The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One (15 page)

He stepped into the light, Selei and a handful of warriors with him. Xinai sheathed her blades.

“I feared—” She paused, and Selei smiled.

“You feared I’d be no match for soldiers.” The woman knelt beside the fire and kindled a lantern. “Don’t worry, child, I’m
neither toothless nor helpless quite yet.” She drew Xinai aside as Phailin’s relatives entered the room. “Let them tend her.
I need to speak with you.” Her milky eye flickered toward Shaiyung. “Both of you.”

They followed Selei into the thicket of the banyan tree, and the light cast their shadows wild and writhing amid the branches.
Shaiyung stood close to Xinai, a line of cold down her left side.

“You can see her?”

Selei snorted. “I’ve been speaking to ghosts since before your mother first propositioned your father, girl.”

“You knew she was here.”

“Yes. We’ve talked, Shai and I.” She smiled at the ghost. “She’s been waiting for you.”

“I’ll do the rites, if you’ll teach me. I’ll sing her on—”

Shaiyung shook her head, twisting the gash in her throat wider. “No,” she hissed.

“That isn’t what she’s been waiting for.”

Xinai crossed her arms against the chill. “What, then?”

“She’s been waiting for you to come and free her, so she can join our cause.”

Shaiyung nodded.

“A ghost?”

“She’s not the only one in these woods.” Selei brushed dry fingertips over Xinai’s eyes. “Do you see?”

And there, pale in the darkness, stood half a dozen ghosts, lurking among the tree roots. Xinai sucked a breath through her
teeth. Most looked more substantial than her mother, but still gray and hollow-eyed, bearing the marks of their deaths.

“You haven’t sung them on?”

“And lose allies? This is their war too, and they’ve already paid a higher price than any of us.”

“But they should rest.”

“We’ll rest when the land is free again,” one of the ghosts whispered, nearly lost beneath the distant song of crickets.

Shaiyung nodded again. “There aren’t many us of us,” she whispered. “It’s hard, hard to stay awake, to stay sane in the Night
Forest. So many have faded or wandered on, or been trapped in their bones.”

“You’re a good omen,” Selei said. “The last Lin child returned. Hope for the clan again. Maybe other clans might live again
too.”

Xinai didn’t know what to say to that—bad enough when the living pinned their hopes to her, let alone the dead. “Does everyone
know of this? Riuh and Phailin and the rest?”

“Phailin does,” Selei said. “But not everyone knows of the Ki Dai.”

The White Hand. Xinai’s eyes widened. “Rebel ghosts.”

“Ghosts and witches, yes. Not all our warriors can see or hear the dead, and some wouldn’t understand why we don’t sing them
on. The Dai Tranh works in the land of the living—the Ki Dai works in the twilight lands as well.”

“So Deilin Xian—”

“Was one of us, yes. We tried to keep her away from that child, but the madness took her.” Selei’s eyes narrowed. “You know
what happened, then? What your companions did to her?”

She nodded. “I heard.”

“Can we free her?”

Xinai heard the rest of the question and swallowed. “I don’t know. But the necromancer wants to treat with you, with the Dai
Tranh.”

“We fight for a free Sivahra, not to trade one master for another. We won’t be snared in webs of foreign gold. Nor can we
barter for Deilin like a fish in a market. She would understand.”

Xinai’s shoulders sagged. “So it was all for nothing.”

Selei clucked her tongue. “We won’t treat with foreigners, girl. You’re kin. If you want to fight with us, we welcome you.”

She glanced from Selei to Shaiyung. The ghost nodded. “Stay,” she whispered.

“What about my partner? He’s saved my life more times than I can count. We’re…close.”

Selei shook her head. “He may be a good man, but he has no place with us. If you care, send him away. Will you stay?”

Her chest felt too tight. Years of partnership, of friendship. It would hurt him. But she only hesitated a moment; she was
home.

“I will.”

“There’s one thing I must ask of you first.”

Xinai waited; there was always a test, a cost.

“Shaiyung is bound to this place, to the tree. You’re the only one who can set her free.”

She swallowed. “What do I need to do?”

“Bleed. Shed Lin blood for the tree and take a piece of its wood in return. Shaiyung will be able to leave the walls, and
to find you if you’re ever in need.”

“All right.” Xinai drew her knife, tested the edge with her thumb; it wanted honing but would serve for the moment. She touched
a young tendril that hadn’t reached the ground and glanced a question at Selei. The old woman nodded.

“That will do.”

She pushed back her sleeve and nicked the smaller vein running down her left thumb—the first mercenary witch she’d met in
the north had laughed her out of the habit of taking blood from her palm. Pressure, then the flash of pain, then beads of
blood welling black in the darkness. She tilted her arm, let the drops trace a dark rivulet into her palm.

Harder to pierce the tree’s skin, and by the time she’d sawed through the tendril tip the last of the edge was gone from her
blade. Sap smeared sticky on steel. She pressed her palm against the root, mingling her blood with the tree’s.

Shaiyung sighed like wind in the reeds.

“Is that all?” Xinai’s bloody hand tightened around the sliver of banyan root.

Selei smiled. “Welcome to the Ki Dai, child.”

Downpour

O
n her eighth day in Symir, Isyllt woke in the ash-gray dawn to thunder and the hiss and rattle of rain on the leaves.

That morning the normally quiet neighborhood echoed with splashes and laughter as children scrambled outside to play in the
puddles. Adults showed more restraint, but many descended their steps and lifted their faces to the rain. Marat’s gray scarf
was spotted with damp as she laid out breakfast dishes.

After the meal Zhirin went to the temple district for her devotions and Isyllt and Adam went with her. They’d spent the last
two days sorting out arrangements for the supply ship; Isyllt thought they’d earned another day’s vacation. Vasilios—whose
discomfort in the increased damp was plain to see—retired to his study.

The sky hung low and dark over the city, the rain gentle but steady. Despite the umbrella she carried, the hems of Isyllt’s
trousers were sopping by the time they crossed the first bridge, and the back of her shirt damp. The canals had already risen,
flowing faster and cleaner. Tiny wooden boats and garlands of flowers rushed toward the bay, the blossoms filling the air
with their bruised-wet sweetness. Mask-sellers hawked their wares in the streets, cheap last-minute choices nothing like the
elaborate creations she’d seen in shops.

The temple district was in the southern half of Jadewater, facing Lioncourt across the wide expanse of water called the Floating
Garden. Today the Garden swarmed with barges and workers. The smell of incense mingled with the rain, and coils of smoke rose
from the domed and pillared churches.

Adam lifted his head as they neared the temples, nostrils flaring in the shadow of his hood. “Xinai is here,” he said when
she cocked a brow. “I’m going to look for her. I’m not feeling especially pious today anyway.”

Isyllt nodded and he melted into the eddying crowds. Zhirin watched him go out of the corner of her eye.

“Is he as dangerous as he looks?” the girl asked quietly.

“I hope so. It’s what I’m paying him for.” She tilted her head. “Are you fond of dangerous men?”

Zhirin blushed. “Only Jabbor. And it’s not the danger, so much as his…”

Isyllt swallowed several teasing responses. “His passion? His conviction?”

“Yes. Ever since I met him I’ve wanted to be…more. Cleverer, more useful. I want to help. Do you know what I mean?”

“All too well.” She smiled and shook her head at Zhirin’s curious glance. “But that’s over now,” she lied. She looked away,
turned her eyes toward the churches instead.

A half-dozen or so temples stood in a wide horseshoe around a fountained courtyard. Some she recognized—the Ninayan sea lady
Mariah, the Assari Sun King, Selafai’s dreaming saint Serebus—others not. In the center of the half-circle rose a tall, domed
cathedral of blue-green marble. Vines trailed from high eyelet windows, spreading wild and green across the walls. Water flowed
down either side of the wide steps and disappeared below them, perhaps back into the canals from which it came. It was toward
this temple that Zhirin led them.

“Whose house is this?” Isyllt asked.

“The River Mother’s. The Mir’s.”

They climbed the rain-slick steps and left their dripping umbrellas and mud-grimed shoes on a rack in the care of a young
acolyte. The floor was cold underfoot.

Inside was nearly as damp as the day without. Water dripped in shining streams from holes in the roof, sluicing over smooth-polished
pillars and swirling into curving channels in the floor, filling the vaulted chamber with the music of rain and river. Flowering
vines clung to the ceiling, shedding petals onto the water. People sat in silent prayer on benches that lined the room, or
knelt beside the spirals of the water garden. Some lit candles and set them in floating bowls, while others waded quietly
into a deep pool in the center of the room.

“It’s meant as a place of peace,” Zhirin said, her voice soft. “Of solace. We give our pain and troubles to the river, and
she washes us clean.”

“It’s beautiful.” She was gawking like a child, but the place was worthy of it.

An old woman passed them, smiling at Isyllt’s expression. She wore a scarf nearly identical to Marat’s, even to the pattern
embroidered on the hem. Several others in the temple wore them too, mostly the elderly.

“Those scarves, the gray, do they mean something?”

“They mark the clanless. Those who’ve lost all their kin. To many Sivahri, it’s the worst thing that can befall someone.”

“So Marat—”

“Yes. Many of them end up as servants. It’s a sad thing, to have no one to look after you. I’m going to leave an offering,
and light a candle. Afterward I’ll show you where the festival will take place.”

The girl took a coin from her purse and walked toward a stand of votives. Isyllt stepped out of the way of the doors, moving
into a green-shadowed corner. A place of solace indeed, and gentler than the sepulcher peace of the cathedrals in Erisín.
No one built temples to the black river Dis, and that was likely for the best; it claimed enough sacrifices for itself.

As she glanced around the room, she saw Anhai Xian-Mar hunched on a nearby prayer bench. She wasn’t going to interrupt, but
the customs inspector looked up and met Isyllt’s eyes, trying to soothe her face.

“Is something wrong?” Isyllt asked softly as she moved closer. “It isn’t Lilani, is it?”

“No. No, Lia’s well, and my sister too.” She sighed. “It’s nothing serious, truly. Only an indignity.”

Isyllt hesitated for a heartbeat. “May I ask?”

“I have been suspended from my position.” Anhai’s lips twisted; the unhappy set of her shoulders made her look older. “The
Khas arrested several members of the Xian family for involvement in the market bombing. The port authority suggested that
I take time off until the matter has been settled.”

“Surely they don’t suspect you?”

“Not me personally. But as all know, in Sivahra family means more than anything.” The last words were so bitter Isyllt thought
she might spit. Anhai glanced at Isyllt’s ring and ran a hand over her face. “Forgive me. You find me at unpleasant times.”

She stood, tugging her coat smooth. “I seem unsuited for meditation today. Perhaps I should see if my sister has a place for
me on her boat.”

Across the room, Zhirin set her tiny flame adrift and rose, the knees of her trousers damp-darkened.

“Would you like to have tea with us?” Isyllt asked. “We’re only sightseeing before the festival.”

“Thank you, but I should go home. Lilani and Vienh will want to attend the Dance and I should find something to wear. Perhaps
we’ll meet again on a happier day.” With a farewell nod she turned away.

Xinai’s first mission with the Dai Tranh took her and Riuh into the city, where a Xian clansman poled them through the twisting
back canals of Jadewater. They leaned together like young lovers, clasping hands and laughing. Sometimes her throat tightened
when she met his eyes—black instead of green.

Rain misted cool against her face, glistened in Riuh’s braids. A common sight, couples walking or boating in the rain, making
wishes. An ancient custom adapted to the city, when once they might have walked through the forest or along the riverbank.
Most couples today hoped only for a child or good business, not for the overthrow of the Assari.

It’s only a job,
she tried to tell herself when Riuh’s thumb stroked her knuckles. But that was a lie. It was a job, it was home, it was clan-ties
and blood-ties and her mother’s fingers brushing her cheek, soft as memory. It was freedom and revenge and other memories
hot as coals in her breast, and she couldn’t tell one from the other anymore, couldn’t tell where she stopped and everything
else began.