Chapter 25
Something was wrong.
I became aware of it as Avrix and I dashed down the tower steps. Though the spiral staircase was still deserted, I detected a growing tumult below—there were raised voices, rushed footsteps, the barking of orders in a voice very like Rexim’s. Surely that couldn’t all be for us?
We emerged into an empty corridor and crept toward the imperial staircase. On the landing, the noise intensified. Crowds were gathered in the entrance hall. A drunk guest lurched past and peered out a narrow window.
Avrix slipped by and, a second later, was gone, lost among the revellers. I was left to pick my way down the staircase, trying to blend in, wondering what was going on.
Guests were darting this way and that. Some were clustered in tight, anxious circles, their eyes on the windows, which showed only pitch darkness. I could still hear the drumming of rain on the glass and, under it, the ever-present purring of laconite.
I was halfway down the stairs when the siblings strode into view. Vercha’s eyes swept the chamber—I couldn’t escape that sharp gaze—and spotting me, she stalked over, handsome features set hard.
“Where have you been?” she hissed, grabbing my elbow.
“Er—” My excuses floated right out of my head. I was still dumbstruck by Avrix’s revelation.
“Never mind,” she said, tugging me down the stairs with her. Her face was oddly pale. “Come quickly. They need you.”
The next figure I was faced with was Llir. Remembering our dance, what I’d admitted to myself after, I flushed, but he only looked as strained as Vercha. Someone had pulled the keep’s doors wide, and people milled there like agitated insects.
Behind Emment and Catua, Rexim’s burly frame appeared.
“Here she is, Father.”
Spots of red colored his cheeks. “Floodmouth.” His venomous tone made me falter. “Get down to the east cove and corral the others. Now.”
I had no idea what others he was talking about, but I willed my legs to move toward the doors.
There, the rage of the storm was palpable.
A few guests had braved it and stood huddled under parasols, their hems soaked through, their eyes fixed east. Most collected in front of the doorway, and as I elbowed through them I glanced back, glimpsing the siblings.
Vercha was gripping Catua’s arm. Emment spoke rapidly to a pair of nobles.
Llir locked eyes with me, watching me go.
Then I was through, thrown into the furor.
I called to the rain, but my nerves were taut as bowstrings. It half listened, sparing me the worst of the downpour, but by the time I was midway across the outer ward, my dress—my stupid, hells-damned dress—was drenched and heavy, weighing me down.
Thunder cracked directly overhead. I ducked, then stumbled toward the cove path.
All around me, the rain sheeted down, the bay invisible, cloaked in black.
Slipping and sliding, I made my way east. With the castle lit up like a Feast Day tree, there was just enough glow to see the rough track ahead.
Under the storm, I heard a low, muted roar. It brought to mind the terrifying swells of peak archwater, but I knew that was still a week away. And anyway, this noise…it seemed continuous, an insistent droning at the edge of my hearing.
Our tower reared out of the darkness ahead like the neck of some colossal sea beast. I passed it, blinking rain from my eyes, edging forward carefully, conscious of the clifftops close by.
A few moments later, I walked smack into a body.
“Oof. Who’s that? Hey, Osprey, we’ve got another one!”
Voices. Squelching footsteps. Somewhere, a woman moaning.
“How long?” someone said.
“Two minutes. Maybe less.”
I turned in a circle, peering through the deluge. Dark, blurry figures moved around me on the slope, muted flashes of color—Orha’s vibrant livery.
Then a hand grabbed me. “Hey.” Amber eyes. Light brown skin. Curly black hair plastered down over drawn brows. “You’re a Floodmouth too?”
“The Shearwaters’,” I said, teeth chattering.
“Finally,” the young man bit out. “Where were you? We’d have got down here much quicker if you’d been here to guide us. Come on.” He urged me onward. “There’s not much time.”
“Until what?” I demanded, trying to shake off his grip. His livery was the deep orange of House Osprey.
He spun me around, made me face the unseen ocean. “Wait for it,” he said, breathless and grim.
I squinted eastward. All was black, thickly cloaked.
“I don’t under—”
A stark white flash. Lightning. It streaked down, revealing roiling clouds above.
The place it struck should have been covered by water. I didn’t know what time it was, but even at lowest tide, the sea never drew out much beyond the island. I should have seen waves. Fountains of spray. Instead, the lightning illuminated bare mud. A great, horrifying expanse of seabed.
And beyond it, lit up for only a second, a low black wall, stretching out along the horizon.
“What—?” I managed. The roar was growing louder.
“Tidal wave,” Osprey’s Floodmouth said quietly. “That quake earlier…you can’t have missed it?”
My core felt cold. My ears filled with buzzing.
“No, but it was nothing. It felt too small…”
He looked at me askance. “Yes, if the island had been the center. That’s what people assumed at first. But it wasn’t. It must have been way out, off the coast.” He stared out gravely. “Big one, I reckon.”
My hair was sopping, but I hardly noticed. Now I began to realize why we’d been sent out here.
I sensed him looking at me, waiting for my reply. Waiting for the guidance I knew they were expecting, deferring to my authority as Rexim’s Floodmouth. But I wasn’t a leader; I’d never felt like one. And certainly not facing something like this.
“Right,” Osprey’s Floodmouth called when I said nothing, “spread out along the cliff’s edge. Any laconite on you—ditch it now.”
He had a commanding air despite his youth, an easy confidence that made my cheeks flush with shame. I maneuvered forward, again cursing my dress. Every movement was far harder than it needed to be.
“They sent us here to die,” a woman was moaning. Fear needled my skin at her words.
“Shut up, will you?” came someone’s fraught snap. The rushing out in the bay grew louder. The darkness was total—somehow worse than seeing the wave.
“Will it come up this high?” I said to no one in particular.
“Oh, yes,” said another woman beside me. “I’m House Avocet. We know our waves. It won’t reach the castle—that would have to be a monster—but it seems your Brigant wants to save his storehouses.”
I turned, peered back at the shrouded island. The castle flared, a beacon of gold light, faintly illuminating clusters of buildings below. Down here were the fish cellar, the icehouse…and the Orha’s tower.
Beyond, squatting at low levels around the island, were the boathouses. Those vessels would be expensive to replace. We’d been ordered out here to try to lessen the damage.
But at what cost to us? a voice in my head said.
I thought of the stories Zennia had told me. The Sparkmouths who had choked in her mother’s glass furnaces. Her own disappearance amid raging waves.
Was that—here, now—to be my fate, too?
I whirled as a second lightning strike seared down. In its brilliance, I glimpsed that terrible rising wall of water, blacker than the night, bearing down on the cove. My legs went weak. I stumbled backward. Osprey’s Floodmouth shouted something, and along the line, others called out, too.
My mind flashed back to Rexim’s test. The one I’d survived only by giving up. Those waves had been nothing, just ripples, compared to this one. They’d listened, barely, but only when I thought I’d die…
Pathetic. Hot shame bled into my cheeks. I thrust a hand into the pocket where I’d stashed Zennia’s brooch. I hadn’t been able to wear it openly lest someone, a Shearwater or a servant, recognize it, but I’d wanted it close. A reminder of her. I squeezed it now but still felt horribly alone.
Fleetingly I flicked my eyes closed, hoping the brooch might temper my horror, but my mind’s eye was crimson, a raging inferno, not even anything ball shaped to squeeze down.
I gulped in air. “Stand down!” I urged the water, my voice cracking, knowing at any second it would reach us, overcome us. “Stand down now—spare this place!”
But then the deeper darkness ahead of me…moved. Came charging toward me. I staggered backward.
Along the line, the others were retreating, some looking just as panicked as I felt, others more determined, still yelling entreaties. My feet tangled in my dress as I stumbled, and then a great black swell broke over the clifftop.
It hurtled forward, a violent stampede, appearing almost to barrel toward me especially. I recalled forgetting to thank the tide. How, in the last few days, I’d been so caught up in everything going on that I’d neglected my usual morning practice.
Rhama’s words came to me: “It takes time, and respect.”
The water reared, towering above us, but for a slowed-down second or two, it seemed to…hesitate. The Floodmouths’ raw shouts echoed around me. Then, despite their efforts—
The wave hit.
It was like running headfirst into cold glass. I was tossed, upended, like a child’s rag doll, my skirts torn and billowing, the momentum shoving me backward.
In an instant, I was under. Salt filled my mouth. I was blinded, enveloped in a rough, icy darkness. Lungs burning, I sensed I was being swept away. In a moment, I’d be cast off the cliff edge to perish. Frantically, I raked out my hands, felt hard earth, a thicket of daggerlike thorns—the gorse.
Another surge broke over me, threatening to finish the job. But it was weaker. Shallower. I clung to the gorse.
The water began to dissipate.
Lying bruised and battered on the sodden soil, I coughed, tasting bitter bile on my tongue. From somewhere a scream sounded. A few hoarse shouts.
Sucking in a breath, I crouched on shaking legs. All was dark, and though the pelting rain had lessened, there was no part of me now that wasn’t drenched and chilled to ice.
I’d been tossed some distance but couldn’t tell how far.
As I clambered to standing, I put out a hand and yelped as a long, wicked gorse thorn stabbed me.
I stumbled in the opposite direction, and the ground grew stony under my feet.
Then, without warning, it abruptly fell away.
I teetered, terrified. This must be a cliff edge.
Below, water still pounded savagely on rock.
I turned and pushed my way numbly through the gorse, trying not to think about how close I’d come to pitching down there.
Squelches in the mud. A hand on my shoulder.
“Who’s that?” It was Osprey’s Floodmouth, voice raw from exhaustion, from all the shouting. “Are you all right? Close call with that cliff. But I think we only lost one.” He trudged away, livery dripping. “Come on, they’ll want us back up at the castle.”
Lost one. Someone had died out here.
I followed him, hearing others traipsing ahead of us.
But when we reached the site of the Orha’s old tower, we all stopped short. I swiped rain from my eyes.
Before the great wave, it had loomed, four floors high.
Now it was a ruin, the upper stories gutted.
My room and Mawre’s were gone, nothing left but jagged remnants of walls.
The front entrance gaped, Tigo’s windows had shattered, and around us, among the flattened, mulchy gorse, lay fallen stones and detritus from our chambers.
I stared up at where my room had once been. My only clothes, my livery. The pouch of regals Emment had paid me. Zennia’s belongings; the letter she’d left. All now scattered and swept away.
Suddenly panicked, I put a hand to my bodice, digging for my tools—and the Breovan Charter. They’d been there, safely stowed when I’d returned to the ball. But now they were gone, shaken loose by the torrent.
I felt around for Zennia’s brooch and was relieved to feel it at the bottom of my pocket, rattling against the false-laconite pin I’d swiped from Emment’s room.
But without the other items, I was useless to the Cage. No way to continue damaging the laconite, and no hard proof of Catua’s secret.
The voice of Osprey’s Floodmouth floated out of the darkness: “Must have been ancient to have collapsed like that.”
“It was,” I said, surprised at how hoarse I sounded.
“Come on,” he replied. “I’ll report it up at the castle.”