24. Thief in the Night
24
Thief in the Night
Safira Chastain
T he libraries of Barixeor Spire were enormous, and that was only the main location where books were kept. As in my suite, there were a great deal of books kept elsewhere—mostly of significantly less value than those stored on the timeless floors of the library. All of them were documented, though, and there were big books dedicated to their enumeration.
The assistant proved to be a complicated machine, one as much clockwork as magic, that could skim through books for phrases and return whether they'd been found or not. Once she'd shown me how to use it, and extracted a promise from me to reshelve my books, Leyweaver left me to it, returning to her own researches.
I didn't waste the opportunity.
I dedicated myself to hunting down every reference to water-horses in the library, looking for anything about consorts, brides, or wives. Even thinking about the words made my palms sweat, and I had to keep drying them on my pants so I could handle the books. I hadn't imagined the pain that could follow something so simple as a wedding ceremony, but the ring on my finger had been a worse imprisonment than any shackle could have offered.
The inscription within it had been written in Common. It read, "my sapphire—I'll never let you go."
I'd thrown it into the mill-pond, even though I knew the wizard would only fetch it back again. He'd want to put it back on my finger, smiling the whole time, his eyes hard with the promise of what would happen if I ever took it off again—
I turned back to my task, shoving my past away. I needed to know—had to find out. I couldn't be trapped like that, ever again.
I found what I was looking for after two days of searching. There were a great deal of books in the Spire, after all, and I had to sleep sometimes. It lived in a fat, leather-bound book named Elemental Mortality, a collection of various stories and interviews about people who had interacted with elementals. There was an entire section on water-horses, story after story of people drowned, people rescued, and bargains struck. And there, tucked in with a set of folk-tales about women becoming naiads to join their lovers below the waves, was an interview with the sister of a woman stolen by one.
They'd been friends, and then lovers. Everyone had warned her not to trust him, but she'd gone back, again and again. And then, one day, she'd gone into the water and hadn't come out, and no one had dared try to go after her.
I wrapped my arms around myself, looking at the book and thinking about the ring, which I'd shoved deep into a desk, out of sight. Celyn wanted to keep me. That much was obvious. Here, right in front of me, was the story of a woman who could have been me, trusting a creature who wasn't human and who didn't think like a human. She'd died for it, her bones moldering beneath the waves of the thing that had been her lover.
How long did he keep her alive? I wondered with sick fascination. How long was she alive down there, praying for someone to come, begging the gods for escape?
Celyn had asked me to be his consort, and he'd let me go. But he had to believe that I would say yes—that I would take another step towards trusting him, like I always had before. What would happen if I said no? Or if I didn't say anything at all?
He'll keep me anyway , I thought, imagining it, my gut twisting. The water all around me, once so comforting, now my condemnation, everything changed into a prison when I wasn't looking. I knew what that was like to wake up one day in bed with someone you'd been sure you'd known, who you'd sworn to love forever, and who'd turned out to be someone entirely different. I remembered how walls with familiar paintings could make you want to claw at them until your fingers bled, and how the ring that had once meant a bright future could become a slave-brand.
He would have to, wouldn't he? If he wanted me that much, that's what he'd have to do, because I was too afraid of the wolves to be caught again. He'd named me a doe, and I was, a creature always on alert—always ready to leap away from the crack of a branch underfoot.
It was after the dinner hour already, and Celyn could wait another day... but I couldn't. The lake beckoned through the window, ice riming his shores, and I couldn't bear knowing that he was sitting there, smugly assured of his conquest. I was more than the stupid girl who'd accepted a wizard's suit, certain that this was the gods' gift to me after all they'd taken from me. I could stand on my own two feet. I could say no.
I marched out of the Spire dressed for war, wearing my coat like armor and cracking the ice beneath my heavy boots. I walked right up to the shore and I pulled out the flat rock I'd used to call him so many times and I hurled it at the lake, wanting to scream.
Celyn rose from the lake like a god, catching the stone before it even struck his surface. He stepped up onto the waves, smiling at me in the moonlight, and came for me.
My heart quailed at the sight of him, naked and glorious in the cold of the night. What was I thinking? He was a water-horse, Tsirisma Lake , and I was still that stupid little girl, so assured of her place in the world that I would dare to defy someone like him.
"I'm not coming with you," I blurted out before he reached me.
He stopped, looking as stunned as if I'd struck him across the face.
There, you see? I told myself, seeing the proof of my fears. He never intended it to be a choice.
"Why?" he said, his voice catching on the word.
"I know all about you!" Tears started falling unbidden, hot, stupid lines tracking down my face. I stalked forward, my fingernails digging into my palms and the accusations on my tongue. "You're a water-horse! All you do is steal people. You just want to steal me , keep me like that ring, like I'm some sort of—of toy!" A sob ached in my throat, my broken heart clawing at my insides as if I'd swallowed broken glass. "Well, you can't have me. I'm not going with you. I should never have touched you!"
Every word hit home. I saw them find homes, his shoulders hunching and pain crawling across his face—and then I watched anger overtake pain. Celyn's shoulders went back, his teeth and fists clenching as his brows came together. A storm settled over a man from whom I'd never received so much as a harsh word, and sudden terror seized me.
What if I was wrong—
My body froze. My breathing stopped.
I was standing on the lake, I realized. I'd walked out onto him, not paying attention to the edge of the water, and I'd put myself into his power.
"Steal you?" he said, his voice like silk. Celyn walked across his waves, sure-footed, his eyes not leaving mine. " Steal you?" He reached out, touching his fingers to my cheek, his face twisted with rage. "You touched me first, Safira. You came to me. " The water-horse leaned down, his hot breath fanning against my face. "I will show you what it means to touch a water-horse."
He released his hold on my lungs as sparks began to dance in front of my eyes, and I gasped for air, starting to sob. He was letting me go. He was—
My hand touched the flank of a horse, reaching out without my volition. Celyn knelt, and I got on his back, every movement choreographed. Horror battered at me. I couldn't even scream as he commanded my body. Even the wizard had never done this to me. He'd wanted me broken and obedient, but I'd still been able to move, to scream —
My hands fisted in his mane. My legs tightened against his side. He rose, turning towards where we'd chased swans, and then he leaped forward, his hooves flashing across the lake in a parody of our joy.
Tears blinded me as he ran, faster even than he'd run with me before. Wind tore at me, his mane whipping at my face where I leaned forward against him. Celyn showed no mercy, taking me through the dense woods at a punishing pace. The branches of firs lashed at me, ripping my clothing and striking me with bruising force. He ran, and ran, and ran, until my body screamed with pain, my fingers numb and the tears frozen on my face, and then he broke into the open and plunged into his lake.
The screams he'd choked off in my throat tore free as he dragged me into the depths, swallowed by the water. His hand closed around my wrist, as cold as ice and solid as steel, my whole body locking in place as he did. I couldn't move and I couldn't die, held there by the implacable will of the lake himself.
"I would have given you everything I am," he snarled to me, his face an agonized mask and his eyes blazing in the darkness. "All you ever had to do was ask. I have never stolen anything from you. I only ever took what you gave me." Celyn leaned closer, his face inches from mine. "This is what it would be like, Safira. You will know it if I choose to steal you."
I didn't try to say anything. There was no argument that could convince him. He had me, and he could do anything he wanted to me.
With even my tears taken from me, I closed my eyes and waited for him to kill me.
Celyn's touch vanished. I felt it as he flung himself away from me, but when I opened my eyes he was gone. I hung there, waiting for the next blow, then shook free of the terror. I kicked for the surface, clawing for it against the weight of my sodden clothing, and then suddenly it was there—and then there was ground beneath my feet, and I staggered up out of the lake, sobbing and gasping for breath.
My wrist ached where he'd held me, and lines of fire marked my arms and thighs where I'd been whipped by pine branches. But I was in the air, free — Why would he let me go? Why? Why? Why—
I half-ran, half tripped up the slope towards Barixeor, and an answer came to me. There was a sorcerer in the Spire, someone more powerful than even him. Maybe he'd thought better of it, realized that she'd come after me. Leyweaver had told me once that she'd protect me, and maybe she'd told him, too. Maybe he'd remembered.