Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Rheave
If there weren’t angry people waving daggers and swords in our direction, I’d probably enjoy the leap from the rooftop. Soaring through the air like I’m flying just for a moment. Hitting the water with a chilly splash.
The current of liquid consumes me, rushing against my skin and into my clothes and hair. The cold prickles through my nerves in an invigorating way.
Then my limbs push at the water, and my head breaks through the surface. A marshy smell fills my nose, with a slightly rancid note that suggests the river isn’t as clean as the streams we drank from during our many travels across the countryside.
Urgent shouts bombard my ears. I grip my bow against my side and blink the moisture from my eyes to see better.
Several figures in red shirts have charged to the edge of the riverbank, which is built up in a stone wall a few feet above our heads. In the water around me, my companions bob.
My gaze latches on to Ivy’s reddish-blond hair first, turned darker than usual by the wetness. She’s swimming with the flow of the water, her slim, pale limbs rising and falling a few arm-lengths ahead of me.
Just beyond her, Casimir and the robed man from the temple sway in the current, clutching the poor victim of the scourge sorcerers between them. Of course—a man with no arms can’t swim.
Petra’s dark head shows against the rippling gray surface near them. She’s rolled onto her side as she kicks at the water, her head tipped to focus on the boat that’s just a few paces farther down the river.
Our soldier stands at the side of the curved wooden structure, hunched so he’s ready to snatch Petra’s hand and haul her into the vessel when she reaches him.
He’s meant to do the same for all of us, but with a flick of my gaze, I estimate that I can propel myself high enough to grasp the edge of the boat all on my own.
I haul my limbs through the flowing water—and an arrow humming with magical energy soars past me from the bank toward the boat.
The projectile slams into the boat’s hull. I know from my own practice that a normal arrow would simply dig its head into the wood and hang there without doing more damage than marring the surface.
But this is clearly not a normal arrow.
With whatever magic the scourge sorcerers have cast on it, the arrow splits right through the boards. A crack opens around the point where it’s penetrated, straight down to the surface of the water.
And the river gushes in.
The soldier gives a bark of alarm and turns toward the hole. Even in my limited knowledge of boats, I can see there’s no patching it.
Then another arrow whirs through the air and plunges into the soldier’s chest.
This time, it’s Petra who cries out. The soldier staggers and crumples backward in the already sinking watercraft.
A jolt of urgency races through my veins. Our escape plan has just been destroyed—and the scourge sorcerers are going to keep shooting at us.
I spare one worried glance Ivy’s way and then grope for my bow. Maybe I can push myself high enough in the water to launch an arrow of my own. If I can just get into the right position…
As I wrestle with the weapon against the current, I twist to face our attackers. They vanish from view for a moment as I sweep past the capsizing boat. I grope behind my shoulder toward my quiver—
And my other arm slams into the stone wall along the river. My elbow shudders, and my fingers spasm apart.
The bow swirls away from me, caught in the gushing water. I spin around the bend I didn’t realize was coming.
The currents shift, whipping me faster along. I surge past Ivy so swiftly that I don’t have time to grasp at her.
Heaving myself to the side, I manage not to collide with Casimir’s trio. My hands scoop uselessly at the water.
Petra lifts her head all the way above the surface to gasp out an order. “We still have to get to the grate! We can leave the same way. Just swim!”
Just swim. Just swim.
But we can’t move through the water as effectively as the boat would have. We don’t have the shelter of its wood, as poor a shield as that turned out to be against the scourge sorcerers’ weapons.
A fresh volley of shouts rings out on either side of us. More red-shirted figures appear on both banks, having run ahead or caught word from their colleagues.
A woman on the farther bank draws back her bow. Is she aiming at Ivy?
My pulse hitches with panic. The image flashes before my eyes of the arrow smacking into Ivy’s skull the way the other did the guard’s chest.
No.
I flail at the churning water, but I can’t push myself any closer to her. My waterlogged clothes drag at my limbs.
She’s too far beyond my reach.
I can’t let them hurt her. My Ivy. My little vine.
The arrow arcs through the air—and hits the water just shy of Ivy’s shoulder. Instead of relief, more panic surges through my body.
It was so close. So much closer than I am.
They could murder my precious woman right in front of me.
I lift my arm to try to hurl some of my crackly magic at our attackers, even though I’m not sure how much damage I can do from this distance. But the shifting currents throw my aim off-kilter.
The sizzling light I fling out smacks into the riverbank instead, slashing black streaks across the stones.
Another arrow flies at us, and another. We swing around a second curve in the river.
For a second, I find myself spun around, unable to even see Ivy.
As I claw my way through the water to face her again, a thicker fear wraps around my chest, squeezing my lungs.
If we can’t make it out of this—if I lose her—all the pain that burned inside me after Lothar took her will wrack me again. Worse than being pierced with a hundred arrows.
I don’t know—I can’t even wrap my head around the thought— What am I supposed to do?
How can I save either of us?
Watching that man hold a knife to her throat the other night was bad enough. At least I could see right away how to blast him away from her.
Now I’m as caught up as she is. Nothing I can do is making a difference.
Ivy’s mouth dips below the level of the water. She sputters and waves her hand toward me. Whatever she says is lost in the swell of desperation that’s engulfed my body.
I stiffen and sink. My legs jerk automatically, sending me back to the surface with a sputter of my own.
Petra shouts something too, from off to my left. Casimir glances back at me, his brow knitting.
One of the men on the bank hurls a knife at Ivy’s head. She flinches to the side, but a protruding bit of its hilt smacks her temple.
My mouth opens with a wail of protest building in my throat, and her gaze snags on mine, startlingly blue compared to the murky water. Finally, her voice penetrates the haze in my head.
“The grate!” she calls out. “It’s time!”
Understanding snaps into place.
I have to carry out my part in the plan—even if we were in the boat, I was meant to fulfill this task.
My fears blotted my duty right out of my mind.
With a ragged breath and a surge of shame, I yank myself around purposefully. Just a few boat-lengths away loom the thick city walls—and the bridge that arches over the river with a steel grate beneath to prevent covert travel by this route.
The opening rises only a few feet above the water—we’d have had to hunch low in the boat to pass through the space beneath the stone arch. That won’t matter now that we’re in the water, but we still need it to open.
If we hit the bars while they’re still closed, we’ll be easy targets for our pursuers.
I shove all of my attention toward the metal structure—toward the lock that secures the grate—and thrust my hands forward.
The first smack of my magic warps the metal but doesn’t break it.
As I speed ever closer, I will another, sharper blast of the searing energy out of me.
The lock melts away, along with a significant chunk of the deadbolt it held in place. I tip myself backward and slam into the bars feet first, aiming one final surge of magic at the hinges on the other side.
The strips of metal sizzle, and the grate pops off. It rushes beneath the bridge ahead of me, tugged by the river’s current.
I right myself in time to see my companions gliding through the opening after me. Yells of frustration carry from the other side, but the scourge sorcerers aren’t going to follow us into the water—and they can’t jump right over the wall.
They’ll have to dash around to the nearest gate on the land. We can be far away from the city by the time they reach the river.
As we bob along in it, the waterway flows past a few farms and into a patch of forest we surveyed ahead of time. The log the now-dead soldier and I heaved most of the way into the current still protrudes from the bank where we left it.
I catch a branch and whirl around to help pull Petra over to safety. Casimir and the devout work their way along the soggy wood to the shore, pulling the sacrificial accomplice with them.
I stay in the water until Ivy reaches me. She extends her arms to stop herself against the log, but I wrap my arm around her first.
The question spills out shakily. “Okay, Little Vine?”
She peers at me, no mark on her except the start of a bruise where the knife hilt knocked her temple. “Just glad to be out of there. Are you okay?”
I push my mouth into a smile. “I am if you are.”
As true as that is, my heart thumps heavily against my ribs as we slosh to the shore and tramp through the forest to the waiting horses we hid. Toast snorts in greeting as if he’s as relieved to see Ivy returning as I am.
She is okay. But not thanks to me.
I almost put her in even more danger when I froze up in the river.
What’s wrong with me? Was that paralyzing mix of fear and pain some effect of my human body that no one thought to warn me about?