“What did you do, Faziy, that they took such care to sink your corpse? If not for Enzi, you would have rotted beyond anyone’s ability to know you. I never come down to this cesspit if I can help it.” The master sighed. “Arram, what does her placement here tell you?”
He didn’t realize she was talking to him until she poked him with her elbow. He flinched. He didn’t want to remember Faziy the way Ramasu made him think about the infirmary dead. “Um, as you said, they didn’t want her to be found.” He added, “And if she was found, they didn’t want her known. So whatever she was doing with them or found out about them, it was important. They went to a great deal of trouble to keep her on the bottom of the river, and to make sure people wouldn’t recognize her if they found her. These spells are hard—advanced work.”
Decide who did this later, after you take the thing away, cloths and all. Enzi’s voice made the globe of power that Sebo had placed around them shudder. The magic that killed it corrupts the river. Do not leave the meat. The vileness has spread into it.
“Then you must help us,” Sebo retorted. “We cannot tow it ourselves.”
“We can’t tow it at all,” Arram reminded her, pointing to the boulder. He grabbed a chain, trying to pull it away from the rock, and cried out as stabbing heat shot into his palm. A chain-shaped burn was seared into his skin.
“Hag’s pox, boy, when will you learn to wait before leaping in?” Sebo demanded. She removed a small jar from her workbag and gave it to Arram. “Just a little on that burn. No need to be wasteful.” She took out a second vial and removed the wax, then the cork that kept its contents inside. Carefully, crouching so she saw exactly what she did, she poured the tiniest of drops on two sides of one heavy link. Arram watched, halting in the middle of rubbing her ointment into his palm, as frost formed where the liquid had fallen. It spread. Abruptly there was a loud crack; the link fell to pieces. When it did, a puff of magic flew to the top of their protections. Arram tried to seize it but missed.
“Idiot boy!” cried Sebo. “Never do that again, or I truly will beat you! You have no protection since I remade ours to include poor Faziy here. That wickedness would have sunk into your pores, poisons and all!”
Arram looked at the puff of gray magic. It sparkled with the different colors of Gift that must have gone into the making of it, only a foot over his head. It didn’t look dangerous, but he decided not to try Sebo’s temper again. Puff after puff rose to join the first until Arram was half ducking, trying to keep away from them. With a jingle, the chains fell away from the wrappings and Faziy’s body.
Sebo corked the liquid that had eaten through the chains and sealed it. “Yes, I will teach you how to make this,” she told him as she tucked the vial into her workbag. “You’re at the point when a potion to eat through metal might be useful.”
Arram gulped. He could think of all kinds of situations in which such a potion would be useful, but he planned never to be in any of them.
“Enzi, if you please,” Sebo called.
What do you want?
As Sebo explained her plan to the crocodile, Arram knelt so he didn’t have to worry about the magics at the top of their bubble. He stared at Faziy’s face, both the magicked living one and the rotting one beneath. Whoever had left her in this place had risked discovery, by fishers, garbage pickers, or boats. Even at night they would have needed concealment and avoidance spells.
They’d also needed a good-sized, strong boat to get that big rock all the way out here. They couldn’t take the chance that a stone heavy enough for their purposes would be on hand already. So there were a few of them who knew about this. Or just enough strong mages. It would have to be mages, to disable other mages who happened by.
Sebo patted his head. “Sit, Arram. We’re going up. I’ll need you to help me.”
“Whatever you say,” Arram replied. He sat gingerly as he tried to avoid lumps on the river’s bottom. Once he was settled, he crossed his legs. He wanted to be out of Sebo’s way and to touch as little as possible.
The woman looked down at him. “You shouldn’t be so accommodating about lending your Gift to others.”
“But you’re my teacher,” Arram replied. “If you meant to do something harmful with my magic, wouldn’t you have done it earlier, when I couldn’t defend myself?”
Sebo rested her free hand on his shoulder. In her other hand grew a ball of their mixed Gifts. Arram hadn’t even felt her draw the power from him. “I hope your ability to protect yourself is as strong as you seem to think it is,” she murmured. “The world is an unpleasant place. Only look at what we just found.”
Her ball floated to the top of their globe of protection. There it spread in a wide umbrella, trapping the poisoned magics against the globe’s ceiling. When the combined Gifts stopped spreading, Sebo wrote five signs in the air and touched each one with her finger. They vanished. The globe of power that enclosed them together with the dead woman trembled, lurched—Arram caught his teacher and helped her to sit—and began to tug itself out of the river’s muck. It shook free of the giant boulder and resealed itself with a mild pop! So quickly had it happened that only a palmful of water leaked in. Slowly the globe began to rise.
The bit of water rolled over to Sebo. “Get away from me, you nasty stuff!” Arram heard her whisper. “The Hag knows what kind of filth is in you!” She glanced at Arram, who pretended to stare at the unpleasant magics overhead. “Well, go on!” he heard his master say to the trapped liquid. “I’ll return you to the river when we must leave it. Go over there. Over…there.”
She was silent. When Arram glanced at her, he saw the handful was pooled in her lap without soaking into the skirt. How had it gotten there? She had talked to it as if it were alive. He looked at the place where he had last seen the water, in case there was more of it. No, the floor of their globe was dry, and the river bottom was receding into the murk.
Sebo had seen his glance. “When we return—when I have delivered our discovery—I will give you a book to read about a thing called wild magic,” she said drily. “I wouldn’t talk about it in the university. It’s supposed to be an old wives’ tale. Well, I am an old wife. You might be interested, that’s all.”
“I’ve heard about it,” Arram said quietly. “I don’t seem to have it, though. Except when it comes to lightning snakes.”
“Few of those with the Gift do. If you get Hulak or Yadeen alone, talk to him. Or ask Lindhall, but privately. No one likes to be laughed to scorn by his peers.” Looking up, Sebo said, “How long does it take to reach the surface? I don’t believe I can keep the air-giving spell going forever!”
The force that drove the large globe toward the surface quickened. The river’s power dragged at the bubble’s sides. The dead woman’s smell got thicker and thicker, until Sebo and Arram found handkerchiefs and held them over their noses.