Chapter 16
“Emment!”
I dithered for a moment. Swore again.
Dropping the reins, I left the track’s comforting solidity, stepping down onto the flats with a twist in my gut.
My eyes were finally adjusting to the dark, and I could just make out the faint gray line of the causeway, the shadowy smears of clouds above.
Port Rhorstin was a cluster of fireflies in the distance.
Of Bower Island, to the east, I could see nothing—only black.
I hurried after Emment, following the squelches of his footsteps. My own soles sank shallowly into the sands. I heard his harsh panting, caught him whimper again: “Zennia.” With his longer legs and stronger build, he was faster than me despite his ale-addled state.
“For gods’ sakes. Emment!”
I’d heard no more howls, but that didn’t mean much. The pack could be circling, drawn by the noise. I staggered on, expecting at any given second to see the eerie pinpricks of eyes in the night.
Then: a shout of panic ahead.
I stalled, gasping for breath, then picked my way forward. The sand was growing softer, wetter, under my feet. The clouds shifted, letting through a few spears of moonslight. And by them, I at last spotted Emment ahead.
But he looked odd. Shorter. Bent over double. He was struggling, arms flailing, twisting at the waist. With a sick jolt, I realized what he was doing. His legs were stuck; sinking. He was trying to get free.
“Emment!”
I inched my way forward.
I’d known there were sinking sands out on the mudflats—swathes of the bay turned sodden by lazy streams—but unlike the fishermen, the mud pickers, the foragers, I’d not yet had cause to worry about them, to learn where they were and how to avoid them.
“Here!” I cried, stepping toward him, reaching out. But straightaway I had to dart back again. My own boots were vanishing into the gritty mulch. I wrenched them out, hopping, heart pounding a wild rhythm.
As I watched him struggle, a part of me thought, Good.
It was as much as he deserved, after what I’d seen at the Veil. Maybe I should just leave him to the sands, claim to the family that he’d vanished in the blackness.
But then I thought of my Cage contact. My agreement. If something happened to Emment out here, Rexim Shearwater would have his revenge. I’d be packed off to a mill, or maybe a cell, any hope of learning about Zennia lost to me.
Emment yelled something incoherent. He was exhausted now, sunk up above his knees. There wasn’t much time. I could save him by speaking, by telling the water to leach from the sands…but I didn’t.
I sensed a dark flicker of opportunity.
“I can help you,” I said hoarsely, “but on one condition.”
He reached out, raking fingers over the sand, but his hands only disappeared into the soggy mire.
“What?” he gasped. I could no longer see him; the clouds had shrouded the moons like thick smoke.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, inching forward as far as I could without sinking myself. “That night, when Zennia…I know there’s more to it.”
Though I couldn’t make him out, I could sense his confusion, his panic. “I don’t know what you mean. I told—I told everyone what happened. We searched—”
“I saw you back there,” I interrupted coldly. “I saw those fights you bet on with your friends. Did you take her there to try to make her fight? Did something bad happen to her—and you covered it up?”
The awful possibility had only just struck me. Even more awful after seeing those nobles laughing and joking and teasing the Shearwater.
“What?” His voice had cracked like glass.
“No. Gods, no. I don’t do that any—” He cut off and let out a breath, harsh and shaky.
“Okay,” he continued, his words running together, “I admit, there’s more to what happened that night, but believe me, I haven’t brought ours along for years.
It was…wrong. It’s all wrong, I know…” He sounded broken.
“Tell me,” I demanded, shocked at myself. I didn’t recognize the voice coming out of me. But I needed to know. I burned for the truth.
Emment let out a strangled sob. “She saw it, too,” he said through rasping breaths; he was still trying, unsuccessfully, to get free.
“I brought her in with me, but not to fight. The other Orha, they all stand there watching, but she—she suddenly got really angry. Marched right in, tried to break up the fight. She was”—Emment paused, took a great gulping breath—“saying things to my…my friends. Things I couldn’t countenance. ”
I could picture her anger, clear as water. The way her nose—her whole face—would’ve screwed up. The flare in her eyes. The hunch to her shoulders.
“I dragged her away, back to the causeway. Said Father would hear of it first thing in the morning, that her placement with us was already at an end…”
The clouds shifted again, letting through pallid moonslight. I picked out Emment’s grimace in the gloom.
“And then, look, I promise you, it’s what I told the others. The water, it turned choppy, then…wild. Must’ve been a sudden squall off the ocean. Our rowboat couldn’t cope, and we both went over. When I climbed back in, she was nowhere to be seen.”
My eyes raked his face for any duplicity, but all I could see was drunken misery, and—to my horror—a cracked-open honesty.
“No,” I forced out. “There’s something else.”
“There’s nothing else,” Emment said, sagging. His panicked wriggling had only made him sink further; there was no way he was getting out of here without help.
“How did you get back?” I pressed. “If Zennia was…gone?”
“There were oars in the bottom of the boat,” he said weakly. “The water had calmed by then. I rowed back.”
My legs felt weak. I crouched on the sand, my own black misery draping over me.
“Please,” he choked, “don’t leave me here.”
I raised my eyes, taking him in.
If I punished Emment Shearwater, I’d be punished, too.
My contact might never know what had happened to me.
Whatever the Cage was hiding about Zennia—and I found myself even more desperate to know now, to see if their story simply matched Emment’s or if he was keeping something from me—I would never find out.
I wouldn’t let that happen.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I conjured my emotions. They were star-bright right now, red as blood—red as laconite. Emment wasn’t wearing the stone tonight. Together in our boat, it would have hindered my efforts.
There was nothing preventing me from saving him but myself.
I tried to squash my anger, my grief. Instead, I imagined myself back at Arbenhaw. This would make a good exam, a detached part of me observed. And the thought of Arbenhaw brought Zennia’s face to my mind.
Two days, I told myself. In just two days, I’d get the time and location of that second meeting, and there I’d finally find out the truth. No more drifting along unmoored; no more of this terrible, all-consuming uncertainty. The thought calmed me. I breathed out, long and slow.
“Displace,” I said to the saturated sands. And to the meandering stream: “Divert your course.”
This slow-moving water, soaking the sands, was a world away from the raging torrents of archwater. It was sluggish and heavy but permissive, too. Pliant. I felt the sand shift and constrict around my soles. Emment yelped in surprise. He must have felt it, too, that tightening around him.
From somewhere came the eerie echo of a howl, and I wasted no time in staggering forward.
“Help me,” I gasped, scooping handfuls of sand. The ordeal must have sobered him, as he joined me in digging, grunting with exertion, heaving himself upward.
At last he stumbled out onto the flats, his fashionable breeches mud-blackened, ruined. He sank down, buried his face in his hands. He was crying, I realized. Murmuring something between the sobs.
“Zennia. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Zennia.”
“Come on,” I hissed, dragging him up. We had to get out of here. I urged him toward the causeway.
But as we neared it, my stomach sank like a stone. Our stallion was gone, no sign of him anywhere.
And then, when I turned and peered behind us—
Eyes.
“This way,” I whispered, tugging Emment along with me.
The lights of Port Rhorstin flickered to the west. Ahead of us must lie the lapping water, but how far I no longer had any idea.
The clouds shifted again, dappling the bay with moonslight, and another glance back revealed black shapes on the sands.
Three, maybe four. Even taller than the wolfhounds.
I broke into a run, shoving Emment ahead of me.
“Wha—What is’t?” He stumbled, craning his neck.
“Just go!” I shouted, then turned, jogging backward.
The eyes were getting nearer. I sucked in a breath.
Another exam. That was all. I could do this. I called to the nearby streams, to the wet sands, “Cut them off! Block their path to the causeway.”
I didn’t wait around to see if it had worked.
Whirling, I took off after Emment. And together we sprinted onward into the night.
—
More howls sounded as we raced along the causeway, but no eyes winked in the surrounding darkness. I hoped that meant the wolves couldn’t cross the soaking sands.
When we finally made it to the little stone harbor, I collapsed into the boat, relief searing through me.
Emment lay back in the vessel with a groan.
I peered at him as we slid through the water, thankful that at least he wasn’t crying anymore.
I’d never been a natural at comforting people.
I’d always felt utterly unhelpful and awkward, guiltily wishing I could just slip away.
Not that Emment deserved any comfort, not after his antics back at the Veil.
I soon picked out the island rearing above us, a deep black against the navy curtain of night. As I looked keenly for the beach, for the planes and angles of its harbor, I saw a single light there, hovering in the darkness. A lantern, being held aloft by a cloaked figure.
I nudged Emment with my foot but elicited no movement. To my annoyance, a loud snore emanated from his slumped form.