“What’s happening to you?” Vivia asked. “Are you cleaving?”
Three more coughs, then Linday’s head lolled up, eyes shining. When he spoke again, his voice was honeyed. Accented. “The dead cannot cleave, Princess. Not truly, for the dead … their Threads are already torn asunder. I simply scoop them up before they shrivel away.”
“Who does? Who are you?” The question was so soft it was almost lost to the breeze of the bridges, to the distant boom of storm and seafire behind.
But Linday—or whoever it was that controlled him—had no trouble hearing. “I’m the one you should be afraid of, Princess, for once the dam breaks and the city is dead, I will be the one who marches in and claims everything. Including that Well your family had hidden all these ages ago.”
At those words, the world seemed to stretch into a strange, sluggish thing. A hundred thoughts colliding at once. A hundred little details to stand out.
The dam loomed with its massive crack, so strangely quiet. So strangely calm. Gulls circled, and a hawk caught air currents drifting beside the bridge. The breeze caressed Vivia’s skin, and the sailors watched the sky as if waiting for something.
Or for someone.
In a cumbersome move, with the scene blending like fresh paint beneath the rain, Vivia looked behind her. At Lovats, where black plumed in contained columns. Already weaker than when Vivia had set off.
The storm was leaving too. No more rain, no more lightning. Just black, spinning clouds rising away from the walls, like poison sucked from a wound.
Lovats would survive this day, but only if Vivia could keep the dam from breaking. Only if she could keep this boat from traveling any farther. And though she didn’t know if the water-bridges’ magic would hold, she felt the consequences from a flooded valley were better than those from a flooded city.
She swiveled her head left. Staring at the patchwork farms so far below. The same view her mother had seen before she’d left this life forever.
It was, Vivia decided, not a bad view to end on.
With that thought, time lurched forward. The world resumed, and Vivia vaulted for the seafire spout. She gripped the iron crank and pulled the handle into place. A shiny resin hacked from the end. Then a full stream burst forth, spraying across the planks, the mast, the sails.
Fire erupted. Black and white and spreading too fast to escape.
The remaining sailors ran. Not Linday. He simply stood there, letting it spew over him, even as his body ignited like a torch. Even as he burned and burned and burned.
Vivia turned to the bulwark and jumped. She dunked beneath the waves and swam with her magic to propel her back toward Lovats.
Too slow, though—she was too slow.
The ship exploded. A burst of energy slammed over her, catapulting her to the surface. Then came the sound, but she was already flung up. Flung out.
As her body left the water-bridge and the valley appeared below her, dappled by shadows and flame, Vivia could do nothing but smile. For though she might now be falling to her death, at least the water-bridge had held.
And at least the dam had held too.
* * *
Safi wanted to break something. She wanted to break, to shred, to pummel, and to slay.
Then perhaps the world would make sense again.
For Merik Nihar could not be dead. That truth boomed in time to her heart. In time to her loping steps forward.
Slaves charged past her on all sides, their limbs long unused. Witcheries ready to let loose. Screaming, racing, hungry. Bursts of fire to her right; lashes of wind to her left; stones rattling underfoot. A maelstrom of color and violence, of hunger and freedom so true, true, true. The slaves thundered into the tunnels, every cavern identical. There was no telling which way traffic traveled versus which way traffic fled.
Fingers clutched Safi’s elbow. She wrenched her sword high … but it was only Lev, her eyes huge and scars stretched long. “Where is the empress?”
Safi didn’t know, so she didn’t answer.
“We need to go,” Lev continued, squeezing Safi tighter. “The slaves are freeing other slaves, and this place’ll be overrun with guards at any moment.”
Good. Safi smiled. She would hack this place to the ground, starting with the Baedyeds who’d killed Merik.
Lights blared to life. Alarm-stones nestled in the walls flashed, summoning guards.
Safi’s smile widened.
“Lev!” Caden shoved through the crowd, Cartorran sailors dispersed behind him. “We can’t get through the way we came in. Zander’s gone to find another exit … Where’s the empress?”
This was directed at Safi, but she only grinned all the more. Zander, whose head towered above the fray, waved at them to follow.
Safi set off immediately, glad to be moving. To be fighting. She body-slammed her way forward, elbows out and teeth bared.
All the while, the alarm-stones dazzled on.
The madness spat Safi out before Zander, who waited beside a passage that was eerily quiet, eerily empty. Some slaves sprinted into it, but most moved very distinctly away. “It’s the way to the arena!” Zander’s bass roar was almost lost to the chaos. “But I think there’s a cutoff that’ll take us outside!”
“Lead the way!” Caden ordered before turning to the Cartorran crew, counting them as they pelted past.
Safi stalked after Zander, following his shadowy bulk upward. The puddles thinned out. A strange vibration took hold of the floor.
At first Safi thought it simply a result of all the noise, all the slaves fighting their way free. Yet the closer they got to the fork ahead, the more a shuddering quaked through her legs. She felt it all the way in her lungs with each panting inhale.