“Eyes forward.”
A sharp smack connected with my cheek. My head whipped around as my guard shoved me ahead of him.
I staggered, raised my bound wrists to my face.
Step two. This part required something from me.
The guard’s blow had been fortuitous. I slowed, then stopped short and swayed where I stood.
“Hoi,” came the gruff voice again. A calloused hand gripped me. “No loiterin’. Get on with you, Orha vermin.”
I bent, put my hands on my knees, sank downward. I mumbled something, but my gag turned it to nonsense. The guard reached down, ripped the gag from my mouth. “I can’t go on,” I moaned. “I’m going to be sick.”
A frustrated sigh. He hauled me upward, but I loosened my muscles like a rag doll, slumped lower.
“What’s the bloody holdup?” came a woman’s hoarse voice. Behind us, because of the narrowness of the causeway, a bottleneck was forming. Faces peered over shoulders. I lay on the slick stone, my clothes soaking up seawater, and curled inward as my guard shoved me roughly with a boot.
“Got a sick one!” he called to the soldiers ahead of us. A few had stalled, staring back through the thin mist. “Shall I just get rid of ’er?” he added. My insides lurched.
As long as they didn’t slit my throat, I hardly cared how they decided to deal with me—throw me on the sands to be taken by the tide, load me on horseback, chuck me in a wagon. All I needed, right now, was a delay.
And with the group stretched out in such a long line, with the horses at the front and the wagons at the rear, I was getting my wish. Shouted orders were passed back to us.
“Nah, Crake says he wants to keep the Orha. Pass her back. Get her on one of the wagons.”
My guard wasted no time in hauling me up and hoisting me over his shoulder like a sack. “Get on, then,” he barked, heading back the way we’d come as the rest of the line filtered past him, finally moving.
From up here, I had a better view behind us, but the sea fog mostly hid the island from sight. I could hear the tide, though, roaring ever nearer, chomping at the bit to sweep out into the bay.
I was jittery, feverish, as the guard bore me onward, and I suddenly glimpsed Llir’s face as we passed him. His green eyes sought mine, brow furrowed in confusion. I knew I didn’t look sick. I held his gaze.
Then he was gone, and there was only dull armor, the rhythmic marching of boot soles on stone.
I looked out—and felt my heart leap when I saw it. The tide. Swirling in, racing level with our group.
My delay. It had worked, bestowed just enough time. And Crake didn’t realize, because of what the Cage were doing…
I could see it now, the way the water was warping, thundering ahead to the left and right of us, but lagging behind us in a great, strange U shape. Like a tumbling avalanche, it roared up the channels, filling the ditches carved out by the Cage.
And the waves held back by the Floodmouths behind us, back at the island, were racing to catch up…
For that was what Zennia had relayed to the Cage, the hasty plan we’d hatched in the tower. I’d remembered Rhianne’s words when we’d talked on the clifftop:“Sometimes the sands, they can change their shape, and that makes the water swirl in differently…”
The Floodmouths—more experienced with the ocean than I was—had leashed the tide where it flowed around the island, while at the same time, the Mudmouths had caused a series of small quakes, shallow tremors in the sands that would push the waves higher. The tidal wave at the ball had impressed itself on my mind.
And then…
Release.
The Floodmouths had stood down, leaving the tide to barrel in at our rear with pure fury.
I thought I could see it: that first foam-tipped wave, eager to catch up with its fellows either side of it. It was high—head-high—soaring dark out of the sea fog, and now I heard the shouts of panic down the line.
I struggled, causing my guard to lose his footing. As he staggered, I managed to leap down from his arms, but a second later, he was no longer looking at me. His eyes, like everyone else’s, were fixed behind us, on the towering wave that was now almost here…
The roaring was louder, almost deafening, and the bay on either side of us was a tumult of water. My heart hammered as though it would burst from my chest. I was lightheaded. What in hells had I done?
I’d been thinking only of destroying House Crake. My own survival, and that of Llir and the others, had been a niggle I’d squashed, something to deal with later.
