The place it struck should have been covered by water. I didn’t know what time it was, but even at lowest tide, the sea never drew out much beyond the island. I should have seen waves. Fountains of spray. Instead, the lightning illuminated bare mud. A great, horrifying expanse of seabed.
And beyond it, lit up for only a second, a low black wall, stretching out along the horizon.
“What—?” I managed. The roar was growing louder.
“Tidal wave,” Osprey’s Floodmouth said quietly. “That quake earlier…you can’t have missed it?”
My core felt cold. My ears filled with buzzing.
“No, but it was nothing. It felt too small…”
He looked at me askance. “Yes, if the island had been the center. That’s what people assumed at first. But it wasn’t. It must have been way out, off the coast.” He stared out gravely. “Big one, I reckon.”
My hair was sopping, but I hardly noticed. Now I began to realize why we’d been sent out here.
I sensed him looking at me, waiting for my reply. Waiting for the guidance I knew they were expecting, deferring to my authority as Rexim’s Floodmouth. But I wasn’t a leader; I’d never felt like one. And certainly not facing something like this.
“Right,” Osprey’s Floodmouth called when I said nothing, “spread out along the cliff’s edge. Any laconite on you—ditch it now.”
He had a commanding air despite his youth, an easy confidence that made my cheeks flush with shame. I maneuvered forward, again cursing my dress. Every movement was far harder than it needed to be.
“They sent us here to die,” a woman was moaning. Fear needled my skin at her words.
“Shut up, will you?” came someone’s fraught snap. The rushing outin the bay grew louder. The darkness was total—somehow worse than seeing the wave.
“Will it come up this high?” I said to no one in particular.
“Oh, yes,” said another woman beside me. “I’m House Avocet. We know our waves. It won’t reach the castle—that would have to be amonster—but it seems your Brigant wants to save his storehouses.”
I turned, peered back at the shrouded island. The castle flared, a beacon of gold light, faintly illuminating clusters of buildings below. Down here were the fish cellar, the icehouse…and the Orha’s tower.
Beyond, squatting at low levels around the island, were the boathouses. Those vessels would be expensive to replace. We’d been ordered out here to try to lessen the damage.
But at what cost to us?a voice in my head said.
I thought of the stories Zennia had told me. The Sparkmouths who had choked in her mother’s glass furnaces. Her own disappearance amid raging waves.
Was that—here, now—to be my fate, too?
I whirled as a second lightning strike seared down. In its brilliance, I glimpsed that terrible rising wall of water, blacker than the night, bearing down on the cove. My legs went weak. I stumbled backward. Osprey’s Floodmouth shouted something, and along the line, others called out, too.
My mind flashed back to Rexim’s test. The one I’d survived only by giving up. Those waves had been nothing, just ripples, compared to this one. They’d listened, barely, but only when I thought I’d die…
Pathetic.Hot shame bled into my cheeks. I thrust a hand into the pocket where I’d stashed Zennia’s brooch. I hadn’t been able to wear it openly lest someone, a Shearwater or a servant, recognize it, but I’d wanted it close. A reminder of her. I squeezed it now but still felt horribly alone.
Fleetingly I flicked my eyes closed, hoping the brooch mighttemper my horror, but my mind’s eye was crimson, a raging inferno, not even anything ball shaped to squeeze down. I gulped in air. “Stand down!” I urged the water, my voice cracking, knowing at any second it would reach us, overcome us. “Stand down now—spare this place!”
But then the deeper darkness ahead of me…moved. Came charging toward me. I staggered backward.
Along the line, the others were retreating, some looking just as panicked as I felt, others more determined, still yelling entreaties. My feet tangled in my dress as I stumbled, and then a great black swell broke over the clifftop.
It hurtled forward, a violent stampede, appearing almost to barrel towardmeespecially. I recalled forgetting to thank the tide. How, in the last few days, I’d been so caught up in everything going on that I’d neglected my usual morning practice.
Rhama’s words came to me:“It takes time, and respect.”
The water reared, towering above us, but for a slowed-down second or two, it seemed to…hesitate. The Floodmouths’ raw shouts echoed around me. Then, despite their efforts—
The wave hit.
