Page 66 of Witchshadow
She and the prisoners were trapped. Rain fell against her face while she treaded water. Clean and new and surprising—she hadn’t noticed the storm clouds rolling in.
The sea fox below Stix was readying for an attack: diving low where it could then build momentum toward the surface. Even if Stix could build an ice wall between her and the monster, such raw animal power would ultimately win. These creatures were too huge, too ancient to be contained, even by the Water Brawler.
So of coursethatwas the moment the voices decided to come. So sudden, so clear, Stix didn’t have time to be surprised. They simply sang,No whistling when a storm’s in sight. No whistling when a storm’s in sight, and the water and the Ring burst away.
“I can stand by no longer,” Stix says. “The people can stand by no longer. We have to end the Exalted Ones’ reign.” She pins her eyes on Eridysi, as does everyone else in the room. Bastien, Midne, Rhian, Saria, and the Rook King’s damnable bird.
Eridysi, a willowy woman with pale hair and paler skin who spends more time lost in her head than she does speaking or even acknowledging that the Six are in her workshop, curls in on herself. “I am working as fast as I can.”
Stix believes her; her workshop, never tidy on a good day, has descended into utter chaos with heaps of paper or books or, lately, dusty stones.
“Work faster,” Bastien growls, and Stix cuts him a sharp look. He only glares in return from behind his mask. He is the least patient of all of the Six and has been urging Eridysi to hurry for weeks now.
“What is it you lack?” Saria asks in her quiet, still way. She is becoming more distant each day, more statue than human. Stix understands. She herself has become more and more mercurial like the tides. It is the only way to endure what the Exalted Ones make each of them be: to sink more deeply into the magic Sirmaya gave them.
“There is nothing you can do,” Dysi says. “I must solve this myself.” She shuffles her gold-backed cards absently. “I will solve this myself. When next you come, I will have an answer. I swear on the Sleeping Giant.” Her silver eyes meet Stix’s, then each of the other Six in turn. Even the Rook, who squawks and ruffles his feathers.
“Good,” Stix says, lifting a warning hand at Bastien. He has become as harsh as the cyclones on the Windswept Plains, and Stix finds him harder and harder to manage. He loves her just as she loves him, but love is not a cure for what he has endured from the Exalted One called Lovats. Nor is revenge a cure, though Bastien won’t listen when she tells him that.
“We will leave first,” she tells the Six and Eridysi. “And we will see you in a sevenday.” Then she hooks her arm in Bastien’s and tows him toward the door.
A familiar orange tabby follows.
Like yesterday’s fight with the hawk, when the waves and the Ring and the barrage of the crowd punctured into Stix again, almost no time had passed. The sea foxes were coming for her; it was time to move.
Or time to whistle as the voices so clearly wanted her to do. Stix wet her lips, licking away salt and mud. Then she exhaled a weak burble of air while her heart thumped and her magic held the prisoners afloat.
The sea fox was still charging up from the depths. The crowd was now chanting—some had even started to boo. Why wasn’t the Water Brawler moving, they wanted to know? Why wasn’t she fighting back?“Ditch the bodies! Toss’em down!”
Stix whistled again. Long. Clear. And loud enough for the crowd to notice.
They silenced instantly, and Stix had no doubt that if she could see their faces instead of just blurred streaks of skin, she would find a thousand wide eyes. A thousand horrified frowns. Superstition ran deep here, and Lady Baile’s poem was not to be crossed.
Stix whistled a third time, and it was the only sound to fill the Slaughter Ring. It carried over the rain, over lapping waves, and over the sea foxes still racing this way. But just as the crowds had heard the whistles, the sea foxes had heard them too—the one between Stix and the exit paused. Its face, silver-furred and sentient, eased into calm interest like a dog awaiting a command.
One of its massive eyes was damaged and milky.
Stix whistled one last time, and the fox listened. It dove beneath themurky water toward the other sea foxes, to intercept, to fight, to stop because the whistle had commanded and it lived to obey. Stix used the moment to kick her magic forward again in a gentle current that propelled her and the prisoners toward the other stall. She was tired; she needed to conserve her energy just in case the fox changed its mind.
No, notitsmind, buthermind. Like with the orange tabby, Stix just knew.
She reached the wooden box with ease. And with silence, for the audience still did not speak. Did not even seem to breathe.
It was not until she reached the wooden exit, her waves lifting her up so she could grab at the latch, that someone finally reacted. It was a single voice, throaty and amused. “Well done, Water Brawler,” Kahina called. “I knew you had it in you.”
Stix had always considered herself cool-tempered. The higher the pressure, the better she kept her head. She had been through brawls and battles and now Ring fights to prove it. Captain Stacia Sotar did not get stressed, she did not get angry.
Right now though, as she stalked out of the wooden stall into the Ring’s winding limestone halls, as water shed off her in great, slapping drops, Stix was a riptide of rage. When Ryber offered her the spectacles, she yanked them too hard; the metal warped; she didn’t care and shoved them on anyway. When Ryber fell into step beside Stix, asking if she needed healing, Stix only grunted and glared.
She reached the highest scaffolding in a blur of fury that thrummed in her blood, sparkling like her magic at its strongest. She only had to snarl once at the guards, and they got out of her way. Ryber, however, had to wait behind again. Which was perhaps for the best, Stix thought vaguely, since she was on the cusp of violence.
She found Kahina’s deck unchanged, though a six-fingered gray cat slept in a ball upon a pile of cushions near the door. The rain had already stopped, leaving a wind-stalled heat thick with swamp stink. The Admiral leaned against her balustrade, scanning the Ring with a gold spyglass speckled in red gemstones.
“You killed that prisoner,” Stix said to Kahina’s back.
“Did I?” Kahina’s drawl oozed over the wooden space. “Or did you kill them because you were too slow?”
Stix’s lips curled back. “Youset up the fight today, so it isyoursoul that bears the weight of that death.”
