Spirit’s End loem-5

by Rachel Aaron

  She told him about the burning of Osera next, and Sara’s counterattack, but when she reached her and Mellinor’s attack on the Empress, and how it had ended, her throat closed up. Eventually, she choked out enough of the important details to get to the Empress herself.

  That was also hard to tell, but in a different way. How did you explain a star to someone who’d never seen one? Eli’s role took longer still, mostly because Miranda wasn’t sure what had happened, exactly. Even so, no matter how unbelievable Miranda knew her story must sound, Krigel’s expression didn’t change until she reached Sara’s apprehension of Banage on the beach this morning.

  “I always told him Sara would never give up,” Krigel said, leaning back in his chair. “So he made you Rector and let them arrest him?”

  Miranda nodded, staring down at the dregs of her soup.

  “A good move,” Krigel said. “We knew his days as Rector were numbered the moment he told me he’d rejected Whitefall’s compromise. A Spiritualist must stand on ideals, but it is the Rector’s job to be a uniting force between us wizards and the rest of humanity, and you can’t do that when they’re calling you traitor.”

  Miranda’s head snapped up. “So you think he should have just given in to Whitefall, then?”

  “Of course not,” Krigel said. “But Banage knew as well as any of us that taking a stand meant ending his time as Rector. Still, it was his decision. I am sorry to lose him, but we in the Spirit Court don’t force men or spirits to act against their will.”

  “Well,” Miranda said. “I don’t mean to let him rot in a Council jail, especially not with Sara as his jailor. We have to free him.”

  “On what grounds?” Krigel said.

  Miranda stared at him, disbelieving, but Krigel just laced his fingers together. “He’s made himself a traitor to the Council,” the old Assistant Rector said. “And he must answer for that. If we try to spare him his punishment, all we’ll do is widen the rift between the Court and Whitefall.”

  “But we can’t just leave him there!” Miranda cried.

  “We can and we must,” Krigel said, his voice infuriatingly calm. “He gave himself up as a traitor to save the Court. By turning himself in, he confines his crimes to one man rather than dooming our entire organization. In going with Sara willingly, he’s freed the Court to make peace with the Council and mend the schism.”

  Miranda slumped against the pillows. She hadn’t thought of it that way. Honestly, the idea of Banage under Sara’s thumb without anyone to help him made her so angry she couldn’t see past it. But as Krigel spoke, she could hear Banage’s voice on the beach as he pressed the ring onto her finger, telling her to mend the Court. And, as much as she hated it, she knew what she had to do.

  “We must call a Conclave,” she said. “We must bring all the Spiritualists together again and unite the Court. That’s what Banage told me to do.”

  “Already done,” Krigel said, smiling at her surprised look. “I sent the messages while you were sleeping. The Conclave is set for the day after tomorrow.”

  Miranda blinked. “So soon? Can we even gather the Court on such short notice?”

  “Conclaves are always short notice, as I understand it,” Krigel said. “And Spiritualists move very quickly when they have to.”

  Miranda bit her lip. It made her nervous to rush something so important. “But—”

  “Calling the Conclave was the entire reason Banage gave you that ring,” Krigel said. “Only a Rector can call a Conclave, and if we’re to avoid charges of favoritism over his appointing you as interim Rector splitting the Court further, we must move as fast as possible. The Court exists to bring order to wizardry, and we can’t do that if we can’t bring order to ourselves.”

  Miranda lay back, covering her tired eyes with her hands. “Very well, what do I have to do?”

  “For the moment, nothing,” Krigel said. “Except try and stay out of trouble, if you’re even capable of such a feat.”

  Miranda laughed at that, but then her face grew serious. “I wish I could stay here and not move for the next two days,” she said. “But the world is changing, Krigel. Greater forces than I knew existed before a few days ago are moving. Banage told me that the world needs the Court now more than ever, and I believe him. The Court must be united to do whatever must be done.”

  “And we will be,” Krigel said, pushing himself up. “One way or another.” He reached to take her tray and paused. “You realize, of course, that many of the Tower Keepers were very unhappy with Banage at the end. When the Court comes together for the Conclave, the first thing the Tower Keepers will do is call for a vote for a new Rector.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Miranda said. “I became a Spiritualist to help spirits, not play politics.”

  “That may be for the best,” Krigel said solemnly as he gathered the tray. “The Rectorship is often the worst thing that can happen to a good Spiritualist. Just look at Banage.”

  Miranda couldn’t argue there.

  When Krigel had everything stacked, he turned toward the door. “There was a Spiritualist who wanted to see you earlier. I told her you were resting, but she was very insistent. Shall I show her in, or would you rather sleep?”

  Miranda wrinkled her nose. “What did she want to talk about?”

  “Something about the river,” Krigel said. “Should I tell her to wait?”

  “No,” Miranda said, pushing herself up again. “Send her in.”

  Krigel nodded and vanished into the hall. A few moments later, a woman Miranda had never seen poked her head in. “Rector? May I enter?”

  “Of course,” Miranda said, fidgeting self-consciously. Answering to “Rector” would take some getting used to. Fortunately, the woman didn’t sit on ceremony. She let herself right in and shut the door behind her.

  She was middle aged, plump in an active, good-living sort of way, but what really caught Miranda’s eye were the woman’s rings. She had several, an impressive collection for any Spiritualist, but where most of the Court had a variety of colored stones marking a wide array of servant spirits, this woman’s rings all seemed to be cut from the same watery blue stone.

  “Sorry to bother you while you’re resting, Rector,” the woman said. “I wouldn’t have intruded, but Rellenor was very insistent.”

  “Rellenor?” The name was familiar.

  “The river running through Zarin,” the woman answered, staring at Miranda like she was stupid.

  “Oh, the Whitefall,” Miranda said. She regretted it instantly.

  “She has her own name, you know,” the Spiritualist said in a huff. “Honestly, Rector, it is a disgrace to hear a Spiritualist using the name imposed upon her by the Whitefall family’s hubris!”

  “I’m sorry,” Miranda said. “I’m afraid I never had the pleasure of meeting Rellenor. How can I help you, Spiritualist…”

  “Brennagan,” the woman said. “Jenna Brennagan. I’m the head of the Court’s Committee on Water Relations.”

  Which explained the blue rings, Miranda thought.

  “But I didn’t actually come here to talk to the Rector,” Jenna said. “I came here to talk to Miranda Lyonette.” She paused. “You are Spiritualist Lyonette?”

  “I am,” Miranda said.

  “Oh good,” Jenna said with a sigh. “Everyone kept calling you Rector, so I wasn’t sure. Anyway, I was paying my daily visit to Rellenor this morning and found her all in a tizzy. Some foreign water spirit had invaded her river, you see. A sea spirit, if you can imagine. He was being frightfully rude, getting salt everywhere, but Rellenor said he kept asking for you by name.”

  Miranda’s heart skipped a beat. “A sea spirit?”

  “Yes,” Jenna answered. “I told him I’d pass on the message, but only if he promised to… Where are you going?”

  Miranda was already up. She ran past the woman, sock feet sliding on the polished stone.

  “Thank you, Spiritualist Brennagan!” she cried as she ran down the stairs. “I
’ll take it from here!”

  “Right,” Jenna said, staring bewildered as the Rector Spiritualis ran down the stairs yelling for her boots. “Thank you for your prompt action.”

  Miranda was already too far away to hear.

  Ten minutes later, Miranda was dressed and in a carriage clattering toward the river. She sat impatiently on the bench seat, drumming her fingers on the window as the hired driver worked his way through the crowded street. It would have been faster to wake Gin, but with all she’d put her ghosthound through already, Miranda hadn’t had the heart. Now, she wished she had.

  It was early morning and Zarin was in full swing. Everywhere Miranda looked, people were out doing their morning shopping at the market stalls as though the war had never happened. Of course, for these people, it hadn’t. The Immortal Empress had come, triumphed, and fallen without causing Zarin so much as a hiccup. Mostly the crowds seemed happy to have their streets to themselves again now that the soldiers were in Osera. Normally, this would have made Miranda smile. Today, they were in her way.

  Three crowded blocks from the docks, Miranda gave up on the carriage. She paid the driver for the full trip and set off on foot, taking the back way down the cargo ramps to the water. After some finagling and more than a few dirty looks from the barge men, she climbed down a steep-graded stone ramp toward the black water of the Whitefall River. Rellenor, she reminded herself.

  The river that cut through the center of Zarin was swift and deep. Centuries of city planning had squeezed the once broad waterway into a narrow, stone-walled channel riddled with docks and shadowed by bridges. Boats of all sizes crowded the intakes, but one boat slip was empty, and Miranda scrambled down it to the water’s edge. The white stone of the ramp was slick with green slime where it met the river, but Miranda fell to her knees in it without thinking, plunging her hands into the cold water up to the elbow.

  “Mellinor?” she whispered, her voice hesitant.

  Nothing happened. As the seconds ticked by, dread filled Miranda’s stomach. Had she missed him? Had she taken too long? Maybe the invading sea spirit wasn’t her Mellinor at all. Maybe she’d let wild hope cloud her judgment. Maybe she’d rushed all the way down here for nothing.

  She’d nearly worked herself into a full-blown panic when the water answered. “You must be the Spiritualist.”

  It wasn’t Mellinor’s deep voice but higher pitched and faster, the words clipping into each other.

  “I am Miranda Lyonette,” Miranda answered, getting a firm grip on her emotions. “You must be Rellenor.”

  “About time you got here,” the river replied in a snippy voice. “I was about to kick him out, Great Spirit or no. The nerve, bringing salt water into my current.”

  “Thank you for your patience,” Miranda said. “Can I speak with him?”

  The river burbled noncommittaly, and then the black water around Miranda’s hands grew clear, the river muck separating out to reveal a current of blue, beloved water.

  “Miranda,” the water whispered in a deep, relieved voice. “I found you.”

  “Mellinor…” It took every bit of self-control Miranda had not to burst into tears right there. Instead, she leaned down, lowering her face until her nose was brushing the clear, salty water. “I thought…” She couldn’t even say it. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I let you down. I left—”

  “Don’t start,” Mellinor said. “We went in together knowing the risks. I can’t have you taking all the blame for something we both decided.”

  “But how did you survive?” Miranda said, running her hands through his cold water. “And why are you here, in a river?”

  “The answer to both those questions is the same,” Mellinor said. “After the Empress knocked you out of the water, the sea currents tore me apart. I lost nearly all my water, but I managed to preserve my core. I don’t know how, exactly. My best guess is that four hundred years in a pillar followed by my time with you gave me a greater sense of self than most water spirits. But even though I was able to hold the last bit of my soul together, I was trapped by the currents and eventually sank.”

  “You sank?” Miranda couldn’t imagine it.

  “Like a stone,” Mellinor answered. “I didn’t have the strength to go against the crashing waters and I was too heavy to flow above them, so I fell down into the black abyss.” Mellinor’s water trembled against her fingers. “I’ve never been anywhere so dark, so cold. I didn’t even have the strength to flow. All I could do was keep falling. I’ve never felt so helpless, even in the pillar.”

  “I’m sorry,” Miranda whispered again. “I’m so, so, so—”

  “Enough,” Mellinor rumbled. “Didn’t I say it’s not your fault?”

  Miranda clenched her fingers. “But you suffered.”

  “I did,” Mellinor said. “But I’m only telling you about it so you can understand why I did what I did next. Listen, and stop interrupting. I don’t have much time.”

  Miranda nodded and motioned for the water to continue.

  “I sank for a long time,” he said. “Until, finally, I hit something. At first, I thought it was the bottom of the sea, but then I realized it was moving.”

  “Moving?” Miranda said, forgetting her promise not to interrupt. “Was it a leviathan?”

  “Far bigger,” Mellinor said. “I’d landed on the Deep Current, the backbone of sea.”

  “But I thought the sea was a mad mass of water?” Miranda said. “Too large and chaotic even for Great Spirits. That’s what you said.”

  “It is,” Mellinor said. “But it wasn’t always that way.” The water paused. Had Mellinor been human, Miranda could almost picture him looking side to side before leaning in to whisper, “You remember what the Shaper Mountain showed us? About the time before?”

  Miranda nodded.

  “Back then, the sea was different,” Mellinor said. “It used to be that the ocean was home to the greatest spirits, the enormous forces who kept the sea moving. Now, only one remains, the Deep Current that runs from the northern ice down to the warm southern seas. It’s the largest water spirit in the world, the only one big enough that the now-mad ocean can’t rip apart. Its flow is what drives the other currents and prevents stagnation.”

  “And you landed on it?” Miranda said. “What happened then?”

  “What else?” Mellinor said. “I was sucked into its flow. Even I can’t fight a spirit that large.”

  Miranda trembled at the thought. “How were you not destroyed, then?”

  “Because the Deep Current doesn’t absorb lesser spirits,” Mellinor said. “It must remain pure and whole because it is one of the most ancient spirits, and, in turn, one of the stars.”

  “Mellinor!” the river’s voice cut in, horrified. “You dare speak the Lady’s business to a—”

  “She already knows,” Mellinor snapped back. “Quiet.”

  To Miranda’s great surprise, the river fell silent.

  “I thought that was the end, then,” Mellinor continued. “The Deep Current runs along the base of the world. Once you’re caught, there’s no escape. You don’t get absorbed, but you can’t escape, either. You can’t do anything except roll along forever until you finally give up and let your water go. But before I could resign myself to my fate, the current vanished.”

  Miranda blinked in surprise. “Vanished? But you said—”

  “I know,” Mellinor said. “Old, ancient, enormous, how could it vanish? It was a star. But it did. One moment I was flowing through the dark with the Deep Current; the next it was gone. Just disappeared, like it was yanked out of the ocean.”

  “I don’t understand,” Miranda said. “What did you do?”

  “The only thing I could do,” Mellinor said. “The bottom of the sea was still for the first time ever. I was surrounded by abandoned water without a will or mind of its own. It had to go somewhere, so I took it over.”

  “You took it over?” Miranda repeated dumbly.

  “Yes,” Mellinor said.
“Without the Deep Current to push it, the sea’s cycle was slowing. It would eventually stop altogether. The moment the current vanished, the lesser water spirits began to panic. I had to do something. I did spend several thousand years as a Great Spirit, you know. That kind of obligation doesn’t just go away.”

  “You took over the water left by a star?”

  “Yes,” Mellinor said again. “That’s what I came to tell you. Until a bigger spirit comes to take the job, I’m the Deep Current, and we have a serious problem.”

  “You can’t be the Deep Current?” Miranda said, her head spinning.

  “No,” Mellinor snapped. “That part’s fine. I’m talking about the fact that a star vanished. The Deep Current, the king of the sea, one of the largest, oldest, steadiest spirits in the world. A water spirit so large that it drove the ocean disappeared, Miranda. It was only by chance that I was there and had retained enough of myself to take over the gap it left before the ocean went stagnant.”

  Miranda took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “How long can you do the Deep Current’s job?”

  “Long as I can bear the dark, I suppose,” Mellinor said. “I’m an inland sea, I’m used to warm water and sunlight. But I can stand it for a while, especially since the currents are treating me like they used to treat the old Deep Current.”

  “They’re treating you like a star, then?” Miranda said.

  “More or less.” She could almost hear Mellinor’s smile. “How else do you think I was able to get a river to take my water into Zarin to find you?”

  “Certainly not my first choice,” Rellenor said with a splash that drenched Miranda to the chest. “I don’t care if you took over the Deep Current’s position; how can you calmly break the Lady’s law to this human? It’s blasphemy, and if you think I’m going to keep quiet about this, then—”

  “I don’t think a river could be quiet if its waters depended on it,” Mellinor snapped. “You can go crying to the Shepherdess if you want, but before you do, you should know that Miranda here is a friend of the favorite.”

  The river suddenly went very still. “Friend of the favorite?” It sloshed quietly. All at once, the water began to gently lap at Miranda’s boots. “Why didn’t you say so, my lady?”