Chapter 39
Not long after, preparations were complete.
Mounts had been readied. Stolen goods had been packed. Crake’s soldiers moved into formation, ready to march home ahead of the Morning Tide.
I strained my ears as I was hauled to my feet, trying to hear the sea’s distant buffeting, but the shouts all around me, the clinking of armor, drowned it out. I was jostled into place with the others.
A satisfied-looking Uirbrig Crake rode past, heading to the front of the line.
Rhianne, just ten feet or so ahead of me, looked as if she wanted nothing more than to spit at his feet, her gag the only thing stopping her.
Beside her, Mawre looked on stonily. Tigo was some way ahead of us, tightly bound, specially guarded by three hulking soldiers.
Llir was behind. I couldn’t quite spot him—only the flash of a white shirt, a bent head, tousled hair.
My own guard, a man, stood close beside me. Stringy hair in a ponytail; grinning yellowed teeth. As I shivered, the chill seeping into my garments, he hung a laconite pendant around my neck. “Don’t want any of you Orha filth trying anything funny on the march.”
I gave him a flat stare. My gag rendered me useless anyway, and besides, although he couldn’t know it, there were still a few laconite beads in my pockets.
Morgen Cormorant trotted past us, head held high, followed closely by her brother. Avrix’s hand had been bandaged, and he held it close to his chest as he rode. His gaze caught mine, and his lips twitched slightly, his uninjured hand rising in a small mock salute.
Before I could scowl, a call came: “Move off!”
My stomach flipped. Were Kielty and the others ready? Had Zennia even gotten to them to relay the plan?
We trudged off, the soldiers laughing and bantering, the horses snorting, the wagons creaking. Soon the bay opened out ahead of us, fog cloaked and eerie, a ghostly white mire. Around and in front, the mudflats glittered, and behind us came a low, murmuring roar.
Thud, thud. Leather soles hit the causeway. Greaves reverberated. Blades clanked against armor.
If this didn’t work, what awaited us on the mainland? A brutal placement in the Quagland marshes? A short-lived stint in Crake’s or Shrike’s armies? For some, no doubt, a quick execution. Those who refused to work. To comply.
I suspected Llir Shearwater would be among that number. Though I didn’t look around, I could almost sense his gaze. Could he see me ahead of him, my shoulders hunched? Traitor. Cuckoo.
He didn’t know what was coming.
I flicked my gaze north, then south, to the sides of us. There, close by on the mudflats, I saw them: Dark humps of sand. Jagged furrows in the dimness. Someone—or more than one person—had been there. People who could bend the ground to their will.
My pulse picked up, sweat prickling between my shoulders.
Step one. They’d done it. Kielty had come through.
I flashed a quick look over my shoulder, hoping the Cage were even now back east. They hadn’t had much time, but if they’d split their resources…
“Eyes forward.”
A sharp smack connected with my cheek. My head whipped around as my guard shoved me ahead of him.
I staggered, raised my bound wrists to my face.
Step two. This part required something from me.
The guard’s blow had been fortuitous. I slowed, then stopped short and swayed where I stood.
“Hoi,” came the gruff voice again. A calloused hand gripped me. “No loiterin’. Get on with you, Orha vermin.”
I bent, put my hands on my knees, sank downward. I mumbled something, but my gag turned it to nonsense. The guard reached down, ripped the gag from my mouth. “I can’t go on,” I moaned. “I’m going to be sick.”
A frustrated sigh. He hauled me upward, but I loosened my muscles like a rag doll, slumped lower.
“What’s the bloody holdup?” came a woman’s hoarse voice. Behind us, because of the narrowness of the causeway, a bottleneck was forming. Faces peered over shoulders. I lay on the slick stone, my clothes soaking up seawater, and curled inward as my guard shoved me roughly with a boot.
“Got a sick one!” he called to the soldiers ahead of us. A few had stalled, staring back through the thin mist. “Shall I just get rid of ’er?” he added. My insides lurched.
As long as they didn’t slit my throat, I hardly cared how they decided to deal with me—throw me on the sands to be taken by the tide, load me on horseback, chuck me in a wagon. All I needed, right now, was a delay.
And with the group stretched out in such a long line, with the horses at the front and the wagons at the rear, I was getting my wish. Shouted orders were passed back to us.
“Nah, Crake says he wants to keep the Orha. Pass her back. Get her on one of the wagons.”
My guard wasted no time in hauling me up and hoisting me over his shoulder like a sack. “Get on, then,” he barked, heading back the way we’d come as the rest of the line filtered past him, finally moving.
From up here, I had a better view behind us, but the sea fog mostly hid the island from sight. I could hear the tide, though, roaring ever nearer, chomping at the bit to sweep out into the bay.
I was jittery, feverish, as the guard bore me onward, and I suddenly glimpsed Llir’s face as we passed him. His green eyes sought mine, brow furrowed in confusion. I knew I didn’t look sick. I held his gaze.
Then he was gone, and there was only dull armor, the rhythmic marching of boot soles on stone.
I looked out—and felt my heart leap when I saw it. The tide. Swirling in, racing level with our group.
My delay. It had worked, bestowed just enough time. And Crake didn’t realize, because of what the Cage were doing…
I could see it now, the way the water was warping, thundering ahead to the left and right of us, but lagging behind us in a great, strange U shape. Like a tumbling avalanche, it roared up the channels, filling the ditches carved out by the Cage.
And the waves held back by the Floodmouths behind us, back at the island, were racing to catch up…
For that was what Zennia had relayed to the Cage, the hasty plan we’d hatched in the tower. I’d remembered Rhianne’s words when we’d talked on the clifftop: “Sometimes the sands, they can change their shape, and that makes the water swirl in differently…”
The Floodmouths—more experienced with the ocean than I was—had leashed the tide where it flowed around the island, while at the same time, the Mudmouths had caused a series of small quakes, shallow tremors in the sands that would push the waves higher.
The tidal wave at the ball had impressed itself on my mind.
And then…
Release.
The Floodmouths had stood down, leaving the tide to barrel in at our rear with pure fury.
I thought I could see it: that first foam-tipped wave, eager to catch up with its fellows either side of it. It was high—head-high—soaring dark out of the sea fog, and now I heard the shouts of panic down the line.
I struggled, causing my guard to lose his footing. As he staggered, I managed to leap down from his arms, but a second later, he was no longer looking at me. His eyes, like everyone else’s, were fixed behind us, on the towering wave that was now almost here…
The roaring was louder, almost deafening, and the bay on either side of us was a tumult of water. My heart hammered as though it would burst from my chest. I was lightheaded. What in hells had I done?
I’d been thinking only of destroying House Crake. My own survival, and that of Llir and the others, had been a niggle I’d squashed, something to deal with later.
Now I saw I’d underestimated the ferocity, the violence, with which the tide was advancing. The Cage must only have held it back for a few minutes, but that was enough. It was spitting with rage.
It was done now. Things were too far gone. I’d have to see this through—however it ended.
The line of soldiers, of Orha, was fragmenting. Awkwardly, for my wrists were bound in front of me, I shrugged off my pendant and kicked it away, then dug in my pockets and got rid of the remaining laconite.
A figure appeared next to me. Llir, face white. He’d managed to tug his gag down around his neck.
“What is this?” He was staring out at the tide.
“Take that off,” I said, nudging his pendant, and he looked at me, wild-eyed, as he pulled it over his head.
“Was this you?” His voice was cracking with fear. But suspicion, too—a simmering resentment. My betrayal hung between us, unspoken.
“Kind of,” I muttered. “Come on. Get these off.” They’d freed our ankles, but our wrists were still lashed, and I scrabbled at his bindings. “Gods. We need a knife.”
A distant shout came then, echoed down the line: “All Floodmouths! To the rear! Stop this nonsense!”
I suspected it had originated with Uirbrig Crake.
But it was hopeless, trying to organize this rabble.
Panic had gripped his forces like a fever.
His soldiers were trying to remove their armor, but time had run out, the wave was here.
The Orha, the Floodmouths, were already shouting, but their words went unheeded by the oncoming tide.
An Orha fled past me, spitting commands, and I remembered pushing laconite deep down into her cloak.
Another still had his pack on his shoulders, a pack I’d laced with the beads in the ward.
“We need to get away from them,” I said to Llir. “They have laconite.”
He looked at me, uncomprehending. I pulled him with me. “All the Crake Orha. I put laconite on them. They won’t find it. It’s too small. Too well hidden.”
“It’s too late,” Llir said. He was staring above my shoulders. And when I half turned, flinching, I saw he was right.
Boom.
The first wave smashed into the wagons, splintering wood, sending sacks into the air.
There were yells down the causeway, horses whinnying.
There was no sign of Rhianne, of Tigo or Mawre.
The next wave reared, dark and ominous, and though it wasn’t as tall as the tidal wave, it still sent a zigzag of ice through my insides.