Wounded Water
MARIN
The water in the washbasin moved before the building did.
Marin noticed because she was looking at Oliver's hand rather than his face.
He sat on the edge of an examination cot in Saint Orra's upper infirmary while she changed the wrap across his right palm, and the ceramic basin on the nearby stand held a thumb's depth of clean water that had been poured there less than a minute earlier.
Its surface tilted toward the north wall.
No one had touched the stand. Oliver followed her gaze. "Should I be offended that the basin has become more interesting than I am?"
"Temporarily."
The water climbed the northern side of the bowl.
Marin let go of his hand. A detonation rolled through the island from the harbor side, lower and heavier than the artillery they had heard through most of the morning.
The windows bowed inward. One pane cracked.
Bottles rattled against one another on the medicine shelf, and somewhere beneath the floor a pipe struck stone three times in quick succession.
The water in the basin rose another inch without gaining volume. Oliver stood.
"That wasn't a shell," Marin said.
Captain Kelm appeared in the infirmary doorway before Oliver could answer. Rain shone on his coat. Two customs officers crowded the corridor behind him, one bleeding from the forehead.
"Naval engineers blew the outer lock."
Marin looked at him. "Why?"
"Unmarked gunboat tried the Cut while the cutter squadron was turning north. Venn's people decided Saint Orra did not need visitors."
"They demolished their own harbor entrance?"
"Professionally, I'm told."
A second impact came from below, metallic rather than explosive. The floor shifted under Marin's boots as pressure moved somewhere inside the walls.
Kelm's expression changed. "We lost water in the east ward."
"Lost it how?"
"Taps went dry. Then the old cistern overflowed."
Oliver glanced at the basin. The water had reached the rim. It did not spill. Marin touched one finger to the outside of the ceramic. Cold. She opened Perception narrowly enough to read the bowl, the stand and the pipe descending behind the plaster.
The water did not feel deep. The connection did.
The copper line beneath the wall returned to her awareness at three different distances.
One remained where the building plans would have put it.
Another ran downward through more stone than Saint Orra possessed.
A third seemed to turn seaward without crossing the intervening rooms.
Marin closed Perception.
"Nobody uses a tap, basin, drain, cistern or well until I say otherwise."
Kelm stared at her. "That includes most of the quarantine station."
"Yes."
"People need water."
"Then give them bottles that were filled before the blast. Nothing connected to the island's pipes."
Oliver looked at his half-wrapped hand. "Should I feel fortunate you finished one side?"
Marin tied the bandage with her teeth and left the rest of the complaint for later. "Coat."
He picked it up. Kelm was already shouting orders into the corridor.
They descended through a building changing one room at a time.
The upper infirmary remained dry. On the floor below, three washrooms had flooded without any wet pipe between them.
Water stood shin-deep in one and left the adjoining corridor untouched.
An orderly had chalked a line at the doorway to show where the flood stopped.
The water had crossed the chalk twice while Marin watched, retreated, then returned to the same edge.
She knelt without entering. A wooden bucket floated near the far wall. Beneath it, the floor tiles were visible through perhaps four inches of water.
"Pole," Marin said.
One of Kelm's officers handed her the handle from a floor brush.
She extended it across the threshold. The first two feet found tile.
At the third, the pole dropped from her hand as though someone had pulled it downward.
Marin caught the end before it vanished.
The brush handle continued descending through water that still appeared shallow enough to show the grout beneath it.
Oliver crouched beside her.
"Depth without distance."
"Or distance routed somewhere else."
"Comforting distinction."
"I wasn't attempting comfort."
A woman cried out from farther down the corridor.
Marin stood. The east convalescent ward had six rooms, twenty-two occupied cots and only one stair that did not pass beside a washroom.
Kelm's people were already moving patients toward the dry central gallery.
Marin caught the shoulder of the first orderly she recognized.
"Where do your water lines run?"
The woman blinked. "Everywhere."
"Useful answer would be more specific."
"Main feed comes up from the old tideworks, splits under the dispensary, then east and west. East branch feeds this ward, kitchens, fever rooms, laundry. West goes to surgical and the cistern."
"Shutoffs?"
"There are floor valves, but half of them are older than my grandmother."
"Show me."
The woman led them to an iron access plate beside the east stair. Marin crouched and lifted it. Five valve stems sat below the floor. Brass tags had once identified each branch. Two remained legible. LAUNDRY. EAST FEVER.
Kelm joined them. "Evacuation is moving."
"How many cannot walk?"
"Nine."
"Keep them off any route crossing a drain."
"That leaves the central stair."
"Then use the central stair."
"It is narrow."
"People can be patient. Floors cannot."
Kelm looked at the valve box. "What are you doing?"
"Finding out whether the problem follows water or rooms."
She pointed toward the east-fever stem.
"Close that one."
Kelm took the wheel with both hands. It resisted. Oliver stepped in beside him. Marin looked at his ribs.
He caught the look before she spoke. "Left hand. Minimal heroism."
"If you make me define minimal, you will dislike the number."
Together they forced the valve through a quarter turn. Somewhere inside the wall, metal screamed. The flooded washroom behind them emptied in one breath. Water vanished through the floor without moving toward the drain. A second later every pipe in the corridor struck once.
Then a scream came from the fever ward. Marin ran. The nearest room contained four cots and a porcelain drinking fountain set into the wall. A boy of perhaps twelve had been sitting beside it when the valve closed. Now his right arm had disappeared to the elbow through the fountain basin.
There was no strain in his shoulder, no current dragging at him, no visible force at all.
Cold tightened beneath Marin's ribs. His forearm simply continued beyond the ceramic where no space existed for it to continue.
His mother held him around the waist. An orderly had one hand under his shoulder and the other pressed against the wall as though leverage would help.
"Stop pulling," Marin said.
The mother looked at her with naked fury. "His arm is in the wall."
"I can see that. Pulling has not improved it."
The woman stopped because Kelm said her name quietly behind Marin. Marin approached the basin. The boy was pale, breathing too fast, but conscious.
"What's your name?"
"Perrin."
"Perrin, can you feel your fingers?"
He swallowed. "Yes."
"Move your thumb."
His shoulder shifted. Somewhere inside the wall, metal tapped once.
"Again."
Another tap. Oliver's gaze moved from the basin to the pipe chase.
"His hand is somewhere along the line."
"Possibly."
"That seems worth disliking."
Marin put her uninjured hand against the wall and opened Perception.
The boy's arm remained attached to his body.
Bone, blood, tendon, pulse. The limb did not pass through stone.
The water connection around it did something worse.
The fountain basin, the copper feed and a section of the old tideworks below had become one unstable relationship, and Perrin's hand occupied the connected water rather than the ceramic space visible around it.
His pulse jumped beneath Marin's awareness. She closed Perception before fear tempted her to use it as certainty.
"Perrin, do not move your arm."
"I wasn't planning to."
Marin looked at Kelm. "Reopen the east-fever valve. Slowly."
"You just told me to close it."
"And now I'm telling you why that was incomplete."
He ran.
The mother looked between them. "You're putting the water back?"
"I'm putting the connection back where it was when his arm entered."
"Will that free him?"
Marin hated the next word and used it anyway. "Maybe."
Oliver moved to Perrin's other side.
"What do you need?"
"Keep him talking."
"About?"
"Anything that makes him less interested in what his arm is doing."
Oliver looked at Perrin. "Do you play cards?"
The boy stared at him. "I'm twelve."
"A devastating age restriction. Dice?"
"My mother says dice are how dockworkers lose rent."
Oliver glanced at the woman. "Your mother has met dockworkers."
Perrin almost smiled. The pipe beneath Marin's palm shuddered. Water returned to the fountain in a thin clear line. Perrin screamed. Marin caught his shoulder.
"Do not pull."
"It hurts."
"Where?"
"Hand. Wrist. Everywhere."
The water rose around the point where his arm vanished. His skin reappeared by inches, not from the wall outward but from several positions at once until the images agreed. Fingers. Knuckles. Wrist. Oliver stopped speaking.
Marin wanted him to continue. Perrin needed ordinary noise more than reverence.
"You were explaining dice," she said.
Oliver understood immediately. "I was explaining that your mother's objections are economically sound and morally tragic."
"I wasn't explaining anything," Perrin gasped.
"Excellent. You're learning argument."
His elbow came free. The mother pulled him against her chest. Marin caught Perrin's wrist before she could crush it between them. Pulse present. Fingers cold but perfused. No obvious fracture. Skin intact except for a shallow cut at the little finger.