The odd note in his voice made me frown. “What do you mean?”
Then the first shriek carried from across the water.
Seventeen
Rain broke over us, drenchingme and Daziel so completely and suddenly that I screamed. He threw up a shield, large enough to stop the rain a foot above us and send it arcing away.
A storm had arrived, with such ferocity and suddenness we hadn’t had warning to flee. People ran back across the floating bridge from the platform, hampered by the increasingly rough water, and the bonfires sizzled out. Shouts cut through the rain as people searched for their friends.
I’d never seen river waves like this, so tall and wild. They reminded me of the ocean back home. And not Port Naborre’s protected bay, but farther down the coast where the land jutted into the water and the sea fought back. These waves were ten feet tall and crested with whitecaps. And they were angry.
“Come on,” someone shouted. “We can enter the caves from the staircase!”
Most people ran toward the promise of safety but not all. To my shock, I saw Élodie run past me in the opposite direction, toward the bridge.
“Élodie?” I shouted after her. I hadn’t even known she was here.
The other Testylier House girl turned.“Naomi?” She soundedinsultingly shocked by my presence but refocused, gesturing toward the platform. “Birra’s out there.”
I felt a pang of empathy. I didn’t like the rich girls, but if Leah had been on the platform, I’d panic. I peered through the rain. It was too fierce to see well, but I could make out people on the raft—at least half a dozen. As for the causeway…I winced. The waves had broken it into at least three parts and submerged one.
“We have to fix the bridge,” I said.
“Using what spell?” Élodie shot back, desperation turning her voice mean. “Do you know one? Or would you have me write one on the spot?”
Shoot. I turned to Daziel, who’d just warded off the rain in a completely inhuman way. “Can you do something?”
His dark eyes were impenetrable. “What?”
“We can’t let them die.You have different magic than us. Able to affect natural elements, faster, bigger—”
“More volatile,” he said. “And I don’t care about them not dying; I care aboutyounot dying.”
But there was something in his face, in his tone, that made me think he could do something. He did have an idea. “Please, Daziel. They could drown.”
Daziel’s gaze transferred briefly to Élodie before returning to mine. “It’s too dangerous.”
“There’s half a dozen people out there.” I nervously eyed the rising waters. “We could get more people. Make a human chain and go into the water.”
“You’d help them even if it put you at risk?”
“We have to dosomething.”
Daziel cursed low under his breath. His gaze on mine seemedto weigh me, to go deeper than his usual laissez-faire attitude. “Are you sure?”
His demeanor unsettled me, but I nodded.
He kept studying me for a long moment. Then he spoke, decisively, as though coming to a grave decision. “We need a stylo.”
Some people kept stylos on them in case they had to write impromptu spells, along with flasks of neshem oil, but most of us didn’t. I’d only taken spelled hand warmers and a glow globe today. I looked at Élodie. She shook her head miserably. “Nothing.”
I looked around wildly for someone else to ask, but almost everyone had run for shelter. “We could use your—nails. On a rock?”
Daziel shut his eyes, looking pained, then shook his head. “Come away,” he said, and started down the beach.
I followed him, and Élodie followed me, her brow heavily furrowed. “Where are you going?” she called.
Daziel looked back at her. His voice changed, turning cold and authoritarian, something I hadn’t heard from him before—except almost, when I had tried to take his seal and when I had followed the winds. “This is private. I’m willing to share some things with my betrothed but not other humans.”
