Chapter 26: Drowning with Dignity
Acalith stayed behind them, sealed under stone and Council incompetence. The River Lands took over again: mud underfoot, reeds at their legs, insects whining in the grass. After the Hush, noise felt almost vulgar.
They saw the smoke first. Then the camp appeared through the reeds, wrapped in the thick smell of fish smoking over a trench fire. Flat-bottomed barges rested along the bank, broad and low, their bright paint dulled by weather and repair. Reed mats covered the roofs. Nets hung from poles. Shell charms clicked softly in the wind.
“Reedborne,” Toren said quietly. “Travelling River Loteri.”
Several children in bright tunics sat on one barge roof and stared. Beside them, a few sleek otters chirped and stretched their necks towards the newcomers.
One child pointed at Dorian’s brass cuff. “What is that?”
“A weapon,” Dorian said.
The child considered this. “Does it explode?”
“Not when properly respected.”
“Does it bite?”
“Only people with questions.”
The children went quiet. Even the otters froze for a moment.
Liana gave him a look. Dorian adjusted his ruined sleeve over the cuff. “What? It worked.”
An older woman came from between the barges, carrying a knife in one hand and a half-cleaned fish in the other. Pale hair hung down her back in two braids tied with blue glass. Her eyes moved over the dried mud on their skin.
“You look as if you came from the Hush,” she said, her accent soft and distinct.
Dorian’s attention sharpened at once. Toren leaned closer to him. “It is a local phrase,” he murmured. “For someone who looks terrible.”
Dorian eased his shoulders and privately admitted that the woman had no idea how accurate she had been.
Her mouth twitched. “The Reedborne greet you, drifters. Let the River hold you tonight. Wash first. Eat after.”
All three bowed with gratitude.
They washed because the Reedborne had standards. Liana needed little work. She washed her face, scrubbed mud from her boots, and was done. Of course.
Dorian and Toren went downstream to wash properly, then returned cold, clean, and dressed in long patched tunics. Their own clothes dried on a rope beside the Reedborne laundry.
The borrowed tunics were bright. Very bright. Liana failed to stop a small laugh.
The colourful camp worked around them while they ate. Nets were mended. River snails were cooked. Berries were sorted. Otters stole things and were apparently rewarded for enterprise.
A few hours remained before sunset.
Liana lasted less than half an hour. She sat with the monastery bow across her knees, thumb moving over the grip. A good bow. But not the shape her hands remembered. Then she stood, walked to the willow trunks at the edge of the camp, and drew targets with ochre from her pouch.
Her first arrow struck left of centre. Not bad. Nearly right. She stared at it.
Dorian watched from beneath a willow. “That tree has offended her.”
Toren sat beside him and laughed quietly.
Liana’s second arrow hit the centre. One young Reedborne hunter with long dreadlocks lowered his knife and smiled. “Good shot.”
Liana ignored him and drew again. The third arrow split the second. The boy stopped smiling.
A Reedborne girl laughed. “Steppe hands.”
After that, more River Loteri came. Young men. Young women. All quick eyes, wet boots, and no visible fear.
On the fourth shot, Liana changed her grip. Not much. A finger’s width. A Steppe correction forced onto a foreign bow. The next arrow struck exactly where she wanted it. They cheered. She looked as if praise had made a tactical error.
Dorian returned to work. His brass cuff lay open across his lap. The storage capsule waited beside him for its turn. He cleaned mud from the grooves with a thin tool, slow and precise.
Toren noticed. “You clean things when you are worried.”
“I clean things when they are dirty.” Dorian did not stop.
Toren smiled and moved closer. Dorian glanced at the healer’s hand. The red marks still crossed the skin, threaded with tiny pale fragments from Acalith. “Give me your hand.”
Toren hesitated. He had healed the worst of it, but his hand still hurt.
Dorian sighed. “Do not be heroic. It is tiring to watch.”
Toren held out his hand. Dorian opened a jar of dark green balm. The smell was sharp. Mireal’s special prescription: for wounds that made ordinary medicine feel underqualified. He spread the balm over the marks. Toren breathed in sharply. Dorian wrapped his hand with clean cloth, careful enough to be annoying.
Across the clearing, Liana hit another target. The Reedborne hunters shouted in excitement. Her ears went red. For a while, Toren watched Liana in silence. The camp softened around them.
Then Toren asked, “Why did you never stay?”
Dorian’s mouth curved. “Because my presence causes structural damage to respectable households.”
Toren did not react. He only waited.
Dorian’s tool stopped. He did not look up. “That is not what happened.”
“No?”
“No.” He started scraping dried mud from the cuff again. “Nobody wanted to stay with me.”
Toren looked at him. “I find that hard to believe.”
“That is because you are kind. A charming defect.” Dorian did not smile.
“You think no one did?”
“I think people find Walkers useful.” Dorian set the tool down. “We arrive. We fix something. We leave. Very tidy. Nobody chooses to stay with us once the interesting part ends.”
“And if someone chose to?”
Dorian looked towards Liana. She was pretending not to enjoy the compliments. Badly.
“If someone did,” he said, “that would be a completely different matter.”
Toren put his hand over Dorian’s. Lightly. Warm fingers over his knuckles.
Dorian looked down. “You are being unwise.”
“I know.” Toren smiled.
“That was not an invitation.”
“I know.”
Toren squeezed once. Dorian’s sarcasm died in the warmth of Toren’s skin.
Then Liana called, “Toren!”
Toren stood. He took two steps, stopped, came back, and bent before Dorian could object. A quick kiss touched Dorian’s brow. Then Toren walked away, leaving the scent of his hair behind.
Dorian stayed still. The cuff lay open in his lap. Across the clearing, Liana taught young hunters a Steppe grip. Dorian looked at the tool in his hand. For once, it was useless.
They left at first light. The Reedborne gave them food and one last attempt at prophecy.
“You still refuse our fortune-teller?” the elder asked. “The river already talks. Seems unwise not to listen.”
Liana inclined her head. “Your offer honours us. Not today.”
Toren bowed. “With gratitude.”
Dorian glanced at Liana. “We are trying something new. Ignorance with dignity.”
Before they left, Toren gave the elder a packet of Forest herbs. She accepted it with a nod, “Useful.”
Dorian searched his coat, found a small brass repair hook, and handed it over. “For nets. Ropes. Hinges. Small stubborn things.”
The woman turned it in her palm. “You carry hooks for stubborn things?”
“I travel with people.”
Liana looked at him. Dorian smiled pleasantly. The elder laughed once, slipped the hook into her belt pouch, then touched two fingers to the river and pressed them to Liana’s brow, Toren’s, and Dorian’s.
“Let the current be kind.”
They followed the raven’s route south.
By late afternoon of the following day, the trace sharpened again. Not the messy thread from Auralis Crossing. This one pulled behind Dorian’s teeth. Too obvious to ignore.
The reeds thinned. The ground dipped. Wind moved over open water. Ahead, the river widened, deep and brown, cutting straight across their path.
All three stopped. Dorian opened the storage capsule. “Unless the river intends to become polite and move aside.”
It did not.
Lucky unfolded with sharp clicks.
“One passenger at a time,” Dorian said. “Liana first. She has arrows. Toren can stay here and negotiate with the water.”
Liana laughed and climbed behind him, bow in hand. Toren remained on the bank with the storage capsule.
Lucky lifted. For three seconds, the crossing behaved.
Then the river opened. A dark funnel formed beneath them. Water twisted inward. Wind rose, cold and sharp. Lucky shuddered.
Dorian pushed the engine harder. “No.”
The river already talks, the old woman had said. Dorian decided, with some irritation, that it could have spoken more clearly.
The vortex pulled harder. Lucky stopped in mid-air, caught as if hooked by invisible wire. The engine screamed. The frame began to turn.
Once.
Twice.
“Oh, excellent,” Dorian said through his teeth.
Liana braced one knee against the frame. “Can you hold it?”
“Barely.”
Something rose from the spinning water. Not a snake. Not a worm. Something repulsive. Long translucent bodies slid out of the vortex, slick and pale, with visible organs shifting inside them.
Liana shot first. The arrow struck one through the throat. The creature folded around it. Still moving. Dorian lifted his brass cuff. A shield flashed out. Another creature lunged and flattened against it, organs smearing inside its own skin.
“Revolting,” Dorian muttered.
He fired a blade of reflective light. It cut through the nearest creature. The pieces vanished into the vortex. Two more rose in its place. Liana fired again, because apparently drowning was not enough to ruin her aim.
Toren reached the river’s edge.
“Toren, stop!” Liana shouted over the wind.
He did not stop. He dropped to one knee and pressed his damaged hand into the river. The water around his palm shivered. Pain crossed his face. He ignored it, lifted his healthy hand, and dragged it sideways through the air.
A wave rose against the vortex and knocked the nearest creatures off course. Dorian used the gap. Lucky lurched forward. Nearly.
The vortex tightened. The machine spun again, throwing Liana hard against Dorian’s back. His cuff flashed. The shield caught another bite, cracked, then collapsed.
“Hold tighter!” Dorian shouted.
Lucky dipped. The river boiled beneath them. Dorian fought the controls. For one sharp moment, Lucky climbed half a metre. The current caught the lower frame. Water swallowed them. Cold reached Dorian’s neck. Liana’s hand locked in his belt. Lucky dragged down hard.
Toren abandoned the bank and plunged in.
Dorian saw him for half a second. Idiot.
He kicked against the pull and fired another blade. It struck one translucent head. The creature split. Its insides unfolded like pale thread. It kept coming.
Of course.
Liana had lost the bow. She had not lost the knife. One hand clung to Dorian. The other slashed at anything too close. Dorian caught her chest strap and held.
Above them, Toren fought through the current. He reached for them, missed, and was struck sideways. His shield flared once. Then failed. Dorian saw his face through the water. Furious. Afraid. Still coming. Forest idiot.
Something clicked against Dorian’s chest.
Once. Then again. Purple light grew beneath his shirt. The river priestesses’ amulet pulsed, spreading through the water in sharp beams. The jelly-snakes recoiled.
Well. That was new.
Then the Mirror Pull hit him. Not a trace. Not a thread. Not the thin metallic ache he had followed for days. This was enormous. Ancient. Wrongly placed. It moved under his skin and through his bones. Vast enough to make the river feel small. For one ridiculous moment, while drowning with monsters and a useless machine, Dorian felt professional satisfaction. He had found it. Probably.
The water closed over his face, and even that thought went dark.
The Wise One had been letting the current carry him through the River Loteri Lands for days.
He liked this. It was slow and uncomplicated. Rare. The current bent around him without touching him. Fish vanished into the reeds. Even the mud seemed to reconsider its position.
Then the purple pulse touched the water. Sharp. Ticking. Too familiar.
Auralis.
It caught the Wise One’s attention at once. His polished black skin shifted to bright silver, and strong rings moved across his body. In one sudden movement, he covered a mile to reach the pulse.
Then he paused. It was rising from a noisy, messy vortex. Water tore itself open. Wind scraped over the surface. Jelly-hunters thrashed in the pull. People struggled. Metal screamed.
The Wise One disliked noise. He considered leaving. It was not his vortex. Not his river trouble. Land people were always falling into things and then objecting to the natural consequences. But the purple pulse ticked again, bright and inviting through the water.
Auralis.
The Wise One slid towards the vortex. The jelly-hunters fled in seconds.
One powerful tentacle coiled around the Mirrorwalker while another slipped beneath his coat and drew out the amulet. The purple pulse ticked against the Wise One’s skin, warm and pleasing.
A third tentacle caught the hunter-woman. A fourth gathered the young healer, who was still trying to fight while barely conscious. Admirable. Pointless. Very Loteri.
The Wise One threw them onto the bank. Gently, by his standards.
Then something hard struck one of his lower tentacles. Metal. Wings. Noise. Wrong in the river. The machine. The Wise One pulled Lucky from the mud and flung it after them.
The river should be kept clean.
He slid the amulet along his silver skin and dissolved into the water. He had involved himself quite enough for one day.
Lucky landed on the bank with a muffled thud, and a final wave of reflective energy rolled over the mud before passing through the three survivors.
Toren came back to himself first, half on his side with sky, mud, and reeds swimming in and out of focus while his lungs tried to escape his chest. He turned onto all fours and coughed river water into the grass. The cloth around his injured hand had gone dark with river water and blood.
Liana lay nearby, choking and swearing under her breath. Dorian rolled onto his side as water spilled from his mouth, then dragged in one breath after another, each one rough and unwilling.
“If anyone suggests swimming again,” Dorian rasped, “I shall become difficult.”
Liana pushed herself upright. “Become?”
Dorian closed his eyes for a brief moment. Toren laughed once, but it broke halfway through and turned into another cough.
Then Liana looked towards the reeds. “Lucky.”
Dorian pushed himself up too fast, regretted it immediately, and crawled towards the machine. Lucky lay half in the mud with its wings spread at a wrong angle. The left wing was bent, not destroyed, but badly twisted. Dorian touched the joint, and Lucky gave one weak click.
“Alive,” Toren said.
“Legally speaking.” Dorian closed the panel with care.
Behind them, the river moved on, smooth and innocent. Dorian moved closer to the water. The powerful Mirror Pull he had felt below the surface was gone completely. He wiped mud from his face and swore privately. His hand went to his chest. The amulet was gone.
Of course it was.
Ancient river things apparently charged a rescue fee.
“Well,” he said. “At least the day has developed structure.”