47. Canal and matchstick houses

Ada was falling again. The water tugged her down, deeper and deeper, gathering within her cloak until its velvet stuck to her body and bound her limbs. The stream pressed against her eyelids and screamed within her ears. It wanted nothing more than for her lips to part so that it could rush into her mouth, down her throat, and fill her lungs. Down, down, down.

Two hard vices closed around her waist, and then she was huddled forwards, her eyes opening in time to see the water run black. The darkness touched her cheek, and it was rough and frenzied, flickering against her skin in time with the current. She tilted her chin up, and though her eyes began to sting from the salty water, she could make out Raeph's wild hair rippling against her vision.

Raeph kept Ada's chest pressed against his own, their bodies entwined as the stream dragged them down into a basin. Ada's toes flapped helplessly against the current, but before they could find the ground, her feet were swept up past Raeph's shins and the pair was suddenly jerked sideways. She tried to keep her eyes open, but the water was cast murky as they were carried beneath the city's wall.

The last vision of the valley was lost to ebbs of algae that stuck in Ada's hair and crept down her neck. She shuddered and Raeph clasped her tighter, her chest suddenly crushed against his ribs. With fingers feeble against the water, she tried to push him away, and her startled moan sounded low and little. But Raeph kept her trapped, even as she shook her head desperately against his shoulder.

The stream turned them and Ada's sense of direction disappeared. There was no up and down, or left and right, only Raeph. He bowed his head, their hair swirling together, and through its dark webbing, Ada saw that the world had been cleaved into three. The stream heaved them nearer, faster, and Ada realised the water had rather been struck through with a trio of steel bars.

Her mouth opened without Ada willing it to, and she wanted to cry a warning, but her lips were limned with salt before she could utter a sound. The water ran heavy here, hurling their bodies this way and that, desperate to prise them apart. But Raeph's hands were hard on her back, keeping Ada so close that she moved in time with him when he heaved his legs to one side. They tumbled together once, and a panic quicker than the current swept through Ada. But then Raeph was righted, his spine lined up with the bars.

Ada felt Raeph's hand press her head to his collar at the moment steel collided with his back. A jolt ran through them both, slowing their bodies even as they were swept through a space between the bars. A flurry of bubbles erupted from Raeph's mouth, drifting through the water in a soundless shout. Whatever iron still remained in the bars had scalded hot through the cold tides of the stream.

Raeph's grip weakened as the water carried them further, head lolling, but Ada grasped his shoulders despite her dwindling oxygen. Black was seeping past the corners of her vision, shadows dancing through the stream, seething closer and closer. Tears burned away the darkness, but they were torn aside by the tide before they could settle. The shadows were closing in.

Then, a light. So faint it came in strokes of watercolour, not yet fully formed. It shimmered closer, tempting, and the stream tugged Ada towards it. Her hands lost their grip, Raeph's long fingers flitting from between her own, but in a sudden surge, he reached out, linking them together again as the current expelled them both into a quivering body of water. Ada's eyes drifted shut, her lungs giving a final shudder, and the world faltered out.

Raeph and Ada broke the surface of the canal, spluttering and gasping as the water lapped around their necks. Ada's chest felt tight, even though Raeph's arms were no longer banded around her, and her throat was ragged. She couldn't get enough air. Raeph's head kept bobbing below the water, but he kicked himself up, Ada's cloak twining around his hips as they held each other afloat.

When it no longer scorched their insides to breathe, they fumbled towards the embankment, though it was little more than an inch of mud and scum. A wall rose up on either side of the canal, taller than a man standing, and riddled with cracks. Ada felt her clothes dragging her down as she stared at the slick stones, doubting she had the energy to pull herself up. But Raeph sifted a hand through the water, attempting to wave further down the canal.

"Over there," he panted, and pressed his free fingers against the small of Ada's back, not quite breaking contact as they paddled along the embankment.

The canal water was stagnant, dappled here and there with tangled weeds and lacewings. Ada didn't care that they caught in her hair, not when she saw a bridge up ahead, a latched square of wood set on one side and spare planks nailed into the stones on its other. Four of them climbed the wall in a makeshift staircase, secured to the bricks with rusted bolts and sagging with a deep-set rot.

Ada heaved herself up first, and though dragging her cloak up took time, she felt Raeph poised to catch her should she slip. But Ada didn't slip, and when she reached the cobblestones, she collapsed onto her knees, gulping air and thanking the sun for guiding her to steady land.

Raeph did stumble, his boot splintering into one of the mouldered planks, though he managed to haul himself up. He crumpled down next to Ada with his chest to the sky as he gasped, clothes clinging to his skin and wrinkling with each breath. Ada tried not to look at him, remembering the feel of his body against her own as he took the blow of the steel bar. The shaking of their bones.

"Your back..." Ada said, a thank-you lingering at the edge of her mouth.

"It's fine," Raeph abruptly replied, though he didn't move from the cobbles.

Water puddled between them, dripping from their clothes and coiling their hair. It wasn't at all like Ada's arrival from the Wishing Well, where she had been instantly dry and sprawled upon downy leaves. The stones were hard against her skin, though the breeze was soft and silken, dissolving away the fear that had seemed so solid only minutes before.

Sunlight streamed through the street, and then, Ada was laughing, half-mad from terror and astonishment. The city was suddenly bright with absurdity, the past day's events swarming together in her mind and tinted with hysteria. She laughed harder. Raeph shook his head, watching the clouds drift above, but a wicked smile parted his lips, strange upon his face. He looked as delirious as she was to have made it past the Hounds and into Wysthaven.

Their eyes met, and Raeph's were burnished by sunlight. Ada's laughs quieted until only a smile remained, mirroring Raeph, only inches apart. She raised her gaze, suddenly warm beneath her soaked cloak, and her smile slipped away. Raeph must have seen her horror because he finally pushed himself up too and stared out across the canal.

The water had regained its listlessness, its smooth surface reflecting the outer city's line of matchstick houses. They were all black; burnt out structures reduced to sticks, so flimsy in the breeze that they might at any moment topple over into the canal. Thin plumes of smoke still rose from their wreckage, recently relinquished of their flames. Ash claimed the cobbles, carpeting the streets grey and winding through the city towards an awful crackling.

Raeph staggered to his feet, fingers curling into fists as he turned his back on the ruin. When Ada came to his side, she spied new pillars of smoke, more sporadic than in the outer city, but creasing up around Wysthaven's tower like roiling serpents. They stumbled forwards as if in a nightmare, water splattering down from their clothes as they entered the inner city. But Raeph hurried faster as they neared its centre, Ada forgetting her numbing feet as he muttered, "No, no, no."

His fear only became her own when it was right in front of her, flickering up towards the pale sky with an infernal heat. The Bonneville was on fire, windows shattered and door hanging loose on its hinges. The bolts once fastened to their frame lay broken across the doorstep, dusted in cinders. Fresh panic flooded Ada's system as she stared through the entrance, wanting to cry out for the bandits, but unable to gasp a single word. Through the flames, she thought she saw a beam with painted stars slump onto the floorboards in a trail of sparks. Celestial embers and burning wishes.

"Do you have anything in there?" Raeph's voice crackled louder than the fire.

At first, Ada couldn't make sense of his words, but they pieced together as a bookcase fell apart near the doorway. She shook her head.

"No, nothing at all." Then paused when she heard the groaning of burning boards from above. "But Solen, and Lark, and Armes—"

Ada broke off when Raeph peeled a sodden stretch of wool from his collar. It was the black mask he had worn within the Wystwood when they had first met, though now it clung to the hollows of his cheekbones and wept water down his neck.

"Stay clear of the windows," Raeph said, and then leapt into the collapsing pub.