Page 37 of Bound and Tide

“Uh oh.”

“Uh oh?” Xander spun back toward him. “We don’t have time for—” But then he saw the uh oh, and it was a big one. Bit more like an uh-fuck-oh.

Water spurted out of the wall where the woman’s chain had been severed. A thin trickle froze immediately, but then more came, too fast to stop itself. The woman stood there, looking from her broken chain to the wall to them.

“Go on,” Xander grumbled, tipping his head toward the ramp, and she fled.

Costa’s next breaths were panicked and hard, but he called up arcana and held back the water, eyes big and on Xander for a better solution.

“How long will that hold?”

Just as Costa shrugged, there was a crack, and the place where the original chain had been severed began to gush freezing river water.

“Shit,” they said in unison.

“Tell me you’ve got enough familiarity with the rest of these criminals to know for certain they deserve execution.”

Costa shook his head.

“Then you better start working on those other chains.”

“What, which ones?”

“All of them!” Xander threw up his hands, and another crack formed on the far side of the pit. “We can’t very well deal out death to all these cretins.”

Costa’s arm shook as the frozen barrier he made cracked. “But Maia said she saw you kill a guy.”

“Well, he deserved it, and that was before.”

“Before?”

“Before,” Xander stressed even though he wasn’t really sure what he meant either, and he knocked Costa’s arm down, breaking the arcana and letting the water burst forth. “Get to work.”

The boy made a flustered sound but ran to the nearest criminal who already had his foot raised and the chain taut. “I think I need help,” he said, his next cast wobbly.

Xander opened his mouth to rant, then shut it again. You said you would.

If you can, you waste of blood and breath.

He called to the shadows first, but they were weak, only like swirling mist. But there was water, and it was everywhere, pouring in at their feet.

Xander mimicked Costa’s hand movements, remembering the things the two had told him after plunging him repeatedly in the river: water wanted to fill up space. He focused on that thought, ripping his arms through the air to send it spearing toward one of the prisoner’s chains. It came at an alarming rate, but there was far too much of it, and it further split the crack in the wall so that a whole cascade flooded in.

If you free these worthless humans before me, you’ll get exactly what you deserve.

Feet freezing as the bottom of the pit filled, Xander already knew it had all gone wrong, and there was no time to be stingy while salvaging their mistakes. He didn’t hesitate as he popped off the cork of his vial and smeared older, stronger blood into his hand. With the flick of his wrist, impossibly sharp arcana severed two chains and freed a set of prisoners. Costa worked closer to the ramp, and Xander trudged himself through the water, rising dangerously close to his knees, to the back where the pit maliciously slanted downward.

The chains there were already submerged. It was a task better handled by a true water mage, but he wouldn’t risk Costa being too far from an escape, so it was up to him, and he had learned something, hadn’t he?

Before another cruel snipe could break into his mind saying that he hadn’t, he plunged his hands into the water and squeezed his eyes shut in a poor mimic of the boy. The incongruous fiery pain of cold depths surged along his veins, up his arms, shocking his heart and numbing his fingers. Everything screamed at him to pull out, to abandon this place, to run, even the awful voice, but as his hands froze and his pulse slowed, he felt his tainted blood anew like the liquid that it was, and for a moment, all arcana was the same.

There was plenty of space for this water to fill, it needn’t be exactly where it was, and really, what was it thinking? How dare it be exactly where Xander didn’t want it? Frankly, it was an incivility that wouldn’t stand, and so he commanded that it move.

The water obeyed, but Xander’s body did not. He collapsed backward, splashing into only a puddle as he’d urged the water to crest up either side of the pit and hover there like unbroken waves. Costa called his name, far too much concern in his timid voice, but Xander shouted back, “Finish with them and get out!”

How long the water would hold, he didn’t know, so he collected more blood from his vial and cast blades into the chains so messily he nicked one of the prisoners. The metal snapped, new cracks formed, and the bleeding stranger cursed. Both prisoners fled past him, and neither stopped to lift him off the ground because there was no camaraderie amongst criminals, he supposed, and then the water caved in.

The frigid darkness could have lasted seconds or hours, but eventually there were hands—human and impish both—and Xander found himself splayed on his side at the pit’s upper edge while Maia slapped his back much harder than he needed to turn out what had ungraciously filled his lungs. He staggered to his feet, muttering that they should have already fled and urging them out past the still slumbering guard.

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