the ones who won’t be noticed.”
“Hold on,” Miranda said. “You’re saying that the Shepherdess is out there grabbing stars, and she’s trying to keep it secret?”
“There’s no one else who could,” Lelbon said. “Not on this scale. But what could she be hiding from? Nothing in this world can stop her from doing whatever she wants.” He scratched the white stubble on his chin. “Maybe she is trying to prevent a wide-scale panic after all? But then, if she cared enough to show that kind of caution, you’d think she’d say something before ripping a star away from its spirits.”
Miranda had no idea. The more she tried to think about what all this meant, the heavier the feeling of being helpless, useless, became. The weight grew and grew until it physically forced her back down into her chair.
“It’s hopeless,” she whispered, shoulders sagging. “Even if every wizard in the world mobilized, thirty stars vanished in one day. How can anyone stop that?” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “You were right. I’m in over my head. I can’t do anything.”
“Now hold on,” Lelbon said. “It’s still possible we’re jumping to conclusions. After all, we don’t know for sure how long this has been going on, or if the Deep Current was first. Maybe this has been building slowly.”
Miranda didn’t believe that for a second, but she had no proof, so she kept it to herself. Instead, she studied the list, paying close attention to the stars who weren’t yet missing. “If she’s trying to keep things quiet, she can’t do it for much longer. Look, she’s already pulled every ocean and stone spirit save the Shaper Mountain itself.”
“You’re right,” Lelbon said, pulling the list toward him. “She’s finished the easy targets.”
Miranda shook her head helplessly. “Whatever goes next, it’ll be big. But there are, what, a hundred and fifty, hundred and sixty stars left to choose from? There’s no way we can cover them all before the next one vanishes. But if we wait until the next one pops, we’d most likely arrive too late to do any good, just like you said.”
Lelbon looked at her sadly. “I didn’t tell you these things to weigh you down, Spiritualist.”
“No,” Miranda said. “You told me the truth.”
“At least you now have the proof to convince the Spiritualists that the world needs them united,” Lelbon said. “If the list isn’t enough, the panic and chaos following whatever spirit goes next certainly will be.”
Miranda blanched. “Forgive me for not jumping for joy at that thought.” Even the idea of sitting back and waiting for a panic to galvanize the Court felt like a betrayal of everything they stood for. “It can’t be all dead ends,” she muttered. “There has to be—”
A sound exploded before she could finish, stabbing into her mind and cutting every other thought free. It started like a shot, an arrow of pain plunging deep into her flesh before widening into a high, keening wail of loss. Miranda gasped and clutched her head, trying in vain to keep her skull steady as the scream vibrated through it.
The sound was cold and sharp, but the terror in it turned Miranda’s bones to jelly. She would have fallen if Lelbon had not been there, catching her arm even as he grabbed his own temple in pain. The sound went on and on, changing and deepening from a keening scream to a roaring torrent of sorrow and abandonment, and Miranda realized that she had to pull herself together. If she waited for the sound to end on its own, she’d be here forever.
Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to stand. Lelbon was still clutching her chair, his wrinkled fingers wrapped around her arm. Across the room, Emma was slumped against the door frame, and behind her, Miranda could see the other women were doubled over as well, clinging to their machines for dear life.
That threw her. The scream going through her certainly belonged to a spirit. How could the spirit deaf be crippled by it as well? But before she could puzzle over the impossibilities, the floor began to shake under her feet.
The windows bucked in their frames, and the walls shook and groaned as the tiny, sleeping spirits within them woke. Woke, and began to scream, their tiny voices joining with the wail that was still hammering through her skull. When the air itself joined them, the atmosphere tightening like the empty space was bracing for impact, Miranda’s blood went cold. She’d seen this before.
“Lelbon,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “Demon panic?”
It had to be. Nothing else could wake this many spirits with such fury. She cursed loudly. This was just what they needed now. But Lelbon was shaking his gray head.
“No,” he whispered hoarsely. “The river.”
He jerked his head at the window, and Miranda’s eyes followed on instinct, her breath catching in her throat. Outside, the Whitefall River that flowed behind the broker’s had stopped. No, she realized, not stopped. The river was pulling upstream, the water sucking in like a breath. It roiled and foamed as it flowed backward, taking the boats with it, and as it churned, the river rose.
Brown, frothy water spilled over the narrow channel, flooding into the street. Screams went up as street carts vanished under the muddy flood. Still lurching under the endless wail, Miranda pulled herself to the window for a better look. She’d barely made it to the wall when the floor under her feet stopped shaking and started to groan.
She looked down in alarm. Brown water was welling up between the floorboards. It rushed up in little gushers, flooding over Miranda’s boots, but even this was wrong. Miranda had dealt with floods before, but she’d never seen water behave like this. The river’s water wasn’t just rising; it was spitting up, almost like the water itself was jumping to escape something.
Outside the window, the river was screwing itself into knots. Whirlpools spun all across its surface, all turning different directions in a terrifying, unnatural spectacle. But worst of all was the scream.
It was still going, still stabbing through Miranda’s mind, growing louder and louder, harsher and harsher. Each swirling eddy and gushing spout added its voice to the rest, flowing faster and faster as the sound rose. The building was screaming as well now, the stone foundation babbling in fear as the water overwhelmed it, and Miranda realized with a start that she had to do something before they were all swept away.
Purpose pulled her out of her panic, and Miranda slammed her eyes shut. The practiced calm fell on her like a stone, and her spirits rallied to her silent call, each going still and ready in its ring. When her mind was quiet, she opened her spirit.
Grief hit her like a wall. Grief and loss and fear and all the things that had been in the initial scream were still there, only now they battered against her naked spirit rather than the shell of her flesh. Miranda stumbled under the onslaught, but she found her ground again and opened her spirit wider, throwing her arms out to take in the full wave of the scream. As it broke over her, she realized with a shock that it wasn’t a single, nonsensical wail, but a word. One word, repeated over and over and over.
“Gone!” it shouted. “Gone! Gone! Gone!”
“Who is gone?” Miranda shouted back, kneeling in the water, which was now up to her calves. “Rellenor!”
At the sound of her name, the river pitched, sending its water even higher.
“Our source, our guide,” the water sobbed. “Our everything, the mother water, the mouth of the world.” The names came on top of each other, tumbling together like flotsam in the flow of the river’s panic. One word, however, was crystal clear. “Ell! Ell!”
Miranda knew that name. She’d seen it on her list just moments ago. Ell, star of the rivers, whose water wound from the plains through the rain forests before finally spilling into south sea in a delta so wide you couldn’t see its end. But Ell’s name had been one of those without the asterisk, one of the stars still present. Miranda cast a frantic glance at the backward-flowing river. It seemed that had changed.
“Gone!” the river screamed again as it pounded against the building. “Gone! Gone!”
Outside, the river barges were now level with the windows and the water was full of debris, some of it moving. People, Miranda realized with an icy shock. Men and women, little children caught up in the river’s sweep before they were sucked down beneath the swirling brown water.
“Gone!” Rellenor’s scream crashed against her. “Lost! We are all—”
“Be still!”
The command rang like a bell through the whole of Miranda’s spirit. It was not an Enslavement. She did not grab the river or force it down, but she leaned on it as hard as she could, using the whole of her will as a weight to press on the water until, at last, the terrible wail sputtered to a stop.
