Book One – Chapter 19

That they learned to swim was astonishing, though not unthinkable. To some measure, you could have even expected it. Human and tairan bodies were alike enough. The tairan of today bore no likeness whatsoever to the creatures that thrived in water, yet within their given limitations, they swam passably well. Their ancestors had come from the unknown overseas. They had been expert sailors. That knowledge had drowned in the wars three centuries ago, save for a few scraps that time and again surfaced from broken lighthouses, deserted settlements, misplaced scriptures or the odd merchant’s chest of curiosities. Tria rescued and hoarded them. She had always collected notable documents from the surrounding regions, but after the paigan hunter wizard had pressed her, she became methodical. Yu never knew their bargain, only that she began paying dearly for the remnants of original tairan logbooks and for those illegible maps scrawled with routes and coasts. Most of it was trash, if not fake. Though by now, she had a few well preserved pieces. There seemed to be more seaworthiness trapped in those papers than in the tairan who inherited the name. Still, their will and skill to defy the sea had left its mark; even now, their descendants swam the streams for pleasure.

But the habitat humans had gone even further. They had let the streams seep into their lives, until their rituals shifted entirely to water. They began to give birth there. At first, it was crude. They had determined a designated bend in the river, where the females gathered and waded in whenever one was ready. Then, seven years ago, they had diverted a branch, cut a side-channel and made a pond for that purpose alone.

Yu remembered the first time he saw it. A birth. The memory clung to his drowned senses. They soaked it up as if it were air. With the silence pressing in from all around, it was as though he stood in the tower again. He could feel the wood beneath his talons, the sand in the air, and the glass pressed cold against his eyes, as his gaze bent downward to water that frothed with shrieks. Tria had taken him there, to the northern watchtower. She wanted to see, and he had been made to watch.