“No!” Bittan shouted. He strode unharmed through the fires and down to the water’s edge. He lifted his arms again and sent another tendril of flame racing toward them. Tavi threw himself back against Fade, knocking them both under the water’s surface. Fire splashed across the top of the water, a distant roar and a violent light above them.
Tavi stayed under the water’s surface for as long as he could, but he could hold his breath for no more than a few seconds. He hadn’t had a chance to get a proper breath before diving, and the water was simply too cold. He struggled further away from the near shore and Bittan’s raging fury, before he broke the surface, coughing and spluttering. He hauled Fade along with him, more or less by main strength, afraid that the panicked slave might drown himself before realizing that the water wasn’t deep enough.
Bittan stood at the very edge of the water and let out a shout of frustration. The flames behind him leapt skyward as he did. “You gutless, crow-eaten little freak! I’ll burn you and that gibbering fool to cinders!”
Tavi clutched at the floor of the river beneath him and seized up a stone the size of his fist. “You leave him alone!” he shouted, and flung the stone at Bittan.
It flashed across the intervening space and struck the bigger boy in the mouth. Bittan flinched back, letting out a yowl, and tumbled backward to the ground.
“Uncle!” Tavi shouted. “Uncle, we’re in the water!”
Through a roil of smoke, Tavi saw his uncle draw back a fist and ram it hard into Kord’s throat. The other Steadholder stumbled back with a choked shout, but didn’t lose his grip on Bernard’s tunic, dragging him down with him and out of Tavi’s sight.
Not far away, Amara rose away from an unmoving Aric, wincing and holding one forearm, where blood wetted her sleeve. Aric’s knife, it seemed, had scored on her, even if it hadn’t kept her from throttling him. She looked around and shouted, through the smoke, “Tavi! Get out of the water! Don’t stop in there, get out!”
“What?” Tavi shouted. “Why?”
He had no warning at all. Wet, supple arms abruptly twined around his throat, and a throaty, feminine voice purred, in his ear, “Because bad things can happen to pretty little boys who fall into the river.” Tavi started to turn, to struggle, but he was hauled beneath the river’s surface with breathless speed, and the arms at his throat tightened. Tavi tried to plant his feet on the river’s bed, to force his head up above the water, but somehow his feet never found purchase, as though the river’s bed had been coated with slime wherever his feet touched, so that they forever slipped and slid aside.
“Poor pretty,” the voice at his ear murmured, perfectly clear. He could feel the press of a strong but shapely body against his back. “It isn’t your fault that you saw what wasn’t to be seen. It’s a shame to kill a pretty one, but if you’ll just lay quietly and take a deep breath it will be over soon, and you’ll still be pretty when they put you in a box. I promise.”
Tavi struggled and writhed, but it was useless against the soft, subtle strength of that grip. He could have wrestled her all day and never gained the upper hand, he knew: She was a watercrafter, like his aunt, and a strong one at that, and the waters of the river itself were being used against him.
Tavi stopped struggling, which made his assailant let out a soft, approving murmur. Cold lips pressed against his ear. He was starting to grow dizzy, but his mind raced furiously. If she was a watercrafter like his aunt, then she would have the same problems Aunt Isana did. For all the advantages watercrafters enjoyed, they had to put up with more than almost any other craft, the disruption that their extra senses picked up from other people—emotions, impressions, feelings.
Tavi focused for a moment on his own helpless, fluttering fear, terror that made his heart race, stole the dregs of air remaining in his lungs ever more quickly away from him, brought him that much closer to drowning. He dwelt on that terror, let it build in him, and added to it the frustrations of the day, the despair and fury and hopelessness he had felt upon returning to Bernardholt. Every emotion built on the next, and he fed them all with a frantic fury, until he could scarcely remember what his plan had been to begin with.
“What are you doing?” hissed the woman that held him, threads of uncertainty lacing through the throaty assurance of her voice. “Stop it. Stop it. You’re too loud. I hate for it to be too loud!”
Tavi struggled uselessly against her, panic now overwhelming him in fact as well, blind and numbing fear blending in with all the other emotions. The woman let out a shriek and curled away from him, releasing him and wrapping her arms around her own head.
Tavi choked, his lungs expelling whatever was left in them as he struggled toward the surface. He only just managed to get his head out of water, to take a single deep, gasping breath, before the water itself bubbled up around him, sudden and enveloping, and dragged him back under.
“Clever boy,” hissed the woman, and Tavi could see her now in the reflected light from the fires on the bank, a beautiful woman of dark hair and eyes, body lushly curved and inviting. “Very clever. So passionate. Now I can’t hold you while you go. I wanted to do that much for you. But some people are never grateful.” Water pressed about him, as strong and as heavy as leather bonds, pressure that shoved his limbs together, wrapped him up like a parcel of bread. Terrified, he struggled to hold on to that last breath for as long as he could.
The woman remained before him, eyes narrowed spitefully. “Foolish. I was going to give you the raptures. Now I think I’ll just break that pretty neck.” She flipped a wrist, the gesture dainty, but the water around Tavi suddenly slewed around his head and began twisting his jaw slowly to one side. Tavi struggled against it, but the water seemed just a little bit stronger than he. The pressure on his neck swiftly built and became painful. The woman came closer, eyes round and bright, watching.
She didn’t see the sudden motion in the water behind her, but Tavi saw his aunt Isana’s hand come out of the murk. One hand seized the woman by the hair, and the other raked abruptly across her eyes. Pink tinged the water, and the woman let out a sudden, piteous shriek. Isana appeared more fully, thrusting both hands toward the woman, palms out, and she suddenly flew through the water, and then up and out of it, as though hauled away by a giant hand.
As soon as the woman sailed up and out of the Rillwater, the pressure on Tavi’s neck eased, and he found himself able to move his limbs. Isana moved to him, and together they broke the surface of the river, Tavi gasping and choking.
“My river,” Isana snarled after the departed water witch. Isana called to Fade, who lunged through the water to Tavi. The slave drew one of Tavi’s arms around his shoulders, holding the boy up and out of the water.