react at first. Even when it spread across her body, too fast for her mind to follow, she was locked in place by shock.
Until suddenly, exactly as had happened on that day paddling through the waves, she was screaming and clawing and crumpling in on herself. And this was worse—so, so much worse—for no amount of wriggling or scratching could remove it.
She fell to the earth, vision blurring beneath pain. She thought she was screaming, but she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was agony.
When at last the magic flames receded, Stix found herself supine across the mud with Kahina gazing down. “My pet and I went all the way to that damnable mountain, Water Brawler, and all the way into that room of which you spoke, so imagine my consternation when there was no broken blade nor broken glass upon a pedestal. There were only the ghosts from our past, still whispering of treachery. A new treachery. Your treachery.
“Now I will give you a second try to do this properly: where are the blade and glass?”