He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)
He Who Breaks the Earth: Chapter 17

The crew had not been particularly happy about Lia storming onto the boat and demanding they fight pirates. They’d been even less happy when Noa had dragged herself sopping wet over the railing like a narmaiden that had somehow grown a face as beautiful as its voice. But peak unhappiness was achieved when the pirate, whatever his name was, climbed up above his little sail and started shooting trails of smoke and fire into the water around them, splashing the rails with saltwater that smelled of acid and char.

To be perfectly honest, Lia wasn’t particularly happy about it herself.

“You said you had a plan!” the captain screamed from where he huddled just below deck. “We could have jumped ship and rowed away safe like we were supposed to, but now—” He ducked as another blast flew toward them and clipped the forward prow, sending chips of wood zipping through the air.

“He missed,” Knox breathed, adjusting the carom on his shoulder. He set the edge of it on the prow, Galerey climbing down into its belly with one of the salpowder packets in her mouth.

“He’s so upset!” Noa breathed, but Lia could see her white-knuckling the edge of the bench. Knox braced the tube against the rail, unprepared when it kicked back in a sputter of smoke and flames, sending a ball of flame into the air with an unhealthy whine. It came down between the two boats, fizzing as it went underwater. After a moment, a dull boom churned up through the water, making the boat pitch backward. Ellis’s ship continued its approach, threading its way toward their side exposed to the ocean.

The smoke from Knox’s carom came out acrid, stealing Lia’s breath. She hunched down, coughing until she could breathe again. Another explosion ignited on the other boat, sending something small and black lancing toward them. It struck the mast, splintering wood and sail.

“I think Ellis is getting impatient?” Lia breathed. She pointed toward the Russo boat making its way toward them and the little trail of smaller crafts racing out from the harbor, bristling with bows, knives, and spears. The harbormaster’s own boat was at the very back, obviously not interested in being the one to face Ellis’s carom. “That’s our cue, I think. Knox, would you untie a rowboat?” She raised her voice, crowing like an auroshe. “Abandon ship!”

“Thanks all the gods,” Noa breathed, hopping up from her seat to assist Knox in untying the ropes.

Lia joined her, letting the ship twist in the waves, a spectacle for anyone watching. The harbormaster probably had money tied up on this ship, and it wasn’t going to last long enough for him to save much of any of it. The sailors would be picked up, though.

Lia heaved one of the boats into the water, then helped Noa over the rail before she felt Knox go stiff next to her. “What is—”

But then she felt it too. Golden sparks at the very edge of her aurasight. She looked around wildly. There had been Devoted at the lake, so many Devoted—There. Three auras, all in the water at the mouth of the river, clutching the turquoise hull of an overturned boat.

And one of them belonged to the Warlord herself.

Lia strained her sight and found one terribly blank white aura at the center of gold. Mateo.

“Calsta’s breath.” Lia couldn’t breathe, the feeling of Ewan’s fingers closing around her throat, her muscles crawling with then need to run. She wouldn’t go back to the Devoted.

She couldn’t.

Knox reached out to grab hold of her, as if he meant to steady them both. Form a united front against the woman who would never stop hunting them.

“We’re within aurasight.” Lia choked on the words, looking all around. There was no escape, only water on all sides, and the Devoted were already swimming toward them. “I manage to stay out of range in Chaol for weeks, and they sail right into our fake pirate battle here in Kingsol?”

“What’s going on?” Noa yelled, the wind whipping her hair across her face.

“It’s not too late.” Knox grabbed hold of Lia’s shoulders. “We’re here to kill Noa, right?”

“Wait, what?” Noa squawked.

“Pretend! Pretend kill!” Knox waved her off. “What if we kill you too, Lia? They’ve spotted you, but if the Warlord watches you die—”

“If I’m dead… she won’t chase me anymore.” The words flapped through Lia, her eyes glazing over the sight of the turquoise boat, the Warlord, Mateo. Had he told the Warlord she was here? Brought the Warlord after her once he’d seen her aura the night before?

“What in the name of Falan’s squatty sidekick is going on?” Noa’s voice cracked, her fingers locked around the canoe’s bow. A sailor jerked it away from her and pulled the lashings free, splashing it down into the water. “Anwei said that we were only going to pretend to let Ellis take us, not actually let him take us!” She pointed frantically toward the boat drawing even with them. Ellis climbed down from his perch with the carom tethered to his back.

Knox held up the bag of compressed salpowder packets. “They burn underwater. All we have to do is make it look good, then swim down until out of aurasight range. They’ll think you drowned.”

Lia’s heart swelled, hope a poisonous thing inside her. “You trust Anwei to find us before we actually drown?”

“Of course.” He twitched, face screwing up as Galerey popped out of his tunic front. “She still needs us.”

Noa began swearing in Elantin when a hook flew over the rail and drew tight, pulling Ellis’s boat closer. Lia’s heart sank, the feel of golden auras ever closer. They were swimming fast, like fish in the water, because Devoted had Calsta to lend them extra breath.

Something Noa couldn’t do.

Noa couldn’t hold her breath long enough to fake drowning. Energy crackled through Lia, the spark of needing to act striking inside her over and over. She could feel Knox’s hands go slack around the salpowder packets as he looked toward Noa, realizing what she just had. Noa couldn’t hold her breath long enough to pull this off, and they couldn’t leave her behind.

But Lia couldn’t stay. Another projectile fell short of the rail and fell into the water below, air bubbling out from under it as it sank. Her mind went to the hold. They just needed to find some way to breathe under water. Drawing her sword, she slashed the ropes connecting their boat to Ellis’s. “Give me some of that.” She grabbed one of the salpowder packets from Knox, the acrid smell like vomit. “We can take Noa down with us. I have a plan.”

“What do I need to do?”

Lia took Noa’s hand and ran toward the hold, hollering at Knox over her shoulder. “Rig things up here to explode before Ellis can get on board, then come below.”

The Devoted auras pricked in her mind, stroking closer every moment.

The stairs that led below were slippery—slippery like the odds this would work.

“Tell me what we’re doing,” Noa gasped, wrenching her hand free.

The Devoted were only fifty paces away.

“Stay close.” Lia grunted as something above them gave an ear-bending crack, and then a boom that shook the whole boat. “I need you to help me find the governor’s prize bathtub.”

About halfway to the ship, Anwei felt something go wrong.

It had all been perfect, the flashes of fire, smoke bleeding into the air so thick they could hardly see the boats, Loren white-knuckling the tiller, asking every two minutes if Noa truly would be safe.

One moment, everything was going perfectly, and the next, something in Anwei’s mind changed. She staggered forward, grabbing hold of the rail. The touch Knox left at the back of her mind, the one she’d been pushing away, went from exhilarated to…

Terrified.

“She’s worth quite a bit of money. To you too, if we get her unharmed, is all I’m saying.” Loren was still talking. “If you’d just let me take us a little faster—”

The pirate-marked ship rocked to the side, smoke and flame erupting from where Knox, Lia, and Noa were supposed to be standing on the deck. A moment later, an earsplitting roar tore over. Flames burst out from the side, and the craft began to list. Knox was a flame in her head, reaching for her as she reached for him. Her mind bent, and suddenly she could see auras the way Knox did, Noa, Knox, and Lia, all somehow below. Trapped inside the foundering hull.

Anwei drew her sword—or tried, almost losing it halfway when it caught in the sheath, but Loren was too busy gasping obscenities to notice. “You said—you said—”

She held the tip to Loren’s throat, her brain twisting into curls of panic that were not all her own. “Get us over there right now.”

His eyes bulged. “It’s too late—”

“Next time, before letting Devoted onto your ship, you should remember that anyone can have braided hair. We only marked one boat. Now we have two. If you don’t get me over there, I will cut off your ears and feed them to you one by one.”

Loren stared at her. Then slammed the sword away from his throat. He dove to the deck, groping for the salpowder trigger Ellis had warned them about. Fingers clawing, Loren pulled so hard that it came away in his hand.

No explosion came, of course. Altahn had dismantled the salpowder trigger before they’d been ten strides from the dock. Anwei advanced on Loren, pinning him to the rail with the sword even though the weight dragged at her wrist. “Get off my boat. The girl you wanted is dead, and you’re going to join her if you don’t jump now.”

Both of them flinched at the sound of another explosion. Anwei looked up to see the ship burst out in flames. It rolled completely over, belly up in the water. Knox was still there, alive and… in control somehow. Knox seemed to grow inside her mind, stretching out past the little spot he usually stayed.

You’re going to have to move fast. His voice was in her head, fully formed, like he was standing right next to her. Meet down the coast, well past the river mouth.

Altahn cried out, “Anwei!”

She dropped the sword, wrenching free the packet of corta stashed in her coat, the fabric tearing, knowing Loren’s hands were coming for her throat before she even saw them.

The eruption of powder fountaining from the torn packet lit up in Anwei’s mind like a beacon, each particle crying out to be guided.

It happened so fast she hardly understood it, each individual particle of powder changing directions at the same moment, like a flock of sparrows. With a nudge from her, they shot straight into Loren’s face, and he staggered backwards over the rail.

She didn’t bother checking to see if Loren surfaced again, her eyes full of the burning ship. “Get me closer,” she yelled. “Around the back side and up the coast. Get us over there now.”

But then she saw it. A turquoise boat.

Anwei clutched her medicine bag, frozen. Shimmers of light erupted across it as she watched, some flickering with gold and one that looked familiar. Her hands clenched on the railing, stuck as she stared toward it, the tomb flashing in her mind, the body on the floor swapping power between Knox and—

Arun. No, Mateo, the monster he’d become when he left her to die on the island for his new monster family. He was right there in the water, ripe for the taking.

Knox’s connection to her flared with panic, and he suddenly was sinking, the little flare of Noa and Lia to either side of them.

Hurry. Knox’s voice was quieter. Up the shore.

Ellis was backing off, her friends’ energy was flickering, and the bond between her and Knox stretching tight. But Mateo was right there.

“Anwei?” Altahn’s voice rapped out. He coughed, the smoke rolling over them. “Everything is on fire. My carom—”

Knox’s aura winked out.

Anwei tore her eyes away from the turquoise boat. “Bane and Gilesh, stay with the boat. Take it up the Felac like we planned. Altahn, you and I are going to take the two canoes up past the river.”

“But Ellis still has—” Altahn yelled over the roar of waves and fire.

Anwei swiped the sword through the ropes tethering the rowboats under the back rail of the ship, dropping it with a clang when the boats splashed into the water. “I’m not leaving them.”

Altahn hesitated only a second before he ran past her, vaulting over the railing into the first boat. “I’m with you.”

Knox could feel the Devoted when they boarded the boat. It was the closest he’d been to gods-touched outside of Lia and Anwei in more than a year.

The explosion had gone to plan, two holes in the same side of the hull that had water gushing up to his knees before the boat began to list. It didn’t stop the sparkle of aurasparks from heading for the ramp that led down to them. Noa had gotten hold of one of his hands and was squeezing his fingers far harder than was warranted. Lia was on his other side, ready to move.

The two auras came closer. Closer.

But then something broke, a spurt of seawater flooding the boat so it was suddenly up to Knox’s chest, the floor tipping out from under his feet, and the tub—

“Move out of the way, Noa!” Knox warned.

She let go of his hand and pushed to the edge of the quickly filling room just as the boat turned fully on its side. Lia pushed from the top of the now steeply sloped floor and Knox pulled from the bottom, the copper monstrosity turning upside down into the water with a slap over his head, trapping air inside. Ensuring the carom was firmly strapped to his shoulder, Knox dove under the lip to get back out from under the tub, surfacing to find Noa wide-eyed and whispering something in Elantin that sounded like a prayer.

“Quick, Noa! It’s sinking!” The bathtub was extremely heavy, cast iron with a copper coating that made it sluggish in the brackish bay water. Knox tried to hold it steady, bracing himself to keep the bathtub from going down and the carom from dragging him with it. Lia was on the other side, face pained as she tried to keep the other side of it from sinking into the hole they’d made in the side of the boat. The water gushed in faster and faster, the pocket of air above their heads shrinking. “You need to get under it, Noa. There’s air trapped inside the bathtub for you to breathe until we get you back up to the surface, we’ll be right there with you—”

“Knox, I….” Noa’s gaze was terrified.

“Noa.” He took both her hands, looking her straight in the eyes. “Anwei promised you she’d get you out, right?”

The Devoted had reached the top of the sideways staircase.

Noa closed her eyes. “I dance and make fun of people, shadow man. I’m not supposed to—”

“Listen to me. Anwei and I are partners, and her promise is mine. Maybe you and I don’t get along, exactly, but I’m going to keep you safe.”

Noa sniffled once. Then nodded, her panic palpable. Something crawled at the back of Knox’s neck, wriggling out from under his shirt. He yelled, slapping at the writhing only to have Galerey scramble out, hopping from him to the top of Noa’s head. She started laughing, gathering in the lizard and holding it close. “I’ve got you, little terror.” She took one last look at Knox’s face, then took a deep breath. “Hold your breath, Galerey,” she whispered, then ducked under the water, coming back up under the bathtub.

“Lia Seystone?” a voice called. Knox didn’t recognize the auras trying to pick their way past the rubble, water up to his chin. The boat gave a sudden lurch, turning the rest of the way over. Knox strained to keep the bathtub poised over the hole.

The ship was sinking fast now, taking Knox, Lia, and Noa with it like fish caught in a current. The auras above climbed up, back to the open air. Knox took in one last deep breath as the water level bubbled up to fill the room, the hum of the goddess’s fire making him feel as if he didn’t even need air. He braced himself against the side of the hole they’d made as the water pressure from below lessened, the bathtub beginning to dip down toward the hole. Knox and Lia struggled to hold it steady, waiting until the auras above them winked out entirely.

The moment they disappeared, Knox launched off the side of the boat, Lia helping him guide the tub down through the hole, then they both kicked hard, pushing the bathtub and its unhappy passenger out from under the boat.

Anwei was a warm hand on the back of his neck—she was frantically looking for him, smoke and confusion in her lungs. She couldn’t see.

Down the shore, he thought. Past the river.

She was close. Not physically, but close inside his head, her presence threaded through him just like it had down in the tomb. Brought together by panic. She couldn’t see what was happening with the ships or the pirates, but she did know the ship had gone down. She knew he was underwater, she—

Something changed, Anwei tearing back for a moment. The air in Knox’s lungs suddenly burned, Calsta a fire around him, and his side—

But then Anwei was back, the weight of the tub, the pressure of water sucking at the boat’s wreckage was all dragging them down, down—Knox could feel the energy coursing through him, more than just his own like other moments they’d reached out for each other. Lia, so graceful in the water beside him, was sketched out in a new kind of light that wasn’t her aura. Knox could suddenly see everything inside her working together to move the tub across the bay. She had a blister from her sword sheath, the feel of it a distinct color in Knox’s mind that he couldn’t quite describe, Anwei’s magic mixing with his as she reached out and he reached back.

Kicking harder, they came out from under the ship’s shadow, and Knox dropped the carom’s extra weight, watching the heavy tube disappear into the darkness below. Sorry, Altahn. At least Ellis won’t be able to get it. He reached out farther with Anwei’s power and found Noa under the tub, her muscles and bones moving together in ways he didn’t understand, her fingers latched to under the tub’s lip with a viselike grip, her lungs—

Something about her lungs was… wrong.

Knox pushed faster with a stab of panic, trying to gauge the distance to the surface. He couldn’t see the auras above them, couldn’t see the boats any longer, pirate or otherwise, but he could feel Anwei. She was up there, and she would know how to fix whatever was happening to Noa.

Lia caught his panic as the air trapped in Knox’s lungs began to burn, not even Calsta’s power enough to keep them under much longer. He ducked down under the tub and grabbed hold of Noa, hoping she knew to take in one last breath. He dragged her out into the water and started swimming toward the surface, leaving the bathtub.

Noa was light and limp as he kicked up into the blue, finally seeing the outlines of little boats on the surface.

Ten feet. Three. And then he was on the surface, gasping for breath, and Altahn was dragging Noa out of his arms into the boat.

“She’s not breathing!” Altahn yelled toward the other boat. “Anwei?”

Knox climbed onto the canoe, remembering what he’d seen Anwei do when one of her patients had stopped breathing. He tipped up her chin and blew air into Noa’s mouth, hard and forceful.

Hand seized his shoulders, Altahn’s angry voice filling his ears.

“Altahn, keep the boat steady!” Anwei’s voice shouted over the water, fading as the waves pushed them apart. “You have to breathe for her, Knox, just like that!”

Knox blew air into her mouth, panic unfolding inside him when she stayed pale and cold like a corpse. Her heart—it’s not beating.

Noa needed a heartbeat. Anwei’s presence, her magic, all of her twisted tight inside him, and he could almost feel her hands over his hands, moving them to press down on Noa’s chest to match the beat ticking in his own chest. Anwei’s boat swept farther away, and Lia, who’d been picked up by Anwei, was madly trying to row them closer as Altahn fought the pull of the waves drawing them toward to shore. More breaths, Anwei whispered inside Knox. Then her heart again. Knox kept going, breathing, then beating Noa’s heart, then breathing, then the beating heart, then breathing—

Suddenly, Noa’s eyes bugged open, and she choked. Knox pushed her onto her side as water spewed out of her mouth. She was crying, and Altahn was yelling, and the boat pitched violently under them as it hit the beach. Knox grabbed hold of Noa, dragging her until the sand under his feet was dry. He fell down next to her, his whole body burning and tears streaming down his cheeks. “Noa?” he gasped. “Noa, are you all right?”

She was coughing, her hands pressing hard against her chest as she curled in the sand, the dry grains sticking to her face and hair. “Gods above, I hate you,” she gasped. “And I feel sorry for Anwei if that’s how you kiss girls.”

“You are the worst.” He couldn’t help but laugh, flopping down in the sand next to her.

Noa’s hand nudged his shoulder, almost like a pat. “You are the worst.”

Altahn staggered up the beach, his Rooster braids matted against his forehead. He fell to his knees between them, an oar forgotten in one hand. “Noa?”

“Leave me alone,” she rasped, waving him off. “I’ll let you take care of me later when I don’t actually feel like I’m about to die.”

Slumping down on her other side, Altahn clenched his eyes closed and nodded. “Don’t die. We traded saving the carom for saving you. If you die, I’ll have gotten nothing out of this.”

Knox squinted out toward the bay. “I think Ellis’s boat is on fire, if that’s any consolation.”

“He’ll soon have it out.” Altahn’s lips pursed. “But I guess that does make me feel a little better.”

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