witch of wealth and ruin

Chapter One

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Saltwater slaps the side of the Mother’s Blessing, sea wind sharp and heavy with an approaching storm. I lean from the railing, letting it take the hair that’s grown to finger length, gazing at the port city of Tenieray. I long to be out there, walking the city’s winding streets and tasting its fiery foods. I remember talking about it with Gaxna, some sweltering Serei night while we shared a cloveleaf on the roof and gazed at the lights of Bamani across the strait. She was sure the markets would be easier to work, and kept going on about how many bricks of smoketea she was going to steal. I just loved the idea of being alone together.

I smile, remembering. Her calloused fingers had been twined with mine, and I felt a peace down in my bones, deeper than meditation had ever gone. I wondered then if I shouldn’t just leave my father and the floods and everything behind, and run away with her.

It’s a bitter thought now. I knowingly putting her in danger instead, and now she’s locked in the pits and I can’t even leave this ship because overseers are asking for me in every port along the Bamani coast. If they find me, everything I’m trying to do will get so much harder. If I even survive it.

My knuckles go white on the rail. When I hired on four weeks ago, I’d been planning to gather allies and make a plan, then go back and get Gaxna free. All I’ve actually done is run from Nerimes and his overseers.

“You were right,” I murmur to the wind, imagining Gaxna there with me, leaning against the rail in her loose culottes. “We should have just taken off.” Her one eye scrunches into a smirk. “Hey. You don’t have to get cheeky about it.”

There is no answer, just me and my thoughts and the wind on the waves. I exhale, deck rolling under me, seeking the clarity that used to come so easily. That clear stream state of mind and body I trained for in the temple, that might give me some perspective on what to do.

It doesn’t come. Instead, my mind churns like the harbor’s silty water. I hate this. Hate not being in control of myself. But even more so, I hate that I don’t have a plan, that Gaxna is locked up and the world is going to end and I’m too busy running to do anything about it.

Spray flies as a wave slams into the bow, and I jerk my hands back. My ancestors are in that water, living on in the embrace of the ocean, but facing them means facing my own failure. I’ve started avoiding the saltwater and the brief flashes of connection it gives. It’s still too painful.

The water drops and I lean out again, searching for that inner calm. The city calls to me across the dark harbor, the dockhands and teahouses that could give me news on what’s happening in Serei. As long as I’m stuck on board I have no way to gather information other than what my shipmates tell me, and I have to be careful not to tip them off to who I am.

The wind gusts and I crack my neck in two hands. Maybe I’m doing this all wrong. Maybe I should go in there and attack whatever overseers I find, and force the information out of them, or die trying. Do something. But if I’m going to do that I might as well sail back to Serei and fight Nerimes head-on, even though I know it would be suicide. It would feel better than this.

Another breaker rolls in, and I’m too caught in my thoughts to pull back in time. Ocean water slops over my hand, bringing a ghost image of Regiana and an echo of her voice: We can help.

My heart seizes. Not because of the reprimand in her tone, or even the guilt that wells up at this wise woman dead because of me, but from the shock of connection. I grew up in the temple’s waters, used to constant communion with the people around me, even if most of them hated me for who I was. After I left, I had Gaxna. Staying dry has felt so… lonely.

The image fades with the water sloughing off my fingers, but something of it sticks to me. We can help. I feel the waters churn anew in my belly, frustration and guilt and now loneliness, pushing against my resistance to entering the sea. My resistance to involving these people again, whom I already failed once.

But between that and spending another month swabbing decks, feeling frustrated and helpless? Maybe it’s time to face my mistakes.

I climb onto the deck’s swaying rail, feeling no less desperate than the last time I leapt into an immersion unprepared, when Nerimes was about to kill me.
I jump. The storm wind rushes past me, replaced as I hit by the peace of the warm silty water and the harbor’s steady current. It draws me down, deeper, my watersight already sensing the presence of others here.

“You’ve been avoiding us,” a voice comes from behind me. I turn to see Regiana, former head of the Theracant’s Guild, white hair floating around her in a pale cloud. Dead, because of me.

“Don’t be a fool,” she snaps. “I’m dead because that hookworm Miyara fooled all of us, and turned the girls against me. Besides, I knew the risks going in. Don’t try to take that from me.”

I clear my throat, though it comes out very strange underwater. I know she’s right, but knowing doesn’t change how it feels. “You said you could help me?”
“A little clarity would help you,” a second voice says, though Regiana’s mouth moves in time to the words. Urte swims up from the other side, and my heart swells at the sight of his bluff, worn face. Till I remember I got him killed, too.

“I know,” I say, sea salty on my tongue. “I—it’s been hard.”

“Every seer will suffer, if they keep themselves away after an immersion. The ocean is in your blood now, Aletheia. You cannot keep it out.”  

“As you cannot keep us out,” my father says, rising from the depths between Urte and Regiana. “We are your ancestors, Aletheia, blood and spirit. The voice of Uje until you join us down here.”

It has only been four weeks, and already he sounds less like my dad, the stern and distant man fading into something older and deeper. The universal voice behind all of them. That makes it a little easier, even if I feel my second chance to know him, here in his afterlife, slipping away too.

“I won’t keep you out,” I say, and I mean it. Hard as it is to face them, this is also the most alive I’ve felt since I left Gaxna’s side. “I promise. And I’m still planning to do something about the flood, I just—”

“You have your lover to save first,” my mother mouths, though the voice comes from all around me. “That is good. Duty alone cannot drive you enough to do what needs to be done.”

“But that’s the problem. I don’t even know where to start. Even with your help,” I look at Regiana and Urte, though there is a siltiness to them now, “we couldn’t do it. Now I can’t even gather information without risking my life, and our whole mission with it.”

“Information is something we have,” their voices say. “More lives come to us every day, and they bring news of the world. Of growing oppression in Serei, by Nerimes and Miyara. Some of those who join us have been killed to ensure their silence.”

“And Gaxna?” I ask. I know she is only one person, but I cannot keep the question from my lips.

“Some of those dead have seen her, locked in the temple,” the voices say. “That is all we know. If she were dead, you would feel it in your blood.”
I nod, wanting to feel reassured but feeling that old weight settling on my shoulders again. It’s good to see them, but this is not information I can use. Not allies I can take with me when I storm into Serei to bring them all down. Or even a clue on where to start with stopping the coming flood.

“Start with the chronicles,” they say, fading backward in the water. “They hold all the keys you need to find the truth. Study them.”

“Wait!” I call. “How do I get them? Who can help me? You must know something else!” In desperation I push my thoughts out at their retreating figures.

My father struggles back, the features of his face drawing clearer, though it seems to cost him something. “There is one memory, I have. Of my papers. I had a copy made—near the end. My notes on the chronicles. They hold—something.” He grimaces. “I cannot remember it now. Everything is growing hazy. But there is a woman—”

He breaks off, head turning toward the shore. I feel it too: a new mind in the water. All its thoughts are hidden behind a waterblind, which can only mean one thing.

Overseer. He must have been listening on the shore. Floods.

I brace myself for a fight, but feel a push back from the ancestors.

“Remember our principles,” they say, outlines just visible in the shifting green light. My father is among them again. “He is not your enemy. You did well, that last day in Serei, to battle the hearts rather than bodies of your foes. In this way will you make allies.”

Right. I also have a much better chance of winning if it doesn’t come to real blows.

Brother, I think, pulling my blind down and pushing my thoughts into the water. I pray you do not come to me with ill intent.

His blind is as solid as mine, but the lack of answer is answer enough. The shadow of his form appears above me, swimming along the surface. I kick deeper, hoping he won’t see me.

You were there the day Nerimes tried to kill me, I go on. The blade in his hand catches the sunlight as he pauses directly overhead. Or you heard of what happened there. My cause is just. Please.

I replay memories of the evidence I found against Nerimes, not shying from the conversations I had with the theracants. The proofs I uncovered are damning, no matter what you think of the female order of Ujeism.

He drops his blind just for a moment, long enough to say, I have my orders. Please come peacefully. He dives down, blade clenched in his teeth.
Your orders come from a usurper, I send back, swimming further down, my breath still held somehow in the immersion’s spell. My feet brush sand. I cannot honor them. Please. Consider the recent deaths in the temple. The ancestors themselves have told me Nerimes is behind them.

I replay the conversation I just had, focusing on the news they shared. Uje, let this convince him. I am half his size, and my concentration a shambles.  

He slows in his descent. That—cannot be.

I take it as a hopeful sign that he leaves his blind down. The thoughts behind it swirl, confused. In them I read the confirmation of his own hunch that something has been wrong with Nerimes from the start.

The immersion ancestors would not lie. They are the voice of Uje. You know this, brother. Surely you can feel them. They watch us even now.

The thoughts swirl another moment in his mind, then coalesce in a decision, though I see the pain it causes him. I… will need to meditate on this. Please excuse me, sister.

Wait, I call, reaching out a hand though I don’t know if he can see me down this far. What news of Serei, before you go? What has the usurper told our foreign agents about me, and what were his orders?

He pauses, but instead of the answer coming in his thoughts, or at least in the flitting schools of notion and memory I read in his unblinded mind, there is only… blankness.

My stomach clenches. I know that blankness. I read it before, in a man named Arayim. And in another overseer, who tried to killed me. It is the blankness of a bloodpush. Which means a theracant is in control of his body now. Miyara, or one of her allies.

So much for winning without a fight.

The shadow above me kicks downward. I swim toward a low forest of kelp on the far side of the ship’s hull. I try not to think about my last battle against a bloodpushed overseer. I lost it.

He swims after, frighteningly fast, blade clenched in his teeth. I push into the waving stands of kelp, keeping low, hoping to lose him, but a hand closes on my ankle.

The complete absence of consciousness I read through it is awful. I kick out with my other foot on instinct, and feel something snap under my heel, the sound amplified through the water.

His nose. Good. The hand jerks open and I wriggle away, deeper into the kelp bed. If this were the Blackwater, goatfish would already be on him, drawn by the scent of blood, but I don’t know what predators swim these waters, and I can’t rely on them.

He catches me again, grip solid as a vice on my calf, and my kick bounces off a muscled shoulder. A second hand grabs that thigh, pulling me in, then the first one lets go to grab his knife. I buck like a caged otter, but the angle is too awkward to do more than strike glancing blows, so I curl in and grab for the knife.

The shifting sunlight shows nothing to grab but the blade, flashing down toward me. I twist out of the way instead, searching desperately for a solution—a lesser-used stance or something my water ancestors could do, but nothing comes to me. He stabs again, and this time I manage to at least catch his wrist in my two hands, then twist it into a version of Coral Bind.

It’s awkward, but his arm still comes close enough to breaking that he drops the knife. It slips down into the murk of the kelp bed and I relax a little. No getting that back, and killing me will be a lot harder down here without that. Aside from the risk of drowning, it’s actually hard to throw a punch or get leverage underwater.

He seizes my neck in Kraken’s Embrace and though my blood pounds I do not feel the usual panic of constricted airflow—I guess the immersion is still handling my need to breathe.

I grin, despite the overseer trying to choke the life out of me. He does not have the same advantage, as a bloodborn. Which means all I have to do is stay down here long enough, and he’ll have to go up for air. Then I escape.

I try Feather Shifts the River’s Course, but his hold is like iron. Still, his lungs hitch where his body is pressed against mine. How long have we been under already, a minute? Two minutes?

He must realize the danger, or whoever is controlling him, because his arms loosen suddenly. Only instead of kicking for the surface he tries Gut the Fish, a paralyzing move forbidden in the temple, to be used only in desperation. Only the resistance of the water saves me from a broken spine.

I use the momentum to kick away, neck screaming, sure he will give up now.

He follows, body arrowing through the water despite his purpling face, and seizes my leg in two hands.

I know the move: Thunder’s Echo, the second stance in the first-year form, simple but all the more effective for it. I have to stop and spin to keep his twist from shattering my leg. He pulls me closer as I do, wide eyes shot with red in the water’s hazy light. His chest bucks now, his arms jerking even as he tries a second Thunder’s Echo, this one guaranteed to dislocate my hip--

Then his mouth jerks open, sucking in water, and his movements go erratic as the life leaves his eyes.

I stare, fear for my own safety fading at the horror of what Miyara just did. She killed him on the off chance he could take me out down here, instead of sending him up for a gulp of air. She is an awful woman.  

My own lungs start to burn, but I don’t want to leave him down here. He could have been an ally, if Miyara hadn’t taken his blood. I pull him behind me, a dead weight as I kick for the surface.

On the way, I remember what my father had started to say, before we heard the overseer. Push my mind out into the water, though my burning lungs surely mean the vision is over. I don’t know if I can bring it back.

Father, I call. Or Urte, anyone. Uje. You were going to say something, about a woman, and a copy of your notes on the immersion chronicles. I need to know what that was. Anything you can tell me. Please.

Silence, as the shimmering surface approaches, then just the echo of a thought, in my father’s voice: Hiana. Hiana Caghdan. An ally. You will find her—in Dahran. She has my chronicles.