6: Too Deep To Swim

I haul myself onto the flat roof to find a stocky girl with one eye holding the rope. “Thank you,” I pant.

She glances over the edge. “Don’t thank me yet. How’s your balance?”

“My what? Fine.” Grunts sound from the crowd below—they must be climbing.

“Then follow me.” She takes off across the roof at a run.

What choice do I have? I run after.

And jump after. She leaps the gap between this roof and the next, and only stops when we are three or four roofs away, one of them so old I was sure I’d fall through.

“Not bad,” she says, eying me up and down from the steep pitch of a tile roof. “The witches have you training for the Guard?”

“The witches?”

“Yeah,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “You know, the ones you ran away from? That sent that mob of bloodborn after you?”

“Oh, they didn’t—I mean—” I take a breath. I hate words. “I’m not running from the witches.”

The girl frowns, scars over her missing eye crinkling. “Then why were they after you?”

“I have no idea.” And even if I did, I’m not going to go blabbing it to the first person I meet. Not when there’s so much I don’t know.

“So you’re not a theracant runaway?”

“No. Just a… regular runaway, I guess.” I shift. It’s strange to define myself like that, especially on the peak of a thatch roof to a one-eyed stranger.

She chews her lip, emotions playing across her face. “Okay. Well, good luck.” She turns and leaps to a lower roof, graceful as a gazelle.

“Wait!” I leap after. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you.” And something tells me this girl knows how to take care of herself in the city. Something I desperately need to learn.

“You’re welcome. Now stop following me.”

“Wait!” I catch her arm and she stiffens. “Why did you help me?”

“I don’t like witches. Thought you might be a runaway.” She shrugs. “Call it my good deed for the day.” She’s not dressed like most women in Serei, though I think she’s a woman. The flowing pants and pocket-studded leather vest hide most of her figure. She ties the rope and trots away.

“But I don’t even know your name!” I call. It’s dumb, but it’s the best thing I can think of. I need to keep her talking. To tell me how she survives out here.

“Better if you don’t,” she says without looking back.

“Well, I’m Ewanala,” I say, running after her. It was my mother’s name. “How did you find me?”

She leaps an impossible gap and turns. “You mean a girl running through the streets with a mob of bloodborn after her? Wasn’t hard.”

I leap after and almost don’t make it. “Were you… looking for me?”

A darkness enters her eye. “I’m always looking for theracant runaways. But look, I have to go. Stick to the rooftops for a while, and the bloodborn should go away. No witch can hold that many for long.”

I take a deep breath. Saying this is not easy for me. “I could use your help.”

“I already helped you.”

“I know. And thank you! But I need someplace to go.”

This stops her for a second. She looks at me again, more carefully, glancing at my violet eyes, the scars on my hands. “Are you from the temple?”

“Yes. And they’re looking for me.”

She dusts off her vest. “Your dad, you mean? The Chosen?”

“My father’s dead,” I say, unable to keep the emotion from my voice. The knowledge he was murdered is still too raw. “But yes, he was the Chosen.”

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“And you decided to run away for the day? Cute.” She starts walking.

“I ran because they were going to kill me.”

She slows. “Sounds bad, but I got enough on my plate.”

“Please. I’m hungry.”

She scrambles up to the peak of a sloped roof. “Buy some food.”

I follow, grateful for my training in balance. “I don’t have any money.”

“Then steal it.”

I grimace, trotting after her. “That’s what I tried to do. That’s why those possessed people—the

Bloodborn?—were following me.” I think. I leave out that the witch seemed to know who I was.

She turns, rubbing at her missing eye. “You couldn’t even steal some food?”

It’s frustrating, how amused she looks. “No, I couldn’t. I’ve never stolen anything before, okay?”

“You really are from the temple, aren’t you?”

“I said I was. And I need your help. Please?”

Uje, I hate asking for help. It’s almost as bad as letting someone beat me. But I know if I don’t do it, I will get beaten. So I swallow my pride and stand there, fists clutching the edge of my shirt.

She chews on it for a moment, then gives me a measuring gaze. “Fine. I’ll get you some food. If you can keep up.”

“Okay.” It can’t be harder than Urte’s training.

I revise that thought about thirty seconds in. The girl leaps from roof to roof, climbs up aqueducts, and balances across laundry lines at breakneck speeds. It’s everything I can do to keep up without breaking limbs, but she just flows naturally from one challenge to the next, like a master seer at his forms. This must just be how she moves. Like she’s constantly hiding from something. I pay attention.

We finally stop on a gently sloping rooftop, two towers rising from its far end. They’re bell towers, I think, part of a Daraa religious cult my father shut down years ago. The girl eyes me, panting with my hands on my knees, then pulls a hand from her sleeve. She shakes a spiny bracelet at me.

“See this?” she asks. “This is poison. Every one of the spines on here is poison. So if you try any water-reading stuff on me—” She slashes the bracelet. “Got it?”

“Right,” I say. “No water-reading on this end.” Though by this time I’ve gotten over myself enough to wonder who she is and why she travels by rooftop.

She eyes me and seems satisfied. “Good. Wait here.” She uncoils the black rope from her waist in a smooth motion, whips it up at the arched windows of a tower, and pulls herself up.

I catch my breath and take a minute to calm myself, icing fear and confusion. I need a clear head if I’m going to earn this girl’s trust. She obviously doesn’t give it easily.

Kind of like me.

She slides down the rope, sack in hand, then shoves it at me.

“Here.”

I open it to find a ripe pear, two smoked sausages, and a crusty loaf of olive bread.

I devour them. “Thank you. That was delicious.”

Her eyebrows climb. “Things pretty rough since your dad died, then?”

“If you call a whole temple wanting you dead, then, yeah.”

She frowns, squatting on her heels. “And the witches want you dead too?”

I hesitate. The first principle of watersight is not to let anyone in, only the people you trust, but—I think of Dashan, and of Urte. Maybe I wouldn’t be here if I’d let them in.

And maybe the only way to earn trust is to give it first.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “There was a witch at the market where I tried to steal something, then an overseer came. She made her bloodborn knock the overseer out, but when I ran they all started chasing me.”

She whistles. “So why was the temple chasing you?”

“Because I know too much. Because they set my father’s murder up somehow, and they don’t want it getting out.”

Her face darkens. “Sounds typical.”

“They tried to kill me last night, after I refused to publicly deny what I know. I escaped and came here, to figure out what they did and expose them.”

“Good. You should. That type of slop happens every day in the witches’ guild, and no one does a damn thing. Everyone knows they only treat people to get their blood, so that the whole city’s under their thumb and they can control you whenever they feel like it.”

“So they—really can control people that way?”

“You saw it yourself. All those people chasing you, with their eyes wide open? That was the witches. Worst part is it doesn’t affect your mind—you’re just trapped inside there, while they do whatever they want with the rest of you.” She shivers.

I frown. “Did they… do that to you?”

She looks up suddenly, eye going hard. “No. They didn’t do slop. Look, you should go, okay? I got you some food so you’re good now, and I don’t need to get involved in your drama.”

I start back, feeling the connection we had slip. Something happened to this girl. Something bad. I ice my panic and search for what to say. What I can do to get her help.

“The runaways,” I blurt. “Theracant girls. You’re rescuing them? I can help with that.”

They’re not the right words, they’re too blunt, but she slows in the act of getting up. “What could you do to help?”

“I’m a fighter,” I say, searching my mind. “The best in my class. And—they don’t know me! I could go places you can’t.”

She narrows her eye, staring at me. “Well, you kept up with me, at least.”

“Yes! I can keep up!” It seems like a stupid detail, but I’ll take anything I can get right now.

The girl sits back down. “I do need help. But not with the runaways. With money.”

I hold back a groan. “I don’t have any.”

“No, I don’t want your money. I want you to help me get it.”

I frown. “How?”

“Thieving,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Jobs I can’t do alone. Maybe some fighting. You’d probably be good at it, with all that monk stuff. Help me with some jobs, and I’ll teach you to how to live out of sight.”

My stomach sinks. It had to be thieving. One of Ujeism’s core moral principles. I already feel bad just having stolen a shirt and a piece of food. “Is that what you do up here? You’re a thief?”

“It’s how I eat and help the runaways, yeah. You got a problem with that?”

I take a deep breath. What did Urte say? Water. I need to be water. I’m already in too deep to swim back, and leaving Nerimes to corrupt the temple is a lot worse than a couple of vendors losing their wares.

“No,” I say, squaring my shoulders. “It’s fine. I’m Aletheia, by the way. Not Ewanala.”

She just grunts, then, “Gaxna.”