It was like running headfirst into cold glass. I was tossed, upended, like a child’s rag doll, my skirts torn and billowing, the momentum shoving me backward.
In an instant, I was under. Salt filled my mouth. I was blinded, enveloped in a rough, icy darkness. Lungs burning, I sensed I was being swept away. In a moment, I’d be cast off the cliff edge to perish. Frantically, I raked out my hands, felt hard earth, a thicket of daggerlike thorns—the gorse.
Another surge broke over me, threatening to finish the job. But it was weaker. Shallower. I clung to the gorse.
The water began to dissipate.
Lying bruised and battered on the sodden soil, I coughed, tastingbitter bile on my tongue. From somewhere a scream sounded. A few hoarse shouts.
Sucking in a breath, I crouched on shaking legs. All was dark, and though the pelting rain had lessened, there was no part of me now that wasn’t drenched and chilled to ice.
I’d been tossed some distance but couldn’t tell how far. As I clambered to standing, I put out a hand and yelped as a long, wicked gorse thorn stabbed me. I stumbled in the opposite direction, and the ground grew stony under my feet. Then, without warning, it abruptly fell away. I teetered, terrified. This must be a cliff edge. Below, water still pounded savagely on rock.
I turned and pushed my way numbly through the gorse, trying not to think about how close I’d come to pitching down there.
Squelches in the mud. A hand on my shoulder.
“Who’s that?” It was Osprey’s Floodmouth, voice raw from exhaustion, from all the shouting. “Are you all right? Close call with that cliff. But I think we only lost one.” He trudged away, livery dripping. “Come on, they’ll want us back up at the castle.”
Lost one.Someonehaddied out here.
I followed him, hearing others traipsing ahead of us.
But when we reached the site of the Orha’s old tower, we all stopped short. I swiped rain from my eyes.
Before the great wave, it had loomed, four floors high. Now it was a ruin, the upper stories gutted. My room and Mawre’s were gone, nothing left but jagged remnants of walls. The front entrance gaped, Tigo’s windows had shattered, and around us, among the flattened, mulchy gorse, lay fallen stones and detritus from our chambers.
I stared up at where my room had once been. My only clothes, my livery. The pouch of regals Emment had paid me. Zennia’s belongings; the letter she’d left. All now scattered and swept away.
Suddenly panicked, I put a hand to my bodice, digging for mytools—and the Breovan Charter. They’d been there, safely stowed when I’d returned to the ball. But now they were gone, shaken loose by the torrent.
I felt around for Zennia’s brooch and was relieved to feel it at the bottom of my pocket, rattling against the false-laconite pin I’d swiped from Emment’s room.
But without the other items, I was useless to the Cage. No way to continue damaging the laconite, and no hard proof of Catua’s secret.
The voice of Osprey’s Floodmouth floated out of the darkness: “Must have been ancient to have collapsed like that.”
“It was,” I said, surprised at how hoarse I sounded.
“Come on,” he replied. “I’ll report it up at the castle.”
26
They’dall been safe up there, of course—the Brigants and Brigantesses, the lesser nobles, the other Orha.
By the time we reached the castle, bedraggled and exhausted, the storm had passed over, moving west toward the mainland, but distant lightning still flashed in the sky, and the rain had kept up a persistent drizzle.
Most of the guests had spilled out into the inner ward. With no Floodmouths left to protect them, they’d huddled under parasols or the hoods of their cloaks. There were figures up on the battlements holding lamps, and I wondered bitterly if they’d enjoyed a good show.
A murmur ran through the crowds as we appeared. One Orha fewer than we’d been when we’d gone down there.
As the young man who’d taken charge on the clifftop strode forward, he was met by Damona Osprey and a man I guessed was her son: white blond, his outfit sumptuous. House Osprey were known for ostentation. The family’s other Orha, in their flame-orange livery, clustered and fussed around them like oxpeckers. Rexim appeared,inserting himself among them, and as Osprey’s Floodmouth reported what had happened, the Shearwater patriarch’s gaze cut to me.
“Corith! Thank the gods you’re all right.”
Vercha had spotted me. She was trailed by Llir, pale face shadowed, along with Tigo, Rhianne, and Mawre.
“Moons, you look terrible,” she said, peering closer. “What’s that on your—” She gasped. “Oh, Corith, you’rebleeding.”
