Dauntless Path

Chapter 5

The water closes over my head, the impact nearly tearing the breath from my lungs. The currents pull at me, tugging against the weight of my anchor. I jerk and twist, but the ropes around my ankles are well tied. The sandbag drags me down, down, down.

I bend my knees to bring the ropes within grasp, my fingers scrabbling past the ballooning folds of my skirts to find the knot. I cannot get a grip on it, not with my wrists bound together. Something collides with my head—it’s Fastu, thrashing wildly, his air escaping him in a cascade of bubbles. Already, my own breath is trickling out of me.

My fingers slip on the ropes again. The sandbag has stopped sinking, and I bob at the top of the rope. The world around me is dark, the moonlight a faint memory.

I am going to die. There is no escaping this reality, the pressure of water all around me. My lungs burn. I tug desperately at the ropes because even without hope, I cannot give up. I don’t want to leave Niya alone, or the stolen children, don’t want Garrin to win, to continue—

Something white slices down through the water, swift and bright as a falling star. I lunge toward it, reaching, and impossibly my hand closes on the hilt of my knife. I try to s***h at the ropes around my ankles, cutting away ragged bits of skirt as my lungs scream for air, but my grip is already going slack. I breathe in a choking lungful of water, my body convulsing, and try, try to slice through the rope, if I can only find it. The tip of the knife cuts through the rope with a jerk, and my legs come free.

Too late. My lungs burn with water, the river dissolving into a whirling darkness rushing past me. I flail, but I cannot tell which way is up anymore, cannot stop myself from inhaling again.

Air meets my lips.

I cough at the sheer shock of it. The sweet night air enters my lungs as my knees hit dry ground. I collapse, my cheek thumping against the moss-covered earth as I cough again.

How is that even possible? Am I dead? My lips gape open, but I can’t seem to get enough breath, my lungs still heavy with water. I must be dying, this vision of air and dry earth nothing but a hallucination.

A hand touches my shoulder, and a stream of warmth flows from that point, cascading through my veins and closing around my lungs. My chest contracts, water spewing from my lips. After three great heaves, I subside, my body pressed against the good, solid earth, and find I am alone on a riverbank with a woman.

Wait—

“Boy,” I gasp. “Boy!”

“What?”

“Water—boy!”

boy“Oh, shall I save him too? You will owe me for that.”

I nod, half uncomprehending, and the next moment Fastu is there beside me, a sodden heap upon the earth, inert. The woman bends, a night-dark braid swinging down from her shoulders, and touches the boy’s arm. His body seizes.

Magic. That is the only explanation—for his appearance, and mine, and the way each of us has been made to expel the water that would have drowned us even after we were taken from the river.

I close my eyes, listening to the sound of Fastu retching up water and moaning. I don’t know this woman, haven’t seen her among the mages of the palace. Whoever she is, she is powerful. And I’m grateful for her help.

The night air is cool in my lungs. My whole body is shaky and weak. I open my eyes and try to focus. Beyond Fastu, gasping now but still prone, lies the river. I lever myself up, following the fast-flowing waters with my gaze to where the slave ship sails, nearly out of sight. How is that possible? We were only just thrown from the ship and couldn’t have been underwater long—no more than a minute, however long it felt to me. The galley couldn’t have traveled that far already.

Then again, none of this is possible. Not my sudden arrival on this riverbank, and certainly not the woman who cared to save me but not the boy.

“Ready to speak, then?” She steps away from Fastu, regarding me steadily. As I turn my gaze to her, another shudder runs through me. She isn’t human, can’t be, not with those eyes deep as the river, and as filled with violence and beauty. I’ve met Fae before—obviously. All of them have eyes as unknowable as eternity, but hers are worse somehow, terrifying in their darkness.

“Your name is Amraeya ni Ansarim,” she says with a smile as cold as death, “and you are the princess’s attendant.”

I don’t know how she knows this, and I am beginning to doubt she is truly here to help me. There was a Fae mage at the king’s court, but Adept Midael was very much male, and where his skin differed from the soft browns of my people for its very darkness, this woman’s skin lies on the other end of the spectrum, pale as bone. Paler even than Genno Stonemane’s. Further, she is clothed in a white dress with gray trim that reminds me vaguely of the fashions favored by the outlanders who live across the western mountains, with a tight bodice and layered skirts. Strange, that.

was“Tell me, kelari, what have you done to end up here, thrown from a slave ship to drown in the river?”

I swallow to clear my throat, the taste of deep river muck still on my tongue. “If you know so much, you must know that.”

She tilts her head, eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “I wonder, though, if you understand it all.”

I glance toward Fastu. He lies with his eyes closed. He is either unconscious or clever enough to play-act senselessness. I return my attention to the mage—or ungoverned sorceress, as the case may be. “I knew the risks I ran in my work. This was the natural consequence of being found out.”

“Found out?” she echoes. “Or betrayed?”

I start, staring at her.

She bares her teeth in a predatory smile. “What was his name, the one who betrayed you?”

“These are great secrets,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

“I will make it easier for you. Was it not Garrin of Cenatil?”

I stiffen, and know at once I’ve given myself away. I say roughly, “What concern is it of yours?”

“Only that he has proven his character through his actions, and I have every intention of seeing him suffer for it.”

“You know?”

“That he enslaves his people to enrich himself? Certainly. He is only following in his father’s footsteps.”

His father—? My brow furrows as I try to think. Garrin’s father married into the royal family. His mother died a year later, shortly after his birth. His father died only a few years ago, in a riding accident of some sort. “If—if that’s true, why did you not punish his father? Or stop him before now?”

“I have my reasons,” the sorceress says. “As I did in aiding you.”

I take a slow breath.

She smiles coolly. “You owe me a life debt twice over, once for yourself, and once for the boy.”

Oh. Oh no.

It’s not at all a good thing to owe debts to the Fae—not debts that haven’t been given boundaries and limits and clear guidelines. I’ve traded in favors with Fae before—though with Genno Stonemane only, and he is more friend than stranger. And in the end, he would not accept a debt from me. I moisten my lips and decide I had better let her speak first. Never mind that I never asked her to save me; I’m not at all sure she won’t throw me back into the river if I argue that.

She waits until it’s clear I won’t respond. “Tell me, Kelari Amraeya, what are your intentions regarding Garrin of Cenatil?”

That’s easy enough to answer. “I intend to bring him to justice.”

She laughs, a fearful sound, as clear and carrying as the cracking of ice. “Do you, child of the country? How will you do so when he is a noble lord, and nephew to the king?”

“I—” I shake my head. “I mean to speak with the princess first.”

“She is one who requires proof.”

“I have plenty of that.” Not only can I testify that Garrin himself took part in my a*******n, but I haven’t forgotten the clue that connected him to the Berenworth Trading Company—which runs most of the slaves downriver and across the sea.

“What if your princess cannot bring him to justice? What will you do then?” she demands.

I don’t know.

“Think on it,” she says. The very gentleness of her voice raises the hairs on my arms.

How does she know so much about me? About what I was doing in the palace itself? I was discreet. Only a handful of people know that my true aim was to investigate the snatchers; everyone else thought me only the newest and least of the princess’s attendants. Yet this sorceress seems to know everything. Including Garrin’s betrayal.

I lick dry lips and ask, “What is it you want? Truly?”

“When you return to the palace, bearing the weight of your proof against the lord of Cenatil, call me.”

“Why?”

“Because the debts you owe me will be due then,” she says. “And I intend to collect.”

She crosses the distance to where I sit in a heartbeat, her hand touching my brow before I can flinch away. A spark jumps from her fingertip to my mind, burning its way through flesh and bone, burrowing into my brain. I hear myself cry out, aware that I am clutching at my head, tearing at my hair with my good hand, but the spark is beyond my reach, burning, burning, and then—it’s gone. No, not gone. Latent, like an ember asleep among burned-out coals.

burning“That is my name,” the sorceress says. “When you need it, reach for it.”

I look up at her, my face wet with tears and river water, my fingers still knotted in the tangles of my hair. There is no name I can sense, just the ember of her spell, sleeping.

I will tell the princess—about this sorceress, about her interest in Garrin. I don’t actually have to reach for this spell in my mind, do I? What did the sorceress say? When I return to the palace? Maybe I can just avoid the palace proper.

The sorceress smiles faintly, still looking down at me where I crouch on the ground, as if she can read my thoughts on my face. “Let us be clear, kelari. You cannot escape this debt.”

She flicks her fingers once, a quick, impossibly fast move, and taps my forehead. Magic burns through me, roaring along the same path as the ember she first laid in me, only this one sends tendrils of searing pain lacing their way through my body.

I open my mouth to cry out, and a whiff of smoke escapes, my tongue coated in ash. I mewl softly.

“I do hate to use a debt so quickly,” the sorceress says, patting the top of my head kindly. “But you are just the loyal sort who will not keep quiet. That was your first life debt, transformed into a binding. Do you know what that means?”

I shake my head, my breath shuddering in my lungs. The pain is easing, but I’m still breathing smoke.

“It means I have bound you to silence, using your life as the counterweight. Should you speak of this encounter, your debt will come due, and you will die.”

I want nothing more than to crawl away from this woman with her burning magic and her terrifying words.

“Do you understand?”

I nod jerkily.

“As for the second life debt, if you do not call me as we have agreed, then I will simply collect your debt from among those you love. Perhaps one of your sisters.”

“You—you can’t,” I say, my voice rasping with horror.

She regards me with an air of mild bemusement. “Do you really think not?”

I don’t answer. This creature is fully capable of anything she claims. I have no doubt of that. I’ve met enough monsters by now to know that what strikes me as horrifying is utterly irrelevant.

“Good. Do not forget.”

She dips her head, takes one step away, and lifts her arms. They lengthen, fingertips stretching into wingtips, and with a single rise and fall she is transformed, born aloft now by magic and physics alike in the shape of a great white owl.