What From the Water Rises #17

In which Cassennia learns some valuable information

All Cassennia wanted was to sit somewhere comfortable and spend a few hours prodding at her memories in search of the gaps—but she knew there wasn’t time for that.

The morning after she’d arrived on Isle Ezu, after a brief night of fitful sleep, Mireht roused her at dawn and shoved a note into her hand. What did you bring to track the prince?

Cassennia blinked blearily down at the words. If she’d ever understood anything about magic, she had since forgotten all of it. “What do we need?” she asked. The question deepened the furrows in Mireht’s wrinkled brow, so she elaborated. “I don’t think I brought anything else. I came here with almost nothing.”

Mireht plucked the paper from her hands, flipped it over, and scrawled something across the back. It would be a possession of his. You must have brought something.

How she expected Cassennia to have stolen something belonging to the prince of Sehmera, she did not say, and Cassennia judged it better not to ask. 

The two of them went over everything she had on her person, concluding that none of her clothes or jewelry would’ve belonged to the prince; everything she owned was distinctly Mesaanoti. She’d brought one small bag, and it was filled with the ephemera of her life at home: a handful of Mesaanoti coins, an amulet featuring Aameja’s symbol, a pair of earrings a little more subdued than the gem-studded hoops she wore now.

“Are you sure this is part of the plan?” Cassennia asked nervously. Mireht was making a second search of her coat pockets while she sat watching, holding the contents of her bag and pockets in her cupped hands. “Maybe I was meant to steal from him now that I’m here.”

“Hard to distinguish ownership here,” Mireht muttered, running her hands over the outside of a pocket. “And I don’t know how you’d rob him if you can’t find him.” Suddenly, she stood and crossed the room; she was holding a dagger when she returned.

“Wait—” Cassennia started, but Mireht only scowled at her. She flipped over the coat, running her finger over the inner lining until she found a few subtle stitches Cassennia had failed to notice. Cutting them loose, she revealed an inner pocket containing a small envelope.

This one, like the other letter Cassennia had brought, was adorned with a waterproof rune in striking red. Mireht pried it open, and Cassennia leaned in close to read. It was a thank-you note addressed to one of the prince’s tutors. At the time, it struck her as brusque and formal; later, when she would consider it with the prince’s face in mind, she’d come to interpret the tone as dismissive, almost bratty.

“Is this really enough?” she asked, skeptical.

Mireht tapped a fingernail against the looping signature in answer. The only letter Cassennia could make out was the A at the beginning; the Sehmeri calligraphy comprising the rest was intricate and lovely, but also completely illegible. 

“It’ll work,” Mireht said. “I can use it to make a rune device so you can carry the spell with you.”

Cassennia blinked up at her, surprised. “I didn’t know you were an artificer.”

“I’m not anymore—but this is simple enough.” She stood, tucking the letter into her coat pocket, and disappeared out the front door before Cassennia could ask to accompany her. 

Where she went for the next several minutes, Cassennia didn’t know, though she thrummed with curiosity and impatience for the duration. She fidgeted in her seat, took all of her earrings out and replaced them one by one—trying on the subtler backup pair in her lobes before returning to her original hoops—and counted her coins, despite knowing they were useless now.

When Mireht reappeared, a thin leather cord dangled from her finger, weighed down by a misshapen block of wood.

“What is it?” Cassennia asked, squinting at the strange shape.

Mireht approached and lifted the rune device in front of her eyes so she could take a closer look at it—a piece of wood, clumsily hand-hewn into an almost spherical shape, with a rough design carved into its surface and a sliver of white paper visible through the notches on one side.

“It’s not pretty,” Mireht said. “I took some shortcuts, but it’ll work. You’ll feel it react when you’re closer to him. Maybe a slight warmth, or a vibration, or a prickling sensation at worst—you’ll know it when you feel it.” She looped the cord around Cassennia’s neck; it was just long enough for the device to hang past the neckline of her dress. She tucked it in, and Mireht nodded in approval. “Make sure you hide it very well or remove it before you come close to him. You don’t want to give yourself away.”

“Thank you,” Cassennia said, resting a hand over the device on her chest.

“When you find him,” Mireht continued, like Cassennia hadn’t spoken, “you can decide where to settle from there. I assume you’ll want to stay somewhere close to wherever he’s living—or maybe a bit inland, if he’s right on the shore.”

“Of course,” Cassennia said, her gratitude toward Mireht beginning to slip. She did not feel ready to make it on her own here, and her companion had done little to orient her so far. “How, exactly, do I find a place to live?”

“Look for a house with an orange sign on the door; that means it’s vacant. Search for something small—you’d be wise to live alone. The group homes won’t offer you enough privacy.”

With that, she retreated to the kitchen, leaving Cassennia to consider her options; after a moment of rummaging through the cabinets opposite the woodstove, she returned to offer Cassennia a selection of berries and nuts, wrapped in cloth and secured with a length of twine.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a waterskin to spare,” she said gruffly. “You’ll have to find one when you reach Zuenos. Again, just ask someone. People there are used to newcomers; they’ll help you.”

She ushered Cassennia out the door without another word. Uncertain and unprepared though she felt—with her lack of supplies besides a snack and a rune device she hadn’t yet determined functional—she stepped onto the path and hurried on her way.

An hour into her journey, the necklace began to throb—like a heartbeat, uncomfortably close to her own and slightly faster. The sensation was unpleasant enough to force her to remove it from her neck, hiding it first in a pocket, then wrapping the cord twice around her wrist and grasping it loosely in her fist.

As she continued along the narrow, overgrown path, the thudding pulse built to a rhythm so rapid it felt like a fluttering against her palm. The wooden sphere, when she looked at it, was unmoving and unchanging, sitting inert against her hand—but the magic it radiated was so overwhelming, she feared anyone who came close would notice, too.

But when she emerged from the path at the city’s edge, she reached two conclusions at once. First, none of the people walking by her reacted to the magic battering her palm, or paid her any mind at all—and second, the device’s desperate pulsing surely meant the prince had settled here, in Zuenos.

That, or he was there for some other reason. Was he already awaiting judgment somewhere, having been found out before she arrived? Were there courts on Isle Ezu? A prison? She considered the possibility as she made her way through the city, following the fluctuations of the rune device to its center. It seemed unlikely; Ezu-anvashe was the source of all law on the island, and for whatever reason, he’d already accepted the prince’s presence here.

The tracking spell brought her toward the city center, toward the water—then, with one final, desperate flutter, fell silent. Was he close?

She looked down the street she’d turned onto, a wide passage to the ocean, and found it crawling with more people than she expected. They walked up and down the curve of the street, moving between others stationed along the edges. Some sort of festival? With a cautious step further, she realized they were trading—so if the prince was truly here, he must have come for the same mundane reasons as everyone else.

She came to an abrupt stop behind a young boy hawking strips of dried kelp strung between two poles; he glowered at her, but she ignored him, standing on her toes to look across the street, at the wildflower-dotted hillside stretching up beyond the market—

And she found him.

The prince of Sehmera stood near the foot of the lush hillside, shadowed by palms and the eaves of adjacent buildings. He was a tall young man, his hair close-cropped, his eyes sharp as they scanned the crowd. His hand rested on the pommel of his sword, clearly craving a fight; his bloodlust, though she’d expected it, chilled her to witness.

She backed away from the market’s edge, taking a spot beneath the shade of a quiet building’s porch before turning back to study the prince again. The boy had not moved from his position; he waited there, appraising the crowd, watching them as carefully as she was him.

But with each passing moment, her doubt began to grow. Though he looked the picture of a Sehmeri prince, he seemed to be deferring to the shorter boy she had just noticed standing next to him—leaning in to catch his words, bowing his head slightly when addressed, listening attentively much more often than he spoke.

Uncertain, she slipped from her position and ambled closer, pausing at a nearby table to watch the two boys from the side. From her new vantage point, she caught the probable prince’s face in profile. He was looking up at his taller companion, the subtle movements of his lips suggesting he was near-whispering. Up close, he was startlingly young and pale and pretty, watching the other boy through dark, curling lashes, a slight pout to his full lips.

And at this proximity, the taller boy struck her not as bloodthirsty but afraid; he kept glancing at and then away from the prince, lifting his hand to his sword and then jerking it away, twitchy and reactive. This one was lean and wiry in comparison to the other, dark-skinned with a copper tint to his hair—a fighter’s appearance, a frightened child’s mannerisms.

How strange and unexpected they both were—but she understood now what she had found. The soft one had to be the prince; the rune device had led her here, and the dynamic between the two boys had shown her clearly which of them held the power.

When the Sehmeris had ceased the tradition of sending their monarchs to the front lines, she did not know—but she would have to reconsider her notions of who her target was. She had imagined confronting a soldier, playing on a warrior’s priorities and desires, not appealing to a spoiled boy.

Clenching the necklace in her hand, Cassennia walked swiftly away. No use in staring at them while they were standing around. For now, it struck her as wiser to move deeper into the market and wait for them to pass her by; she could not imagine what else she was meant to do.

There were parts of herself, her past, her life experience, that Aameja had taken and could not return. As much as she’d accepted this as necessary, she longed to call on what she’d once known—and wished her past self, with all the training and experience she must have possessed, had left her with something before letting her patron interfere with her mind. Some set of guidelines to teach her how best to proceed, some advice on how to be an effective spy—

The rune device stirred in her hand when she was halfway down the length of the market, and she turned to the nearest table, pretending to examine some simple pottery. With a glance over her shoulder, she spotted the two boys drifting by. They kept pace with those around them and might’ve blended seamlessly in with the crowd but for the guard’s rigid posture. 

The prince seemed less confident now that he was immersed in the crowd, too. He hovered close to his guard, radiating uncertainty—perhaps mistrustful of foreigners or commoners, or just shy. Whatever the reason, it was a vulnerability she’d find a way to exploit.

No longer maintaining the pretense of studying the pottery before her, she focused in on the two as they paused just down the road. The prince stooped down to study some brightly dyed cloth spread across a blanket while his guard stood at the ready beside him—his anxiety so palpable that she feared he’d realized they were being followed.

He didn’t catch her eye or move to confront her, though, so she turned to the prince again. His attention was riveted to the bright red garment clutched in his fingers—probably the closest thing he could find to the opulent clothing he was accustomed to. Of course. She should have expected that he’d come not for basic goods, but for the luxuries he felt he deserved.

But when she decided to abandon the pottery table and slipped into the crowd, he happened to glance back into the street as she passed, and what she saw gave her a moment’s pause. An unmistakable cunning lurked in his round, dark eyes. Perhaps it was simply an indication that he was as watchful or paranoid as his guard, but regardless, she decided then and there that she would be wise not to underestimate him.

She found another stall to linger at, then followed from a distance after they left the dressmaker’s. There wasn’t much more she could learn from tailing them, she thought; they weren’t doing anything worth watching—until they made a stop at the wizards’ table.

At which point, for some reason she couldn’t discern, the prince’s guard bolted and left his ward behind.

Cassennia froze where she stood, astonished by the sudden departure. The prince concluded his brief exchange with the wizards, then turned around and scanned the crowd with an expression of growing alarm.

This struck Cassennia as an obvious chance. Unsure how to utilize it, she trailed after the prince as he wove up and down the market in search of the other boy. 

For a moment, he slipped out of her sight. And when she followed her rune device back to him and located him hovering just outside the market, he wasn’t alone.

An older woman stood beside him—Sehmeri, tall and regal, looking down at her prince with unmistakable derision. Cassennia’s heart skipped a beat. Had she recognized him? There was certainly enough contempt in her eyes to suggest that she knew something about him.

Their brief interaction appeared to consist of the woman berating him while he was intent on ignoring her, scowling and searching the crowd. It wasn’t long before Cassennia spotted the guard pushing through the throngs; his arrival beside the other two Sehmeris quickly ended their conversation. The two boys departed quickly, and the woman stared after them for a moment before turning to go her own way.

Cassennia unwrapped the leather cord from her wrist and dropped the rune device into her pocket. The prince, she could always find later; it was this ex-noblewoman who had caught her attention now. For several blocks, she followed the woman, watching her stalk down the road away from the market; once she was certain that they’d reached a relatively empty stretch of street and no longer felt the rune device trembling against her hip, she hurried to catch up.

“Excuse me?” Cassennia called. The woman glanced back at her, frowning, and kept walking. “Excuse me!”

The Sehmeri spun around to face her, a glare emphasizing the lines around her mouth and eyes. “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes,” Cassennia said, and paused for a moment to catch her breath. For someone of her age, the woman moved startlingly fast. “I have a question.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not interested.” She clutched her cloth bag closer to her side and swept away, but Cassennia caught up with her again.

“It’s about the boy you were speaking with—”

“Him?” The woman stopped abruptly and narrowed her eyes. “Who is he?”

“Oh. Well—I thought maybe you knew him.”

For a moment, the ex-noblewoman just stared at her, her lips pursed. Then she demanded, “What is your concern here? Our conversation concerned the Sehmeri nobility. What business does a Mesaanoti have with us?”

“I don’t care about that,” Cassennia said, a little shrilly. “I’m not—I don’t know who he is, but I—”

“You don’t know who he is, but you followed me halfway home to ask about him?” She fixed Cassennia with a look of contempt and said, “What, are you interested in courting him? Even if you weren’t too old for him, he has nothing to offer you here. Besides, you’re not his type. Didn’t you see? He’s spoken for.”

It took Cassennia a beat to untangle her meanings. “You mean—?” Surely she wasn’t implying a relationship between the two boys; this was a grave insult in Sehmeri culture, with all of its absurdities around gender. She was not here to gossip, though. The woman neither had what she needed nor seemed interested in offering anything but insults.

“Well, thank you,” she said hastily. The woman put up a hand to try and stop her, but she ignored it and sped back to the market. A command echoed behind her, but she could not make out the words as she fled.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Cassennia retreated to the beach. She’d been too restless to even think about finding a new home and settling in for the day, and the sun had fallen too low to consider seeking out the prince’s. She couldn’t guess how far she would need to travel and didn’t want to get stuck wandering a strange place in the darkness.

After escaping the Sehmeri noblewoman, she’d lingered around the market until the merchants started to pack up their remaining wares, only a few stragglers remaining in search of last-minute deals. At that point, she had judged, it became safer to ask questions.

Naturally, most of the traders were too busy to pay attention to each person who walked by. Of those who knew who she was asking after, she was unsurprised to find that it was not the prince himself who had drawn the attention of the people there, but his guard. 

Maybe he had known he was being tailed, then, if his nervous energy was noticeable even to those who weren’t stalking him.

That was the sole useful conclusion her questioning brought her, however. The dressmaker she’d seen the prince approach had already disappeared. The wizards were still at their table, but they proved uselessly coy, pretending not to understand what she was asking. Only after she walked away did she wonder if they had recognized the rune device in her possession and decided not to trust her.

So she left, moving toward the glint of ocean she’d spotted from the market’s highest point; a few minutes later, she emerged from between two narrow houses to find a long strip of sand. Children played in the water before her while their parents foraged nearby, deftly collecting kelp and shellfish from the shallows.

Cassennia sat down in the shadow of a palm tree, stared out over the shifting ocean, and thought.

She thought of the nervous guard and his sword, and of how she might take advantage of his fear without showing her hand or encouraging the two to flee. It would be so easy to play on his anxiety—to lead them to believe that she had eyes everywhere, that they could not escape her surveillance while on the island, that they were known, with their chances of being caught increasing by the day. 

But she needed to find the right balance; the real question was how to draw the guard out, leaving the prince open to her, rather than encouraging them both to retreat.

If the old noblewoman had been right about the two boys, they certainly lived together; maybe, when she tracked down the prince in the morning, she could snatch something of the other boy’s and ask Mireht to help her track him, too. Paranoid as he already was, it would be so simple to scare him… perhaps utilizing his own particularly Sehmeri anxieties.

An idea was already forming in the back of her mind; all of the pieces were starting to fall into place. These boys were so young, so afraid. It would be easy to push them toward what she wanted.

She could offer them Mesaanoti amnesty, after all. She just needed to convince them that they needed it.