Waterlogged (The Valkwitch Saga)

by Michael Watson

  They followed through an unlit entryway and into the shop. A string of glow-orbs hung on a line drooping from the ceiling cast a steady pale light over the main floor. Thin dark paper covered the windows, sealing out much of the day’s sunlight and a clean, chemical scent hung in the air.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of the Cadre’s renewed attention?” Zaes settled into the single available chair. Zaes had a reedy voice more appropriate to a sneak-thief than an elchemist and he spoke with a decayed Khalanheim accent, half the speed lost to the smoother flow of the river lands.

  Jesca found a second chair tucked under a workbench overcrowded with all manner of vials, tools, and wrapped packages of who-knows-what. She dragged it out and set it across from Zaes. She settled in, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. Yosh and Kal took up position near the entryway and assumed well-practiced masks of disciplined boredom.

  “Favors for favors. Mr. Zaes. You owe the Cadre and I’m here to collect,” Jesca said.

  The elchemist challenged Jesca’s view of things but Tyrissa quickly tuned out their conversation in favor of looking over the shop. Zaes’s shop didn’t appear to receive much customer traffic, nor did that seem to be the goal. It was chaotic in organization, the hallmark of a scheme that only required one person to know where any given item resided. But those wares produced a flurry of elemental sensation in Tyrissa’s head. None were strong enough to trigger any absorption, but with a little concentration she could single out each of the eight standard elements among the various crates and jars and cloth-covered items of questionable intent. All in all, it made good practice for her elemental sensing ability.

  All eight. Tyrissa cast around for an element she had little exposure to and found it in a darkened corner, a small wooden crate appropriately marked with a painted emblem of a white skull. As soon as she focused on it a wave of dread washed over her, tightening her stomach as if caught in the moment before hearing terrible news. Death magick.

  Tyrissa walked over to the crate, the feeling of dread increasing with each step. The Death-Life pair was the one remaining elemental conversion she had never touched, despite traveling with a lifepact last year. Both were rare and it felt taboo even to her. A forbidden element with dire implications of improper usage where lethality was the default result.

  “Ah no, no!” cried Mr. Zaes. “Don’t touch that, miss!”

  His reedy voice brought her back to the present. Jesca gave her a quizzical but not disapproving look.

  “What’s in this crate, Zaes,” Tyrissa asked, getting a handle on the dark feelings running through her. “Are you running death elchem items?”

  “Oh really?” Jesca said. “Now that’s too illegal to not report, Zaes.”

  “No!” Zaes stood up but looked as though he had no clue where to go. “Of course not. That would be, ah, reckless.”

  “Yeah, wouldn’t want to risk your Concordium certification which I’m sure is entirely current and registered.” Jesca looked around the walls of the shop, seeking out a framed license, one she knew wouldn’t be present.

  A pause and Zaes sat back down. “Precisely. Though last I checked, you aren’t the law.”

  “You’re correct. But I know many law men.”

  Zaes was politely losing patience. “What do you want, Commander?”

  “What are you selling the Sons of Amatha?”

  Another pause of consideration from Zaes. Tyrissa could see the social calculations behind his eyes, which loss was worth the gain with the other.

  “Purifier filters,” he answered, businesslike. “Some incendiaries. Utility items, all relatively legal.”

  “I don’t think that’s everything, Zaes,” Jesca said.

  Tyrissa returned to the center of the shop floor, glad to be away from the crate of death elchemy. She reached up for a crystalline charm dangling from the string of glow-orbs. It shone with a different sort of light, an internal, tenuous sky blue. A wind charm, a minor elchemical device meant to freshen the air. The light within the crystal dimmed as her hand drew near and faint currents of air began to coil down the skin of her arm. She caught Zaes’s eye, challenging him, but he remained silent, eyes narrowed.

  Tyrissa tapped the crystal with a finger. The light went out and the surface cracked at her touch. The minor attendant winds seeped into her skin and became a small weight of earthen energy in her core, a much more familiar elemental pairing. Zaes frowned, his mouth working to say something, but his eyes looking at Tyrissa with a new light. Jesca snapped her fingers and brought his attention back to the matter at hand.

  “Shame if that happened to the entire shop,” Jesca said. She was overpromising but didn’t know it. Tyrissa still had trouble with multiple elements at once. All eight would be a disaster. While it would have the same result for Zaes’s stock, the side effects on the people within were impossible to predict.

  “Jadeshell powder,” Zaes admitted.

  “And what would they need with that?” Jesca prompted.

  Zaes gave a theatric shrug. “It’s used as a desiccant, mostly. A losing battle out here if there ever was one. Don’t know why they want it, and that’s the truth. Ma’am.”

  “I know what it’s for, Commander,” Tyrissa said, heart sinking at the implications. “Can tell you later.”

  Jesca and Zaes went a few more rounds until she was satisfied he had no more to tell her. Tyrissa let herself wander around the shop, but made no further moves to damage any of the elchemist’s stock.

  “Thank you for the help, Zaes,” Jesca said after a time.

  “Certainly,” he said with a healthy dose of venom.

  “Oh.” Jesca fished out a small pouch of gilders and held it up as a peace offering. “We also need some incendiaries, for bolt tips.”

  Zaes brightened instantly, took the offered pouch, and peeked inside. “Of course. Allow me to bring those out for you.”

  Their party of four returned to the Drifter with a crate of rattling glass carried by Kal. Tyrissa sensed a faint feeling of fire within the crate, weak elchemically, a few steps below the night lanterns but still a bundle of latent, accessible power to her.

  “We could have requisitioned this stuff in Khalanheim, but the paperwork with the Concord and the need to stay on, well, be not on Zaes’s bad side came first. Tell me about the powder Zaes mentioned,” Jesca asked, sounding cheerful.

  “Jadeshells are water magick creatures that live in and around water domains,” Tyrissa said. She’d done some reading on water aligned magick. Know your enemy and all that. The images of the part-crab part-lizard creatures from one illustrated tome came to mind. “Their shells are ground up and used as a desiccant, yeah, but they’re also used by water Pactbound as a cleansing method.”

  “Cleansing what?”

  “Themselves. Pact magick is poison and Pactbound have figured out methods to cleanse that poison. Jadeshell powder is basically medicine, though it only treats the symptoms, not the cause. It’s also expensive, since Jadeshell is mostly used for jewelry and decoration.”

  “So this powder is being used to pay off a waterpact?”

  Tyrissa nodded. “Exactly. If a criminal group is moving or buying a lot of a not-obviously useful elchemical material like powdered jadeshell, qul’zir crystals, inferno leaf, or light fibers, they’re likely employing a Pactbound. The Sons’ water elemental tricks are almost certainly coming from a Pactbound and not some elchem device, otherwise Zaes would be selling them entirely different stuff.”

  “Assuming Zaes was being reasonably truthful with us. But it’s always good to have confirmation. Thank you, Ty.”

  Tyrissa wasn’t so pleased to have such confirmation. It meant she would certainly have to face down another Pactbound. She had hoped this Calling could end otherwise. Not so.

  “It’s all part of the job,” she said.

  * * * * *

  The day after Kesh they reached the great confluence of the rivers, where the darker waters of the Dreve m
erged into the muddy tans of the Rilder. On the triangle of land between the two rivers rose a rocky bluff crowned by a fortress of gray stone. Rippling pennants of gold, silver, and copper flew from the ramparts, a sleepy but active post over one of the great crossroads of the continent.

  The Drifter hewed to the right and cut into the dark, murky plume of the Dreve’s waters, turning northward and away from the Rilder’s watery highway. At first the character of the river remained the same aside from the hues of the water, but by afternoon they came to the first portions of the Rildermeek, where the banks of the Dreve began to lose definition. Instead of solid ground, the river was abutted by shoulders of swampland spreading from the river like a well-structured flood. Clusters and lines of trees seemed to float atop the water, their partially exposed roots a great tangle of brown spirals. Channels navigable by small boats riddled the poorly defined bounds of the Dreve, leading into mazes of swamps and ponds glimpsed from the passing Drifter.

  Where the river wasn’t bounded by swampland Tyrissa could see hardwood forests of a primal density that reminded her of the Morgwood back home. But for every stretch of dark forest, she saw many more flat barges piled high with felled logs. For the next few days it was a constant stream of logging barges filled with pyramidal stacks of a slain forest and headed downstream to the mills they passed before Kesh. Swaths of clear-cut fields dotted the banks of the River Dreve, small hives of activity with logging barges being loaded up, or riverboats like the Drifter pausing at the yards to restock on wood for their furnaces. These places were always on the western side of the river belonging to the Khalan state of Haarnen. On the east side, the only traces of industry were the abandoned, former sites of the same purpose.

  Tyrissa understood the necessity. Khalan cities had a great hunger for resources. Even the Morgwood of her own homeland was well cut in places. But here she saw only token signs of replanting, a thin layer of vanguard trees along the banks that gave the passing illusion of restoration.

  One of the things she fought against was the spread of elementally charged lands, domains of extra-planar power: scorched wastelands of ever-burning fire, or cracked and dusty badlands riven by ceaseless winds. Yet here was a large scale change of a different sort, no elemental influence required.

  The Elements seek to warp our world in their image, but in some places we’ve beaten them to it.

  Chapter Four

  It was the hottest day yet on the river, a clinging, sweltering heat that made Tyrissa feel as if the surface of the river and the air above it held the same level of resistance. The River Dreve had passed by quickly and soon they departed its upper reaches for a navigable tributary called the Callen. More so than the sections of the journey behind them, the Callen had vague banks identifiable only by the sparse lines of the now-abundant floating trees. Here the Drifter kept a pace true to its name as it pushed its way further from the main routes of the river system. The Callen’s current had a languid flow to it and at times Tyrissa could swear they were standing still upon the river, despite the engines humming along below.

  With the banks given over to swampland, the Callen presented a monotonous view to either side. There were few markers of progress, little traffic in either direction, and any villages were tucked away from the river, often as half-seen structures of weathered wood between the floating trees. Life expressed itself not in the touches of humans but in the narrowly glimpsed riverine creatures who became less reclusive as civilization withdrew.

  Denser groves of trees with their tantalizing pools of shade taunted them from beyond the navigable lines of the river. Tyrissa envied the unseen, perhaps imagined folk of the swamp while she broiled in the sunlight. The Drifter had limited shade, with its few overhangs and stepped, boxy structure. There was no relief to be found inside either, where the heat was trapped in by walls and reinforced by the engine room burning away below with elchemical and mundane furnaces. Tyrissa preferred to stay well away from the engine room anyway, though the engine’s old elchemical designs were a weakened presence in her head since the boat had switched over to wood-fired engines on the slower-flowing Callen.

  The Cadre mixed with the Drifter’s crew, tending to simpler tasks about the boat. Scattered around the decks were crates of gear: weapons and armored jackets, readied and waiting. Today was the first day they could reasonably expect their targets to make an appearance. When inspected from afar, or even rather close, the Drifer would appear a normal, small-time hauler making a run to Stotten and Eizba, the pair of destinations on the Callen which received infrequent traffic. The members of the Cadre had even tanned up to the leathery shade of a riverboat worker, though some had gone too far and sported red patches of sunburn. Combined with the white, cool as possible linens everyone wore, they had managed to have their standard colors of red and white on display, even when incognito.

  Tyrissa had no such burns thanks to her Pact’s rapidly accelerated healing, any damage from exposure repaired with a cool, no-longer-unnerving tingle. The healing had been the first expression of her Pact, long before she knew the nature of her ability to absorb and convert elemental magick or what a Valkwitch was. It hadn’t been a truly welcome revelation at the time, but now she barely noticed minor cuts or scraps, or in this case, sunburn. Still, glancing at her arms, Tyrissa clicked her tongue at the progressive bands of color matching her shedding of sleeves as the temperature rose on this journey. Her shoulders were still rather pale while her wrist and forearms were bronzed enough to pass for a Rhonian’s.

  I should have gone straight for sleeveless.

  Today she took up a forward position at the prow alongside a crewman named Yetz. With a weathered face and razor-sharp brown eyes set to a perpetual squint, Yetz watched the river ahead from the near-surface level, seeking out hazards and changes not on the pilot’s mental and navigator’s physical maps up in the crown. Tyrissa stowed her staff along the base of the ring deck’s wall and railing, lashed down but at hand. She mostly listened to the occasional lesson from Yetz on what to look for in the river, be it along the banks, floating toward them, or shifts and shadows in the murky green-brown water. He had a tendency to talk out the side of his mouth in hushed tones, barely audible below the shouts and calls of the rest of the crew at work.

  During a stretch of smooth travel along a wider section of the Callen, Yetz tapped out some chewing tobacco. He offered some to Tyrissa without taking his eyes from the river. She murmured a refusal.

  “Time was,” Yetz said after a moment of thoughtful chewing, “This river was just as busy as the Upper Dreve. The Callen is navigable up to Eizba, a town near the old imperial road between Delmora and Khalanheim.”

  Tyrissa hadn’t seen a single riverboat traveling in either direction since dawn. North of the confluence with the Upper Dreve they seemed to have the river to their lonesome selves.

  “What caused the traffic to dry up?” Tyrissa prompted, as expected in her role as the impromptu apprentice.

  “Mix of things. Logging moved from the Eizba area to the Haarnen side of the Dreve. You had to have seen all the logging barges we passed between Kesh and here, yeah?”

  “I sure did,” she said with a frown.

  “Then Southwest,” Yetz spat over the railing, “Kept flexing their muscle, crushing most other river shipping guilds. Northwest responds by putting more traffic on the roads instead of the rivers.” Any point of overlap between the Prime’s territories were lines in the sand of their endless competition. Though the Khalan Federation was composed of six unified states, most would say it is the Primes that form the true subdivisions of the Federation. But no one owned the river, despite Southwest’s best efforts.

  “Add in some bouts of banditry and you have where we are now,” Tyrissa said, finishing the quick, sad history for him.

  “You’ve the right of it, girl.”

  The prow of the boat had the weakest of breezes blowing against them, relieving a fraction of the day’s heat, and time passed on to mid-
day. Taciturn as he was between reminisces, Yetz was a game enough companion to nod or murmur a response when Tyrissa called out something along the river, mostly caimans mistaken for logs and logs mistaken for caimans.

  With every brief stop along their route, stories of the Rildermeek filtered through, stories of oracles, and strange monsters and the like. But also recent tales of the Sons of Amatha. Tales of rival gangs being found in their dens, some dead by traditional means, others via stranger methods. Tales of bodies boiled dry, all blood and moisture forcibly removed, like sacks of brittle leather wrapped around piles of bones.

  As for how much was truth and how many were mere rumors of the river, Tyrissa couldn’t tell. As for how much to attribute to her Pactbound quarry, she wouldn’t say. Looking out over the surrounding swamps, Tyrissa could convince herself of all the stories being true. There was enough space out there for all manner of mysteries and secrets.

  The faint breeze dropped a few welcome degrees and soon they spotted a haze laying over the river ahead, as if a morning fog had lost track of time.

  “Is that mist normal?” Tyrissa asked Yetz.

  “At times. Patches of mist drift out from the odd places in the swamp.” He spat once more into the murky waters off the front of the boat. He turned to the crown and bellowed out, “Mist patch ahead!”

  “Mist patch ahead, aye,” came Jesca’s response. She was enjoying her turn as the relay, with a fine vantage point at the crown to oversee her troops and a chance to shout boatman jargon. “Prep her down, boys!” The second was a signal for the Cadre members to prepare themselves. Some reports of the Sons’ attacks mentioned a thick mist settling over the river.

  “They already know, of course. Engine room is slowing us down now,” Yetz said while resuming his pose on the prow of the Drifter, leaning forward with one foot planted on a raised plank. The Drifter perceptively slowed as they eased into the mists. The night spotlight sparked to life above them and a constant, steady ring of the boat’s heavy iron bell began. Both were precautions for oncoming traffic, but turned them into a beacon for anyone waiting in the swamps for a passing mark.