by Sky Corbelli
Chapter 24
Forbidden and Flowing
Sarah swore softly under her breath. “What does she...” Ezra began, feeling the blood draining from his face.
“She will travel with me for as long as she is fit. She will be expected to rise before me in the morning to prepare for the road. I will suffer no backtalk or lazing about. I will see to it that she is fed and watered, provided she does exactly what she is told when she is told to do it. She will not need any possessions or trinkets to accompany her, as we have a long way to travel and will be moving quickly. I will see to her dispensation if I find her services... wanting. I'm sure she'll fetch a fine price at the marketplace in Eastpoint if there are any problems.”
Virtual slavery, Ezra thought numbly, with sale into actual slavery if Kelly disappoints her.
“They wouldn't...” Ezra could almost hear Mat's teeth grinding.
“Mama no,” the girl whispered, terrified.
“Surely... surely you can't mean... there must be something...” Mrs. Wellward's voice was hopeless and forlorn, a woman faced an impossible choice.
“I have named the price for the boy's life. You have until I leave in the morning to decide.” Sounds of movement, then the door opened a crack, only to be slammed shut again.
“Ungh,” Mr. Wellward's grunt sounded defeated, as if his dearest hopes had been shattered. Mrs. Wellward made a horrible whimpering noise and began to weep again.
“No, papa, no,” Kelly breathed. She began sobbing again, her voice rising in hysteria. “Please mama, I'll be good, I'll do as I'm told and never talk back and help with–”
She was cut off with a strangled sound. “Be silent, girl, and thankful for your brother's life.” The seer's cold voice was a quiet, harsh reprimand.
Ezra felt his fingernails biting into his palms and realized his hands were clenched into tight fists. “We can't let her–”
“Change what you can, Hawkins,” Sarah interrupted him. “And accept what you can't.” Her face was pale, knuckles white where she gripped her mug.
“Bad things happen.” Mat recited his mantra, resignation in his voice.
They heard more movement in the room, and Ezra felt hope rising within him. Surely they would come to some other arrangement. Surely they couldn't do that to their own daughter. There was a brief rustle of clothing, perhaps the sound of a hug, then Mr. Wellward came back into the room, head bowed as he rubbed at his eyes and shut the door behind him. Ezra stared at the big man in mute horror.
“She'll probably–” Mat cleared his throat. “She'll get to see the world, Ezra. Just like she wanted. Water-seers go all over, they're welcomed everywhere.”
“As a slave.” Ezra felt numb as he whispered back. “She'll see the world as a slave.” He wanted to scream in frustration.
A gasp came through over the sound of Mrs. Wellward's grief, then a deep, ragged breath being drawn. “There,” the water-seer said in her infuriatingly calm voice. “I'll collect the girl in the morning, after I've rested. Please see that she is fed and ready for travel. We won't be stopping until we've reached the skyports at Eastpoint. I will review her performance upon arrival and either keep her on or put her up to auction. I will need–”
A gunshot rang out in the bar, pulling Ezra's attention back to what was happening in front of him. The gangly man had jumped up onto the counter, his bandages pooling around his feet, greasy hair hanging limp over his wild eyes. The crowd that had pressed him was suddenly scrambling back, angry mutters hushed. In his hand he held what looked like an antique revolver. Jenna Haldis leaned heavily against the counter beside him, red hair mixing with blood as she clutched her shoulder and made piteous, mewing sounds.
“Everyone, just stand back!” he snarled at the crowd. “You'll stand back if you know what's good for you!” Ezra felt Sarah tense beside him.
“His head's obscured behind the wall,” Mat reported in a clinically detached voice. “There are too many people around him for a safe shot without visual, and the freaking contact is between me and his legs. I have no shot.”
“Yes,” the man sneered, “I posed as a wind-scarred because that's what you trash would understand.” He drew himself up, posturing grandly. “However! I am actually from,” he let the tension build with a dramatic pause, “the Forbidden City!” He brandished his pistol in the air. Out of the corner of his eye, Ezra saw Sarah slowly drawing her gun from its hidden shoulder harness. “You thought us a myth, a tale to frighten your children at night. But we are real!” His voice shrilled harshly. “Real! And we will have our vengeance!” His gaze was lit feverishly as he scanned the room for an appropriate target of said vengeance. It finally came to rest on the girl at his feet. She stared up at him, eyes wide with terror and glistening with tears, slowly shaking her head in disbelief. “Behold the might of our technology!” He pointed the gun down at Jenna Haldis as she tried to squirm away.
The water-seer chose that moment to re-enter the room. Everyone, including Sarah, Ezra, and the lunatic with the gun turned to stare at her. She glanced up, unfazed, all-blue eyes calmly taking in the situation. The madman began to reorient the weapon on her, eyes gleaming with hatred. “You strucking–”
That was as far as he got. Faster then Ezra would have believed, the cloaked woman had crossed the room and vaulted onto the counter, a blur of blue and gray. Her hand flashed by the cup of water she had filled earlier, knocking it over and pulling the liquid that remained along with her, forming it into a blade as she streaked toward the lanky man. With a flick of her wrist, the water lashed out, cleanly removing the man's thumb and trigger finger along with the top of the gun. He let out a strangled shriek as she closed on him and lightly touched two slender fingers to his throat. Instantly the man made a choking sound, his body going rigid. With just the two fingers still resting just above his collarbone, the seer lifted him as if he weighed nothing. Some part of Ezra's mind cataloged the information away, noting that his life expectancy would be dramatically reduced if a water-seer ever touched him.
The elementalist cocked her head to one side. “You say you're from the Forbidden City? Extraordinary.” She regarded him as if he were a particularly interesting insect. “I don't believe I've ever killed one of you before. I wonder what your life is worth. Tell me, are you alone?”
Abruptly the man let out a gasp, the ability to breathe returned to him. Ezra almost felt sorry for the failed con man, clearly thrust into a situation he could not handle. He had claimed credit for a tragedy and taken advantage of a village too shocked to do anything about it. Without a doubt, he was a monster, but before the indifference of the water-seer, he was less than a bug. The man looked wildly around the room, but no-one would meet his frantic gaze.
His eyes shifted past Ezra and landed on Sarah, desperate hope lighting them. Ezra could almost hear the thoughts clicking together in the man's mind. She was brave and clever! She had stood up to him, figured it all out! Someone like that might even find a way to save him, someone like that could... something evil slid over the his features, a crazed smile spreading across his face.
Ezra glanced back to see Sarah's eyes widen as she realized what was going through the doomed man's head. “Oh, struck me,” she whispered in horror.
“Them!” he shouted as loudly as he was able, gesturing directly at Sarah and Ezra with the bloody mess that was his hand. “Those two came after me! From the Forbidden City!”
The water-seer turned, deep blue orbs singling them out across the crowded room. Her eyes narrowed on Sarah, frozen with her gun halfway out of its shoulder harness. She released the madly cackling man and, almost as an afterthought, flicked her hand, sending out a scythe of water that neatly slit his throat. Blood sprayed. A woman screamed. The seer blurred as she flitted through the crowd, cloak snapping every time she changed direction, no more hindered than if the room had been empty. So fast! Ezra barely had time to think as he rose, motions feeling sluggish, reaching for his sword.
; Sarah, however, was ready. Leaning back in her chair, she kicked the table onto its side between them and the fast approaching elementalist, getting her gun clear of its holster and shifting into a shooter's stance. There was a hiss and the table split in two, a stream of liquid arching whip-like away from it, still anchored to the seer's fingertips. Sarah's pistol barked three times. A spurt of blood trailed from the water-seer's leg as she bobbed and wove, dodging the second shot and catching the third in a shield of water that quickly froze around the bullet, trapping it in place. The ice immediately melted back to liquid, snaking out and wrenching the gun from Sarah's hand. The elementalist's face lit up with a triumphant smile.
Then the tip of Ezra's sword bit into her face. The blade slashed up through her nose, nicking her left eyebrow. She jerked back, but Ezra's body moved forward instinctively, just like he had practiced, pressing her with a follow-up thrust at her exposed throat.
A dull shock ran through the blade and up Ezra's arm. It felt like he had stabbed a wall. A thin trickle of blood ran down the water-seer's hand, a millimeter or so of the sword's tip embedded in her palm where she had barely managed to catch his attack. Her lips spread in a feline smile as her tongue languidly licked at the blood running down her face, her hand wrapping around the sword's tip. Slowly, inexorably, the seer began to twist the weapon from Ezra's hands. He felt a measure of the hopeless panic he had seen in the dead man's eyes as he struggled to hold on to his blade.
The water-seer's shoulder snapped abruptly to the side, twisting her body away as another crack of thunder rattled the windows. Or maybe that wasn't thunder this time... “Crap, she's still up,” Mat muttered.
The seer sprung up from where she had been thrown to the floor, a clean hole marking where the Mat's shot had gone straight through her bicep. She had somehow managed to jerk away from what should have been a clean head shot. Her strange eyes widened as she rapidly scanned the area in front of her, locking on the hole in the window just as second clap of thunder rang out. She flung herself to the side as her leg was swept out from under her by the force of the bullet's impact, sending her sprawling to ground. Before Mat could fire again, the water-seer pushed off the floor with all four limbs, sailing through the air and out of sight of the window.
And directly into the astonished crowd. They all went down in a tangle of arms of legs.
“I'm incoming, get out of there!” Mat cried to them urgently. Sarah spun, grabbing her chair and hefting it through the window. Ezra sheathed his sword in a practiced motion and bounded over his own fallen chair, then lurched to a stop. The wheels in his head were spinning, putting things to together, forming an idea.
“Hawkins!” Sarah yelled, one hand on the windowsill, her other reaching out to him. “Let's go!”
Ezra took a step away from her, glancing nervously over his shoulder toward where the water-seer had vanished into the writhing mass of bodies. The idea clicked into place. He licked his lips, spun, and sprinted across the room.
“Hawkins, what are you doing?!” Sarah screamed after him. “Get back here!”
A man suddenly flew through the air in front of him. “...off of me you trash!” He heard the water-seer snarl from somewhere inside the throng of toppled humanity. “They're getting...” another body went sailing over the bar in Ezra's peripheral vision “...away!”
His hand closed on the door handle and he wrenched it open. Light, fast footsteps sounded close behind him, and he was afraid he was going to have a heart attack as his mind leaped through calculations. How many bodies had been between his own and the water-seer's? Panic was rapidly replaced by relief as he caught the steady stream of curses Sarah was muttering under her breath. Ezra swept his gaze around the room. Mrs. Wellward was staring at him in horror, clutching a small, pale boy to her chest, tears still streaming down her face.
Kelly stood frozen in place, eyes bright with tears that she apparently could no longer shed, whimpering noises caught in her throat as her breath came very quickly and shallowly. Ezra grinned ferociously.
Sarah stopped cursing, but Ezra knew that was only because it was taking all of her energy to glare at him. He had a history of being glared at. He could sense it.
