That night at the river, I start submersing myself.
A minute. Then three. Then five. My skin is on fire and my chest feels like it’s bursting and I know I should be swimming desperately for the surface, but I hold myself still. Waiting for my vision to blur, my mind to start wandering, for that unnatural calm to start hitting me. But the Vitaeria buried in my arm do their work. Body and mind screaming at me to let it end, but I don’tneedto breathe. It’s exactly as Caeror said, what feels like a lifetime ago.
The next day I make it ten minutes under. The next, fifteen. Perhaps it will be different when I am buffeted with the unrelenting pressure of the poisoned water as well, but there’s no good way to test that.
By the end of another week, I know I don’t have enough excuses left to avoid what I need to do.
I STAND AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS THAT LEAD DOWN TOthe massive underground cavern, tracing the luminous green water as it pours from the darkness above and thunders along the canal into the distance. All is motionless otherwise. The mists seem thick today, even more cloying and sharp in my lungs. They’re not the reason I pause, though. They’re not why I cannot bring myself to descend just yet.
The last time I felt so much dread in the doing of something, I ran the Labyrinth and ended up here.
Finally, I move. Pick my way along the overflow, across the small bridges and to the very end, where the twisted wreckage of rusting machinery protrudes from beneath impossibly large chunks of shattered stone. I gaze into the void into which the torrent of water disappears. A few feet wide but the water gushes freely into it. It must not narrow significantly, farther in, at least.
I stare at the water for a while. My thoughts on a different track, now. The acrid stench, the violent green of the water, is nothing like that night at Suus.
I still hear my sister’s voice.
“I don’t want to.” Barely audible. The protest of a child who knows they don’t have a choice. “I’m scared.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t sure.”Lie. “We can make it.”Lie. “Do you trust me?”
The last things I ever say to her.
I sit. Lost in the memory. Stare at the darkness for several minutes. The pain of losing my family and my home has become an old ache, rather than the open sore it once was. Grief never really leaves you, but at some point it becomes remembered rather than enveloping. My return to Suus, and time, has healed that wound as much as it ever will.
I dragged her onto that beach. Hair splayed, ghostlike, until she was out of the water. Eyes open and chest still. I tried to breathe life back into her, just as I’d been taught. Waves crashed and hissed and slithered back and forth along sand, flecks of dying foam in their wake as they touched us and retreated. I tried for five minutes. Ten. Crying. I stood to leave and then dropped to my knees and began again, not convinced she was gone. I didn’t know what else to do.
My throat tightens. She would have been sixteen, now.
“Don’t do this, Siamun.”
Netiqret’s voice echoes over the water from my right. My shoulders stiffen and I turn. She’s a hundred feet away. Alone.
“I have to.”
“There’s nothing for you out there.” She’s walking toward me, but slowly. Hands out, palms down. As if calming a startled animal. She’s figured out what I’m planning, if not why. “Stay.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Kiya said you fought an Overseer. Killed it in the Infernis.” She glances up into the darkness, as if she can see the spot where it happened. “The Nomarch saw your Vitaeria. It’s been watching the river. But I knew you’d think of this. And I’ve been down here a lot myself, this past week,” she finishes wryly, coming to a stop. A cautious fifty feet away. Not wanting to spook me.
“Ahmose is dead.”
“I know. I heard.” Something approaching regret in the acknowledgement. “He made the decision.”
“He had it made for him.”
She nods. A melancholy motion. “All of us wake up one morning for the last time, Siamun.”
Silence, as we remember Ahmose. Then Netiqret exhales. “Kiya is my daughter.”
Only the rushing of water for a few seconds. I suspected it, I suppose. It was the only thing that made sense. “You can’t save her, Netiqret.” Not the compassionate response, but she needs to hear it. “How long?”
“Twenty years.”
Vek. “You have to realise that what you want isn’t possible.”
She nods again. So slowly that it looks as though it physically hurts her to do so. “You know, Siamun. I thought you were sent to me for a reason. One last gift so that I could finally complete my task and get her back. I was sosure.” She gives a soft laugh. Bitter and regretful. “But now I realise yours was the task, and I was the gift. So stay. Stay and I swear to you I will help, because I need to knowwhy.”
