by Kevin Hearne
A ragged sigh of relief escaped me, and I continued to trap them one by one, working from the base of the pillar outward. The spots came back into my vision by the end of it and the nausea returned as well, but I had nothing left in my stomach to evacuate, and I was convulsed by dry heaves while Tuala knelt next to me with a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“Relax now. You did it,” she said. “Just listen to them complain.” The Bone Giants were shouting at us and one another in their incomprehensible language, and it made me smile for a moment until I remembered there were many more inside the walls of Göfyrd.
“If any more come after us, we run. I can’t do that again.”
“Yes, I agree.” She fetched my canteen and made me drink some water. “Just relax and regain your strength.”
“What should we do next?”
“Let’s eat lunch in front of them while they cook in the sun.”
It hurt to laugh, but I did anyway, and Tuala helped me sit up. We sat on the edge of the tower, legs dangling in the air, and chewed through some salted dry meat and biscuits as the invaders hurled insults and dire promises of murder at us. We smiled and waved, and by the end of the meal I felt better if not actually good.
Tuala waved a hand at them. “Notice anything weird about this group besides them being tall, pale, and obsessed with death?”
I took a moment to survey them with a critical eye before observing, “They’re all men.”
“Good, so it’s not just me.”
“It’s really strange now that I think of it. Don’t their women fight? I didn’t see anything like the whole army in the Granite Tunnel, but the ones I saw there were all men, too.”
The courier shrugged. “Maybe they’re in the city running things.”
“If so, it’s a criminal war they’re waging. Killing children and the elderly.”
Tuala shook her head. “You ever go to Bennelin?”
“No, I never got down there.”
“It was wonderful. Thriving market down by the docks. Best seafood in Rael, you know, right off the boat. There was one fishmonger in particular I liked to visit whenever I was in town. Nicest old woman you’d ever meet; she must have been seventy-odd years old, her spine all bent with age, a good number of her teeth missing, but she was down there every day, rain or shine, and just happy as could be. She braided her hair with shells, had shells around her neck, too. She also spoke fluent Brynt and knew their sea chants and Drowning Songs and taught a bunch of them to me. That helped me get along in Brynlön and make fast friends, you know. She did so much good for me, and I never learned her name. She smiled and I smiled back, and we talked and sang, and I always bought some fish to cook later, always assuming that I’d see her again. And now I never will. Because of them.” Her head bobbed down at the Bone Giants. “Well, not them specifically but another army of them. They’re all stone killers.”
“They are,” I agreed.
“We have to be the same. We can’t leave them like this or they’ll dig themselves out. I can go down, speed up, and knife them in the kidney.”
“No, don’t do that.”
“We don’t have a choice. They’ll kill anyone they meet.”
“I meant, don’t do that specifically. I have a better idea. I’ll finish what I started.”
“How so?”
“Watch that one there,” I said, pointing to a Bone Giant gesticulating at me with what I assumed were rude gestures in his culture and bellowing what I guessed were promises of a gnarly death. Placing the soles of my feet against the side of the earthen tower, I commanded the earth to convulse underneath his feet, loosening and dropping, and then compact once more around his body. It worked so well that I repeated it. The effect was that he was being gulped down into the earth, a hand span or two at a time. His aggressive tone and demeanor changed the farther down he sank. He kept his arms up and held on to his sword, I noticed. When he was buried up to his belly, he fell silent and despair gripped him as he saw his end approach. But once he sank to his armpits, he raised that sword high above his head and shouted a phrase as inspiration to the others, for they raised theirs in answer and repeated the phrase back to him in unison. Two more gulps and his head disappeared from view. I let it go one more gulp after that, leaving only his forearm and hand above the ground, still clutching that sword in defiance. It quivered, spasmed, but held on to the handle tightly even when it grew still. The remaining Bone Giants watched that in silence once he went under, but as soon as they were sure their fellow soldier was dead, they all turned to face me and shouted that phrase again.
“What is that they’re saying?” Tuala wondered aloud. “It’s all kind of a garble at the beginning, but then they say ‘Zanata sedam.’ Maybe that’s the word for their king or queen or god. Or their country.”
“I don’t know. But the good news is that wasn’t too rough on me. I think I can do that forty more times or so.” I picked the invader nearest the tower to be next. He stubbornly died the same way as the first, sword in the air, and so did the next two. The fifth giant broke the pattern and appeared to beg me for mercy, but he was quickly shamed by the others into dying with what they considered to be dignity. He raised his sword like the others and died like the others. There were no more entreaties until I got to the very last one. Seeing forty-seven die ahead of him—forty-eight counting the one Tuala brained with her stave—had robbed him of his convictions. Or else he figured there was no one left to witness his plea for mercy and judge him.
I would show him the exact same mercy that his people showed Bennelin and all the Brynt cities, that is to say, none at all. And I would ignore the twinge of my conscience. “There is no such thing as moral high ground in war,” Temblor Kavich told me once. “There is only high ground, and as a Raelech stonecutter, you don’t take and hold it. You make and mold it.”
From my high ground I sank that Bone Giant into the rich farmland of Brynlön to join the others, leaving only their wrists and swords standing in the air. The worms would be at the rest of them soon enough.
Fintan returned to himself and said, “Let’s step backward in time that very same morning right here in Pelemyn, where the newly commissioned gerstad Culland du Raffert had an appointment with Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll.”
This time the importer was dressed in a very smart and overly stiff uniform.
Pressed pants with a crease that audibly crackles as I walk: I hate this uniform already. But I move it and all its stiff, scratchy, crunchy noises to report on time to the Second Könstad at the Wellspring, hoping that she will give me some excuse to take it off and go swimming. People salute me as I walk now that I have shiny things on my breast indicating my rank, and I remember to respond only half the time and probably salute improperly when I do. Mynstad du Möcher confirmed via her expression yesterday that I’m definitely not military material, and she may have suffered a crisis of faith as a result: What was Lord Bryn thinking, making me a tidal mariner?
She’s not the only one asking herself that question.
No close encounters with the pelenaut this time: Tallynd du Böll meets me at the entrance to the Wellspring and guides me back around the throne to the small pool that leads to the Lung’s Locks and the bay.
“Gerstad du Fesset reports that you’re competent at sleeving and swimming in general now. You will not have had much practice at dry direction, though.”
“You’re right. I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s any exertion of your kenning while on dry land. The pulling and pushing of water on your person or elsewhere.”
“Okay.”
“Hop into the pool, get yourself soaked, and climb back out.”
“All right.” I noticed that her uniform, while appearing quite sharp, didn’t make all the noise that mine did. I gladly leapt into the pool just to stop the itching and make that material loosen up. I climbed out, dripping, and she smiled.
“Feels better, doesn’t it?”
&n
bsp; “So much better.”
“Good. Now I want you to pull that water out of your clothing and let it fall back in the pool.”
“How do I …?”
“It’s focused visualization and exertion of will, just like moving yourself through water. Your kenning will do most of the work.”
My first attempt gets the water out of my uniform, but it doesn’t all go in the pool. Instead it radiates out in all directions from my body, spraying down the Second Könstad and the mariner standing guard there and splashing against the wall behind me as well. I apologize to them both, horrified and embarrassed. Tallynd du Böll just laughs, says it’s no problem, and wicks away the moisture properly from both herself and the mariner.
“This is why we call it dry direction,” she explains. “It’s the direction that takes work. The nature of water is to take the easiest path. Forcing it to take a path of your choosing takes a bit more effort. Not exertion, mind—just an effort of concentration. Wrapping your mind around the totality of the water you wish to affect, allowing none of it to behave as it would wish but as you would wish. Again, Gerstad—and again and again until you can do it flawlessly.”
It takes me nine attempts to perform it to the Second Könstad’s satisfaction. It was, as she suggested, much more of a mental exercise than a physical one. Water will try to leak out of any container, physical or mental.
“But at what point,” I ask her, “does this kind of thing become a physical exercise? I mean, when do we get the physical consequences—the aging?”
Tallynd du Böll shrugs. “Difficult to say. At some point you pass a threshold of moving volume or creating pressure that triggers the cost. No one has ever wished to experiment with their lives to measure it precisely. The effect is that we try to get along with the minimum possible. You live longer that way.”
She dives into the pool and waves at me once she surfaces. “Come on; we’ll head out to the ocean now. I have some things to show you.”
We cycle through the locks, and once we’re out of the harbor, we pause and tread water. “Before the invasion and my promotion, the majority of my work involved current adjustment and reef farming.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“All those people who dive into Bryn’s Lung—you saw what happens to the bodies, right?”
“Yes. Crabs and scavengers on the bottom. Glowing fungus on the walls.”
“Right. It’s a tremendous source of both food and waste. We have to keep that moving out of there, and I used to work with the rapids and hygienists to maintain it. Lots of particles can be used elsewhere; the hygienists analyze the contents of the water and work with me on moving it out. We feed the coral reefs and shellfish beds, those in turn feed the fish, and as a result we have the world’s most fecund fishing waters. And thank goodness because I think it might be all that keeps us going when we run out of everything else. Follow me down. I’m going to show you Pelenaut Röllend’s personal reef.”
“He has his own reef?”
“Yes. He sneaks out every morning and tends it. Takes a small net sometimes and catches his breakfast. And he allows a small daily harvest of the pelenaut’s reef to be sold at the Steam Spire restaurant. Have you ever been there?”
“No, but I’ve heard legends about its high quality and higher price tag.”
“Well-deserved legends, both. Follow.” She bends at the waist and dives, propelling herself to the south, and I trail after, opening my eyes and enjoying the swim. We don’t descend very far; we stay in the shallows where we still have light to see. I’ll have to ask her how she handles going deeper where the sun doesn’t penetrate. Do our eyes adjust due to some gift of the kenning or do we need luminous bulbs of some kind, like the fungus living on the walls of Bryn’s Lung?
She slows down as we approach a reef teeming with schools of shining fish, rays cruising along the sandy shallows, colorful banded eels, and all kinds of pulsing, feeding, crawling, squirming things I had never seen or even heard of before.
When we surface, she smiles. “Is that not beautiful?” I agree that it is. “You see his attention to making sure all the creatures thrive. It’s a consuming interest of the pelenaut’s, the flow and equitable distribution of resources, his passion for infrastructure as the basis of prosperity. He’s taught me so much. I have my own reefs being fed by currents, and they do well, too, but not so well as his. That’s primarily what tidal mariners do with our kenning in the absence of war.” Her face turns somber. “But there are obviously aggressive tactics. Ways to use water as a weapon. That method we use to pull the water out of our clothes, for example. What do you think would happen if you applied the same principle and forcibly pulled the water out of someone’s head through their ear?”
“Gods, they’d be dead before they dropped to the ground.”
“Exactly.”
She swims closer to me and speaks quietly. “People are mostly water to begin with. But tidal mariners are a bit more so. You belong to Bryn of the Deep now.”
“I, uh … I don’t follow.”
“You’re not going to leave anything behind you when you die except water.”
“Wow, this has taken a pretty dark turn all of a sudden. You mean …?”
“I mean to say I know you wanted to die when you jumped into Bryn’s Lung. And you can still die if you want. But not before every last Bone Giant in Göfyrd dies first.”
“You mean I have to go down there and do the exploding ear trick to every last—”
“No. That would take too long, and they’d overwhelm you. You’ll think of something else.”
“Oh. Of course.”
“They represent an imminent threat. We’ve seen scouts or messengers coming our way, and we’ve managed to pick them off so far. But eventually they’re going to figure out that Pelemyn and Tömerhil remain untouched and march against us. So there’s no time like the present.”
“Right, right. I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yes, indeed.” They’d been waiting for someone like me to come along, someone willing to return to the sea and take the enemy with him. I’m not saying the Second Könstad wasn’t willing to make sacrifices—she’d aged much in defense of Pelemyn, and I learned from Mynstad du Möcher that she got that limp from a spear in her foot, earned while stealing Bone Giant documents near Hillegöm—but she has kids to raise, and I don’t. “Leave it to me. Currents keep you safe, Second Könstad.”
“And you as well, Gerstad.”
She salutes me and then propels herself back to the Lung’s Locks. I tread water for a minute, taking a last look at Pelemyn’s domes and spires, and then decide I’m not quite ready to go just yet. I sleeve myself along the surface but do not return to the locks. I head for the docks instead and climb out there, wicking the water out of my uniform to drop back into the harbor. Longshoremen and fish heads alike look surprised and give me tight nods and wide berths. I walk back to my quarters, enjoying the morning sun, and once there I fetch a log book, ink and a pen, and a waterproof satchel issued to me by a surly sarstad at the armory. I check the contents of my purse, which is slightly swollen from the gerstad’s stipend paid to me, and realize that I have enough for one last glorious, ridiculous meal at the Steam Spire Loose Leaf Emporium. They have a table for me on the second level, where I indulge in their rarest Fornish tea and a selection of fresh raw fish from the pelenaut’s reef, cooked in citrus acids. A month’s pay and more blown on breakfast. But it is an excellent place to record some final thoughts in the log.
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to carry out my orders—for they are orders, even if not explicitly spoken—but then I don’t think the Second Könstad knows either. There’s no precedent for any of this. But what I do understand is that I’m probably going to die in the attempt regardless of how successful I am.
Few people get a single chance to choose the time of their passing, let alone a second chance. I think today will suit me ju
st fine. For as marvelous as Bryn’s blessing is, as beautiful the white-ribboned blue sky, as exquisite the tea, and as filling the breakfast, I’m still empty and alone. Life is for those graced with love and ambition. My life no longer features such graces, so I’m ready for oblivion rather than a hollow existence. For me, the deep awaits.
I put the log safely inside the satchel, slung it across my shoulder, and left my entire purse on the table. I fell backward off the docks, waving Pelemyn goodbye, and sleeved myself most of the way to Göfyrd on my back, looking up at the sky and marveling at how something so empty could contain so much.
It was past midday when the bay began to narrow, and I flipped over to see my target better. I had yet to see those creatures who had destroyed so many lives. There were some, perhaps, on the walls, but I couldn’t see them well. I didn’t want to get too close, either, not knowing what their capabilities were, so I avoided both the docks and the Lung’s Locks, choosing to walk out of the sea on a beach well outside the city walls. I had been there only a few moments, beginning to wonder how I was supposed to eliminate a whole army by myself and also wondering why there was a strange earthen tower near the road leading north, when I saw a woman approaching me impossibly fast. Impossible, that is, until I realized she must be a Raelech courier. She had a Jereh band on her right arm, and couriers were the only Earth Shapers who could move like that.
She slowed down to normal human speeds and waved in a friendly manner before I could worry that she had come to attack. I noted that she stopped a good distance away, however, and shouted a greeting to me in accented Brynt.
“Hello! May I approach and speak with you?”
I nodded at her, and she darted forward, flashing a grin at me when she halted a length away.
“I am Tuala, courier of the Triune Council,” she said.
