Ninety Days of Water

Next, I suppose I ought to tell you how I met her. She spoke the way the sea sounded, and her name, which I would later learn was Vaghiiss, mimicked the hissing of white-water down a gully.

The sea was breathing quietly on the morning in question, gurgling in her sleep and splashing idly through the gaps and chasms in the headland. She was slumbering finally, I thought, after having spent all night in restless churning, tossing herself at the packed sand with lustful moans.

Like a scavenger, I picked a path down the jagged rocks from the base of Lightshale Tower to the beach. The yellow beacons that were the structure’s other namesake formed a crown around its top which served as a lighthouse. Normally, they would have been extinguished by sunrise, but on that morning the fog was as persistent as I was. I passed swirling waters that might have been crystal-clear on any other day, with seashells winking like alluvial gold and barbed snails lurking among them like assassins.

I wasn’t going anywhere, really- just out.

Another renegade like me really had arrived at the Tower overnight, and was by all accounts living. The rumours had swirled around the Tower like a second wind. I wondered who it was, and why he had pushed a boat out into the storm. Had he been trying to flee, or to die? Had the tides perhaps brought him back? All I knew about him was that he, like me, had objected to the Table of Eight’s proposal, and had been promptly cut loose from Blackmouth’s ranks like infected flesh. He made the same mistake I had, refusing to learn from my example. Naturally, the Academy did not show mercy or reason. It persevered with its time-honoured method of treating dissent- cutting and sloughing until whole limbs were maimed.

In my view, the Academies ought not to have feared their members’ politics to begin with. Traditionally, they were independent of the Emperor and the Table. Sorcerers manageed their own affairs, assisting the Imperium only when it suited them. We were neither strict subjects, nor a threat. It was improper, therefore, for Blackmouth to bend its students to political ways of thinking, and to distract them from their primary tasks, which transcend the plight of the powerful. It was cowardly to submit to the Table, to crawl, beg and ingratiate- to undermine any leverage we had once had in bargaining. It threatened our exclusive right to our talents.

Ah, but I digress.

Contrary to what might seem natural, I was not inclined to meet this new addition to Lightshale. I was not in want of a confident, and I further had no need of an associate who could reinforce my views. I only wanted to maintain a low profile, and to avoid ridicule, as far as that was possible.

I wanted to be left alone.

I stumbled aimlessly along the shore, appearing to all the world like a scavenger searching for the discards of fishermen. The grey weather suited my mood, and I welcomed its abrasion. It drove me closer to the sea, where I knew that all the sunken things were immune to the biting wind. Part of me was jealous of them. How simple it would be! I thought. To be a thoughtless mollusk, and have no concerns more complex than the caress of the tide!

On my walk, I found tidal pools set like jewels in the cool, black rock. They were like windows to another world, crammed with sea life. There were tiny starfish and crushed shells like bleached fragments of bone. There were bright blue and purple barnacles like miniature volcanoes, no larger than a thumbnail. The wider pools became like shelves as the rocks stepped closer to the ocean. There, soft carpets of weeds waved, barely kissing the glass ceilings of their containers.

Tucked into the shale, these bunks lay just above reach of the frothing at low tide, and were surrounded by slits that breathed stale moisture, which were in turn home to millions of invisible crabs. At high tide, the sea would surge over and bury them in nourishing currents, but presently, the clusters of mussels, tendriled anemones and chains of weed were part of a self-contained ecosystem.

Experimentally, I prodded the contents of one of the shallower pools, and found my arm submerged up to the elbow. The ice-cold water just reached the hem of my sleeve, which was too voluminous to be effectively rolled up. The black handprint, less a tattoo than a scar on my forearm, waved up at me from underwater. I combed the bottom with my fingers, and disturbed a spiky, orange crab. It scuttled beneath my fingertips, forsaking the cover of one patch of weeds for another.

I recall thinking the rock pool like a little escape hatch, or a porthole in a brassy, modern submarine. I stared into it for so long that I became oblivious to my wider surroundings. I was surprised, therefore, when a shadow blotted my view that couldn’t have been a cloud blocking the sun.

‘Who are you?’

I snatched my arm out of the water, so that my sleeve fell back down over my dripping skin. Nearly tripping on my overlong robe, I took several steps back.

‘You’re one of them,’ she told me, putting the word breaks in odd places, as though she had learned to speak the Imperial tongue by imitating whole phrases. 'This part of the beach is forbidden to your kind.'

She was the strangest thing I'd ever seen, and I’d seen more strange things by that time than most people do in their entire lives. In less than twenty-five years, I’d seen fire jump in arcs, talked to animals, and met men who could wear shapes as effortlessly as if they were slipping on costumes. This woman, if she was a woman, I decided, was more shocking than all of them. It was as though a dozen glamour spells had clashed, giving rise to something that was collective, but made from pieces wholly disparate. She could not have been designed.

Two green, glassy tentacles, complete with pearl-like suckers, snaked through holes in her ears, twisting themselves into hook shapes. This, I supposed, was an adornment. Silver tentacles wrought in a similar style wrapped themselves around her wrists. Her face was long and aquiline, her nose flat and wide. Her hair was greasy, mossy green and knotted like seaweed. Her skin seemed to shimmer as though she was wearing an oily rainbow. In the dim light, it gleamed most often in flushed pink, bruised purple and brilliant gold. She was covered in scales, but scales so tiny that they were nearly invisible, more fluid in motion than the finest chain mail.

‘You’re one of them,’ she repeated. ‘From the Tower.’ She jabbed a green finger at the rising spire, and I saw that it was webbed. So, too, were her bare feet.

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

‘Why are you here?’

I blinked. ‘Why am I not supposed to be?’

Gulping, I suddenly felt much less important than I thought someone with my accomplishments had a right to be. Something told me that, just as my knowledge of runes could not assist me here, the sea had made me vulnerable in another sense. It cared not for any achievement that could be drowned, for in drowning, all men are equals. The waves glinted like hard onyx behind the woman- they had the keen look of a blade familiar with killing. They also looked as though they might back her up on any threat she cared to make. Between the two of us, I suspected only one was truly waterproof.

She was hesitant, considering, perhaps, how she could interrogate me without arming me to ask questions myself. ‘None of you are allowed to come here,’ she said, fondling a shell clasped at her throat. ‘I should spit at you.’

I recoiled, but I didn’t know whether this was intended as an affront to my dignity or my person. Then, her tongue fanned the air, as if in a vulgar gesture, and I saw that it was forked. Poison, I guessed. She must spit poison.

‘I get spat at plenty as it is,’ I retorted. ‘I meant no trespass. I’ll leave if you want.’

I waited, but the order for dismissal didn’t come as quickly as I had anticipated. I felt the weight of scrutiny on me. ‘Who are you?’ she asked again.

‘I’m an Adept from Blackmouth,’ I supplied automatically. It was another moment before it occurred to me that those words might not mean anything to her, or that they might not be true anymore. ‘That’s another place for sorcerers,’ I added.

‘Adept at what?’ she demanded.

‘Runes,’ I replied.

‘What is this?’ The sentence came as one word, evidently rote-learned.

‘Runes. They’re a kind of writing.’

She narrowed her liquid-black eyes, but didn’t pursue it further. I surmised that she was eager not to appear ignorant of things that might empower me. ‘We are also adepts,’ she said, loftily. Her misappropriation of my title angered me.

‘Adept at what?’ I countered, imitating her now.

The word she returned with was unintelligible to me. I was only much later that I learned it was ‘gyeesha’, the ‘great ebb and flow’.

I was saved from responding when the woman turned her head sharply. Another figure was winding its way up the rocks; a black shape flickering like a tongue of flame in the mist. It cast no shadow behind it. There was only one kind of person who like that.

My heart sank.



‘By Gheltar’s light, it’s you, Achevon!’

The flicker became a swagger, and as the mist rolled back a young man in robes emerged. His long, red hair was held in a careless ponytail, and the smirk on his face warped the handprint there. It was an inky brand, like mine.

‘If a hand without a lamp casts no shadow, shut away the light,’ I recited, rebuffing him. A little of his smirk faded.

‘Who was your friend?’ he asked, eyes wide as he stared out to sea.

It was only then that I noticed she had vanished. The woman had been so intimidating that I had barely taken my eyes off her, but in the second during which I had turned my head, she must have sprinted back over the rocks and plunged into the ocean. I spotted her dark tangle of hair as she cleaved the water. Then, there was a glimmer of silver, followed by something that might have been a splash, and she was gone.

‘She wasn’t my friend,’ I found myself saying, lost in thought. ‘You don’t seem surprised at all by her,’ I added, insidiously.

He shrugged. ‘We had fairy folks where my mother lived.’

‘I see.’

I stood still while I tried to remember where that was. He was a Journeyman, of that I was fairly confident. He was too old to be an Apprentice, and he bore the brand and other markings of a graduate. Yet, he was also younger than I was, and less disciplined. Therefore, I concluded, he could not have been an Adept. I outranked him.

The sun was beginning to shine through the clouds, reflecting off the fog so that the whole sky glared. It stabbed my eyes, and I was forced to look at the ground. I was used to shuffling amongst the Tower mages, or else keeping to the dark, where the shadows hugging every corner smothered my feet and the space behind my back. It was bizarre to see another person like me- someone whose feet were bathed in light, such as there was; somebody with no shadow.

Even though the day was slightly overcast, we looked peculiar, like characters in a painting who had not been drawn quite right. The rocks were the wrong hue for pre-dawn or for dusk, and were anyway peppered with sunlit craters, ringed around with darker crescents. The woman had also cast a shadow. We alone were two-dimensional. No doubt that was part of the intention behind our guise. Sorcerers like Fletch –or was it Fitch? I couldn’t remember– and I were created as avatars of our institution. We were meant to strike awe, even to perpetuate fear.

No Blackmouth sorcerer, save one, possesses a shadow. What started with the pluckiness of one Apprentice became tradition, and is now a rite of passage for those of us who endure the strictest of magical initiations, for Blackmouth is the original and most renowned school of sorcery. The appearance of our scholars makes us seem like apparitions beside the more pragmatic mages of Lightshale, or the brutal mountaineers in Firepeak. Where we come from, it is a badge of honour- a mark of status.

The full tale of our tradition is a lengthy one. I will tell you some other time. Meanwhile, it will suffice for you to know that we are severed from our shadows on the day we graduate from Apprenticeship. Shadows are not sentient things, I hope, for the fate that awaits them in Master Ulrik’s dimensional dungeon is extremely unenviable.

I noticed that the stranger was watching me stare at the ground. He must have been cleverer than he looked, because his mind leapt straight into my latest train of thought.

‘How long have you been here?’ he asked me.

‘Three weeks, or, more accurately, one-and-a-half lunar cycles,’ I replied, wondering why I did him the favour. Then, ‘Fitch, is it?’ I enquired. He set his jaw combatively. It was an ample jaw for such a gesture.

‘Fletch,’ he corrected me. The smile had been completely erased from his face now, and a grimace spread out in its place.

I cursed under my breath. I had been right the first time.

‘Well, Fletch,’ I continued, as though nothing had happened, ‘I think you should address me as ‘Adept’ from now on.’

The grimace almost cracked, like the earth splitting to reveal molten lava, or a rockfish breaking character to show a set of pointed teeth. ‘We’re not at Blackmouth anymore,’ he said slyly.

The insolence of it boiled my blood, and yet... something in his tone suggested that he knew things that I didn’t. How could he? He had just arrived, and surely he was no less reviled than I was.

‘I’ve been sent to find you, actually.' He seemed to suppress a snigger as he made this announcement, as though witnessing my reaction was a real treat. Perhaps he had even asked for the task. ‘As soon as I got here they told me about the ‘other one’ who’d come from Blackmouth. They said you’d been skulking about the rocks all day, like a village urchin. They said they hoped I’d be more useful.’

‘Is that so?’ I replied, trying to keep my voice even.

‘Don’t bother,’ he said, detecting my facade and sounding ultimately bored by it. ‘I don’t know what it is you do, but I can tell already you’re no Presence Adept. Beasts, probably, or maybe Birds. Or Rocks,’ he added, as an afterthought.

I gritted my teeth. The insult of it!

‘Runes, actually,’ I interjected, drawing myself up to my full height. Unfortunately, he was taller than I was, too.

‘That explains it.' He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I thought I recognised your profile, all bent and round-shouldered, pale and with that unruly hair you refused to tie back at the Academy. Of course, I never encountered you much, but everyone knew of Achevon Ashen. That’s what they used to call you, behind your back. Did you know?’

He chuckled deeply, as though this was both was the most hilarious thing in the world, and an observation he expected me to appreciate. ‘Runes,’ he muttered to himself again. ‘It figures.’

‘Why were you sent to get me?’ I demanded, my patience wearing thin.

‘Oh, that,’ he waved a hand dismissively while he recovered from his laughter. ‘You’ll love this. The Tower mages want us both to run an errand.’ I felt my eyes narrow at the word ‘both’. Then, Fletch paused, evidently waiting for me to ask him again.

‘What’s the errand?’

‘They want us to gather bottle jellyfish off the shore. Apparently, they’re migrating and a bunch of them washed up during the last storm. We’re to each procure a bucket from the dock where the messenger canoes are tied and–’

‘What?’ I exploded. I could feel my cheeks reddening. Suddenly, the morning wasn’t chilly at all. ‘Well, what did you tell them? Don’t they know who I am? What are the Apprentices doing? They should be sent instead!’

‘Relax,’ he spread his hands out and chuckled to himself again, ‘the Masters assured me the Apprentices are very busy studying and cannot be disturbed. As for whether they know you are, they referred to you frequently as ‘that Adept who complains’. I’m pretty sure they know you because you fit that descript– Ugh!’

He didn’t get to finish his sentence, because a moment later my closed-fist spell had connected with his cheek and sent him sailing backwards. He thudded against the cold rock, and sat up groaning. A red welt was already swelling on top of his mark. It might as well have been my hand that left it there, except that the fingers in the brand were splayed. Shocked eyes found me panting for breath, my heart racing.

I might have been short and bent, but I knew how to fight. A childhood fending off bullies in the market and around the stables had taught me that, and it was a skill like riding a horse- you didn’t easily forget it. Nevertheless, it was a foolish thing to do, in retrospect.

‘You will call me ‘Adept’ when you speak,’ I reiterated, feeling more authoritative now that he was sprawled on the ground, ‘or you will do this task on your own.’ Truthfully, that wasn’t a threat I was prepared to follow through on. However, if the mage only knew me by my name, I figured, he might not realise just how reluctant I was to incur anymore wrath from our Masters, in Blackmouth or anywhere else.

This time, my gamble paid off.

‘Fine,’ he hissed, wiping his mouth with his sleeve as he clambered up. ‘I won’t tease you. I’m not calling you by any titles either, though.’

The evenness with which he said this prompted me to ask rather than order. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’m an Adept, too,’ he said, disgruntled. ‘What did you think I meant when I said you were the ‘other one’?

‘You’re too young,’ I insisted.

‘I’m twenty-two.’

‘Exactly.’ I folded my arms. ‘No more jokes.’

‘No jokes.’ He raised his eyebrows and his green eyes bored into mine, entreatingly. ‘Infusion Adept. I got the rank this year. I worked hard for it, too.’

I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out. So, he was a prodigy. I had to admit, even then, that that made me slightly jealous, but at least I wasn’t babysitting. ‘Alright,’ I conceded. ‘Let’s do this.’



Collecting the jellyfish turned out to be putrid task. From a distance as they lay on the shore, the slimy things looked like deflated balloons, but when we picked them up with our bare hands, they oozed a kind of translucent puss. Further, stringy tendrils, like strands of spider web beaded with morning dew, trailed out behind their conical heads and plastered them to the sand. It was impossible to avoid touching these. The tendrils turned out to be sticky. They wrapped around our wrists and adhered themselves, delivering a caustic, itchy sting.

This was even more painful where our lacerations already smeared our hands and forearms with blood. We found the buckets at the bottom of a slippery pier, where the water slapped at the hewn rock and the posts were covered in sharp oysters. These, we were forced to cling to for support. Fresh red ran into the murky water as we swung and groped for the crude, half-barrels bobbing along beside some equally untrustworthy canoes.

Most of the buckets yielded seawater, but one revealed an angry squid which had been using it as a home. Finally, we selected the two least split containers and scrambled back up the beach with fresh distaste for our assignment.

‘How are you finding it here?’ Fletch asked, determined to distract himself with small-talk. Wincing, he slit open a jellyfish with a penknife, let the toxic puss drain out and tossed it into the bucket.

I didn’t have a knife, and was throwing them into the bucket whole. ‘You’ll see,’ I said. I hoped my treatment by the Lightshale mages wasn’t anything personal. ‘Nobody much talks to me. They all disappear when I’m around. You’d think I smelled bad.’ I paused, and sniffed my robes discreetly to reassure myself. ‘I avoid the lamps when I can.’

He grunted, struggling with a particularly rubbery creature. ‘At least your mark isn’t on your face.’

I nodded. Though my robes were as black as his were, I nursed a secret hope that Fletch would face equal discrimination. It was petty, perhaps, but I simply couldn’t stand to believe that it was only me they hated... Blackmouth had thrown him out, too, after all. That one of my trials hadn’t only been the result of my unpopularity.

‘What’s it like?’ I asked. ‘Infusions? And being the youngest Adept in the history of the Academy, surely?’

He shrugged. ‘I won’t complain. Or, at least, I wouldn’t have complained, before this fiasco.’ He regarded the puss covering his swollen hands with open-mouthed, hopeless disgust. As he did so, more leaked onto the front of his robe, and he cursed. ‘Cthlaar’s thunder! You’d know about infusions from your days as an Apprentice. It’s the same atmosphere- lots of hanging around steaming pots. You start to smell of it if, after a while, but that’s not something I mind, obviously. All the fresh air here is already driving me mad,’ he added, with another smirk.

‘And what about being a prodigy?’

‘Well, I’m not the youngest,’ he began, gingerly. If the topic had been another jellyfish stranded in his path, he would have side-stepped it. ‘Tellesing was the youngest, but that was half a century ago.’

I must have exhaled sharply, because I felt like a hook had been driven between my ribs, and was twisting sharply.

‘Are you alright?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It’s just... it burns.’

In reality, it was the mention of Tellesing that set me off. My Master is the reason Blackmouth sorcerers don’t have shadows, as I still promise to explain. He was the first, bold Apprentice to suggest retention of our shadows in lieu of the usual fee the Masters charged for tuition. As Fletch and I groped for jellyfish on the beach, he was in hiding, having disappeared three years prior. To begin with, he had sent his crow familiar home with occasional news. In at least a year, however none had arrived. I wondered then whether he knew about the conflict with the Table of Eight. Maybe if he had been around, I thought, it wouldn’t have happened. Then I wouldn’t have been sent away...

Despite his absence, I had great respect for the Master of Runes. He was my predecessor, and had intervened in Academy matters several times during my time as an Adept. He had even been my overseer when I was a Journeyman. Everyone knew that he was just and fair. More than that, however, I approved of the way his original cunning had abolished the old, punitive system, doing away with the terror that had once gone hand in hand with Apprenticeship.

I could appreciate prodigy when it took such a form as Tellesing's. It pained me, therefore, to think that my prejudice against Fletch was purely on account of his age. Maybe it’s not just that, I beguiled myself. He was unprofessional. Yes, that was what it was.

Yet, there was no denying that he had stooped to our present task more willingly than I had, albeit still with some displeasure. He was gutting the jellyfish with much greater efficiency.

For a while longer, we worked in silence- Fletch resigned, and I frustrated. Then, still bent over a fistful of slime, he turned his face up so that his eyes bored into mine. They sparkled sea-green with mischief. ‘She’s watching you,’ he whispered, and nodded slightly, glancing in the direction of the water.

‘Huh?’

I stared out across the beach. Initially, I could see only the vast rocking of the ocean, as though in time with some lullaby, and the gentle thrashing of the waves against the sand. Then, something flashed silver, and I spotted her. The sea-woman was standing stiffly in the waves, and the silver thing encircled her waist, fluting out like an upside-down crinoline. I couldn’t tell the look on her face from a distance, but her posture was severe.

‘Just keep working,’ I instructed him. I should have said, ‘Just keep working quietly.’

‘Who is she?’ he asked, without hesitation.

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, through clenched teeth, ‘but she’s mad. There are more like her, from what I gather, and they’re all fairly angry.’

‘About what?’

‘How should I know? I was just minding my own business, and there she was. Wanted to know why I was on their beach. She said our kind never come here, and she didn’t know what writing was.’

Fletch laughed. ‘Well, that’s no surprise,’ he said. ‘Did you get a good look at her fingers? With claws like that, she’d gouge paper. Fairy folk don’t have writing either,’ he supplied, offhandedly. ‘I suppose they don’t see the point of it. They live in small groups, and their knowledge is, well, embedded in the trees or something. That’s why they’re so protective of–’

I cut him off. ‘She’s not a fairy, alright?’

‘She might be a nymph or something.’

‘Use your eyes.’ I felt mean, but also aggravated. The poison was irritating my skin, and purple welts were forming over the cuts the oyster shells had left. I looked up at Fletch, and was gratified to see that he wasn’t faring much better. His hands might have been generally less covered in puss than mine were, but he had just as many lacerations, and an ugly bruise was blossoming on the side of his face where I had struck him.

‘I think we’ve got enough,’ he grumbled. I was glad to agree.

The wind had picked up. It whipped at our robes as we crept back across the exposed rock towards the base of the Tower, moulding them around our legs.

When we found the cave that was the main ground entrance, the Master stationed there only scoffed at us. A grin split his thin-lipped face like a rip in a leather ball as he scanned our disheveled bodies, taking in the stains, the burns, the cuts and rashes, Fletch’s black eye and the soiled hems of our robes, which were soaked with water and caked with muddy sand. Stony-faced, he reached inside the first barrel and pulled out a dripping jellyfish, holding it with just his fingers so that no puss touched his skin.

‘Half of these are ruined,’ he announced, the grin replaced with a sour expression. ‘Who told you to cut them open? Fools! I should send Apprentices next time.’

I dared not speak. What would happen to us now? Would we be punished? I wondered whether Fletch had been given more specific instructions and had forgotten. He had been the one to slit the jellyfish. He was the reason for our scolding...

We waited while the Master inspected the rest of the bucket’s contents, growling whenever he found another jellyfish sliced open. Eventually, he seemed unable to tolerate us any longer, which was acceptable to me.

‘Get out of my sight!’ he barked.

With a bow, we each turned and shuffled off. Fletch looked back, but I grabbed him by the wrist, nearly making him howl in pain, and dragged him back outside.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I don’t want to go back in there,’ I said. ‘The whole Tower will know about this by midday, and there’s nowhere we’ll get any peace. They’ll find us in the library, and in the dining cavern. If you stride about, they'll mock us both. Or perhaps you’d rather be under siege in your quarters?’

I pictured my own lodging, which was more like a cave eked out of pinkish soapstone than an actual room. Even the shelves were indents in the wall, with lumps of wax or boiled seaweed serving as candles, and brittle starfish for decorations. It wasn’t much. To begin with, I had considered it foreign and uncomfortable, but eventually, it had grown on me. It was like being nestled inside the whorl of a shell, where the ocean whispered soft songs and the world outside might as well have floated leagues overhead. I imagined tittering Apprentices and snide Journeymen rapping on the driftwood door, destroying that sanctuary.

‘What you do is your business, but why do you have to bring me along?’

‘I’m doing you a favour,’ I replied. ‘You haven’t been here long enough to know how it is, but you’ll see.’ It was a half-truth. It would only be marginally better for him to make himself scarce while the word spread about the Tower that two Adepts had been sent to do servant work, and failed miserably. Everyone would know eventually.

There was more to it than that, though. I should not have cared about Fletch's fate. Better that he make mistakes, thought my bitter side. Let him be the face of the incident. Better that he be a target for ridicule than me. After all, he had been the one relaying the orders, and the one who had made the mistake.

All the same time, though, it could easily have been either of us. Perhaps I felt guilty about that. Or, maybe I was just glad to have somebody else to share my persecution. I suppose, in my twisted, lonely mind, that made Fletch my friend.

‘Let’s go down to the tidal pools,’ I suggested. ‘We can rinse all this puss off our robes, and try to scrub the worst of it from our skin. The salt water will cleanse our sores, and nobody will harass us there.’

It was a solid plan, excepting that last clause. Of course, somebody was lurking along the shore, and there was every possibility that she might harass us. I only hoped that fortune would be on our side after such a disastrous morning.

Predictably, I was wrong.