Chapter 11 Watermaker #2
I turn and move toward the stairs, the air growing heavier with each step as the ship continues forward.
The sound of the water has changed, the hull answering it with deeper strain, and beneath it there’s something else threading through the structure, something that doesn’t belong to wind or current.
Behind me, the deck shifts into motion again, voices rising, movement tightening, the space between people closing as they prepare for something that has already begun.
The weight in the air presses more heavily against me with each step down the stairs. The deck behind me holds too tightly together, voices low but beginning to strain, as if something beneath them is pushing upward and waiting for the moment it gives.
The ship continues forward, but the movement beneath my feet no longer feels like open water.
It drags, resists, the hull answering something outside it with a deeper, uneven pull.
I descend the first set of stairs, my hand brushing the rail as the air shifts the further I move from the deck.
It thickens below, warmer in a way that feels wrong against the cold pressing through the structure around us.
The second set of stairs narrows, the light dimming as the ship strains again beneath me.
The first impact rolls through it a moment later, heavy and uneven, the wood vibrating under my hand as something outside presses against it with more force than it should.
Another follows. closer this time, and the sound that answers it is not just movement.
It breaks.
The corridor below shifts as panic rises where control had been. People surge toward the stairs, pushing past one another without direction, hands catching walls and doorframes as they try to move faster than the space allows.
I reach the bottom as the first scream cuts through it. Bodies press toward me, someone colliding with my shoulder hard enough to force me back a step, another gripping the rail beside me to keep from falling as the space fills too quickly to hold them.
“They’re inside—”
The rest is lost. The sound reaches me a moment later, deeper now, closer, something forcing its way through the hull with a wet, dragging pressure that leaves no room for doubt.
I move toward it. The breach runs jagged along the wall, the wood bowing inward under the force pressing against it.
Fingers push through first, dragging along the edges as the opening widens, followed by more of it, pulling itself forward with a persistence that doesn’t slow no matter how little space it has to work with.
Another body presses behind it. Then another.
The wall gives further. The light answers before I think, cutting forward and forcing the first of them back hard enough that the wood fractures outward with it.
The opening doesn’t close. It widens under the pressure, the force behind it building as more of them push through.
Something catches my arm.
I turn into it and find Nyara there, her grip firm enough to stop me without dragging me backward. “Stop fucking around,” she says. “Get them off the ship.” There is no uncertainty in her voice, only impatience sharpened by the chaos around us. “I am not going back to Veynar today.”
The wall splits wider as she says it, the structure giving in uneven sections as more of them force their way through. She releases me and steps forward.
The air shifts. The cold presses deeper through the floor and into the walls as something outside answers her. I feel it gather beneath us, along the seams of the ship, the water pulling closer in a way that feels directed.
The next body that forces through the breach halts mid-motion. Then it jerks backward, hard enough to tear the wood wider.
What the fuck?
I stare at her, at the way she stands there as if the sea itself has turned toward her. Her eyes have now changed from their usual warm brown to an ice blue not dissimilar to Colsar's eye.
“What are you—”
“I’m a Watermaker,” she says, her tone irritated like the question is unnecessary. “One of the many reasons Veynar has always shunned me.”
Teorin had been wrong about her. Or he had lied. It was hard to tell which these days.
Another surge presses forward. The shards hold for an instant, then begin to fracture under the weight of what’s pushing through. A short sword lies on the floor, abandoned in the rush. I grab it and step in beside her as the first of them breaks free of the ice.
It comes at me wrong, faster than its broken body should allow, and I meet it with the blade, not to cut it down, but to turn it.
Steel catches bone and slides, forcing it off balance long enough for me to drive it sideways into the wall.
It hits hard, limbs tangling, but it does not stop moving.
I pivot and catch its arm with the flat of the blade, knocking it wide, then slam my shoulder into it, forcing it back into the breach where the ice catches it again.
I realize with humbling clarity that I am not killing them, I am simply holding them back. Barely. The ship shifts under me, but my footing holds this time, my weight landing cleanly in a way that still feels new.
Nyara notices. “Your leg,” she says, dragging another surge of ice upward through the breach, “I thought you were limping.”
“A weaver fixed it.”
She glances at me, interest cutting through everything else. “Oh, shit. You survived that?” Another body jerks backward as the ice catches it across the torso. “I heard it’s the worst pain possible. Supposedly leaves very attractive markings though.”
“It was painful,” I say, forcing one off me as it lunges, using the blade to lever it away rather than cut through it, “but now I can use my legs again, so there’s that.”
“Oh,” she says, almost amused. “Colsar will be relieved, I'm sure."
The next surge hits harder. The breach widens again. The ice slows them, fractures them, holds them for seconds at a time, but it does not stop them.
Nothing here truly stops them.
“What is Junis?” I ask, forcing another one back into the mass behind it as it reaches for me.
She doesn’t look at me. “He is something far worse.”
Another body forces through. I step into it, redirect its weight, drive it down to its knees and shove it back into the crush behind it, buying space that disappears almost immediately.
“But he is male,” Nyara adds, her tone dry even as she pulls more of the frozen sea through the hull. “Being dangerous is an asset, not an abomination.”
“In Rathmor bloodlines, twins are always dangerous,” she continues, as if this is a conversation we can afford to have. She shrugs slightly. “In most royal bloodlines, actually. Look at Prince Tamal of Yorali and his sister.”
The words are meaningless, because I know almost nothing about the Yorali twins or what magic they possess.
The wall gives further and the opening widens enough that two of them force through at once.
Nyara pulls more of the cold upward, but the strain shows now.
The ice forms slower, fractures faster, the pressure behind it too constant to hold indefinitely.
“This chat is all very nice,” she says, “but I need you to do whatever the fuck it is Alarnan royals are supposed to do.”
Another body forces through beside the first. I catch it with the blade, redirect it, shove it back, but more take its place before I can recover.
“I have always been curious about lightcraft," she adds, driving another surge of ice upward. "I meant to ask Talen during our journey but we were too busy for conversation.”
She glances at me. "I didn't realize until I overheard the Threns talking that you even possessed lightcraft."
“Full of surprises, best friend,” she says with a grin.
“As are you,” I say, the word best friend making me feel warm. I was still impressed at her fighting skill and whatever this hidden water power is that she possesses.
The opening tears wider, and the next wave doesn’t slow.
“Anyway, if you by any chance know how to use this lightcraft skill of yours,” she says, turning her head just enough to look at me, “now would be a great time to fucking use it.”