Ninety Days of Water

The next morning was indistinguishable from the evening before. I called it morning only because I had woken up, having had either sufficient rest, or enough of sleeping and thus of waiting idle. The current was invigorating. It was filled with the crackling energy of the air before a thunderstorm- a rich, acrid aroma that couldn't be ignored. I pushed it away.

'Fletch.' I prodded my companion where he slept on a bed of soft corals. 'Wake up.'

'What do you want?' he asked groggily.

Now that I had disturbed him, I was at a loss for what to say next. 'I'm going out,' I announced.

'So? You do that a lot lately.'

'This time it's different.' I wanted to tell him my plan, but I was suddenly wary of being watched. I didn't want to say too much aloud, lest the tide carry it away, along with my fear, and expose me. 'Where do you suppose the rest of them sleep?'

'For all I care,' he said sourly, 'they don't sleep at all. Why? Why do you care?'

'I have a... theory.' I shuffled uncomfortably. 'I think Tellesing is here too. Or at least, he was, and he might still be.'

'No he isn't,' Fletch snapped. 'You're making things up, or else imagining them. I knew this whole underwater business would be bad for you.'

I sighed. 'Honestly and earnestly. I went out where I wasn't supposed to be, and I saw him talking to...'

'Who?' I couldn't tell whether he was suspicious of the unnamed person, or suspicious of me, for making up stories.

'I can't say it aloud. Just come with me.' I thought that, between my stubbornness and my pleading expression, I had made a convincing case. However, Fletch merely rolled over and waved me away.

A new thought struck me, and I wondered why it hadn't occurred before. Most likely, I had been too preoccupied with my new talents, as well as fearful that the eyes of the sea were watching me. Now that I thought about it, though, I was becoming increasingly confident with my swimming, and tired of my captivity.

'Why don't we do that, then?' I asked. 'Why don't we just... go aboveground?' I had wanted to say 'escape', but I was once again anxious about being overheard.

'Are you stupid?' he asked. 'Where would we go? Where even are we?'

My heart sank again. I must not have been fully awake, and fully reasoning- of course, he was right. We had no idea where we were, or in which direction Lightshale lay. Vaghiiss had gestured broadly from the shores of the lagoon, to which place I could travel easily enough on my own, but water flowed out so extensively from that island that the shore was not even visible as a crust on the horizon. It could have been stranded in the middle of the ocean. I might have been able to slip there on my own, but the two of us stood a much greater chance of being noticed. If we strayed much futher, who knew what kinds of trip wires we might be setting off?

'Vaghiiss wouldn't let us escape, anyway,' he added, sounding sure of himself. I couldn't decide whether I agreed with him or not. 'If you want to risk your neck, leave mine out of it.'

I tried to explain that nobody would distinguish between us, but he only rolled over and pulled a blanket of weeds over himself.

'Fletch?' I said tentatively, crawling down to his level.

'What?' He sounded grumpier than before.

'I was just thinking... Well, it must be three weeks since we got here. Why didn't we ever ask each other about ourselves? Why don't we talk about anything?'

'Because you don't want to,' he grumbled. 'What is there to talk about, anyway? The weather?'

In our time as prisoners, I had only pieced together a fractured picture of Fletch's history and personality, but this reaction didn't seem to fit with it at all. I had always thought of him as a casual kind of person, even oblivious at times. I did not think him easily annoyed.

There were also other reasons for us to strengthen our acquaintance. He was an Adept, like me, but whereas I had chosen to specialise in the arcane art of Runes, he had pursued the more practical, but no less subtle, discipline of Infusions. Not only were both our talents useless underwater, but our disciplines also made us uncommon in another sense. As Journeymen, we had both remained at Blackmouth instead of travelling the world, as the students of Beasts, Birds, Stones, Images, Fire, Water and Earth all did. Theoretically, we ought to have known each other. We should have been drawn together by common experience, yet I knew him only by face and name, he knew me only as a leering shadow that hung out on the eaves surrounding the highest tower.

'I want to know about you,' I said. 'We're captives together, but we're still strangers, really. We have enough in common that it would be logical for us to be friends. Wouldn't it be... prudent?' I asked. I didn't go so far as to say that I actually wished we could be friends , but I was thinking it. I think he knew I was- that must have been why he obliged me.

'It's not a question of logic,' he muttered, 'Or prudence.' Then, his voice softed. 'What do you want to know?' he asked.

There were as many things that sparked my curiosity as there are sticks in a bundle, but I found myself grappling to keep a hold of all of them, and so I could not easily grasp any one. 'Where do you come from?' I asked. 'Why don't we start with that?'

He sat up and shrugged his broad shoulders. 'Fine,' he said. 'I come from out on the plains, if you have to know. Or at least, I did originally.' He started out reluctantly, but seemed to enjoy telling his story once he had begun. 'That's where my family was, see. We had a farm and were doing fairly well for ourselves, but it was never a nice place to live. Too warped by sour magic.'

'What do you mean?'

He made a twisted face, so that his eyes seemed harder and his nose more hook-like than it had before. 'It's a long story,' he said. 'There was a war going on. There always is. You used to get a lot of highway thievery and the likes- people who thought they could get away with it while the Imperial Guard wasn't paying attention, or when they were losing. It wasn't a land with a lot of law about it.'

I nodded. So, that was another thing we had in common, I thought. I might have been poor, and he by his own account somewhat wealthy, but we had both been failed by the Imperium. The end result was the same.

'I suppose it was only a matter of time,' he said bitterly. 'You took risks owning a caravan, but we had enough corn to sell that there wasn't really another way of moving it. I still wish they hadn't gone together. I don't see why it had to be both of them, but my mother knew the dangers, and she wouldn't stay at home, not knowing. I guess my reasons were similar. Anyway, it was the three of us together, the day we were attacked. They had shiny Imperial rifles -the kind with all the polished brass and bits that spin. They also had a few rogues who could throw sparks around, but no real magic, of course. Nobody trained could stoop to that.'

I felt a shiver as I sensed where this was going. Fletch was right, however- not even the militant Firepeak mages, who often took what wasn't theirs, would hunt harmless farmers and traders.

'They were dead before I could do anything to stop it. I had been sitting back in the wagon, see. I was pretty young at the time- only nine, in fact. Then, I snapped. I had never known much about magic before. I knew that there were tricks I could do. I could will for particular outcomes in arguments or games of luck. I could find lost objects, and if my father bought a new animal, I could break it in even when it wouldn't listen to anybody else. Yet, the plain was a simple place, without sorcerers, healers or even passing Journeymen. Nobody had ever explained to me what it might mean. It was just a quirk I had.

'That day, I think it was just the blind fury and the grief in me that made it happen. I was in denial. My parents couldn't have been killed like that. Things couldn't be the way they were, and so they weren't, I guess. I managed to wrest a gun from one of the bandits, despite my inferior strength, just because I wanted it so badly. I got it to go off, too, and before I knew what I had done, three of them were dead. The rest scattered- they had stolen what they needed, I thought, or they had discovered that it wasn't worth it.'

'You were nine?' I had never done any act of magic at that age- never been exceptional in any way.

'Yeah,' he said, glossing over what must have been, to him, an insignificant fact. 'I was lucky, like I say. Lucky, but not fortunate.'

'Certainly,' I agreed, making no effort to hide my astonishment. It made more sense now, the way Fletch seemed to have a natural aptitude for so many things; the way he seemed to adapt effortlessly, and to be successful at new and challenging tasks without trying. Not only had he endured loss and suffering, but he was guided by a power the likes of which I had little experience with, and couldn't fully comprehend. Even among sorcerers, he was gifted. It made me a jealous, but not so much as, in context, it impressed me.

'Anyway,' he went on, 'I had timing on my side that day, after it decided it was done slaughtering the people I cared about. I soon discovered why the bandits had really fled. A lone, black-robed figure was coming up the road on horseback, riding on an enormous beast with hooves as large as a man's skull that scraped through the dust. "Death!" I heard them shout. "Death comes! Woe! Who have we killed?" They were a superstitious lot, and so I guess they believed the old adage, the Death comes personally for the great.'

'Who was it really? A Blackmouth sorcerer?' I raised my eyebrows.

'Yes,' he said. 'The first I'd ever seen. The first to come that way in a long time, I would imagine. It goes without saying that he saw what I'd done. He took me with him. Asked if I wanted to come and refine my talents. I had nothing left anymore, so I went.'

'And you were nine?'

'Yeah.' He sounded annoyed that I had made him repeat it. 'I know it was early to be starting at Blackmouth, but I didn't mind. What's a few years anyway?'

Well, I thought, that was easy for Fletch, who had the exceptional talent of being casual about everything, to say. Those years had been on his side, as all other things also were. They hadn't been on mine.

'So, that's me,' he concluded. 'What about you?'

I told him a little about how I had been raised an orphan, and in light of his own story, I felt compelled to reveal the much less dramatic history of my parents' deaths from the plague.

'Sorcerers often passed through the City in those days, didn't they?' Fletch asked. 'People hired them to cast protection spells and banish demons. Healers would have been in demand, too- Lady Morganna had an influx of students around that time, I believe. I guess someone discovered you,' he assumed, folding his hands in his lap conclusively. I felt my teeth grind, not because he had applied his luck to my situation, but because in doing so he forced me to reveal the truth.

'No,' I said, resentfully. 'Nobody found me.' I let my eyes glide out the entrance of the cave into the empty water, which was streaked with darker blue bands that were the equivalent of rain. 'Probably I was hard to find, hanging around the gutters and the awnings of the marketplace.'

'Is that why you used to hang around on the rooftops at Blackmouth?'

'I don't know.' I dismissed his question, pursing my lips briefly. 'Maybe. I liked it up there, where nobody could catch me. You wouldn't want to know the things they did to urchins- the traders and the Guards alike. I was lucky,' I grated my teeth again, this time training my eyes on my own robe stretched between my crossed legs, 'that my aunt and uncle were able to secure an Apprenticeship for me.'

'Oh, so they sent you here?'

'No,' I said again, less gently for having been interrupted a second time. 'I started training to become a fishmonger. It was only later, when I was twelve, that a sorcerer coming through the marketplace happened upon me and bought me out of my then Master's service.'

'You must have done something amazing,' Fletch commended me, 'for him to pay money for you! Go on, tell us! What was it?'

I tried to take it as a compliment, but once again, I was forced to disappoint. 'I didn't do anything,' I replied. 'He said my aura was strong.'

'Huh.'

'And that's me.' Although I could have gone on, I chose to end my story there. I couldn't stand his audience. 'Why did you object to the Protocol?' I asked, inviting him to talk again, since he seemed to enjoy doing it so much.

'It's just the feel of the thing, isn't it?' Fletch responded immediately, using his intuition. 'It seems wrong. Sorcerers answering to the Emperor, labelling people as abominations...' No doubt he thought of his own upbringing, and of being considered a strange but endearing child. His magic had been apparent then, while mine had not, and so under the new regime, children like him would have the most to fear. 'Magic shouldn't be forced on people,' said confident Fletch, who had always been in a strong bargaining position with destiny. 'It should be something people can elect to choose.'

'I think the Protocol is based on fear of something that isn't there,' I added, couching his statements so that I could agree with them. 'But there must also be more to it than that.'

Fletch shrugged. 'It doesn't matter if there is,' he reasoned. 'It's wrong either way. It's bad for people, to take their choices away, and it's bad for sorcerers to have less independence. How are we supposed to get anything done?'

'So why did you protest?' I asked, although the answer was in plain sight.
'How could I not?' I noted that he did not call me simple for asking what he thought obvious when I gave him a chance to opine aloud.

'Well, there was the obvious matter of me already being in exile for doing exactly that,' I countered. 'I wasn't the only one, either, and the tension between the Masters was almost palpable.'

'Doesn't matter, does it?'

'If you say so.'

Naturally, he didn't ask me about my own motivations. He must have assumed that I, like him, was an uncompromising person with moral ideals who objected purely on principle and at any price. If that was the case, then he was at least partly right.

'So,' I ventured, now that he was fully awake and animated, 'will you come with me?'

'Are you still going out?' He sounded wary.

'Yes, I want to find Master Tellesing, and... the other person I was talking about.'

'Oh.' His voice suddenly plummeted, becoming very dejected, and the grin that had been creeping up his cheeks the whole time he was talking slackened, drooping into a half-frown. 'No,' he said, with baffling apathy. 'I don't want to go anywhere, Ach.'

'Why not?'

He gazed out, misty-eyed at the streaked blue water, looking and sounding vague. 'I just don't want to go anywhere today,' he said.

I was mystified, even more awestruck than I had been while Fletch had told his story. I stood gaping, but it was too late. Fletch had crawled back into his bed and was, even more amazingly, apparently going straight back to sleep. I made a few stuttering attempts to rouse him, mouthing pointlessly like a guppy. Even so, it didn't take me long to figure out that, as weird though his behaviour was, I had no choice but to accept it.



As I strode into the reef, I couldn't help but wish for some of Fletch's uncommon luck. I had no idea how I was going to find Tellesing, or what I would do when I found him. Several times, I thought of going back and demanding accompaniment -even dragging Fletch if I had to- but my conscience always got the better of me. I was as naturally timid as my fellow prisoner, and now friend, I supposed, was bold.

The reef was unusually deserted, which confirmed my suspicion that it was an early hour, or else one at which the sea-people slept or stayed indoors. I wondered why they all went indoors at the same time. Without the darkness to chase them into their beds, why would they bother? Was it something to do with the tides? Was it something to do with the curious way they seemed to move in rhythm with each other, as though caught in a perpetual dance, or beating with the same heart. The latter comparison, I considered was perhaps not wholly inaccurate- I already knew that they breathed the same water, thus internalising a part of their collective that influenced their thoughts and moods.

An enormous jellyfish wafted by, interrupting my train of thought and adding yet another surreal element to the scene. Pendulous tentacles like bunches of grapes brushed my shoulder as they trailed by. They swung beneath a bubble of molten glass, so that the whole creature resembled a wobbling chandelier. I watched it drift until it crossed barricade of wedge-shaped yellow fans, and disappeared into the liquid sky.

Eventually, I came to the secluded part of the garden where the sentry crabs stood guard. I slumped onto a rock, having long since learned that they would leave me alone, and looked out at the crowded seascape. There were countless spiraled dwellings and cave-like openings, but none of them seemed more promising than the others. There was no doubt in my mind that Tellesing would be staying with Iyetta, if indeed he was staying at all. Therefore, she would be the person I would have to find. Yet, given her importance and particular needs, it seemed unlikely that she would be housed with the other sea-people. I wondered where the rest of the Drowned were. How many of them were there?

Only one thing did I know for certain- Iyetta was not in sight. She was valuable to the sea-people, and so they concealed her like a pearl clamped in an oyster.

My prospects had never seemed more hopeless, stifled, as they were, at the bottom of the ocean. It was perhaps no wonder, then, that he chose that moment in which to reveal himself. He always appeared in that fashion- first as a vision, and second as a man. His silver hair floated around him like a halo, and his robes billowed voluminously as he walked, breathing with the current. I guessed that only magic held him upright so that he didn't float away.

'Achevon!' he exclaimed. It startled me to hear bewilderment, rather than mere caution, in his tone.

'Master Tellesing!' I greeted him wholeheartedly. 'What are you doing here?'

I had expected him to chastise me, and to announce that he had seen through my ruse, having noticed me when I spied on him and simply thought better than to speak of it at the time. That, he ought to have said, was the reason he had stayed. Yet, he did not.

'I am here on a matter of business,' he said grimly. As I was about to see, he was unusually composed. 'I had heard there were captives from Lightshale here. Of course, in my preoccupation, it never occured to me that one such captive might be you! Though I was of course aware of your unfortunate crossing of paths with Master Ulrik, I did not consider the possibility that you had been sent to Lightshale, and that you might have gone astray from there.'

I didn't know what to say to this, although I had several gut reactions. Firstly, I discerned that Tellesing had not been impressed by my resistence. For someone who had famously stood up to Master Ulrik, his tone implied that he thought my bravado amounted to nothing more than foolishness. It was, however, possible that his mood was aggravated by something unrelated.

This thought was comforting, and so I clung to it. Admittedly, Tellesing had not only inspired my actions. Privately, I had also hoped that he would hear of them. I had pictured him in his hideout in the pine-fringed mountains, or perhaps in a secluded, crumbling stronghold elsewhere in the highlands, grinning when he received the news that I, his student, had done him proud. It was thus crushing for me to receive his disapproval, especially after what it had cost me. Lastly, however, it was most painful to hear that I had not been in his recent thoughts at all, that my former Master had misplaced me, and that. Indeed, he was so surprised in finding me here as to be open about it.

The apology that followed did little to mend my feelings. Though I said nothing of it, I also made no secret of its inadequacy, folding my arms as I endured his dismay.

'It's my fault you were exiled,' Tellesing confessed. 'I sent Blue-tip back with a scroll, outlining all of my objections, immediately after Master Ulrik ratified the Protocol. I would expect it is because of his recent distaste for me that the scholars of Blackmouth were so unfairly punished for having similar objections. I must admit that I did not foresee this as a consequence of my action.' He hung his head, so that the hair floating above it, which would normally have hung in a curtain, was strangely wild.

I wondered whether he had counted on us to take care of ourselves, and thus blamed me for the exile of my fellow sorcerers. However, something else begged questioning, and so I set aside my misgiving for the time being. 'But I thought Master Ulrik liked you?' I asked.

I was thinking, of course, of the story Tellesing had told me, about how he had lost his shadow. I had taken it for truth, and certainly hoped that I had not been hoodwinked by embellishment. I had already been made enough of a fool.

He appeared to read my mind. 'That was a very long time ago,' he said plainly. 'Master Ulrik approved of my cunning then, no doubt, and saw it as promising. However, as later came to light, we have very different views on pacts. We have often clashed since. He believes that my empathy is my weakness, and that it holds me back from my full potential. He says that I allow myself to be ruled by it, rather than advised, even when it is inappropriate. He calls me compromised.' His eyes seemed to glaze with some of the same rejection I felt.

I thought his point absurd, although I did not say so to my Master. I did not think him in need of reassurance, and I was at any rate reluctant to supply it.

'It is my impression,' Tellesing continued, 'that Master Ulrik treats the Protocol as just another pact, which will result, perhaps, in benefits for him at the expense of Blackmouth and magical traditions generally. Whereas I am concerned with the wellbeing of our institution and its students first and foremost, Master Ulrik sees them perhaps as just one chapter in the narrative of his rise to power.'

'He founded Blackmouth,' I said skeptically. 'Surely, he wouldn not then discard it so easily? It must have meant something to him, if he perservered with it so long, even after other teachers like yourself arrived.'

'Oh, I think you are right,' Tellesing conceded politely. 'Most certainly, Blackmouth means something to him, but I think we would be mistaken to assume that it means something sentimental. I can only imagine what it must feel like to be a man as old as Master Ulrik is, and as scarred by pacts. I do not think he feels the same way we do, or has the same attachments to the things that made him. He must have seen so many beginnings and ends by this point in his life. He must be used to losses, just as he is used to making concessions. I think he sees Blackmouth as an asset he can barter.'

'For what?' I asked. Although I thought his motivation was respect, my Master's formal references to Ulrik made me uneasy.

'Alas,' he muttered, 'I am afraid that I do not know.'

This vein of answers exhausted, I began to mine another, prospecting where our conversation had already indicated that the ground might be rich and fertile.

'You said Master Ulrik threw us out on purpose, to spite you?' I asked.

'You and the half-dozen others who protested,' he confirmed. 'Miri and the Lady Morganna have sealed themselves within their tower. They dare not threaten to break away from Blackmouth, but they glimpsed less often even than usual.'

'Is that why you're here?' I asked. 'Because you knew we were sent to Lightshale? Did you come to convince them to let us go home? When you found out that we were here, did you come to arrange our release?'

'No,' he said simply. 'Our paths have crossed, it would seem, by fate or by coincidence. I have not visited Lightshale, nor was I aware that anyone thought you missing.'

This disappointed me even more than I had been prepared for. I had spent so long hiding from the Lightshale mages, wishing to make my presence negligible, to blend in and to be ignored, just like the rats that scurried among the docks and the damp that infected everything. It would seem that I had gotten my wish.

'You are going to help us though?' I pressed.

'I will certainly help you,' he said, but then qualified his promise with, 'if I can. Regrettably, I have delicate matters to attend to here before I can risk burning any bridges. You would be surprised how fast wildfire spreads underwater.'

He smiled jovially, but in that moment I did not see him as a beloved tutor or as an artisan of words. Certainly, I respected him still, but I was bitter. The sea stung at me from all angles, and I resented it. It is never nice to be de-prioritised.

'Master Tellesing?' I asked.

'What is it, Achevon? And please, you can call me by my proper name only. We are not at the Academy.'

'Sure.' I nodded. 'I was wondering whether anyone has told you who the other captive is...?

'No.' He looked stern but puzzled, as though concern was brewing behind those ice-blue eyes. 'Why do you ask?'

'He's also from Blackmouth Academy. He's an Adept of Infusions, by the name of Fletch. He's been strangely sad lately. I mean... of course, anybody would be sad to be a prisioner,' I thought fleetingly of my initial, thrilled reaction to being able to breathe underwater, which I had learned to rein in now. I thought better than to mention it. 'But he seems much sadder than I expected he would.'

'It must be difficult for him,' said Tellesing.

'No,' I interrupted, feeling that my rudeness was justified. 'It's not just that. He won't do anything. For example, he wouldn't come with me to look for you.'

My Master's pale eyebrows flew up in surprise, and I felt blood flush my cheeks when I realised what I had done. Whether we were being watched, or whether there was some other reason for his silence, I did not know. In either case, however, Tellesing chose not to acknowledge my blunder.

'And, er... do you know him well, this Fletch?' he asked, fixing me with a worried look.

'Not really...' I mumbled.

'Hmm.' He gave a long, flustered sigh. Despite his silence, it appeared that my news meant something to him. 'Well,' he said again, after a length. 'Well, I would imagine he would be troubled at the moment.'

'You'll do what you can to help us?' I asked, hopefully.

'Of course,' he said. 'I would not abandon you, Achevon. Do not be so paranoid. I am on my way to somewhere, but I will arrange to meet you later.'

I looked over my shoulder. 'The Grotto?' I asked. 'Is that where you're going?' It was the only place even remotely nearby, but I though I might have over-stepped a boundary.

'Yes,' he said flatly. He closed his eyes exasperatedly, as though predicting that I would ask to follow him, but I knew better.

'You promise you'll come back for me?'

He paused as he turned, fixing me with a hard look. 'I promise, Achevon.'

With that, he was away. I thought about following him, but I knew that I could not do so undetected, what with the currents in the Grotto being channelled so particularly. I anyway did not want to show him any disrespect which might lessen the chance that he would return. I simply sat on my rock, feeling slighted, and wondering what I ought to do next.