From an open door on the right side of the hall came the clinking of glass. Nereus ducked into the room, and I heard a cry, followed by an unpleasant crunch.
Nereus held the Black Dog’s arm twisted at an unnatural angle behind his back. A puddle of spilled ale seeped into the carpet. It was Alektor’s captain, Philemon, though his lip was bloodied. He wore a long gilt-trimmed coat, which I recognized at once as the jacket I had so admired on Markos.
“One silver talent,” Nereus drawled, running the edge of his knife down Philemon’s neck, “if you tell me where the Emparch’s being held.”
“Are you joking?” the man spat.
Nereus laughed. “’Course I’m joking. Tell me, and you might not get my knife through your eye. Can’t make promises though.”
“I—I don’t know about any Emparch,” he stammered.
“Liar!” My heart pounded a frantic beat. “You’re wearing his coat.” And he looked awful in it, with his arms stuffed into the sleeves like sausages. He was broader and shorter than Markos. “If you hurt him, I swear I’ll kill you.”
“He killed six of our men!” Philemon struggled in Nereus’s hold. “Good, able-bodied seamen, they was. You’re gods-damned right I hurt him!”
“Where is he?” I pressed my pistol into his neck.
“Perhaps we took his fingers off. An Emparch don’t need fingers, do he?”
I schooled my face into stillness, refusing to let him know how his words upset me.
The blood in Philemon’s mouth gurgled as he laughed. “Perhaps I cut his eyes out and gave them to the gulls to feast on. Guess he ain’t so pretty now.”
Nereus dug the blade into his cheek. “Shut up, you. The Emparch. Now.”
Philemon glared, blood trickling down into his beard. Then he nodded toward the end of the corridor. “The tower,” he growled. “But you’re too late. It collapsed, and the stairs is broken. Whole bloody thing’s coming down.” He leered at me, showing a chipped tooth. “All you’ll find down there is a corpse, girl!”
I swallowed down my rage. They had left him in there to die.
“I’ll go with you,” Kenté said.
“You heard him.” I loaded my pistol. “It’s not safe. Ma’ll murder me if anything happens to you.”
“Oh, and she won’t mind at all if something happens to you.”
I laid a hand on her sleeve. “Stay with Nereus and keep an eye on this fellow in case he’s lying. I’ll be right back.”
She squeezed my arm in return. “Current carry you.”
The ruined tower creaked and trembled. Somewhere tiny crumbs of mortar and stone trickled down the wall, and the air was thick with dust. Stepping cautiously through the door, I tested the first stair. It didn’t seem like it was about to drop out from under me.
Bracing myself on the wall, I took the curved staircase one step at a time. The ghostly moan of metal made me squeeze my eyes shut. My pistol shook in my hand. The staircase descended much farther than I had thought possible. Surely I’d gone right down into the hill itself by now.
Something fell with a tremendous crash, causing the whole tower to quake. My legs went out from under me. For a long terrifying minute I huddled on the steps, clinging to the stone. I bit back a whimper. Markos was down there. He might be trapped under a fallen stone. He might be hurt. I forced myself to go on.
The stairs ended in a fifteen-foot drop into darkness. I gasped, scrambling back to safe ground. My heart raced as I flattened myself against the wall. I’d almost gone over.
The room below was not totally dark. A flicker of lamplight dimly illuminated the pit. I leaned over the edge, cold sweat prickling my neck.
Sitting in an inch-deep puddle of water was a chair. And tied to it with many thick turns of rope was the one person I’d never expected to see alive again.
“Markos!”
He squinted up at me. “Caro?”
His left eye was blackened, and a cut on his chin had spilled a thick trail of blood down his shirt. Other than that, except for his hair looking greasy, he seemed more or less unharmed. I was so relieved to see him that all I could do was grin helplessly.
He grinned back, which looked truly gruesome what with the state of his face. “Nice hat.”
A moth-eaten tapestry hung on the tower wall. Unwinding a length of heavy brocade from the rod, I gripped it in both hands, took a deep breath, and swung. Halfway down, the tapestry tore and I fell the last few feet, landing with a splash.
Markos twisted against the ropes. “I heard the cannons outside and hoped it might be you. Where’s Daria?”
“You mustn’t think much of me, if you think I’d bring your sister into a place like this.” I sliced through his bindings, careful to hold the dagger well away from his wrists. “She’s safe on the ship.”
He winced, sucking in a breath.
“What’s wrong?” I cried in alarm. “I didn’t cut you?”
“My hands,” he managed. “I can’t feel them.”
I knelt before him, pressing his hands between mine. They were limp and cold. I slapped and chafed the skin until he gasped in pain.
“Gods.” He rocked forward. “It’s just pins and needles, but it hurts like a … Well, I can’t say that in the presence of a lady.”
“You don’t mean you’re counting me as a lady.”
I was suddenly too aware of his breath on my hair. The last time we were together, I’d kissed him as if I was never going to see him again. Well, that was cursed awkward now. I dropped his hands and scrambled back.
He got slowly to his feet, stretching each leg in turn. I inhaled sharply. The crusted blood on his shirt wasn’t from his chin. His left ear was a scabbed mess. It was the one, I queasily realized, where he’d worn the garnet earring. That jewel was missing.
He saw me looking. “Yes, well, I would say you should see the other fellow, but unfortunately I admit I got the worst of it.”
“It was ten to one!” My hand hovered near his ear.
“More like twenty, once the men from Alektor arrived. Please don’t touch it.” He swatted me away. “It’s finally stopped bleeding. I’d like to keep it that way. Who’s out there firing cannons? When the tower got hit the first time, that’s when the stones started to fall. The Black Dogs all ran out and never came back.”
“It was the Bollards. Wait, the first?” Concerned, I asked, “How many times did they hit this tower?”
“I counted three. You brought the Bollards? You didn’t even know I was alive.” His left knee buckled and he clutched his side, as if he had a cramp. “Ow!”
“The Black Dogs tried to swindle the Theucinians.” I offered him my arm. “They want to ransom you back to your family in Valonikos, or maybe they were just going to collect the money and then kill you. Only they hired a Bollard ship as courier, so Ma found out about it.”
I gave him the brief version of what had befallen us since we parted, secretly enjoying the warmth of his body as he leaned on me for support.
“How typical,” he said when I was finished. “You were stealing pirate ships and having adventures while I was tied to a chair. I was forced to concoct all manner of fancies to pass the time. I admit most of them involved you.”
“Markos Andela—” I began sternly, to cover my blushing.
“How do you know that name? Daria, I suppose.” He gave me a rakish smile. “Well, I’m not entirely sure I should allow you to take such liberties.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “You talking about taking liberties. Stop flirting with me. This tower’s going to collapse on our heads.”
“You have a plan for getting out of here, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “The way we came?”
“You jumped down from a doorway fifteen feet up in the air,” he said, “with the help of a tapestry that is now torn and no doubt will not bear our weight.”
“We can climb—”
“I can’t,” he said hoarsely, pinching the bridge of his nose with one
shaking hand. All at once I realized he was embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s—I’m—I don’t have the strength.”
“Markos, are you sure you’re all right?”
“I could use some water,” he rasped, his face as white as Vix’s paint. I hastily handed over my belt flask, and he gulped the whole thing down. “They left me tied to that chair for so long I was beginning to think I was going to die here.” He wiped his mouth. “I’d like a bath and a shirt that isn’t covered in blood. But I suppose that can wait.”
I eyed him doubtfully, wondering what he wasn’t telling me.
“I daresay there aren’t any handholds anyway,” I said, to make him feel better. “If only Kenté and Nereus were here.” Unfortunately I’d left them at the end of that long corridor and come ahead on my own. That, I knew now, had probably been stupid.
I turned in a circle. By the light of the lone guttering lantern, I saw that the cavernous room was full of water, parts of it much deeper than the puddle we stood in.
“Why’s the floor all wet?”
“There was a retaining wall outside,” Markos said. “To keep the sea back. But—”
“The Bollards probably blew it to bits,” I finished. “I expect when high tide comes, this whole room will be underwater. Well then, we’ll just have to wait. When the water rises, it will lift us to the opening.”
The tower moaned ominously, and he flinched. “Before the ceiling collapses on us?”
A stone fell, landing with a splash. I didn’t much like the idea of being crushed under the tower when it came down. I was further annoyed that it might be Bollard cannonballs that indirectly ended up killing me. How long until Kenté and Nereus came looking for us? I hoped they would be in time.
“I don’t like this,” Markos said over the creak of the burdened rafters. “There’s another door, of course. The one all the Black Dogs ran out of. Over there.” He gestured across the pool. “At the bottom of the steps.”
“What steps?”
“They’re underwater now. We’re standing on some kind of platform.” He nodded out at the circular room. “They were using this tower as a storeroom to keep treasure in, I daresay. There were all sorts of interesting things, before …”
A set of stone steps led downward, disappearing into the murky water. I now saw that crates and barrels bobbed in the corners of the room. If Markos’s chair had not been on this platform, he would have drowned before I reached him. He would already be dead. It wasn’t only my wet feet that made me shiver.
“The sea’s coming in!” Panic clutched at my throat. I’d lived all my life on the water. This was not how I died. “The tower’s going to fall and trap us.”
“Can’t you do something?” Markos asked. “With your magic.”
“You know I don’t have any magic.” I swallowed. “I would’ve thought you’d be polite enough not to rub it in.”
“You haven’t figured it out yet?” He raised his voice over the trickling pebbles. “Listen. Caro. You told me there was a god in the river. That spoke to the wherrymen.”
“There is. But not to me. We’ve been through this, Markos.”
“Well, obviously,” he said. “Because your god isn’t in the river. It’s in the sea.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
“No.” A cold feeling trickled through me.
The day your fate comes for you, you’ll know.
Images flashed through my head. Seagulls watching me with beady eyes. Dolphins and fish racing alongside Vix. The drakon. My strange dreams.
It wasn’t possible. Pressing my fingers to my temples, I tried to shut it out.
The pig man on his houseboat. She a bigger, deeper god. The one who steers you. He don’t be fighting her. And Nereus. Ayah, and didn’t she send me to help you, Caroline Oresteia? Finally I understood what he’d been trying to tell me, with that story about Arisbe Andela.
“On the Neck. The fog.” Markos gripped my wrist. “I tried to tell you at the time, but you didn’t believe me. Caro, I couldn’t see a thing in that fog. Not those posts, or the cliffs. Not our own mast. Even Fee couldn’t see.”
“No.” I yanked my arm away. “It wasn’t that bad. It couldn’t have been. I could see …”
“Right through it,” he said. “I’m telling you, it was magic.”
I shook my head. “The weather behaves oddly sometimes. That doesn’t mean—”
“Isn’t it strange that a fog happens to come up just when the Black Dogs were about to overtake us? You told me yourself, the Neck is saltwater.”
Light sparkled on the seawater, taunting me. “That’s not how it happened,” I whispered.
“Oh really? What about the drakon? That’s what Fee saw, that night on the river, isn’t it? It has been following you. Caro, it’s you. Don’t you see?” His eyes shone earnestly. “The god’s been calling to you all along. You were just so busy listening for small things, you missed the biggest thing of all.”
A shower of stones tumbled down from the ceiling. Markos turned to the broken staircase. “We should yell for help. Maybe Kenté can find a rope or—”
“Wait,” I said.
I pulled off my boots and let them drop. My bare toes curling on the slick stone, I took one tentative step. Nothing felt different. I took another, until I stood at the top of the underwater stairs, bubbles swirling encouragingly around my feet.
Biting my lip, I hesitated, as Markos watched me with a sympathetic look.
In truth, I was afraid. The sea wasn’t a friendly god, content to simply guide wherrymen from port to port. She sank islands and smashed cities. The sea, she keeps the things she takes. The deeps be littered with the bones of ships and cities. Ayah, and men.
Who might I become, the moment I touched the water? If Markos had guessed correctly about me, everything I knew was wrong. Everything was changed. I drew a deep breath and walked into the sea.
The water gently lifted my clothing. Light from the nearby lantern rippled and danced on the surface. Plunging my hands in, I turned them palm upward and offered myself up to the sea.
I took another step.
Standing waist deep on the submerged stairs, I felt foolish and secretly relieved. The hem of my shirt floated around my stomach. Markos was wrong. There wasn’t anything special here. I spun around to tell him so.
Then I saw it.
A wave turned over—small at first, a trickle of a wake on the surface of the water. Rolling out from where I stood, it grew into a frothy white line.
The wave began to break. Another followed, turning over and over, faster and faster. The breakers crashed against the walls, and I gasped as the spray flew over me.
A silvery fish jumped, then a second and a third. The splashes plinked like music. Almost, I might have reached out and touched them. My mouth dropped open. I felt the tide as it sucked against me, but this wasn’t any natural tide. It pulled at something buried deep inside me.
Something I almost remembered.
A rumbling voice whispered my name. The wave broke over me, and I surged into it, my toes lifting off the stone. I could feel the sea outside the tower—infinite, roaring, and dizzyingly deep. Trailing my hands through the foam, I marveled at how sensitive they were. I felt a thousand tiny individual bubbles and each movement of the waves as they danced a wild rhythm.
Something clammy and wet trailed against my face. Dazed, I reached up.
I wore a crown of dark green seaweed. Pulling an errant strand away, I stared at it between my fingers.
“How?” I yelled over the churning water, as I drifted slowly down, my toes once more touching the step. I laughed. “How did I not know?”
My eyes stung, and not from the saltwater. All those years hoping. Being jealous of Pa and Fee. Wondering if I belonged.
There had never been anything wrong with me. I did belong. Just not to the river.
I looked up at Markos, my throat almost closing on the words. “How did you see it and not me?”
“Sometimes,” he said with a wistful half smile, “we need others to see the good in us before we can see it in ourselves.”
He waded down the stairs, struggling against the weight of his wet clothes. When he reached me, he circled my waist with his arm. I buried my face in his neck, breathing him in. He smelled of salt and blood and Markos.
He hissed sharply, pressing a hand to his side.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You are hurt,” I said. “I should’ve expected it. Just like a boy.”
“It’s not bad,” he said between tightened lips. “Let’s go.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, we’re trapped.”
“Caro, look.” He turned me around.
Only moments ago I had stood waist deep on the steps, but now the water sloshed around my ankles. Opposite us, a door loomed in the wet stone wall. What had been a great lake was rapidly becoming a puddle. The receding tide had littered the room with detritus—overturned chests and crates, a layer of slimy sand, and bits of broken shells.
Just my luck, to be chosen by a god who was a bloody show-off.
We splashed down the tunnel. As it turned out, it led to a small beachside training yard filled with weapon racks, one of which had been knocked over by the waves. Markos grabbed a sword off the wet sand, and we ran into the fort. I tried to draw a map in my head of those twisting corridors, but it was hopeless. Picking a direction, I crossed my fingers that it was the right one.
Markos’s hands settled on my waist as we peeked around a corner, causing all my senses to skitter and jump.
“If you’re going to kiss,” Kenté said from behind us, “I suppose I can look away.”
I whirled. “We’re not going to—Why would we do that?”
“No?” She tilted her head toward Markos. “Ah well, lost opportunities.”
He immediately let go of me, the ear that wasn’t covered in blood turning pink.
“What are you doing here?” I asked to cover my own embarrassment. Part of me missed the warmth of his hands.
Song of the Current Page 24
