She put on her best threatening voice. “I’ll cut off your hands with a Watermight razor if you don’t let me down.”
“We’re fifty feet up,” the man said blandly. “Even if you didn’t fall, Rook and Boru would never let you escape.”
Tamri glanced at the red dragon flying alongside them, and the arching blue neck and white-feathered shoulders beneath her, weighing her chances. Leaping into the void might be preferable to coming face to face with Pendark’s ruler.
The King’s Tower was drawing closer. Lower battlements bristling with armed men surrounded the tall middle column. Some of those men would be Wielders. King Khrillin was notorious for hiring powerful Waterworkers who might otherwise try to carve out their own territory within the city-state. His followers weren’t known for being lenient.
“Please don’t give me to the king,” Tamri begged, desperate now. The Vertigonian’s knee was pressed against her thigh, and she clutched the fabric of his trousers. “I’ll do anything.”
He was quiet for a beat. She sensed him wavering. She didn’t know much about Vertigonians, but maybe he would be merciful. Khrillin surely wouldn’t.
“Please.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late.”
They soared over the lower battlement of the King’s Tower, and Tamri’s heart plunged even faster than the dragon flew. King Khrillin’s thugs were waiting for them.
3
Tamri didn’t stand a chance. As they landed on the battlements in a clatter of talons, the Waterworkers yanked the remaining power from her body with a violence that left her shaking. She scrambled off the dragon, and the Waterworkers surrounded her, shouting, shoving, and spinning silver power through the air. She lost sight of her Vertigonian captor, and she could barely see the two dragons with so many bigger and taller people closing in around her. She couldn’t escape no matter how hard she struggled, and her pleas for mercy fell on unsympathetic ears.
A few chaotic minutes later, she was being dragged into the tower and up a winding staircase to face King Khrillin himself.
The Waterworker serving as Tamri’s primary jailer was called Brik, a particularly unpleasant fellow with bad breath, worse teeth, and a cruel grip. The Vertigonian stranger had held her firmly, but Brik squeezed her arms raw as he hauled her into the king’s audience chamber.
Tamri had run into Khrillin on occasion back when he was just another Waterlord. She’d sold power to him when he was buying and stolen it when other Waterworkers were paying more. His dominion had encompassed the entire Garment District and a large swath of the Jewel District before he maneuvered his way into the kingship. Famous for throwing extravagant parties for the interesting and influential, he made it his business to know things, and he used the information ruthlessly to achieve his ends. He was widely considered the most powerful Waterworker Pendark had seen in a generation—and its strongest king.
Today, Khrillin was dressed all in black, with fine polished boots, and a silk baldric straining over his broad chest. Black pearls and chips of obsidian were woven into his luxurious black beard, and his skin remained smooth, though he was well into his middle years. He carried himself with grand dignity, his presence radiating power.
“Well, well,” he said as Brik dragged Tamri to the center of the audience chamber. “This is our dragon thief? I must say I expected one of the bigger players.”
“Some other gutterfeeders tried to cause a distraction, sire,” said Brik. “We caught most of them.”
Tamri winced, wondering what had become of Pel.
“And what do you have to say for yourself, little gutterfeeder?” Khrillin’s deep voice filled the room and rumbled through the soles of Tamri’s feet. She resisted the urge to shrink in on herself. “Did you truly think you could get away with the beast?”
“I just wanted to borrow it.”
“Borrow.”
“That’s right. Didn’t go as planned.”
Tamri scanned the audience chamber as she talked, seeking an escape. It was a windowless room in the dead center of the tower, with sparse but elegant furniture and two exits, both guarded. The king’s usual entourage milled in the corners, Waterworkers who were powerful enough to find places at his side but not powerful enough to claim their own districts. A few swirled silvery-white spirals above their hands, showing off their wealth.
The Vertigonian dragon rider who’d caught her stood by a darkwood table at the side of the room, arms folded across his chest, face impassive. She would find no help there.
A young woman sat at the table, watching the proceedings with interest. Two goblets before her suggested she’d been having a drink with the king when Tamri’s arrival interrupted them. Not much older than Tamri, she was tall and freckled, with curly dark hair. Tamri had never seen her before.
“Have you nothing else to say?” The king’s booming voice drew Tamri’s attention back to the center of the room. “No explanations or apologies?”
“They’re never sorry enough.” Brik’s hands on her arms went stiff and icy. “Let me teach her a lesson.”
Tamri’s skin crawled, and she tried not to think about what kind of lesson Brik had in mind.
“I didn’t mean any harm.”
“Yet harm was done,” the king said. “I understand the dragon is distraught, and much of the Watermight it was carrying has been lost.”
“What?”
“Oh yes.” The king examined the rings on his right hand idly. “A very valuable quantity, I must say.”
Tamri glared at him—and at the room full of Waterworkers. She had been careful of the power while the dragon was with her. If someone else took advantage of the chaos to skim some for themselves, it wasn’t her fault. Somehow, she doubted Khrillin would believe that.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“No need to fear. We can be reasonable.” Khrillin smiled in a way that could almost be mistaken as kind. “You will pay for the missing Watermight and the damages the dragon caused during your little escapade—”
“But—”
He silenced her with a raised eyebrow. “Plus a bit extra for delaying my fine Vertigonian friends, who ought to have departed for the north by now. It—”
“But, sire, I—”
“Do not interrupt me again,” the king said, his voice lowering to a dangerous purr.
Tamri clamped her mouth shut, fear worming through her belly. Khrillin gave her a hard stare.
Then he named a sum large enough to make even the other Waterworkers blink.
“I don’t have that kind of money,” Tamri said faintly. It was as obvious as stating that water was wet or Steel Pentagon fights were bloody. She couldn’t hope to repay that much coin if she stole a dragon-full of power every week for a year.
“Then you should not have disrespected our guests.”
Tamri tried to stammer out a plea for mercy, panic bubbling up so fast it made her dizzy. This would put Gramma Teall out in the gutter. It would obliterate any hope Tamri had ever had of changing their circumstances, of getting her grandmother the kind of healing and care she needed. It would leave Tamri indebted to Khrillin until her dying day.