The door gave way as Kaylin crashed into it; she could feel it shatter, but couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t, for a moment, hear at all. There was water everywhere.
But it wasn’t high enough to instantly drown in, even if the only breaths she could draw were the ragged gasps that panic often caused. She had time to close her mouth; time to find her footing; time to see that the windows here were normal windows. Normal meant closed; in this section of town, it didn’t immediately mean barred.
Unfortunately for Kaylin, in this house, normal didn’t mean backyard and familiar city landscape, either.
She’d come here to talk to the water. She’d let Gilbert do it instead. Clearly, the water in the here and now didn’t agree with Gilbert’s presence in the here and now. She struggled for more air and less water, coughing the water out. The tide at her feet was strong, but the water itself wasn’t deep. Kaylin didn’t want to give the water time to regroup and try again, if it was even attempting to kill her consciously.
It wasn’t. She inhaled, coughing less. It wasn’t trying consciously. It was aware of her; it must be, to dump a wall of water in a way that shattered the railing to which she’d been clinging. But it didn’t see her as Kaylin.
She felt confident that if it could or did, she would be in far less danger.
There was only one way to get its attention, and she once again dropped her hand into the water. This room was not like the single room in the third story; it had furniture and waterlogged carpet. It had chairs. It had—ugh—shelves, and the books on them were going to be far, far worse for wear.
And none of that was relevant right now.
Only the water was. Kaylin’s arms stung; her wet, wet clothing chafed her skin. And she knew what that meant. At any other time, she would look for the source of magic; the water itself didn’t usually cause this type of pain. Today, she looked at her arms. She saw the faint blue glow of runes through the cloth plastered against them.
She saw the hand she’d plunged into the faintly rocking water.
If it had been natural water, there would be visual distortion. It wasn’t natural, and there was no distortion; the water might have had the same properties as air, except for the inability to actually breathe it. She heard roaring again—the same shattering roar she had heard and felt at her first contact.
She did not hear the Tha’alaan. She didn’t try.
As the light on her arms brightened, she tried to speak a single word. It took effort. The syllables—there were more than one—snapped on her tongue; they slid out of her mind and she lost them and had to start again. And again. And again. But the third time, in the warmth of water she could no longer feel, she held them all, forcing each out of her mouth, although speech wasn’t technically necessary.
And the water rose.
*
It formed not a wall, but a pillar, and as Kaylin watched, the pillar refined its shape, until it was no longer a standing column of water from floor to ceiling. Kaylin was prepared to see the watery figure of a woman: this was how the water spoke to Kaylin when it chose to speak.
She was not prepared to see the water take the form and shape of a child—although this would not be the first time. Nor would it be the first time the figure had looked solidly, profoundly mortal. A mortal girl. Young enough to be Kattea, and hurt enough, bruised enough, to be Kattea as she would, no doubt, have become.
No, Kaylin thought. Kattea’s fief was not Kaylin’s fief; her life, not Kaylin’s life. If it was true that her father had once been a Sword, it meant that others—like Kattea’s father, and not Kaylin’s long-dead mother—could be living there, too.
Liar, Kaylin thought. Gilbert found her in the streets at night. Near Ferals.
And again, that didn’t matter. Not right now. What mattered now was the water.
“Kaylin.” The name was spoken by a bruised mouth, distorted by swelling at the corner. The water, as it manifested itself in this room, was shorter than Kaylin, and skinnier. Slender was not the right word: she was gaunt.
“I’m sorry,” Kaylin said. She looked at her hand. Held in it was the child’s. Beneath the child’s feet lay soaked carpet; it was dark enough to be black, but Kaylin suspected it would be blue when dry. Beyond the child, seen through the door frame, which would not, without repairs, house a door again, the runner in the hall was also soaked. But the floor was no longer a wading pool. “I didn’t know that having Gilbert here would upset you.”
“Gilbert?” The child’s eyes narrowed in a way that children’s eyes seldom did. “Is that what you call him?”
“It’s what Kattea calls him. And yes, it’s what I call him, as well.” She hesitated.
“I can hear the Tha’alaan,” the girl whispered. Her expression shifted; she looked anguished. “I—I’m afraid I’ve broken it.”