1: Mistakes Are All I Have

I crouch ankle-deep in running water, blind-folded, reading the current. I hear the whole chamber through the water: the mutters of the watching students, the patient tick of my trainer’s thoughts, and the anger of Erjuna across the wide floor from me, his mind seeking to read mine.

I refuse it. That’s the first rule of watersight: do not let your opponent in. Only those you trust.

I let no one in.

Erjuna tries to keep me out, but he’s slacked off in the last few months, like the rest of them, like the whole temple. Become more interested in politics than studies, and so they’ve all gotten weak. I’ve fought half my class today and not taken a scratch. Erjuna is the last of them, many say the best of them, because they don’t want to admit I’m the best. That a girl could be the best.

Sometimes I hate my dad for putting me here. For discovering I have watersight when I shouldn’t, for using his position to get me in any way, for making me the only female seer in a temple of men. I’m a walking heresy, a challenge to everything they believe. That’s what finally got him deposed and murdered, no matter how much they claim it was suicide. I hate them for killing him, even though I resent him for putting me here.

It’s twisted, I know. Welcome to my world.

Erjuna makes his charge. I know he’s running from the way his thoughts stutter, feet splashing in and out of the water. His mind is a mess, thoughts slipping through his blind like a school of fish through fingers—calculation on how to beat me and worry he’ll be humiliated and stress about losing his place as the head of his House.

I wait till the last second, confident in my watersight though I’m blindfolded and all I can hear are the shouts and cries of the watching students, echoing in the long stone training hall. I need to do more than win here. I need to win so decisively my enemies won’t dare attack me. I need it more than I need my trainer’s approval or a position in one of the Houses. Because this about more than the training now.

It’s about staying alive.

Erjuna strikes, chopping his staff down overhand. He thinks it well before he does it, so I’m ready. I roll left at the last second, hearing his curse through the water as the wood cracks into stone. My staff slaps into his knee. He’s good enough that he recovers with a strike at my chest, and for a few seconds we dance and dodge blows, staffs cracking and water flying, but it’s a foregone conclusion. His concentration drops even more in action, and I read his thoughts like a peddler’s banner, see the desperate strike at my head before he tries it.

I duck, his blow cutting air above me, then drive the butt of my staff into his sternum, hard. He doubles over, wheezing, and I deliver a series of blows to his ribs, then a crack on the head that drops him like a dead man.

I should stop now. I’ve won, I know that, everyone knows that. But winning isn’t enough. I need fear from them, a show of strength so intense the other students won’t dare come at me, and the theocrats won’t dare disappear me, despite my heresy.

So I press the staff into his windpipe, finding it even blindfolded. I can feel his throat flex through the wood.

“Yield,” I say, not in the water as I should, but in the air, so everyone can hear it.

His thoughts are an angry jumble of defeat, humiliation, and strategizing how to save face, how to convince his friends he should still be head of their House.

Apparently, it includes not yielding right away. Too bad. I need everyone to see the second-best fighter in our class is a distant, distant second.

“Yield,” I say again, pressing harder.

He starts choking. “Yield,” he finally croaks, throwing up his hands.

I lift my staff. “Witch,” he spits, getting up from the water.

Beating him is a mistake. Erjuna is the second-best seer in our class, the most popular, and the best with words, something I suck at. He’s an easy pick for class leader—which means his House will likely get elevated this year to full seership. If I had just bowed down to him, at least let him touch me, maybe he would have taken me, taken my strength and skill over my heresy. Not anymore.

It’s a mistake, but all I have are mistakes now. A mistake to not make friends, but a bigger mistake to trust anyone as my father’s usurpers disappear all my relatives. A mistake to defeat my whole class without taking a scratch, but a bigger mistake to show any weakness when they’d readily off me to improve their own chances. The best seer in generations, the town criers are saying. If only she wasn’t the daughter of the former Chosen. If only she wasn’t a girl.

So I have to be stronger than all that. Untouchable. The best they’ve ever seen. Or they’ll disappear me—kill me or marry me off to some minor merchant or send me to a distant riverpost to relay messages the rest of my life. I can’t let that happen.

Because if it does, I’ll never find out what happened to my father. And I’ll never be able to ruin the bastards who did it.

“Remarkable,” a voice says, and it takes me a second to realize I didn’t hear the speaker’s thoughts through the water, not even a trace. Someone who blinds as well as me—a senior seer, then. I pull off my blindfold.

Worse: it’s the new Chosen, Nerimes, the seer who led the charge against my dad’s heresies, standing in the archway at the far end. The ocean breeze lifts his elaborate robes, and sunlight sparkling off the running water casts shadows in the pits of his eyes. This is the man who took advantage of my father’s death to seize power, who stands for everything my father was trying to change. A traditionalist. I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed my father, but I believe in Uje’s justice too much to attack him without being sure. Everyone deserves justice.

Especially the guilty.

Trainer Urte clears his throat. “Alethia is doing quite well, your Grace. Eighteen of her classm—”

“Defeated today, and the rest too scared to challenge her. Yes, I know. I’ve been reading the waters for some time now.” He lifts a brow at the other students, now lined up along the far wall, at sixteen all taller and stockier than me. “And none of you can take this girl? Can even touch her, despite her heresy? Despite watersight being the gift of your sex, and totally foreign to hers?”

No one responds, but the water speaks volumes. That we can hear their thoughts at all speaks volumes, when they should be practicing, should be blinding their thoughts with breath and concentration. It’s pathetic. I would be better yet if I had someone with real talent to fight against.

Nerimes’ eyes snap to me, sharp in deep sockets, as if he heard me. My fingers go cold on the staff—did he hear me? Did my waterblind fail? He, of all people, I do not want reading my thoughts.

“Perhaps a friendly spar, then?” he asks, shrugging off the bulky robes of state. He did read me, somehow. And meanwhile his mind is silent as stone, not even a murmur through the water.

I look to Urte, who appears uncertain. It’s not customary for full seers to spar with students, especially not the senior theocrats. They hardly spar with each other, except those chosen as overseers for the city. But Urte nods, and I catch a hint of his thoughts, as I often do these days. That it might be good for the class to see me beaten. Might be good for me.

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I tighten my fist on the staff. Nerimes has to beat me first.

“Blinds or no, your Grace?” I ask, giving my robes a quick wring to free up movement.

He smiles. “No need for them. A real monk must use all his faculties.” He’s not a big man, or even a particularly muscular one, but there is an air about him. A sense of power coming from his lean frame.

Good. It will feel glorious to mash his throat under my staff, like I did Erjuna’s. I let the thought slip past my blind. I don’t care. My strength is not in words. It’s in battle.

Take the lower position, he says through the water, his words precise, formal. I nod to him and stride across the hall, downstream in the flat sheet that flows across the floor, that originates with the River Thelle and runs through every room in the vast temple before dropping to the sea. The lower position is easier, as thoughts travel faster downstream, with the current. It’s a small advantage, but I’ll take it. My pride is not so great as to think I can beat the Chosen of Uje as easily as I beat Erjuna. Though I do intend to beat him.

I crouch, fingers to the water, staff flat behind me, pushing my awareness out.

And see myself, with a shock. He isn’t even bothering to hide his thoughts as he strides confidently across the floor toward me, catching a staff one of the students throws to him. I am a small figure in the sunlit room, black hair falling nearly to the water, body wiry under damp robes. I look small, vulnerable in the vast space. Maybe that’s why he’s letting me see.

I stand, uneasy. No one has ever done this before. It violates the basic rule, to let no one in. And yet, I can’t read his thoughts, his intentions, the normal unrelated things that run through everyone’s minds. Only his sight. With a gasp, I realize he’s partially opened his waterblind, showing some things and hiding others.

This is beyond me. Far beyond me.

I grip my staff tighter as he approaches. His thoughts remain completely closed, but the sight he offers gives me some small advantage at least.

It vanishes. And in the dead silence that follows, he strikes. I manage to get my staff up, blocking left with a crack, but the force of the blow nearly knocks me from my feet. Floods, he’s strong. I step right, spinning my staff to catch his ribs.

He’s fast too—my staff whooshes through the air where he was, the Chosen circling left. I lean back to avoid a counterstrike, and the dance is joined. We circle and parry and thrust and slash in grim silence, water splashing and glinting around us. He is no better fighter than I, at base, but his speed and strength are unbelievable.

I dodge back again, gradually giving ground, being driven back toward the flat stone walls of the chamber, our engagement already twice as long as any I’ve had today, and his waterblind still as silent as the midnight ocean.

I need to do something, find some edge, or I’m going to lose. So I form a thought, a simple suggestion in my head: a slip. A stumble. A moment of gracelessness, or overreaction. And as I block a bone-shaking overhead blow, I push the thought into the water, push it at Nerimes.

He stops for a moment, eyes widening. I think maybe it’s worked, this power of watersight I’ve discovered, of planting thoughts in another’s head. Then his eyes narrow, and he comes at me again in a flurry of blows.

Well done, his voice comes through the water. But I am beyond such tricks.

I step back, running into the wall, and it’s a quick series from there to the corner, to the floor, to his quarterstaff mashing my throat, to me admitting I yield.

I almost don’t, preferring death to dishonor, but pragmatism wins out. I’ll have other chances at this man. When I’m a full seer and I can do better than defeat him in a spar. When I can depose him and prove that I am no heresy. That it’s the temple, not me, that needs to change.

His black eyes lock on mine. So your heresy runs deeper than your gender, his voices comes in the water, pitched for my mind alone. That is a shame.

A chill runs through me, despite the heat. I might have imagined it before, but there’s no denying it now. He read me through my blind. Which is impossible.

And it also means I’ve made an enemy here, if I didn’t have one already.

Aloud, he says, “Impressive,” tossing the staff back to its owner without looking. “There are not many in the temple who could stand before you, Aletheia of the Vjolla, watersight or no.” He smiles. “But I guess I am one of them.” He nods to Urte. “My apologies, Trainer, for intruding on class. If you did more to enforce orthodoxy within our walls, perhaps I would not need to step in.”

Urte does not flinch under the criticism, and my heart swells. “I will do as Uje commands, Your Grace.”

“See that you do,” Nerimes snaps, and sweeps out with a last glance at me.

Urte dismisses class. Dashan gives me a look on the way out, wide face concerned, but he’s clearly not going to say anything in front of everyone else. Good. The last thing I need right now is someone feeling sorry for me.

I pace back to the cubbies in the wall, trying to sort out what this means, why Nerimes came, what it bodes for my position in the temple. If he’s finally going to disappear me, now that he knows I’m more than my father’s pawn. That I’m a heretic too.

Too bad I’m the also best seer the temple has seen in generations. Try disappearing that.

Well done today, Aletheia, Urte says through the water, in a thought too soft for any but the closest to hear. He stands in a pool of sunlight, weathered chest bare, hands clasped behind his back.

You think I am foolish, I think back to him. I don’t need to see through his waterblind to know his mind, not after so many years.

He inclines his head. You are strong—even the Chosen says so. But strength means little without insight.

You think I should have let Erjuna win. Should have bowed down to get into his House.

You need a House to be elevated, Aletheia. It is part of the test.

I kick at a leaf floating in the water. And what good will a House do me if everyone sees I’m not the best? That the heretic girl isn’t even a skilled heretic? I’d be out of here faster than the spring flood, even if Nerimes doesn’t ship me off.

Urte sighs and turns to the windows, cool breeze carrying the smell of salt and the sounds of the city below. Child, how many forms of water are there?

Three, I answer, letting a bit of impatience slip through my blind. This is first-year stuff. Liquid, ice, and steam.

And which of these would you say is the strongest?

Ice, I answer without hesitation. Though we rarely see it in Serei, I learned my lessons well. Even before we started sparring, I had to be the best. Not only is it the strongest, when set in cracks it can split stone, as the philosophers believe even our sea cliffs were made.

Urte cocks his head. And how does the ice get into the stone? Is it forced in there, solid and cold?

I frown. I—haven’t seen it, but I assume it must flow in first, then freeze.

I see his lesson a moment later. He says it anyway. Water’s strength is in its adaptability, little bird, in its ability to flow into the tiniest of cracks, and also to freeze and split apart mountains. But ice on its own? He shrugs. It is not nearly so strong as stone or steel. It will crack. It will shatter. It will break nothing apart if it cannot first flow.

I gather my things and turn to him. You would have me be fluid. Flow into the cracks of this temple, that I might break it apart?

He gives me a pained smile. I would have you serve this temple, as your father did. Not split it apart.

But he did split it apart, I think bitterly. With his heresies. With me. I’m the reason the traditionalists seized power at all.

No, Urte says, his voice hard for once. Stergjon was no heretic. You are not a heretic. It is the temple that failed to adapt, that stayed ice when it ought to have been water. You can change that. But not if you do not first learn to be liquid, too.

I sigh, gazing out the giant square windows at the ocean and the white-roofed buildings of Serei beyond, climbing the sides of the bay to the clifftops. All I’ve ever been is ice. If I change now…

He turns to me. You will still be the best of them. And the best version of yourself, too.

I sigh. Thank you, Urte. I wish I could take his advice, but it’s too dangerous.

I am leaving the temple for a few days, Urte says. Some business in the peninsula. Be careful while I am gone.

Careful? I turn to him. Careful of what?

The old man purses his lips. Likely of nothing. But do it, all the same.

I nod, sensing the dismissal, then remember something. Is there another form of waterblind?

He shakes his head. What do you mean?

Nerimes let me into a part of his thoughts today, but not all of them. And I could swear he read thoughts through my blind. Is there more we haven’t been taught?

Little bird. There is no waterseer in the world who can do such things. But pride can imagine reasons to hide the truths it does not wish to see. He drops his blind to me, and I see he’s telling the truth, as far as he knows.

Still, I wasn’t imagining it. I turn to leave, rather than be rude to Urte. He was loyal to my father and is the closest thing I have to a friend among the seers.

I know what I know. And not knowing how Nerimes did it, or why he came today, feels like diving into the ocean blind.