Lee’s trials

Under water

*Thalia*

The river is colder than it has any right to be.

It punches the breath out of me before I can decide whether to panic. Black water closes over my head. My shoulder strikes stone. Lee's hand is locked around mine, fingers tight enough to hurt, and the current tears us forward through a tunnel barely wide enough for two people.

I try to kick.

My boots drag against something slimy and hard. Roots scrape along my back. The water tastes like iron and old leaves.

Above us, there is no light.

Lee pulls once, sharply, and I understand without seeing him. Down.

I duck beneath a thick root that cuts across the tunnel. Something catches my hair. I wrench free, green strands fanning around my face. My lungs burn.

Then Lee's grip slips.

For one terrible second, I have only water and darkness.

I reach blindly.

My hand closes around his wrist.

His hand finds mine again and he squeezes back at once.

A pale blue glow appears ahead, weak and wavering. Nessa's candle, somehow still alight inside a glass lantern she must have grabbed on the way down. She is half swimming, half being dragged by the current, one arm wrapped around a root.

She points upward.

There is a pocket of air beneath an arch of stone.

Lee shoves me toward it.

I break the surface coughing so hard my ribs ache. The cavern above us is small and low, tangled with roots that hang like dark hair from the ceiling. Water pours through gaps in the stone. Nessa gulps air beside me, her pale braid plastered to her neck.

Lee surfaces last.

He sucks in one breath, then immediately turns toward me. "Are you hurt?"

"I swallowed half a river."

"That was not the question."

"My shoulder hurts."

His face worries, "Show me."

"It's underwater."

His eyes flash. "Thalia."

"I'm fine enough to be annoyed with you."

He lets out a breath that shakes at the end.

Nessa clings to a root, coughing water into her sleeve. "There should be another chamber ahead. The current slows there."

"You knew about this?" I ask.

"My grandmother told stories." She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "She left out the drowning part."

"Grandmothers do tend to edit for charm."

Lee scans the dark tunnel ahead. "Can you make it?"

Nessa looks at him as though the question is insulting. "I pushed an archive cart into a guard. I can swim fifty more feet."

"Good," he says. "Stay between us."

He says it like an order. Like he has practiced sounding certain while his whole life is collapsing around him.

I touch his arm beneath the water. "Lee."

He looks at me.

"You're shaking." I say softly.

"I'm cold."

"So am I."

His mouth presses into a line.

I do not ask if he is afraid. I can feel it in his grip, in the way he keeps looking at the darkness behind us as though Fileas himself might come swimming after us in ceremonial black.

The current takes us again.

This stretch is wider, though the roots are thicker. They knot beneath the water, pushing against my legs. The roots of Eirawen know me now. They have felt my fear, my anger, the effort it took to open the wall. Their sickness pulses through the tunnel like a fever.

I trail my free hand along one.

Please, I think. Just get us out.

The root curls around my wrist.

Not trapping me. Guiding.

It shifts beneath the water, opening a narrow space between itself and the stone. The current changes. Instead of dragging us toward a jagged wall, it carries us right.

"Here," I gasp.

Lee trusts me without asking why. He pulls Nessa toward the opening, and we squeeze through one after another.

The tunnel rises.

Moonlight spills through the water above us.

I push hard with both feet and break into open air.

Rain lashes my face.

For several breaths I float there, staring upward. The sky is black and silver. Eirawen rises behind us in a vast wall of roots and glowing windows, its lower branches reaching over the river like the skirts of some enormous sleeping creature.

We are outside the city.

The realization hits slowly, then all at once.

Lee surfaces beside me. He turns in a full circle, scanning the riverbank. His chest rises and falls hard.

"There," he says.

A narrow strip of mud lies ahead, hidden beneath the overhang of the outer roots. We swim toward it.

My legs are trembling by the time my knees scrape bottom. Lee gets his feet under him first, then catches me beneath the elbows and hauls me through the shallows. Nessa stumbles out after us, soaked from head to toe and swearing with impressive creativity.

We collapse beneath the roots.

The earth here is soft and black. Wet moss covers the stones. Rain runs down the trunk above us in silver streams. A few yards away, the river rushes past toward the human roadways and whatever waits beyond them.

Lee bends over with his hands braced on his knees.

Nessa sits in the mud, staring at the city.

"That is the palace," she says faintly.

"Yes," I say.

"We just escaped through a flood channel."

"Yes."

"Is that something princes do often?"

Lee looks up. "Only on special occasions."

She makes a sound that could be a laugh if she had enough breath for it.

Then a horn sounds from inside Eirawen.

One long note.

A second follows.

Lee's face changes.

"What is that?" I ask.

"City alarm."

Nessa goes very still.

"They know we're gone," she says.

The horns sound again, lower this time. They carry over the river and into the forest. Lights move along the outer walkways. Figures gather at the main landing near the city gates.

Guards.

I push myself to my feet, though my knees wobble. "Can they get out?"

"The main gates are sealed," Nessa says. "But there are patrol boats."

Lee looks downriver.

"Then we need to move."

Nessa rises too. "I'll go back."

All the warmth leaves my body at once.

"No," Lee says.

She looks at him. Rain drips from the end of her braid. "If I disappear with you, Fileas will know I helped. He will question my family. My father works in the south kitchens. My brother is an apprentice in the guardhouse."

"We can take you somewhere safe," I say.

"Where?"

I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.

New York is not safe for a frightened palace servant with no human identification and no reason to trust us beyond one dangerous night. Even if we got her there, Fileas would know exactly where to look for leverage. Her family would still be inside the city.

Nessa folds her wet hands together. "If I go back, I can say I was swept into the channel when the wall broke. I can say I never saw where you went."

"They will not believe you," Lee says.

"No. But it gives them something to pretend."

The river keeps moving beside us.

Lee takes a step toward her. "Nessa, I can't ask you to do that."

"You didn't." Her voice shakes, and she looks angry at herself for letting it. "You asked me if I wanted to stop helping. I said no."

He has no answer.

She pulls something from the pocket of her soaked dress. A small iron key, old and rusted, tied to a green thread.

"My grandmother kept this," she says. "It opens a locker in the old boat shed at Larkspur Crossing. There are dry clothes there. Food, maybe. The shed belonged to the palace gardeners once, before the river changed course."

Lee takes the key, staring at it in his palm.

"Larkspur is two miles downriver," she says. "Follow the bank. Stay under the trees until you reach the old mill bridge. If the patrol boats come, hide under the eastern bank. The reeds are thick there."

"How do you know all that?" I ask.

Nessa's mouth tightens. "Servants know where things are."

Something about the way she says it makes me think of all the corridors beneath the palace. The invisible routes. The doors and staircases made for people expected to carry everything and leave no trace of themselves behind.

Lee closes his fingers around the key.

"Come with us," he says again, quieter.

Nessa looks toward Eirawen.

There are more lights now. A line of guards moves along the river walk. From here, they are tiny dark shapes against the warm glow of the city.

"My family is there," she says.

He nods once.

It is not agreement. It is surrender.

Nessa steps close and reaches up to straighten the collar of his soaked shirt. The gesture is so ordinary that my throat tightens.

"Eat something," she tells him.

"I will."

She sighs, "You say that to everyone."

"I mean it this time."

"You always mean it. That's why it is irritating."

A laugh catches in him. He looks down quickly.

Then Nessa turns to me.

Her gaze lands on the green streaks in my hair, the mud on my face, the black smear still faintly visible across two fingers.

"Take care of him," she says.

"I plan to."

"He thinks being kind means he has to stand in front of every blade."

Lee makes a protesting sound. "I'm here."

"I know. You are difficult to miss."

I almost smile.

Nessa's expression softens for half a second. "Don't let him go back alone."

"I won't."

Lee looks between us, clearly offended that we have formed an alliance without consulting him.

"I am fully capable of hearing conversations about me," he says.

"That sounds exhausting," I tell him.

Nessa gives me a quick, grateful smile.

Then she takes a breath, turns toward the tunnel mouth hidden beneath the roots, and disappears back into the city.

Lee watches until she is gone.