Chapter 4
On the fifth day, with a nervous lurch in my abdomen, I spotted gulls circling over the treetops of the Drowning Woods. The roads looked sandier, the people windburned, and the air had taken on a strange new freshness.
My whole body ached. I was exhausted from lack of sleep, not merely from the scritching of mice in our guest rooms but from lying awake each night for hours, my mind raking over the note in my case.
It had to have been left by someone at Arbenhaw. Egard and Belamy had been in the coach with me all day, and I’d had to lug my own bag up the steep steps to our room.
There was whoever had been ordered to pack my things, but at Arbenhaw, most chores and odd jobs for the Instructors were performed by the younger trainees, in preparation for service. They wouldn’t have known either me or Zennia, nor had the means to arrange a meeting on the other side of Nemestra.
It seemed more likely that someone else had packed my case. Caerig had known I was bound for Bower Bay, but I simply couldn’t imagine why she would have a hand in this.
That left Rhama.
I recalled his too-long look at my departure, him standing guard outside Zennia’s room. He alone had seemed to understand how close we were. Perhaps he had taken pity on me after all, arranged for someone to share the details of her fate.
But why not simply seek me out and tell me? Much as I tried, in those long hours tossing and turning, I couldn’t square what I knew of Instructor Rhama—who’d been a stalwart presence at Arbenhaw for far longer than I’d been there—with the mystery, the clandestine unorthodoxy, of this note.
It was dark when we finally rattled into Port Rhorstin.
The moons were close, almost touching—at the beginning of each month, one eclipsed the other—but tonight, their faces were swaddled in thin cloud.
As I limped from our coach through the doorway of our last inn, the note crumpled small and hidden in my pocket, I saw only the dark outlines of gables and weather vanes and the uncanny glow of hanging lamps.
For the first time on our journey, I slept like the dead, the accumulated fatigue of four nights of poor sleep at last overcoming my racing thoughts.
My grief, too, seemed finally to have blunted: no longer the raw, open wound of a few days ago but a yawning black hole I now teetered on the edge of.
The next morning, I woke late, groggy and disoriented.
Daylight, dulled by a heavy blanket of cloud, filtered in through the window and beckoned me from bed.
I opened the catch, pushed the casement wide, and with a sudden thrill felt the bracing briskness of the breeze, smelled salt on the air, heard the snapping of ships’ sails.
We were on a main thoroughfare that dropped east to some docks, just visible between the walls of weather-beaten whitewashed buildings. Over the rooftops, marsh reeds marched into the distance. I craned my neck but couldn’t yet see the sea.
Egard and Belamy had the room adjoining mine and in their drunken state hadn’t even closed the door.
They sprawled, snoring, on canvas-covered cots.
An empty wine bottle lay on its side near the window, and a few stained playing cards were scattered over the floor.
I eyed their slumped figures, disdainful.
Perhaps it was time to give my “guardians” a little scare.
Downstairs, the taproom was noisy and bustling, but my uniform—and the laconite pendant against his chest—alerted the barman, drawing his eye to me immediately. Those who could afford it often wore protections against us.
“Orha,” he said. “Another one o’you. You’re alone.”
I sidled to an empty space at the bar. “My guardians sent me down to get breakfast.” I held out the letter of passage from Arbenhaw, which I’d eased from one of Egard’s pockets. “Could I have buttered eggs in bread? And cold meats?”
His eyes roved the parchment; then he nodded, handing it back.
“What did you mean, ‘another one of us’?” I asked, my pulse picking up.
He threw me a quick glance as he poured out two ales. “Last month,” he commented. “One from there, just like you.” He nudged his chin at the letter I held. “Same uniform an’ all. Just that we don’t see many of you.”
He sloshed the ales onto a tray with some bread and hefted it, making to head down the bar.
“How did she seem?” I said desperately, heart drumming. It was the only thing I could think of to ask. But with a shake of his head, he was gone, tray held high.
Half an hour later, I heard the inevitable ruckus: shouts from upstairs, then the thumping of boots. Egard appeared first, eyes raking the taproom. Belamy, behind him, looked to be nursing a painful hangover.
“You.” Egard stalked up to me, face bright red. “Thought you’d try your luck giving us the slip? Thought you’d treat yourself to a little something on our tab?” He scowled at the remnants of egg on my plate.
“You looked like you needed your beauty sleep.”
I felt a little thrill at my words, knowing he couldn’t harm me if he wanted his coin. I’d never talked back to the Instructors at Arbenhaw. Now I was outside its walls, I couldn’t resist.
Egard looked as though he was about to explode.
“Come on,” Belamy said, steering me roughly away. “Tides mean we need to get going across that causeway.”
A tingle went through me: half anticipation, half apprehension. I hadn’t seen the sea since I was eight years old. And I knew the tides here were different from those down south.
Outside, the clouds had lowered and a brisk wind blew, bringing the scent of oncoming rain.
As my case was loaded onto a cart pulled by a gray mare, I watched sailors loitering in fraying linens and wool caps, rusted whistles slung around their necks.
Servants lugged sacks and ewers of water, picking their way with practiced ease around the wagons and over the ruts in the road.
A knight on horseback nearly clipped me as he passed, two men-at-arms behind him, broadswords strapped to their backs.
And above the din, I heard a distant roaring.
We walked east, toward the docks I’d seen from my window, passing through a cobbled square surrounded by narrow shop fronts and houses. One of the shops was selling news pamphlets, and I slowed my pace, eyes roving the headlines.
But there was nothing, of course, about one drowned Orha, even though it had happened right here in this bay.
Deaths in service were a common enough occurrence.
Instead, it seemed, the pamphlets were going wild about the declining health of one of the ruling Regents: Who Will Fill Chamber Seat Left by Dying Dunlin?
“Hoi, get moving,” came Egard’s low growl.
But something else in the square caught my eye: a line of great metal plaques affixed high on the walls of the buildings. Each was engraved with symbols and figures, and I hesitated, staring up at the dense rows and columns. It was like another language; I could make no sense of it.
This time, Egard butted me from behind, and I grabbed at the cart to keep from falling. I’d seen no sign of a place called the Veil, the establishment my mysterious meeting would take place in, but I couldn’t exactly look for it now…
Besides, once we emerged from between the buildings, all thoughts of the Veil flew out of my head. A wide vista opened out before us, and all around were the endless marsh reeds. I looked down the hill, beyond the docks, and saw it there—
The high tide, battering the coast.
It filled the bay from end to end, dull daylight glinting off boisterous waves as clouds of seabirds wheeled above us. Even up here, I felt a thin mist on my face.
If I remembered right from my lessons at Arbenhaw, every month was split into archwater and pallwater. This had to be archwater, when the tides were fastest, flooding the bay with frightening speed. The stone docks we’d emerged onto were deserted; no one took boats out when the sea was this wild.
“I don’t understand,” I said to my guardians, trailing them down to the water’s edge. Rhama had said there was a causeway to the island, but there was nothing in the bay save churning waves. “Don’t we have to wait for low tide?”
“There,” said Belamy, nudging his chin up. Following his gaze, I finally saw it: the beginnings of a stone track raised above the marsh, snaking out from the reeds into the water. “Tides move fast here. It’s goin’ out already.”
He was right—the sea was receding in front of us, each swell breaking well short of the last. By now there were stretches of mudflat exposed, strewn with glistening seaweed and shells.
“Better get a move on,” he added to Egard. “Innkeeper said to follow close behind the tide.”
“Oh, we won’t be leaving,” Egard replied, tightening the ropes that held down my case.
He shot me a disconcerting smile. “Nowhere for her to go this time but onward. So she can cross by herself while we sit here and watch. And she can tell them nobles up at the castle to have the cart returned to its owner tomorrow.” He clapped a hand onto the mare’s flank, making her jump.
“Up we get, then,” he said, lip curling, “Orha filth.”
My heart thudded painfully as I looked out at the tide. Although it was receding, it was still unruly, slapping at the dull stone, sending spray up over the track.
“You were contracted to see me all the way to my destination.” I had no desire to spend another second in Egard’s company, but the thought of heading into the bay alone made me uneasy—the very place where my friend had met her end.
“That may be,” Egard retorted, “but you can’t exactly tattle on us now, can you?” He shaded his eyes, looking out to where the island must lie, and shook his head. “Hells if I can guess why anyone’d choose to live out there.”
I half expected Belamy to protest, or at least look discomforted by the plan, but he seemed relieved; I suspected his head was still pounding. Idling by the bay’s edge with some breakfast no doubt sounded far more inviting than bumping along that causeway and back.
I climbed, with as much dignity as I could muster, into the cart.
“Farewell, then, Floodmouth,” Egard called, already seating himself heavily on a low wall.
“Enjoy your well-earned wages,” I shot back, but goading him was far less satisfying this time. My nerves fluttered and my neck was damp despite the breeze.
Egard chuckled as Belamy folded his long body down next to him. I was left to urge the gray mare onward, and my cart slowly trundled off into the bay.