“I know about the fights,” I said, hugging myself. “I saw one of them, too. I know you spoke up.” A hot flare of pride, of admiration. She’d done what felt right, despite the danger.
“Okay. I need to go further back.” She chewed her lip. “Remember when I said it was all Instructor Rhama? Well, it was him who got me this job. The spying, the sabotage…that was meant to be me. He told me about it the night before my exam; said he was putting his life on the line, but that something told him I’d be interested…”
That memory again: the lecture hall.“Is it true we used to call ourselves Tidespeakers, sir?”
I wondered now if that had been when it started. When he’d started watching her, hearing her quiet scoffs. He must have pinpointed her as an asset: the best of us, a talent too strong to waste.
After Owyn, I made Zennia promise never to run. Never to take her chances with the gallows. I supposed she hadn’t really broken that promise. She hadn’t had to; Rhama had made sure of that.
“The letter hidden in your room,” I whispered. The one I found soon after arriving, only for it to get swept away by the wave. “You said you couldn’t talk about everything you wanted to…and the dates on the back. They were meetings with Kielty, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” she said brittlely. “I’d just got started. But after…what I did at the Veil, Emment said that was the end of my placement. That he’d tell his father and I’d be sent back to Arbenhaw. He said they’d put me in the cellars overnight, then bundle me straight into a coach the next morning.
“That’s when I knew Ihadto do something. Kielty wouldn’t be able to save me, and there was no guarantee I’d escape on the journey.” She looked at me, brown eyes glinting in the gloom. “I decided to fake it. Fake that I’d drowned.”
“Why didn’t you just run from Emment?” I asked. “He was drunk, wasn’t he? You could have slipped through his grip.”
“No,” she said, thick black brows drawing downward. Her eyes were on the path, picking out where to place her feet. “My likeness would’ve been everywhere. Etched in the papers, on posters in the streets…‘Missing Orha.’Remember Owyn? This way no one would go looking for me. Safer for me; safer for the Cage.”
My thoughts were jumping, making new connections. Everything now seemed clear as glass. “Youcalled up the waves in the bay. But how? Emment would’ve heard you, wouldn’t he?”
Her lips twisted. “I made sure I had my back to him. Pretended I was whispering to the water to propel us, when really, I was riling it up, agitating it. Soon it was choppy enough to toss us.”
“And then you could get far enough away from him to—”
“Make it seem like I was in real trouble.”
Rhianne’s words echoed in my mind.“He was shaking harder than I’ve ever seen anyone…Got us all up, made us go out there looking…”
A mixture of guilt and pity sloshed in me. Emmenthadseen what he thought he’d seen.
“Then what?” I said, imagining that night: the darkness, the chill, the rippling waters.
“Swam back to the harbor, then sprinted for the Veil. Kielty was just closing up. I was lucky. Another few minutes and he’d have vanished—I had no idea where he slept at night.
“After that we sent word to Rhama. And Leadership.” She shivered, shoulders lifting. “They weren’t too happy. Sent me down south to help raid laconite shipments, but Kielty persuaded them to let me back. For this.”
And that, I guessed, was whereI’dcome in.
“It was Rhama,” I said, thinking back to my exam, the memory making my cheeks warm with shame. “My final exam. It was all going wrong. But he couldn’t allow that—he needed me, didn’t he?”
Zennia paused on the path, reaching out. “I told them it had to be you,” she said. “I knew it would mean I had a chance of seeing you, a chance to stop you being sent somewhere else. But this job—” She came closer, gripped my arm hard. “Corith, it suited youperfectly. You know what I’m like: My face says everything. That’s probably why Rhama knew he was safe to approach me. And it was hard—sohard—to be around the Shearwaters. But you…you, Corith. You’re what this job needed. I knew you’d be better at keeping your cool.”
I tried to picture Zennia sucking up to Vercha and found myself smiling. My friend’s lips twitched, too.
“I told them I knew you better than anyone. They agreed to have Rhama send you to the island, but they outright refused to tell youabout the mission. In case you went straight to Instructor Caerig, I suppose.”
I thought of Rhama’s assessing looks that day. I knew I was far more of a closed book than Zennia. He must have been wondering if they’d made the right choice.
“Corith,” she said, “I put you in danger—”
“It’s all right,” I said, taking her wrist and squeezing it.
The sight of her jerkin’s buttons glinting suddenly brought something else to my mind. I dug in my pocket and brought it out: the brooch I’d given her for her eighteenth birthday, the one Kielty had used to entice me, to prove he knew more about Zennia.
She took it and turned it over in her fingers. “I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice breaking slightly, and I tugged her to me and hugged her close. We stood there a moment, enveloped against the chill, then reluctantly drew back and set off up the path.
“So you went to join the rebels. What’s it like, living rough?” Sidelong, I noted her new, wiry leanness. Her thin, frayed garments. Her hard-set face.
