Chapter Sixteen

Steam filled the air of the water chamber with thick, cloying moisture. Tanitha eyed the surface of the deep stone bath. Its water was slowly settling to stillness, small waves and eddies disrupting the surface.

It had taken her far too long to activate the magical construct that summoned water from some deep reservoir to fill the bath, and almost as long again to deactivate it. She'd developed an easy intuition for most constructs while in Darius' Hold, but those connected to water still seemed almost hostile to her, sliding away from her ability to mentally reach them with all the lithesome cunning of an eel. She supposed she should just count herself fortunate she hadn't flooded her new rooms; aside from being embarrassing, it would have been a clear indication to Naratha that she and Alethia had guessed right about Tanitha's level of competence with water. Or rather, Tanitha thought, with a despairing glance at the bath once more, incompetence.

"All right," said Lithra. She was shuffling through her notes, the scrawled results of the various experiments they'd attempted over the previous three days. She looked up at Tanitha. "Are you ready?"

Tanitha restrained a weary sigh; trying to coax an ability from herself that she was increasingly certain she didn't have was exhausting. But at least they were trying something different today.

She stepped onto a shallow shelf that ringed the inner perimeter of the bath, water lapping at her ankles and causing the hem of the light robe she was wearing to swirl gently around them. She slid from the narrow lip, half swimming to the center of the bath. Once she reached it, she stood fully upright; in the center, the water reached nearly to her shoulders. Normally, she might have felt strange about using such an opulent bath— even with magical aid, it had taken nearly an hour to fill— but this wasn't a matter of soaking in quiet relaxation. This was a matter of survival.

She closed her eyes, focusing on the sensation of the water's gentle buoyancy, on the feeling of it lapping against her skin, on how it swirled the robe's fabric around her. But try as she might, she could only just barely sense the elemental power it held. It remained as distant and vaguely hostile to her efforts as ever.

She shook her head; the elemental powers weren't sentient and were therefore neither hostile nor friendly to anyone. They simply were, existing in the same way that the elements that bore them did. Fire could cook a meal as easily as kill and would be equally indifferent to either case. Water… water was a bearer of life, but also of death. Tanitha's unease around it was simply a symptom of knowing which one was more likely in her case.

"Anything?" Lithra asked.

"No," Tanitha said reluctantly, though actually she was glad that Lithra had disrupted that particular downward-trending trail of her thoughts. "Still nothing."

Lithra sighed. "All right. Go ahead with the other thing, then."

Tanitha nodded. Taking a deep breath, she submerged herself beneath the surface.

She opened her eyes, taking a moment to let herself adjust to the sensation of water pressing in on all sides. She knew how to swim, but even as a child, she'd never liked the activity; Ivathi Yarun had once said it was natural for a child with an affinity for fire and air to be wary of an element that was practically anathema to them both. She exhaled slowly, watching the blurred outlines of the resultant bubbles as they rippled toward the surface. Then, she lifted one hand, reaching out for her elemental senses.

She could feel her ability to summon fire quickly, if only just barely; it was like the shimmering light of a star on a misty night. It took her a moment longer to grasp her sense of air; it had always seemed more distant to her than fire and light, and the water surrounding her wasn't helping matters. Still, she reached mentally for it. She'd gotten the idea from one of the scrolls Lithra had sent for; it was an account of some of the feats great water elementalists had accomplished, and one of the descriptions of a famed storm-summoner had given her pause. If air and water could be used in conjunction like that, she didn't see any reason why she couldn't use air to manipulate water by proxy.

She exhaled, then pulled on her sense of air. The bubbles, already midway through rippling their way to the surface, suddenly stopped. They undulated in place, light shimmering over their surfaces.

She held them there as long as she could, but her capacity for holding her breath ran out long before she otherwise would have been straining at the edge of her abilities. She burst back through the water's surface with a quick gasp.

"That was good," said Lithra. "Do you think you could pull air from the surface down to yourself to breathe while you're below? It might make it a bit harder for Alethia to drown you, if that's what her mind is set on."

"I'll try that next," said Tanitha, though she was secretly dubious; she wasn't sure how long she might be able to maintain a cycle of capturing and releasing air from the surface. It wasn't as if she had any better ideas, though.

Lithra started scribbling notes on the thick sheet of papyrus, and Tanitha pulled herself to the bath's rim, water streaming down her body along the folds of the robe. She looked mournfully at the notes.

"We'll need to destroy those, you know," she said. "We can't risk Alethia getting her hands on them somehow." An idea struck. "Perhaps we could make a decoy set? Something that would give her a false idea of what we've been working on?"

Lithra pursed her lips. "Maybe. Although I don't think we're going to get far beating her at her own game." She looked back down at her own writing. "All right. She specifically mentioned her own skills at water. And you said she pointed out that you had no experience healing as well?" She flicked a loose bead of ink from the bronze nib of the pen. "Was she right? Have you had any practice at that?"

Tanitha grimaced. It had been something she'd wanted to practice; it was one of the most useful applications of soul-speaking, as far as she was concerned. She'd even asked Darius for texts on the subject once. He'd put her off it, though, with some vague reassurances that he'd see to it soon, and Tanitha had been leery of bringing up the subject again, wondering if she'd struck a nerve of discomfort in him with the request. Looking back, the reason seemed obvious. He'd been housing a woman touched by prophecy, one who he thought potentially very dangerous to him. Healing might seem innocuous, but it was a form of soul-speaking that involved exploiting the link between body and soul, essentially forcing the body to do as she commanded. Rather like what she'd done to force him to sleep.

Was it any wonder he'd been hesitant to help her develop that skill set?

She brought her mind sharply back to the present. She'd castigated herself enough on that subject for several lifetimes, and wallowing in the despair and guilt of what she'd done would scarcely help her. Or Darius, for that matter.

"I don't have very much understanding of healing, no," said Tanitha. For some reason, a flash of annoyance passed over Lithra's face. "It's not likely to matter," Tanitha said, frowning. "I can't think of a time when healing has featured in the Trials."

She glanced toward the washroom's door, thinking of the books and scrolls they'd sent for that were stacked in the front room. The accounts of Trials for the past several generations of royal heirs and their prospective mates had been dry and sparse, but literary merit aside, they had proven valuable for giving them an idea of what sort of tasks Tanitha might be assigned.

Lithra folded her arms. "If Alethia specifically mentioned something, we're practicing it," she said flatly. "We need to at least understand if you've any aptitude for it."

Tanitha shifted, uncomfortable. More than a small part of her felt that she shouldn't be trusted with any such skill set. "I just think there are other things that might be more important."

In response, Lithra stabbed her own forearm with the pen.

Tanitha started with a gasp, shocked at the sudden act of violence.

" Lithra !"

Lithra tossed the pen aside. Blood began to well from the wound. It wasn't deep or serious, but Tanitha stared at her, aghast, regardless.

"Well?" Lithra asked impatiently. "Fix it."

"Gods, Lithra! I've never even— how do you expect me to—"

"You know how this works," Lithra said, hands on her hips. "The demons, they can all soul-speak to some degree. They can all heal or hurt even from a distance. I've seen it often enough in the Sanctuary, when we had serious cases. They can't fix everything, and they can't always fend off death, but something like this?" She raised her arm, and a rivulet of blood trickled down, dripping to the floor. "Something like this is easy for them." Seeing that Tanitha was still looking at her in outright astonishment, she added, "Try, or I'll do it again."

Tanitha grabbed her hand, more to prevent her from reaching for the pen again than anything. "I don't know how," she repeated.

Lithra pursed her lips. "Listen," she said. "The soul and the body are entwined until something happens to the body to untether the soul from its thousands of moorings. Something drastic, if it's not just the ravages of time. But even small injuries cause a certain level of distress, of wrongness , in the connection. You find that place of wrongness using your— your sense for the soul. And then you reach through and soothe it. Put everything back as it should be. All right?"

"All right, " Tanitha said, still appalled at Lithra's infliction of injury on herself. The fact that it was minor damage barely registered. "Just… hold still, all right?"

Ensuring that the pen was out of easy reach with a quick and wary glance, she closed her eyes.

Lithra's mind— her being— was a bright tangle of awareness and thought against the darkness, but despite its brilliance, it was pulsing with pain. Tanitha's eyes flew open to assess the injury once more, wondering if she could have misjudged its severity. But she hadn't— it was a simple wound about midway up Lithra's forearm, just a puncture. She glanced up at Lithra's face. Lithra had looked away, but her expression was set, as if she were restraining emotion. As if she were restraining pain.

"Lithra?" Tanitha asked, tentative. "Are you… are you all right?"

Lithra didn't look at her. "Try," she said, her voice flat. "I know you didn't. I would have felt something if you had."

Unsure, but knowing that she wouldn't get anywhere if she didn't do as Lithra said, Tanitha closed her eyes once more.

Though the whole of Lithra's spirit was tainted with that twisting pain, there was a place in it that was pain of a different sort. More concentrated, dully throbbing. She focused on it, gently nudging it, trying to untangle the snarl of hurt and soothe it to rights. Tanitha wasn't certain how long she sat there— it could have been seconds or half an eternity— but after a time, the red pulse of pain had dulled to the yellow of the pale streaks of new dawn.

Blearily, she opened her eyes. She was listing to one side strangely, and she forced herself to sit up straight. It took her a moment to make sense of being in her own body, and a further several seconds to remember her surroundings. Her lower legs were still resting on the shelf that rimmed the interior of the stone bath, and the sensation of water lapping at her calves suddenly filled her with a bizarre aversion. She pulled her legs out with a shiver, then turned to Lithra.

The wound on Lithra's arm was little more than a dot of pink, slightly ridged skin.

"There," Lithra said, pulling her hand away from Tanitha. "I knew you could do it."

"Well, I didn't," Tanitha said, blinking. Then she remembered the pain she'd felt, the twisting coils of hurt that had been wound through Lithra's entire being.

She took a breath, not sure what to say, then finally settled on a tentative, "Lithra… is something wrong?"

Lithra gave her a skeptical look. "Is something wrong?" she asked, making an encompassing gesture before folding her arms. " Everything is wrong right now."

"I know," Tanitha said, restraining a wince. "But…"

"It's nothing you don't know as well as I do," Lithra said with an air of finality. Tanitha knew her sister well enough to know there was almost certainly more to it than that, but to her own shame, she couldn't bring herself to press further. Perhaps it was simply the fact that Lithra was right; everything was wrong. And their efforts to give Tanitha half a chance of fixing it felt as futile as lighting a candle in a windstorm.

"So," Lithra was continuing, "we know you can heal minor injuries, which means you should be able to fix more serious injuries as well, although you'd have to have physician's training to really understand how to put more complicated things to rights. Illnesses are different; most of them are caused by tiny seeds of disease that have to be rooted out and killed to let the patient's body recover. Traditional medicine works by strengthening the patient enough that their body can do it alone, but soul-speakers can actually use their abilities to kill those seeds, and then sometimes they will also repair some of the damage done to the patient." She pursed her lips. "I don't see how we could practice that, though."

Tanitha looked at her in surprise. "You learned about that being a midwife?"

There was a faint shift in Lithra's expression, a movement away from her determined focus toward a flicker of sadness. She gave a quiet sigh.

"I learned about that eavesdropping on classes held for future physicians," she said.

Tanitha blinked. Lithra had never mentioned that before. Lithra looked down at the ground, one hand toying with the hem of her tunic.

"I used to hope… well, there was a time I thought I might be able to become one," she said. "A physician, I mean. I knew you'd at least once been able to soul-speak, even if I didn't know you still could, and so I thought maybe the gods would bless me with the ability as well. But… well, I'm not a soul-speaker. I probably won't ever be made even into an independent midwife, let alone a general physician." She made a hopeless gesture. "Not that any of it matters right now, obviously."

Tanitha frowned. It was true that soul-speaking was highly sought-after in that field, but the simple fact of the matter was that the ability was too rare for non-practitioners to be turned away on that basis.

"Hardly any physicians are soul-speakers," she countered gently.

Lithra gave a quiet snort. "The ones who start life here as foundlings and don't have wealthy connections are," she said. Tanitha gave a reluctant nod, and Lithra sighed.

"I just… I used to wish for it so badly," she said. "But it felt like such a fragile kind of wish that I couldn't ever make myself speak on it. Even praying for it felt wrong, like I was asking for more blessings when we'd already been given so much and been protected from so much danger and pain."

Tanitha took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. She knew what that felt like, that fear of disrupting the balance of their lives. That fear of reaching for anything better lest they lose what they already had. At least Lithra had been willing to admit to herself what she actually wanted, though. Tanitha had never even allowed herself that much. Although on reflection, she wasn't certain which way brought more pain.

"And then," Lithra said, "I find out that you've had the ability, all these years. It's just… it's not…"

"I didn't know," Tanitha said softly. "Truly, Lithra. I didn't."

Lithra sighed. "I know," she said. "If you had, perhaps you might have known better than to listen to me and soul-bind a prince." Tanitha flinched, and Lithra's grip on her hand tightened suddenly. When Tanitha looked up, to her shock, she saw that Lithra was blinking back tears.

"Tanitha," she said, a quaver in her voice. "I'm just… I'm so sorry. If I hadn't told you to…"

"This isn't your fault," Tanitha said. Lithra didn't look at her. "Lithra, it wasn't. You were just trying to look out for me. It's my choices that led us here. Mine and…" She trailed off. She wasn't prepared to address the other matter, the matter of how much of this truly hadn't been her choice. But she could at least be certain that Lithra bore no true blame.

"You were just trying to be sure I was safe," she said firmly. "And you're still doing that. So let's keep practicing."