Page 20 of A Blade of Lies and Spirits

My cousin was many things, but not a cruel man.

Behind me, someone started crying. I navigated the mass of roots and stopped at Kara’s side.

The willow spirit remained still in Kara’s lap. The greenish-white skin blackened across her abdomen, a spreading ashen color through its red-striped brown hair. Kara sang to it. Magics unraveled from the spirit in deathly wisps as Kara fought to use her magic to save it in any way she could. Her talent lay with plant life, helping it grow and curing diseases. She’d borne a lot of unkindness for that gift, which many of her peers thought hilarious.

Ah, that might be why Chance was holding her- contact made it easier to feed power into someone.

I staggered under the weight of the river’s emotion. It was pissed off. Manifested and ready to kill. Willows were called the river’s daughters for a reason.

“Compact strains. She dies: second break to pact in seven years. Wi·nteko·wa bound in a body. Cayagaga abused. You fixed Cayagaga. If Compact breaks all over, all great spirits free. No want. Fix this.” A Puck-wudj-ininee’s voice in my ear. It crouched in the tangled branches.

The fear and anger radiating from the little spirit sent icy sweat trickling down my belly. But it wasn’t just the little spirit’s emotions I was feeling, my own bubbled up inside of me. The Wendigo had been bound in a body? I’d never heard of anything like this before. A spirit taking over a human body was uncommon, but happened. A human capturing a spirit within it for their own use… that was something else entirely.

The puck-wudj-ininee was right. I might have fixed things with the Cayagaga spirit by hurting Greene, but it still happened. And that, along with the Wendigo spirit being taken, and this dryad being harmed, might just be enough for the Compact to be broken and for our world to descend into chaos. If all the spirits started acting like the elves… I pawed in my satchel to retrieve the wristcomm and tapped it. Maybe a healer could fix a tree spirit or a tree, but it was far from my skill set. Me, I could talk to it.

“Fix this,” the Puck-wudj-ininee whispered again.

Why did they want me to do something? I had no authority. Maybe it knew I’d taken vengeance for the northern river? I sighed, knowing it didn’t really matter. I had to do something. And if all else failed, this would focus it on me, and buy time for Kara or Walker or Chance to do something effective.

I dropped the satchel by Kara and walked to the formless mass of water that boiled and swirled in the air. I pulled off my glove, extended that hand and waited, bracing myself.

A rill of water slapped my hand as a mind collided with mine. The taste of mud in my mouth and sinuses. Screams echoing were distant in my ears. So alien… time a mutable construct, words too small to contain its concepts.

The beginning and ending of what it was translated just fine. The swampers called the willow trees the river’s daughters and let them be, taking only fallen bark. Knowing that the spirits were to be respected and protected.

They were smarter than these privileged idiots.

In my mind, I sensed how the river would take its revenge if this dryad died. Images of drowned bodies, floating; flashes of the furthest extent of its reach. All the swampers, the city, the farms that neighbored it… all those lives. Unrestrained, the river could do just that. If the Compact wavered due to a succession of insults, like the ones that kept happening, the insults had the potential to break it entirely.

The willow spirit was still alive. The Puck-wudj-ininees might or might not be correct about whether the spirit’s death might be the final thing to break the Compact. I didn’t know its details, but it seemed possible after all the ways my people had offended the spirits over time.

I separated my mind from the spirit’s, but the river lingered in my awareness. I’d established communication and enough of a connection that we could use words to talk. That had to be enough, for now.

I opened my eyes.

Kara sat, hands flush against the base of the willow now, blood trickling down the remnants of the trunk into the grass. Chance was still supporting her with his body, arms under hers, his expression fixed in distant concentration. She murmured, voice cracked, and her head drooped forward with loose curly hair hiding her face.

The humanoid form of the dryad had vanished, and new growth sprouted from the bole. Around it, I no longer sensed death, but life. Hope swelled in. Had Kara managed to fix the damage and save the dryad?

“What happened?” Walker’s voice was grim as death, to my right. The grass withered under his boots as his obsidian fire whispered cold and elusive around him.

I startled at the sight of him, having the strangest desire to throw myself into his arms and collapse. Which was strange. Any logical person would be more overcome by the sight of the incredible man and the power surrounding him like a cloak.

Power that could maybe calm the river. Fix the Compact.

At least for now.

Someone shouted. I turned and stared in surprise. The teenagers and the mercs stood enveloped in separate bubbles of water. The original form the river had taken was gone, changed to liquid globes that confined them, lapping against their chins, strong and dark as spring floods.

I claim them all. Even if she lives, they are mine.The river’s voice came strong and angry inside my mind.

My stomach twisted. The river no doubt intended a slow death for them all. Losing the mercenaries meant nothing. Actually, it was probably a benefit to our world. The bastards. And the teens had made the choice to kill another living being at an age where they understood what killing meant, so it was hard for me to feel any kind of pity for them now. However, I didn’t want to explain how a dozen upper class twits died under my watch.

Even if they deserved it.

I met Walker’s gaze. “The river wants them regardless of whether the willow spirit lives.”

He stopped next to me, lightly grabbing my arm, making me realize just how unsteady I was on my feet still. “Tough. If the Compact stands, the Guild will compensate it for this situation. But I want answers from these idiots, and answers are easier to get from them when they’re alive.”

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