Every Sticktown kid had been down to the banks of the Blackrush from time to time, but wading in the river and swimming in the sea were as different as walking and flying. The answer to her question was no – I couldn’t swim, just like I couldn’t fly. Not until she came along to teach me.
Okay, so the perpetual-warmth, buoyancy-removal and water-breathing spells surely had something to do with it, but within a few minutes me and the twins were basically fish. The hardest part was remembering not to swallow when breathing it in – apparently the wizardry didn’t extend to letting us drink saltwater. The fact that it didn’t taste very nice certainly helped. I couldn’t actually feel any water in my mouth – so long as I acted as though I were still on the surface breathing air, everything worked smoothly.
As Em locked her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, I set shields on the twins then let them swim off and have their fun, paddling through the darkness chasing after rocks and shells along the seabed, feeling their way along. They were being nice to each other again in the wake of this newfound awesomeness, treating the mysterious depths of the bay as their playground. With the shields I could track them, ensure they were safe… ensure they didn’t return too soon…
We spent almost an hour under the water. Unlike everyone else here, I could see with almost perfect vision – Em could surely sense fluctuations in the currents, sense when she was close to an obstacle and divert her course, but my sight easily pierced the silent, peaceful gloom of the sea. Crabs, teeming by the hundreds, strode like armies in formation across the sea floor, sidestepping across the rocky sand in their typical directionally-challenged fashion. Eels slipped across the distance, faint lines, like dark hairs being drawn through the water. There were even hostile creatures – two jellyfish, transparent mushrooms trailing fibres of snotty-looking material – that haplessly tried to pierce our shield, only to find themselves being repelled by my barriers. I was reassured by the fact that the shield protected us from them, but also a bit surprised to find they were actively aggressive like that. Floating snot-mushrooms, that wanted to eat you? Mekesta was surely responsible for more than demons.
I added jellyfish next to cats on my list.
“We should get the twins,” I said after a while. I didn’t even try to understand how she was capable of moving my words to her ears through the dark water. “I’m on duty in a bit, and I could do with getting dry –“
Then I realised how stupid I sounded; she regarded me with her ‘You didn’t seriously just say that, did you?’ look.
“Riiiiight. And ve are so far from Mund – if only ve had a vay to fly back! Oh dear –“
I crushed her to me, stealing a final kiss to shut her up.
I could still sense Jaid and Jaroan, moving around a hundred or so yards away, and we made our way over to the pair.
“Okay, stop torturing that poor little crab,” I commanded, relaxing my limbs and coming to a stop.
Jaid stopped humming the Blackrush Blues, a jaunty theme that everyone kid of the lane knew from being knee-high, and looked up at us.
“But – but – but waaaatch.” Jaid was giggling uncontrollably – she’d got hold of a big shell and was moving it to either side of the poor fellow, blocking his path – whenever he changed direction she moved it again, forcing him to continue his dance… “Can we take him home, Kas? Oh can we – please…?”
I opened my mouth in shock. “Don’t use my name! The crab could be a dark druid in disguise, just waiting down here for us to approach! We’ll have to take him home just in case.” I grinned at Em. “He’d go nice with some of that green sauce stuff.”
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While I dealt with the unavoidable outburst that resulted from my joke and Em did her best to explain that the crab would die on the surface after a couple of days, Jaroan floated away; he plunged his hand down into the rocks, feeling around –
“Wait, Jharoan – zere is something down zere.” If we were fish, Em was a… far faster fish. Not only was she a practised swimmer, she used her power to push herself along; I could feel thin rivulets of water streaming towards her, congealing behind her, thrusting her on.
She was at my brother’s side in a second, and as I followed in her wake I looked down and I could see what she was referring to. The critter was no bigger than a ball that a child could hold in their hand but it was covered in long reddish spines that looked decidedly nasty.
She extended her own hand, letting radiance pour from it and drift on the currents, illuminating the sea floor.
“Zey call zat ze sea urchin. Ze spikes can be venomous. Stay back.”
He peered down at it as the spiny creature slowly started to back away from the wizard-light. “Now that’s cool. What does it eat? Does it even eat?”
But before Em could reply, Jaid arrived, kicking with her feet as she carried her crab in her cupped hands.
“See,” she said sweetly to her brother, “if you were a druid you could turn into one of them, and find out for yourself…”
“If I was a diviner I could just, I don’t know – diviners know everything –“
“About sea surgeons?”
“Sea urchins,” he growled. Growls sounded silly, tinny, underwater.
“Urchins?” Jaid asked in some perplexity. “It’s… poor? Surgeon makes much more sense, it’s got all those little scalpels –“
Em caught my eye-roll, then decided to move things along.
“Jhaid – Jharoan – I think it’s time ve vere going.” She waited out the inevitable sighs and mutters of dissent, then continued, “Unless you don’t vont to go on ze greatest ride of your lives?”
“We’ve already tried flying,” Jaroan grumbled.
“Flying? Ah, zat is not vot I speak of… Perhaps it vould be better if I showed you.”
With no warning, in almost absolute silence, the incredible wall of water struck us, scooped us up and carried us away. The sheer invisible rush of it paralysed every part of my body at first, then after a couple of seconds I let myself go slack, spread out my arms and just enjoyed the sensation. The kids’ tongues definitely weren’t paralysed – they whooped and wailed as we were pulled around at frightening, exhilarating speeds.
If she’d thought by this show that she was getting us both out of a load of moaning, Em was to find she had underestimated the resourcefulness of the enemy. Half an hour later, as we sat on the wizardry-warmed rocks listening to the waves and Em dried and braided my sister’s hair, Jaid was still harping on about wanting another go, and about the crab she’d left behind but would hope to see again next time we went – because we were going to go again weren’t we Em? weren’t we? – and by the time I caught Em eye-rolling, the argument we’d had earlier on was buried for good, never to rear its ugly head again. How could I look on her, and see anything but a member of my family? Someone I wanted to be with, for as long as she wanted to be with me.
She might’ve wanted to carry on being a magister. She might’ve decided to allow them to get away with what they’d done to the poor citizens of Zadhal, most of whom would be lowborn, people like us with no stake in the games played by the rich and powerful. She said she would let herself forget, because the perpetrators were long-dead. She might defend Zakimel till she was blue in the face, because he was a part of the system she needed, to be who she was right now.
I knew none of it mattered. The truth would out in the end. She would give up her trust in them one day soon. It wasn’t like she’d been raised here, or raised rich, dreaming of being a high-ranking magister from a young age. She was a magister out of convenience, but she was a champion at heart – I’d known it from the moment we met, when she looked at me, the intensity, the almost-jealousy which my situation as Feychilde had stirred in her.
Perhaps I was being stupid. I was young, and real life wasn’t much like the stories – people usually didn’t find the person they were meant to be with just like that. Yet, how could I deny what I felt?
I watched her, the breeze blowing heated air through her own hair, the long strands of platinum not yet tied back or braided, just streaming loose in the wind.
I watched her and I knew, in my own champion’s heart, that this was love.
* * *