13: A Risk I Have To Take

Gaxna is militant about training the next morning. “Faster!” she barks as I uncoil the thief’s rope from my waist. “Higher! Harder!”

My arms ache after just an hour practicing on the wide roof above the hideout. I don’t know if it’s the burglary or the witches yesterday, but something has my friend determined to wear me out.

I strike back the only way I know how: by training her just as hard. “Breath,” I shout back, coiling the rope with a snaking motion.

She hesitates. “In!”

“Too long!”

Gaxna starts running. “Rope me!”

I change the end and snap the rope at her. It catches her waist, coils a couple times rapidly, and I jerk, bringing her down. “Breath!”

“Out!”

“Emotion?” I start hauling in the rope.

“Giii—calm!”

“Fishslop,” I call, rolling off. “You’re frustrated. Ice it!”

She grimaces, then points at one of the bottles on the wall. “Hook it!”

So it goes for hours. It’s insane. It’s exhausting. And it’s almost kind of fun. I can at least tell that Gaxna’s working something out with it, maybe thawing her fear from yesterday, and I’m a lot better at thief’s rope by the time we finally take a break.

“You’re getting better,” Gaxna pants, flopping next to me in the shade of a rooftop lean-to. I massage my left arm where the muscles are starting to burn. The breeze from the ocean plus the shade of the lean-to is delicious.

“I’ve been thinking about yesterday,” Gaxna says. “About the break-in.”

“And the witches?” I know she didn’t tell me the whole story yesterday.

“About what you said, whether it was them or not? I decided it doesn’t matter. Someone’s figured me out. Or you out.”

I take the water skin from her. “Could be that runaway that stayed with us a few nights back. Maliel? Maybe she went back and ratted us out.”

“No. It wasn’t her. I—” She pauses, and I can see her practicing the breathing, trying to ice whatever’s bothering her. “The witches. They can track me.”

“What? How?”

“They have my blood, so they can feel me or whatever. Kind of like you do through the water.”

I shake my head. “How did they get it?”

She shrugs. “Not like it’s unusual. They probably got it at birth, along with my mom’s. That’s why the witches are everywhere, offering to midwife for free. And why some people try to hide it, when their time comes. Because whoever’s there gets your blood and your kid’s.”

“So they can sense you after that.” Floods. That must mean— “So pretty much the whole city is under their control?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“And a lot of the peninsula, too. How do you think they got that mob to chase you so fast? Doesn’t matter what the monks think up in the temple, it’s the witches who rule the city. The overseers have to touch you to read your thoughts, but the witches are watching all the time. Waiting to take control of you when they want to.”

“And they… can control you, too?”

Gaxna again takes a minute to breathe, icing something inside. “Yes. Not all of them can do it, and I don’t know if the lady who helped my mom could or not, but they—they got more blood, later. And whoever got that blood can definitely do it.”

“But that’s good, right? That means if they wanted you, or wanted you dead or something, they would just do it. They don’t need to search your house for something, they can just force you to walk over to them and tell them your secrets.”

“Well, they can’t force you to say something you don’t want to. They can’t really make people talk at all. But yeah, if they wanted to see me, they could just march me all the way to their guildhall.”

“So what’s the big deal, then? It probably wasn’t even the witches at all, if they can make you do what they want.”

Gaxna sighs. “That’s not how they do things. They know if they use their power too much, the city will rise against them. And they still need to recruit from the girls. So they do things like this, let you know that they’re watching you, that they want you to come in or whatever.”

“They want you to come in?”

She nods, morose. “That’s what the paper meant. You’re supposed to bring it to them.”

“Uje.” I think it through a minute, watching two seagulls wheel in the sky. “You know, there might be a way to keep them out of your head.”

“What?” She sits up straight. “How?”

“Well, it’s just a theory. Something I’ve been thinking about. I’m a girl, right? But I can use male magic. And you’re starting to get good at icing emotions, which shows probably lots of people can use watersight powers, not just men. My dad knew that—I think I was the first step in him opening the temple to women. But what if it’s more than that? What if the powers aren’t actually that different? Watersight lets you read thoughts, and the theracants can read feelings. On our side we’ve got the blind, to keep others from reading our thoughts. So what if that worked for bloodsight too, to keep them from reading your feelings?”

Gaxna stares at me. “And you’re saying if it did, they probably couldn’t see where I am either.”

“Exactly. It’s just a theory, but—”

“Let’s do it. Now. Show me.”

I show her the steps. It all builds on the breath anyway, though it’ll be some time before her concentration is strong enough to really pull it off.

“Flooding hells,” she says, after she loses focus again. “How do you do this?”

“I had my whole life to learn it,” I say. “You’ve been working on it what, a week now?”

“Still.” I can see she’s frustrated even without watersight. For someone who spends her whole life in disguise, it has to kill her that the witches can see right through it.

“It’s going to take time,” I say, as gently as I can. “No matter how much you practice. So in the meantime, are you going to go in?”

“Hell no. Floods no.”

“But they could come for us here just as easily.”

“Exactly.” She bites her lip. “Which is why we need to leave. Go someplace safe.”

“Gaxna, I can’t.”

“They’ll kill you too, or take you, take your blood.” She takes my hand. “And you’ve got the overseers on top of that. What good are you dead?”

“Nothing. I’m no good dead. But it’s a risk I have to take. This is where my dad was murdered. This is where the temple is. My home. If I’m going to find out the truth, if I’m going to do anything about it, it’s here. Besides, what would I do out there?” I look out over the bay, Uje’s Fist sticking like a bleached white skeleton from the waters. “I’m a seer. I’ve always wanted to be a seer, to share my gift with people. Like I’m doing with you—teach them to see deeper, get control of their emotions. Out there?” I shrug. “I’m just another person.”

“Out there you survive. You can come back later, do this when no one’s expecting. When I’ve got the blind down. And in the meantime, we do whatever we have to. Whatever we want to!”

There’s a light in her eyes I haven’t seen before, hopeful and pleading and something more. I wish I could read her through our hands, but I promised not to and I’m honoring that. Still, I feel a warm buzz coming from her touch. It’s intoxicating, but it doesn’t change the truth.

I shake my head. “The longer I wait, the harder it will be to find the truth, and the more secure the traditionalists will get. If you have to go, I get it. But this is where I need to be.”

She looks away, then takes a deep breath and sets her shoulders. “Okay. Then there’s someone we need to talk to.”