Page 2 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

Even so, she dreamed.

With that kind of renown, any publisher would leap at the opportunity to print her research. Even better, it would force the king to acknowledge her. Past rulers had only kept Yevani in their court as bankers and financiers, but King Wilhelm surrounded himself with artists and scholars. Lorelei was not beautiful enough to whisper her heart’s desires into the king’s ear and believe he would listen. There was no charm she had, no power she possessed to make her persecutors throw themselves at her feet. All she had was her mind. If she co-led the expedition he’d commissioned, she’d have the sway to ask him to appoint her a shutzyeva: a Yeva under the direct protection of the king.

She’d learned to survive the viper pit of Ruhigburg University by becoming the worst of them. But outside the university, her reputation meant nothing. As a shutzyeva, she would be granted the full rights of a citizen. She could exist, unbothered and untouchable, outside the walls of the Yevanverte. With a direct line to the king, she could advocate for her people. But her most secret, selfish desire was simple. As a citizen, she could purchase a passport, her ticket to a world she’d only ever read about. It was all she’d ever wanted, the only thing she’d ever allowed herself to want: the freedom to be a real naturalist.

Wilhelm had not appointed any shutzyevan during his brief reign. But it was an exceedingly rarehonor—oneshe was certain she could earn.

“I am not doing this forattention.” Sylvia looked flustered. “I’m doing thisfor—”

“What you’re doing is wasting everyone’s time,” Lorelei said brusquely. She had endured far too many speeches aboutnoblesse obligeover the years to let Sylvia continue uninterrupted. “Mine,Ziegler’s—andHis Majesty’s, for that matter. You’ve spent far too long playing knight-errant with your own research. It’s high time you took your responsibility to the expedition seriously.”

Sylvia’s face flushed, and her pale eyes filled with fire. It made Lorelei’s blood quicken with anticipation and her mouth go dry. “Accuse me of neglecting my duties to Wilhelm again, and I will pitch you into the Vereist.”

Lorelei knew she’d touched a nerve. Most provinces had resisted the unification of their patchwork Kingdom ofBrunnestaad—andnone fought more valiantly than Sylvia’s homeland of Albe. Even twenty years after their annexation, they agitated for their independence. Lorelei supposed she could sympathize. They practiced their own religion, spoke their own dialect, and by land mass rivaled the rest of Brunnestaad combined. The rest of the kingdom believed them heretical, mountain-dwelling yokels, ready to turn and bite at a moment’s notice. Sylvia, naturally, was the heir apparent to its ducal seat.

“Besides,” Sylvia continued huffily, “this will be fast. I know exactly how to deal with nixies by now.”

Lorelei had never seen a nixie before, but as the expedition’s folklorist, she had recorded countless tales of the wildeleute over the years. Most commoners she’d interviewed thought them monsters, sometimes even gods. In truth, most species of wildeleute were nothing but a nuisance. The more bearable sort sequestered themselves in far-flung places and amused themselves by leading travelers astray. Others ran amok in the countryside, stirring up mischief in villages and trading petty enchantments for bread crusts or jars of cream.

And then, there were creatures like nixies. Facing one armed with only a guitar and three kilos of silk seemed to Lorelei a regrettable idea. “And how, exactly, do you plan to deal with it? Bludgeon it? Perhaps invite it to tea?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sylvia replied crossly. “I am going to sing to her. I’ve been practicing my technique for months now.”

“Singto it?” Lorelei spluttered. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Sylvia canted her chin. “And how many books have you published on the subject of nixies?”

A frigid silence descended. Both of them knew very well that Lorelei had not published a word.

“Mock me all you’d like,” said Sylvia, “but my research suggests that nixies congregate around sources of magic. Learning to communicate with them could prove invaluable on the expedition.”

Lorelei very much doubted that. Debates still raged in the halls of the university about the exact origin and nature of magic, but the most widely accepted theory posited that it was aether, a natural substance found only in water. Thaumatologists, specialists in the study of magic, had already developed instruments to measure it, and those were far less deadly and far more precise thannixies, of all things.

Feeling spiteful, she gestured at the empty expanse of the river. “Well, then, let us see your groundbreaking research in action. Or have nixies learned to cloak themselves as well as alps?”

The crowd was growing restless. Farther upriver, she spied a group of boys shouting and jeering as they hefted one of their friends into the air. Clearly, they meant to throw him into the river. Lorelei rolled her eyes. There was a reason no one swam in the Vereist. Once you sank beneath the surface, there was no way to orient yourself in the total darkness. Nixie or not, someone was going to die today.

Sylvia flushed with indignation. “She will come.”

“Go on, then. Far be it from me to distract you.”

Sylvia smiled beatifically. “Wonderful! Then please be quiet.”

Lorelei had half a mind to shove her into the river, but she complied.

Sylvia plucked an off-key little arpeggio, and then began to sing. Lorelei watched her from the corner of her eye. The evening light filtered through the branches overhead, casting lacelike shadows across Sylvia’sface. She grinned as her fingers clumsily shaped the chords. Never in Lorelei’s life had she encountered anyone sodemonstrative. She’d spent most of her life around northerners and had grown accustomed to their cold, clipped efficiency. But in Albe, people did strange things like sing in publicand—worse—hugone another in greeting. Most of the time, Sylvia’s easy warmth and excitability infuriated Lorelei. Other times, it reminded her too much of all the things she’d left behind.

She tore her gaze away and tightened the stranglehold on her own homesickness. Out in front of her, the Vereist shone like a sheet of black glass. It had always unsettled her, but it was far from the strangest river in Brunnestaad. To the north, there was the Salz, where you could step onto its churning surface and walk straight across from bank to bank. To the west, you could wade into the Heilen and your every wound would close. And somewhere in this treacherous, sprawling kingdom lay the aim of the Ruhigburg Expedition: the Ursprung, the fabled source of all magic and King Wilhelm’s current obsession.

Sylvia grabbed her arm. “Look!”

Before Lorelei could twist out of her grasp, the water rippled. Slowly, something emerged from the darkness of the river. The mist parted, and a gaunt face stared out at them, as gray and lustrous as a full moon against the clouds.

Gasps and shouts rang out from the crowds behind them. Lorelei couldn’t find it in herself to be annoyed. There was, admittedly, a certain provincial novelty in seeing one of the wildeleute here in the city, as if some folktale or quaint landscape painting had come to life. All of the engravings in the travel narratives she’d read paled in comparison to the sight of her, real and solid and terrible. The nixie’s skin glistened, and her dark hair fanned out atop the river like a spill of ink. But her eyes struck Lorelei with a cold, instinctual dread. They were a solid black as depthless as theVereist—anduncannily reptilian; a thin, translucent film slid over them as she blinked.

“Look at her,” Sylvia said with true wonder in her voice. “Isn’t she magnificent?”

No, Lorelei wanted to say.She’s dreadful.