The day before, I’d snuck up to the culverhouse and, with shaking hands, scratched out a message:
K,
The Bird in Our Booth Grows Wrathful. I May Be Gone in a Sevenday—You Must Visit Sooner, at Archwater.
Bluebird
It was far from perfect, but it would have to do. I couldn’t risk explaining any more on paper, and I was even too nervous to sign off as “C,” deciding to reference my mask instead.
Restless and tense, I dressed in the dry chill, pulling Rhianne’s too-short cloak around my shoulders. The cuts from the gorse had scabbed over but still ached. As I stole out of the keep into a pinkish pre-sunrise, I guessed I had a quarter of an hour before I was missed. I’d have to make sure I woke earlier tomorrow. But I was determined, at least, to make headway this morning. To face archwater again—and this time exert my will. I’d need every scrap of practice I could get to see me through whatever awaited me next. And besides, the routine felt calming amid this turmoil.
I jogged down the path from the castle to the cove, my heart skittering anxiously at the sound of the sea. I forced my feet to carry me to the cliff’s edge, the same place Rexim had stood when he’d tested me, and stared down at the water churning in the cove, at the fountains of surf as the waves slammed on stone. Gone were the sedate, suggestible currents of pallwater. Peak archwater was six days away, and its fury was already palpable.
I picked my way gingerly down a steep scramble and crouched on an outcropping misted by spray. In a lonely hour lying awake last night, I’d raked over all the times—all the ways—I’d faltered.
“The ocean is a…different beast.”
I’d blown into Bower Island with the wind, commanded the tide, and expected it to listen. I was a stranger, and a fool, and it had treated me thus.
Then, when ithadlistened, I’d forgotten to thank it. I’d been so encased in my inner world, so embroiled in my own emotions, I hadn’t shown it the respect that Rhama had pressed home.
And now, rightfully, it was angry.
I had to get a grip. I had to rectify this. I shifted forward, dangled my feet in the foam. Stared out at the white swells, the whirlpools and eddies. I emptied my mind of apprehension, then turned my focus outward, to the sea.
“I’m sorry,” I said, really and truly meaning it. No commands this time, just conversation. I tried to open myself up, to justlisten.The tide had moods, too, and I needed to learn them.
It came, then, like the flicker of a sputtering candle. A sliver of an emotion that I knew wasn’t mine.
The receding tide was weary but ebullient, gathering strength for its next assault on the bay. I caught wariness, too. A distant suspicion. Resentment that I might get in its way.
I sat with it for a long time—probably too long. I knew Miss Haney would be wondering where I was. But soon I sensed the tide’s wariness ease. And then I opened my mouth and spoke: “Show me your power—send up a fountain.”
A flash of outrage. Then…simmering curiosity. I kept my mind open, stayed tranquil, unmoving.
Then, at last, the next wave rose high, spiralling upward. Droplets refracted the sunrise like jewels. Ifeltthe sea’s pride, a warm flare in my chest, and though I tried to suppress it, I felt pride of my own, too—a gleam of relief, like a torch in the darkness.
The tide shrank back, growing distant again.
A sudden skitter behind me made me start. Loose gravel tumbled down into the spray. I hopped into a crouch, craned my neck to peer upward. Against the flushed sky, I thought I glimpsed something black. A ripple of fabric, like a cloak’s hem disappearing. But the next second there was nothing. I blinked salt from my eyes.
A bird, I expected. A crow, or a shearwater. The black-capped birds liked to follow the tides eastward.
After making sure to thank the water, I clambered to my feet, still bruised from two nights ago, and began the slow, careful climb to the clifftop.
There, cresting the ridge, I saw no one, bird or human—only the craggy hump of the old tower’s ruins.
—
I practiced before dawn the next morning, and the next. And during daylight hours, I threw myself into my duties.
At first I’d wondered if it was worth the effort. But I quickly realized I had no choice. If the Cage didn’t come early, if my note went astray, I had to do whatever I could to impress Rexim, for I’d need to be here when theydidarrive, at pallwater, the date Kielty had originally planned. How would it look to Rexim if I just gave up?
So I plowed through my chores in double time, ferrying water to the horses and bringing ale from the brewhouse, sprinkling the flowers and vines in the orangery. I made sure to cross paths with Miss Haney at all hours, even calling at her office to ask for more work, knowing she would be reporting back to Rexim.
The Brigant himself didn’t approach me again, but whenever I happened to come across him—outside the stables as he handed over his mount, in the high-ceilinged hallways as I scrubbed down the floors—he stared down his aquiline nose at me, and I straightened my shoulders, quickened my steps, and scoured a little harder, avoiding his eyes.
Amid all this, of course, were my social duties, for the Cormorants were still installed in South Tower. It was difficult, among the hubbub and rigors of my work, to find any opportunity to speak to Avrix. But speak to him I must, for he had the only tools. Moreover, if my notehadwound its way to Kielty, the Cage would be coming in just three days, while the Cormorants were still here—something Avrix didn’t know yet…
