“What are we going to do?” Her green eyes went wide. “Benn — ”
“I haven’t forgotten him.”
He turned, turned again. At various points into the bay, huge timber mooring piles had been driven deep into the mud, though all were empty. The ships that had been moored there had either been sailed away, or wrecked in the tidal wave.
The nearest pile was thirty yards away. Rix fixed the location of the end of the drainpipe in mind as best he could in the featureless water, then swam with Glynnie to the pile, which extended six feet out of the water and had a copper cap on top.
“Hang onto the mooring ropes,” he said, and made sure she had a tight hold. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
He scanned the water for boats and other dangers. Several hundred yards further offshore, wind and currents had collected a mass of timber and floating debris into a loose, bobbing raft at least a hundred yards across. Dinghies were drawn up on the shore but he could not reach any without being spotted.
“Benn’s in trouble, I know it,” she wept. “I should have let you bring him first. I’m so stupid. I can’t do anything right.”
“He’ll be all right. I’m going back now.”
“What if you can’t find the end of the drainpipe?”
“I’ll find it.”
“If something’s happened — ”
Now Rix was worried too, but he couldn’t bear to listen. “I’ll be quick. Stay low. Don’t do anything to attract attention.”
He swam back thirty yards, dived and went down with powerful strokes of his left hand, his right flopping uselessly. The bottom was some fifteen feet down, but there were no waving streamers of algae and no sign of the drainpipe. Rix cursed and swam in a widening spiral until lack of air forced him to the surface. He trod water, gasping, eyeing the patrolling guards until he got his breath back, then dived again.
The drainpipe was not below him here, either. How could he be so far out? He swam another spiral, another. Ah, there it was, but he lacked the air to swim all the way back to Benn. Another breath and down he went, into the drainpipe and up. Despite his words to Glynnie, Rix was starting to panic. He’d told Benn that they’d be five minutes but fifteen must have passed by now, and in fifteen minutes anything could have happened.
He swam furiously until he approached the upper end of the drainpipe, then slowed and approached it carefully, just in case. Now he could make out a faint bluish light, coming from the glowstone. It was all right.
He eased his head through the surface and looked around. The air reeked of rotting fish and decaying bodies. He hadn’t noticed how bad it was before. The glowstone sat on a rock by the water’s edge, and Benn’s little pack was beside it. But Benn was not there.
CHAPTER 6
Rix threw himself out of the water, grabbed the glowstone and held it high. “Benn?”
No answer. What had happened to the boy? Could a hyena shifter have survived the explosion and taken him? It seemed unlikely; there was no blood, no shredded clothing, no shifter stink. If one of the rank beasts had been here, the smell would linger…
Had Benn been captured by the enemy? The floor of the drain was bare stone here and showed no tracks, but surely they would have taken his pack, or tipped everything out to search it.
Had he gone back up the tunnel? Why would he? More likely, after a wait that must have seemed interminable to a small boy, Benn had tried to go down the drainpipe in a vain attempt to find his sister. He could not swim, and must have drowned if he had tried… though he might have held his breath and pulled himself along the rough stone on the bottom of the drainpipe. Could Rix have passed him, coming back? It was possible, because he had swum along the top. They would not have seen each other in the murky water.
Check the water, quick. If Benn had only gone in a minute or two ago, he could still be alive. Rix dived in and swam furiously along the bottom, sweeping his arms out to either side, feeling for anything lying there. Nothing. He reached the outlet without encountering anything other than broken rock and leathery weed, then felt around the exit for snags and projections. Nothing. Nor could he see the boy on the muddy lake bed immediately outside.
Though he was desperately low on air, he swam back along the roof of the drainpipe in case Benn had passed out and floated up. Nothing there either. Rix burst out of the water, gasping, lay on the stone for a minute while he got his breath back, then picked up the glowstone and checked up the drain again. There was no sign that anyone had ever been here.
Could Benn have reached the outlet? It was barely conceivable that he could hold his breath that long, but if he had, Rix would never find his body in the murky lake waters. Benn was a skinny lad, and if he had drowned, his body wouldn’t float.
Only one hope remained — that he had wandered up the drain, back the way they had come. What could have made him do such a thing, though? He was a sensible boy and would not have headed back into danger. Besides, he would never have left his sister.
Rix stared up the dark drain, then down at the murky water. Benn might have been captured by the enemy, though if so, why hadn’t they touched his bag? Holding the glowstone high, he ran up the tunnel to the first bend. There was no trace of the boy. He stumbled on, to the point where the broken bodies were jammed into the wall. There was mud on the floor here but it showed only their three sets of tracks, heading down.
He rubbed his numb fingers, clawed at his scalp. What else could he do? If Benn had been taken by the enemy, they would be on watch for a rescue attempt. If Rix tried, he would be killed or taken and Glynnie would drown, all alone, never knowing what had happened to either of them.
How long could she last in the water? Slender little thing that she was, half an hour might finish her. An hour certainly would. If she climbed out onto the mooring pile, the icy wind on her wet skin would kill her more quickly.
And if he did not come back? Glynnie might manage to swim to shore, though it was a hundred yards away from the pile and she had never swum more than twenty. She would be captured and probably killed for having been a servant of Palace Ricinus.
Rix groaned, turned, turned again. He could do no more for the boy. His duty was to the living now, and if he spent any more time looking for Benn, Glynnie would die. He headed back to the water. How was he going to tell her that her brother was lost, almost certainly dead?
This swim down the drainpipe was interminable, yet not long enough. A thousand miles would not have sufficed to find the words to confess his failure. If he could not protect these two innocents, what was he good for? Nothing.
He struggled on, exhausted in body and mind, and every injury he’d suffered in the past few days, every bruise he’d taken after throwing himself down five levels of the corkscrew stair to the murder cellar two days ago, throbbed to remind him of the pain he was about to cause Glynnie.
Rix reached the end of the drainpipe so breathless that he had no energy to swim further. All he could do was float to the surface and bob there, gasping so hard that surely the troops patrolling the shore must hear him.
It was after four in the afternoon. The short winter day was fading, mist rising to drift in wisps above the water. The breeze had picked up and was icy on his cheek and shoulder. It drove more debris ahead of it, the final fruits of the tidal wave that had engulfed the lower areas of Hightspall a few days ago.
A large, solid front door, intricately carved and inlaid with freshwater pearl shell, but splintered along one side where the water had torn it from its hinges. An empty pottery flagon, green and white, slowly turning as it drifted. The body of a stocky, balding man, his fish-white skull gleaming like glowstone through strands of sparse black hair. His belly was swollen and his eye sockets empty, picked clean.