I drifted. Everything felt too heavy and weak to do anything else. The waterway’s sluggish current dragged me along with it and soon it felt like it tried to help me find every storming fish below the surface. I learned to close my eyes against the silt and debris, stop myself from flinching every time a fin or scaled skin suddenly appeared less than a foot from my face. Instead, with my eyes closed, I pretended that the waterway was absolutely filled with weirdly textured plants and logs. Not dangerous fish that could easily make this whole ordeal even worse in an effort to kill me.

  Drifting like I was, they paid me no more mind than if I was the weird log and leaf. I could sense a crazy idea wanting to form at that realization but my world had narrowed to dirty water filled with enemies and the need to breathe. Somehow, I never bobbed to the surface. Likely if the waterway had been empty it would have been easy but instead the sheer amount of fish pressed me down toward the river bed.

  My lungs ached. Like I was at the very end of an incredibly long sentence and about to draw in the next bit of air to fill in everything that had been emptied out, but I couldn’t get the last word out to take that breath. That, in its own way, was worse than being frozen. Then I had ached to move, but I hadn’t felt starved or thirsty. Now it was like I had an itch I couldn’t scratch, and my mind was screaming that if I didn’t scratch that itch to breathe I would die no matter what the prickling blaze on my thigh meant.

  My world narrowed further to those two sensations: the need to breathe and the burn that meant my blessing was working. Sometimes, it expanded to a third: water flowing where it shouldn’t be as my body tried to suck in a breath it couldn’t get. I had to fight to remain still then, as the urge to choke and flail and struggle begged for me to move, but I knew I should already dead, unable to do anything of those things, so I did the more difficult thing and stayed still, limp. Over time, it became easy to ignore the horde around me—they couldn’t help me breathe. Instead, they became synonymous with the water. A combined threat that passively, completely, kept me from the air I craved.

  I vowed that, one day, the horde would know what it was like to be denied what they wanted most and that they would know I was one who took it from them.

  Something pressed against my back that wasn’t water and wasn’t scales. Wasn’t air either. In fits and starts it moved, and more and more fish bodies pressed up against me. Some detached part me noted I should be worried, but that had long passed as an option.

  And perhaps that was fine. Whatever I had caught up against was pressing me upwards.

  Air touched my chin, nose—mouth. I tried to suck in a breath, but nothing came. Not caring about the consequences, not with the need driving at me, I finally moved. Shifted my head away from the fish pressing into my face and shoulder and tried again.

  No air. I could feel it on my skin but nothing filled up my lungs. What was this? I needed—

  Everything shifted and I fell. I fell on the horde and the horde fell on me. Something punched into my gut and water spewed from my mouth. Of course.

  I couldn’t stop moving then. Vomiting up water, hacking, curling around my stomach, anything to get the air into my lungs. I needed it.

  Something was going on around me, but I couldn’t think or pay attention to it until that first painful breath burned down my raw throat and aching chest. Then the sounds filtered in. Fish sliding against each other, slapping against soggy ground. They should have been attacking me as soon as they realized I wasn’t a corpse, but no blows came. Their attention was elsewhere. Whistles, the snap and whoosh of thrown weapons, mostly coming from overhead. Slowly, I realized that I must’ve been dredged up by one of the defensive outposts and dropped into their killing field.

  Fish were dying in droves around me and I wished I could help out the tribesfolk, but my body refused to support my weight. I hated lying there, helpless, waiting to see if they would save me. At the very least, I could stick my hands in the gills of the fish I landed on and mess something up. That, at least, wouldn’t require me to stand or sit or crawl anywhere. It could see what having its breath stolen from it was like.

  Multiple bony protrusions raked against my fingers on the inside of the fish’s gills. I growled and ignored the pain to pull at the more delicate parts of the creature’s gills. It squirmed and fought and I had to release what hold I had.

  Bloody hands and no decent payback.

  I punched it.

  It slapped me in the head with its fin and my vision grayed but I clung to consciousness. A second hard slap and everything went dark.

  — —

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  I woke on my bunk in the room I was sharing with Ana and Ziek in Bramble Watch. Neither of them were in but Ingrasia was watching me from the top bunk across from me. She sat with one foot dangling, chin propped up in her hand, like I was the most interesting thing she’d seen all day.

  At my movement, she dropped lightly to the floor and held up a cup of liquid that had been resting next to my head. I tried to sit up and take it from her but my body was still irritatingly weak. Everything felt sore from my temples all the way down to my toes. My throat felt raw enough still too that I wasn’t keen on trying to speak.

  She indicated my back. “May I?”

  A long second passed as I contemplated denying her help, but I had dealt with more difficult patients than I cared to remember and I called them all fools in my mind. One way or another they still got the treatment they needed or they paid a stupid price. Better not to count myself among their number.

  I nodded slightly, and she set the cup down to help support and guide me into a sitting position against the wall before bringing the cup to my lips. I drank. The liquid was thick and soothing. Part of me tried to identify the ingredients the healer had used without thinking, but there was little I recognized. The environment in the delta was too different from the habitats I knew.

  Ingrasia set the cup down for a final time and smiled. “That’ll make the healer happy. She said you might be hacking up water for a few days but that’ll keep your throat from closing from irritation.”

  The drink was soothing enough I decided to chance speaking. “Not too life ridden for you?” My voice was soft and hoarse, but I was glad it didn’t break.

  She laughed and flicked a dismissive hand. “We all do what we can. If giving you a drink and helping a healer is enough to put me in the goddess’s bad graces then I’ve been doing something wrong all these years.”

  I blinked. That was a more lenient stance than I was used to hearing. But there were more pressing matters, especially considering I had wasn’t sure how long I had been out for. Apparently, long enough to be transported and then treated and bandaged by a healer, but that meant little.

  Ingrasia held up a hand when she noticed I was about to ask another question. “Let me fill you in. I was away for most of it, but I’ve been informed on everything we currently know.”

  She paced lightly around the room as she talked, like she wanted to hop up on a railing or one of the bedroll shelves, but there wasn’t anything suitable for her to stand and perch on.

  Ingrasia told me about my trip from Bramble Watch from the tribe’s and Ana’s point of view. How I had suddenly left with Kaylan, only for the whisper woman to report the rare news of a walkway breakage and that the fish had already found it despite the break happening behind the defensive perimeter. How they sent out reinforcements only for Kaylan and me to suddenly disappear again after claiming I could fix how the fish were reaching the new ramp.

  Ana had been surprised by my unexpected request for a net, but everyone had been impressed how quickly my helpers and I got the broken nets fixed together. They had been surprised again when I hauled the net off on my own through the trees, only to show up in another net, dredged out of the river, hours later.

  The defenders had killed off the fish around me as soon as they could once they noticed me attacking the fish in the killing field. They had thought I was dead in the chaos of the fight until one of them saw me punch the stupid fish. Once they recovered me from the killing field and I was confirmed to be breathing, they sent a runner ahead to tell Sect Leader Toniva and Ana while I was lugged back to Bramble Watch.

  Ana went to investigate what happened herself, only to find my injured helpers still waiting with my pack and spear on the walkway, debating whether they should go after me or return to Bramble Watch to tell Sect Leader Toniva that I still hadn’t returned. After that she followed the secret channel, now empty of fish, to the net I had set up.

  She managed to collect my other supplies I had left despite the large crowd of fish doing their best to break through the net and into the channel. It was holding and she had been impressed to see that every hook and tie had been put in place.

  Now all my things were gathered by my bed and Ingrasia informed me that Juniper had managed to kill off the second leviathan before taking care of the fish trying to climb up the broken walkway. They had the broken walkway secured so it was no longer dragging in the water and a new temporary outpost defending the net I had set up until the channel could be secured as well.

  All in all, I had been out for over half a day since I was found, but I hadn’t lost as much time as I thought. There was still daylight if I wanted to be truly stubborn and head back out to reach the river mouth before I fully recovered.

  In return, I told her a very abbreviated version of how I ended up in the tribe’s net. My mark no longer prickled and burned, but I tried to dwell on my time in the water as little as possible.

  Frozen. Drowned.

  My only hope was that when I next came across water in dire circumstances I wasn’t going to get steamed within an inch of my life.

  “Why place the third hook?” Ingrasia’s eyes searched my own. “Why not get out of the water when you had the chance?”

  I hadn’t even considered that I could climb up onto the tree roots, escape the waterway before more fish came. The final hook hadn’t been placed and I hated to leave anything unfinished, especially when I knew there wouldn’t be a chance to fix it later. Getting the third hook placed could be the only thing letting the net hold against the horde. I was already in the water, hook in hand, unable to die and…

  “It needed to be done.” I shrugged a shoulder and regretted it as various bruises and sore muscles announced their presence.

  “No wonder Esie likes you.” Ingrasia shook her head, smiling. She gestured to the door. “I’ve taken enough of your time and you have a very impatient guest waiting to see you. Normally, exceptions like this wouldn’t be made for new Saplings, but she was very…persuasive. I’ll bring her through the shadows.”

  My stomach tried to drop and swoop at the same time. There was only one Sapling likely able to bully her way into seeing me, only one that would want to, and only one reason why our long distance conversations were no longer good enough.

  Somehow, Prevna had already learned about my near death experience and I wasn’t in any condition to allay her fears.