“Hartis as much of a home as I have,” I said, infusing my words with the courage I wanted to feel.My winds blew steady now, strengthening and turning around us in an ever-widening churn.They smelled of rain and snow and power.“I’m with you.”
Charles shrugged.He looked more than a little intimidated, too tired for bravado.“All right,” he agreed.
The wind tossed Ben’s tangled, blood-sticky hair into his eyes as he stared into the dawn and grunted, “Fine.”
IMPLING—An Otherborn creature with a ghastly appearance, resembling the blending of a human fetus and a malnourished canine.They are small, rarely larger than the infants they appear to be, and are possessed of a profoundly malevolent and devious nature, as well as a fierce hunger for living flesh.They are also one of the few Otherborn creatures who can pass through the barrier between the worlds at will, making them both common and deadly, and a common fixture of folklore across the Winter Sea.
—FROMTHE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEW WORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES
THIRTY
Floodwaters Rise
MARY
Muted morning light crept into the road, filtering through the storm that blanketed the forest in our wake, chasing our horses’ hooves with the crackling shush of freezing rain.As the storm grew so did my fatigue, until finally the rain slipped my control and overtook us.
For hours we rode as the snow turned to ice, and the cold worked into the marrow of our bones.I could hardly breathe for my streaming nose, let alone coerce my sore throat into another song.Tane, who I might have leaned upon for support, was uncommonly quiet, recovering from Adalia’s attack.
Just when I was sure I would topple from my horse, slide into a gully and sleep my final sleep, we began to see signs of a town— literal, helpful signs that pointed us towards what roughly translated to Riverbank, combined with a thinner, tended forest, a few houses tucked among the trees, and the remains of a dead chicken in the snow.
A few minutes later, the forest ended and the town materialized.It looked morose in the rain, its layers of grey cloud and sodden brown wood made worse by a frozen fog rising from the snow and miles of flooded farms.Every fence post, every tree branch, was lined with glistening ice.
There was no light in the settlement, no signs of life.No glowing windows or smoking chimneys.There was not even a wayward goatto stare at us or a dog to bark from the closest farms.The town was a tomb and the farms surrounding it drowned and hushed, save for the patter of the rain, rush of the river, and distant creak of overburdened timbers.
A fresh chill crept up my spine.I glanced back into the forest, sure the town was an ill omen.
“Sam,” I murmured.“Can you see if we’re alone?”
Samuel nodded, rain dripping from his hood, and sat back in his saddle.Benedict, Charles and I all watched as his eyes became distant and then cleared once more.
“There is an impling in the woods, some distance away.No mages or beasts.”
I opened my mouth to point out that that did not mean there were no soldiers or mages with Sooth talismans, but he continued speaking.
“But the Other is darker than usual.”Samuel indicated the sleeping town.“The first Black Tide, it seems, is close.”
“A week away,” Tane said through my lips.
“That is the coastline,” Benedict added, his gaze cast north.I squinted, just able to make out a low shore of snow drifts and black rocks.The sea was both a churning blur and an encroaching tide, swelling upriver and turning the entire waterway into an ice-choked monstrosity.It had overflowed its banks as far as we could see in either direction, forcing its way up into the town and turning the surrounding fields into sheets of ice for miles, smeared with snow fog.
“The locals must have been warned,” Charles observed.“Pity.Though an abandoned town should still provide some decent pillaging, if we could reach it without drowning.”
Benedict perked up at that, but, upon contemplation, made a discontented noise.“We should go back and spend the night at one of the houses in the forest.We will not be getting anywhere near that settlement, let alone finding somewhere dry to sleep and stow the horses.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of repeating that experience of Benedict puppeteering the woman at the farm.The houses we had passed had still been inhabited.“There must be another way in, some road not flooded.”
“The bridges are what concerns me most,” Samuel said.From our vantage, I could see that the bridges that connected the eastern and western banks were shattered or submerged, the former little more than stone markers on either shore and the latter beset by mounds of ice and debris.
Samuel sat straighter in his saddle with a creak of cold leather.“I see one intact, to the south.If we are still a week out from the full tide, the water will only continue to rise.By tomorrow morning that bridge may be gone too, and our road to Ostchen blocked.”
“So, we cross now,” Charles summarized, sounding dubious.
The bridge was too far away to see clearly, but its dark shape appeared whole, if barely above the rush of the glutted river.
“The east bank does look drier,” I admitted.“I would feel better with a river between us and anyone following us.”
The men descended into debate.I adjusted my hold on my reins, glancing again at the forest track behind us.Snow fog had spread across it, too, as the day drew to a close, playing tricks with my eyes.Was that a pine bough swaying under a weight of snow or a soldier with a musket?
