“We can climb—”
“I can’t,” he said hoarsely, pinching the bridge of his nose with one shaking hand. All at once I realized he was embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s—I’m—I don’t have the strength.”
“Markos, are you sure you’re all right?”
“I could use some water,” he rasped, his face as white as Vix’s paint. I hastily handed over my belt flask, and he gulped the whole thing down. “They left me tied to that chair for so long I was beginning to think I was going to die here.” He wiped his mouth. “I’d like a bath and a shirt that isn’t covered in blood. But I suppose that can wait.”
I eyed him doubtfully, wondering what he wasn’t telling me.
“I daresay there aren’t any handholds anyway,” I said, to make him feel better. “If only Kenté and Nereus were here.” Unfortunately I’d left them at the end of that long corridor and come ahead on my own. That, I knew now, had probably been stupid.
I turned in a circle. By the light of the lone guttering lantern, I saw that the cavernous room was full of water, parts of it much deeper than the puddle we stood in.
“Why’s the floor all wet?”
“There was a retaining wall outside,” Markos said. “To keep the sea back. But—”
“The Bollards probably blew it to bits,” I finished. “I expect when high tide comes, this whole room will be underwater. Well then, we’ll just have to wait. When the water rises, it will lift us to the opening.”
The tower moaned ominously, and he flinched. “Before the ceiling collapses on us?”
A stone fell, landing with a splash. I didn’t much like the idea of being crushed under the tower when it came down. I was further annoyed that it might be Bollard cannonballs that indirectly ended up killing me. How long until Kenté and Nereus came looking for us? I hoped they would be in time.
“I don’t like this,” Markos said over the creak of the burdened rafters. “There’s another door, of course. The one all the Black Dogs ran out of. Over there.” He gestured across the pool. “At the bottom of the steps.”
“What steps?”
“They’re underwater now. We’re standing on some kind of platform.” He nodded out at the circular room. “They were using this tower as a storeroom to keep treasure in, I daresay. There were all sorts of interesting things, before …”
A set of stone steps led downward, disappearing into the murky water. I now saw that crates and barrels bobbed in the corners of the room. If Markos’s chair had not been on this platform, he would have drowned before I reached him. He would already be dead. It wasn’t only my wet feet that made me shiver.
“The sea’s coming in!” Panic clutched at my throat. I’d lived all my life on the water. This was not how I died. “The tower’s going to fall and trap us.”
“Can’t you do something?” Markos asked. “With your magic.”
“You know I don’t have any magic.” I swallowed. “I would’ve thought you’d be polite enough not to rub it in.”
“You haven’t figured it out yet?” He raised his voice over the trickling pebbles. “Listen. Caro. You told me there was a god in the river. That spoke to the wherrymen.”
“There is. But not to me. We’ve been through this, Markos.”
“Well, obviously,” he said. “Because your god isn’t in the river. It’s in the sea.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
“No.” A cold feeling trickled through me.
The day your fate comes for you, you’ll know.
Images flashed through my head. Seagulls watching me with beady eyes. Dolphins and fish racing alongside Vix. The drakon. My strange dreams.
It wasn’t possible. Pressing my fingers to my temples, I tried to shut it out.
The pig man on his houseboat. She a bigger, deeper god. The one who steers you. He don’t be fighting her. And Nereus. Ayah, and didn’t she send me to help you, Caroline Oresteia? Finally I understood what he’d been trying to tell me, with that story about Arisbe Andela.
“On the Neck. The fog.” Markos gripped my wrist. “I tried to tell you at the time, but you didn’t believe me. Caro, I couldn’t see a thing in that fog. Not those posts, or the cliffs. Not our own mast. Even Fee couldn’t see.”
“No.” I yanked my arm away. “It wasn’t that bad. It couldn’t have been. I could see …”
“Right through it,” he said. “I’m telling you, it was magic.”
I shook my head. “The weather behaves oddly sometimes. That doesn’t mean—”
“Isn’t it strange that a fog happens to come up just when the Black Dogs were about to overtake us? You told me yourself, the Neck is saltwater.”
Light sparkled on the seawater, taunting me. “That’s not how it happened,” I whispered.
“Oh really? What about the drakon? That’s what Fee saw, that night on the river, isn’t it? It has been following you. Caro, it’s you. Don’t you see?” His eyes shone earnestly. “The god’s been calling to you all along. You were just so busy listening for small things, you missed the biggest thing of all.”
A shower of stones tumbled down from the ceiling. Markos turned to the broken staircase. “We should yell for help. Maybe Kenté can find a rope or—”
“Wait,” I said.
I pulled off my boots and let them drop. My bare toes curling on the slick stone, I took one tentative step. Nothing felt different. I took another, until I stood at the top of the underwater stairs, bubbles swirling encouragingly around my feet.
Biting my lip, I hesitated, as Markos watched me with a sympathetic look.
In truth, I was afraid. The sea wasn’t a friendly god, content to simply guide wherrymen from port to port. She sank islands and smashed cities. The sea, she keeps the things she takes. The deeps be littered with the bones of ships and cities. Ayah, and men.
Who might I become, the moment I touched the water? If Markos had guessed correctly about me, everything I knew was wrong. Everything was changed. I drew a deep breath and walked into the sea.
The water gently lifted my clothing. Light from the nearby lantern rippled and danced on the surface. Plunging my hands in, I turned them palm upward and offered myself up to the sea.
I took another step.
Standing waist deep on the submerged stairs, I felt foolish and secretly relieved. The hem of my shirt floated around my stomach. Markos was wrong. There wasn’t anything special here. I spun around to tell him so.
Then I saw it.
A wave turned over—small at first, a trickle of a wake on the surface of the water. Rolling out from where I stood, it grew into a frothy white line.
The wave began to break. Another followed, turning over and over, faster and faster. The breakers crashed against the walls, and I gasped as the spray flew over me.
A silvery fish jumped, then a second and a third. The splashes plinked like music. Almost, I might have reached out and touched them. My mouth dropped open. I felt the tide as it sucked against me, but this wasn’t any natural tide. It pulled at something buried deep inside me.