Page 133 of Dark Water Daughter

The wind shuddered and branches clattered overhead.

“There now, Tane,” Lirr whispered into my ear, his voice thick with sorcery and his breath the only warm thing in my icy, terrible world. “It’s time to go home.”

AN EXCERPT FROM:

A HISTORY OF GHISTLORE AND THE BLESSED; THOSE BOUND TO THE SECOND WORLD AND THE POWER THEREIN

THE SUMMONER ADJACENTremains one of the rarest abilities associated with the Sooth. As an overflow of their preternatural connection to the Other and their ability to traverse its waters, Summoners may attract the attention of Other-born beasts such as morgories, dittama and huden, which can do them grave physical harm. The dittama remain the most dangerous of these, encompassing a larger subcategory of beasts which are too numerous, and too difficult to study, to be effectively rendered here.

The more these beasts are attracted to a Sooth in the Other, the greater the likelihood that the Sooth is, indeed, a Summoner; one who may command the loyalty and favor of such beasts, though at great peril.

FORTY-FIVE

The Summoner Adjacent

SAMUEL

Apirate thrust me to my knees beside a bonfire. The small flame Mary and her mother used to lure Lirr’s pirates was gone, built into a hellish blaze at the foot of the larch’s rock. It filled the Wold with light and heat and roaring flames, and turned everything beyond its reach into pure, impenetrable darkness.

Penn huddled beside me. The tops of his ears were white with frostbite but he was oblivious, long past pain. “They’re bringin’ in more prisoners, sir.”

I followed his gaze, each shallow breath fogging from my lips. My crew and Demery’s pirates, many of whom had suffered in the carnage on shore, were hauled into sight. Clots of other prisoners came with them, men and women I did not recognize, haggard and stumbling and linked by longchains—thecaptives from Lirr’s hold, I imagined.

Charles Grant was among those Lirr’s loyalists dragged into sight. His glassy eyes stared out at the forest as they set him down against a boulder and left him there, slumped and silent. He was pale as sun-bleached canvas, a shard of wood embedded in his throat.

He ought to be dead, judging from that wound and the amount of blood on his clothes. So should dozens of the other wounded around him. But their chests rose and fell, and Grant’s glazed eyes blinked every so often.

Fear clawed up my spine. Had Lirr already bonded them? Had that shard held a ghisting?

The pirate himself emerged from the forest after his subordinates who had borne Grant. He had Mary by the back of the head, her arms bound before her. He barely glanced over the assembly before he jerked her towards the larch’s great rock and shoved her upwards. She’d been divested of most of her outer clothing, leaving her in her trousers and a thick wool shirt.

Run, I willed to Mary, but her movements were lethargic. One blink into the Other told me why. There, on the edge of worlds, I saw Lirr’s eyes hedged withred—full,bloody, violent red.

His influence spread as I watched. The whimpering of the injured faded and his loyalists tracked his progress up the rock with worshipful eyes.

Lirr was in the height of his power, here, at the end.

“Lirr!” Anne’s voice called from the other side of the fire.

It took all my strength to look away from Lirr and find the older woman. She was here. Mary was here. Lirr was here. So where were Demery and the Usti and Athe? Had anyone escapedHarpy?

Benedict. I tried not to think of him, locked inHarpy’s hold as the ship went down, or as Lirr’s pirates tore through her hatches.

“Lirr!” the Fleetbreaker shouted again, her voice rife with hatred. “I’ll kill you,I’ll—”

Her cry broke off as several pirates grabbed her and wrestled a Stormsinger’s mask over her face. She screamed into it and the air around us shuddered. Snow kicked up, swirling into the fire with a shushing hiss.

Lirr ignored Anne, dragging Mary to a stop at the foot of the larch. Firelight filled their faces and cast their shadows onto the broad tree trunk at their backs.

A second figure stepped from Lirr’s frame. A ghisting, tall and broad and looming.

Beside me, Penn started to curse then slipped into a prayer instead.

I had known this was coming, but I felt the same instinct to pray. As Demery had said, Lirr wasghiseautoo. But knowing the truth and seeing it were two vastly different things.

“Some of you have waited decades for this day,” Lirr began, raising his voice above the roar of the bonfire.

His ghisting, Hoten, slipped to Mary’s other side and watched the pirate with an intense gaze.