Cast in Honor (Chronicles of Elantra, #11)(90)

Ybelline.

Where are you?

Kaylin showed her; it was easier than using words. It was easier to just...open up everything and let Ybelline see what she saw, as she saw it. A year or two ago, this would have been Kaylin’s worst nightmare. Now?

She wasn’t alone. Yes, she was standing—more or less—on her own two feet. But someone was standing beside her. Someone who couldn’t take the weight of responsibility off her shoulders, who couldn’t just do what had to be done—but who saw it, who understood it. Who saw Kaylin and understood Kaylin—and didn’t judge.

We...will speak to the Tha’alaan. Speak to the water as you can, she added, the interior voice grim. We will speak as we can. But, Kaylin—

Yes?

The Tha’alaan is...confusing now. There are—there are thought-memories in its folds that are ours—but not ours. We did not think those thoughts; we did not live through those events. It is...chaotic. We are used to dreaming thoughts and memories, but they do not have the same weight, the same texture.

Kaylin froze. Ybelline sensed everything Kaylin was trying to gather words to explain. And Kaylin, in turn, sensed Ybelline’s hesitance. It was almost like fear. Fear of a future that had not yet happened, but which the Tha’alaan remembered.

You need to know what happens in those memories and thoughts.

Kaylin swallowed. Yes. It’s—it’s why I came to talk to the water at all. Not—not that I knew the Tha’alaan was affected, but that I thought the water could tell me, tell us, what’s about to happen. What had happened, sometime in the near future. But...the water isn’t us. It’s not mortal. It’s not living here. You are. I am. Whatever thoughts you’re hearing—the haven’t-happened-yet thoughts—I think they’ll be clearer, and cleaner.

She felt Ybelline’s reluctance give way—and she expected that. That was Ybelline, all over. What she didn’t expect was the water’s frenzied response. The inches of water across the second-story hall reared up in a sudden wall, like a tidal wave in miniature. It dropped on Kaylin’s head—and the stair railing.

The railing snapped.

If she drowned here, Severn was going to be so mad.

*

The water did not speak.

It roared. It roared like a flight of Dragons, the sound a sensation that made Kaylin’s teeth—and every other part of her body—rattle. She lost the Tha’alaan; lost the comfort of Ybelline’s steady presence; she lost everything as the water swept her, and the very broken rail, down the hall and into the door at the end of it.

The door gave way as Kaylin crashed into it; she could feel it shatter, but couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t, for a moment, hear at all. There was water everywhere.

But it wasn’t high enough to instantly drown in, even if the only breaths she could draw were the ragged gasps that panic often caused. She had time to close her mouth; time to find her footing; time to see that the windows here were normal windows. Normal meant closed; in this section of town, it didn’t immediately mean barred.

Unfortunately for Kaylin, in this house, normal didn’t mean backyard and familiar city landscape, either.

She’d come here to talk to the water. She’d let Gilbert do it instead. Clearly, the water in the here and now didn’t agree with Gilbert’s presence in the here and now. She struggled for more air and less water, coughing the water out. The tide at her feet was strong, but the water itself wasn’t deep. Kaylin didn’t want to give the water time to regroup and try again, if it was even attempting to kill her consciously.

It wasn’t. She inhaled, coughing less. It wasn’t trying consciously. It was aware of her; it must be, to dump a wall of water in a way that shattered the railing to which she’d been clinging. But it didn’t see her as Kaylin.

She felt confident that if it could or did, she would be in far less danger.

There was only one way to get its attention, and she once again dropped her hand into the water. This room was not like the single room in the third story; it had furniture and waterlogged carpet. It had chairs. It had—ugh—shelves, and the books on them were going to be far, far worse for wear.

And none of that was relevant right now.

Only the water was. Kaylin’s arms stung; her wet, wet clothing chafed her skin. And she knew what that meant. At any other time, she would look for the source of magic; the water itself didn’t usually cause this type of pain. Today, she looked at her arms. She saw the faint blue glow of runes through the cloth plastered against them.

She saw the hand she’d plunged into the faintly rocking water.

If it had been natural water, there would be visual distortion. It wasn’t natural, and there was no distortion; the water might have had the same properties as air, except for the inability to actually breathe it. She heard roaring again—the same shattering roar she had heard and felt at her first contact.

She did not hear the Tha’alaan. She didn’t try.

As the light on her arms brightened, she tried to speak a single word. It took effort. The syllables—there were more than one—snapped on her tongue; they slid out of her mind and she lost them and had to start again. And again. And again. But the third time, in the warmth of water she could no longer feel, she held them all, forcing each out of her mouth, although speech wasn’t technically necessary.