Water worked excellently, but I couldn’t just run a hose between whoever was talking. If my plan was going to work, I had to divide the water, but even the largest, most alert spirits forgot about their water as soon as it left them. I’d take a bucket from an awakened fountain, and by the time I’d lifted it, the water in the bucket was its own spirit, disconnected from the first and utterly useless.”
“That is the nature of water,” Banage said scornfully. “To disconnect and reconnect, to flow.”
“It was a problem,” Sara said, standing straighter. “A problem I solved. Quieting spirits is nothing new. Your own rings are quieted to make room for the spirits they house.”
“Rings are different!” Banage shouted. “Jewels and metal are still by nature. Water moves constantly. To quiet water is cruel.”
“It was brilliant!” Sara shouted back. “I was the one who discovered that if you took a water spirit and isolated it from everything from the moment you woke it, something extraordinary happened. The quieted water never realized it was part of a larger world. It never learned its name, and it never connected with the greater spirits above it. This disconnection gave the quieted water an extraordinary property. With only its own spirit for comfort in the world, the water had Spirit Unity like nothing else I’ve ever seen. I could chop a tank in half and sail it across the Unseen Sea and it would still be one spirit with the half I’d left behind.”
Sara took a step forward, her voice trembling with the excitement of finally being able to explain her Relay to someone who would understand, if not appreciate, her cleverness. “Don’t you see, Etmon? It was perfect. The quieted water was still enough to pass voices, and its ignorance of other spirits besides itself meant I could divide the water up and send the pieces across the Council. I could pass voices instantly over thousands of miles, and even better, I could do it without wizards. Oh, I kept wizards with the points to make sure the water stayed isolated, but the Relay passes sound, not will. Even Sparrow could use them. It was brilliant. The only downside was how long it took me to make a point and how much water was required. I needed enough to make sure the spirit was big enough to have a cohesive soul, but in order to preserve the isolation, the majority of the water had to be locked in silence. That’s where I got the idea for the tanks. Hundreds of spirits all held together, and each one thinks it’s alone in the world.”
Sara took a deep breath. “Absolutely brilliant. Someday I hope to find a way to make the tanks smaller, but even if I never figure it out, the Relay was the discovery of a lifetime. The foundation of my career. Even you have to admit it’s genius.”
“It’s cruelty!” Banage screamed. “Inhuman, unforgivable cruelty! I’d call it Enslavement, but you found a way to subjugate a spirit without touching it. You’ve shackled living spirits with their own ignorance, their fear of being alone, and for what? Sending trade deals? The business of running a Council?”
Sara heaved an angry breath. “Powers, Banage, it’s only water.”
“Only water?” Banage’s cry was horrifying. “Are you truly that far gone, Sara? Look around you!” He threw out his hands at the remaining tanks, the water lapping at their feet. “Every one of these has a mind. They feel pain, loss, suffering. Far more than their share of suffering, thanks to you. What if you’d had to Enslave a person for your Relay. Would you have done it then? Would you have kept a child locked down here alone in the dark if it served your career? Would you have done this to Eli?”
“Don’t be stupid, Etmon,” Sara said, forcing her voice to stay measured, stay calm. “There’s a world of difference between people and spirits, even between the spirits themselves. You said it yourself, water flows. Its ability to flow in and out of itself is unique in the spirit world. Cut a rock in half and you have two spirits with half the power and intelligence of the original. They can never be rejoined, only reforged and born again in the molten fires beneath the mountains. But water is different. Pour out half a bucket of water and the half that remains is diminished. But, unlike a rock, you can pour that water back in, and the spirit is restored. Or you can pour the whole bucket into a river and it becomes the river, which becomes the sea.”
She pointed at the water that covered their feet. “All this water is draining away. Maybe it will flow to the Whitefall River. Maybe it will evaporate and become rain. Maybe it will just stay here forever. But whatever happens, this water you’re so deathly concerned about will eventually become part of something else, and anything I did to it will be forgotten. An abused child is damaged forever, but water can forget a hundred years of torment between one wave and the next.”
“So if suffering is forgotten, that makes it forgivable?” Banage said, his voice low.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Sara said, crossing her arms. “The water is ignorant. It doesn’t even know it’s being wronged. And when you look at the larger picture, even you should see that I’ve actually been doing a great good. Think about it, the Relay gives the Council of Thrones power the individual kingdoms cannot touch. This power provides a lasting peace and prosperity that will ultimately make everything’s life on this continent, spirit and human, better. So yes, I think the temporary suffering of water spirits who will forget all about it as soon as they’re released is perfectly forgivable considering what we all get in return.”
Banage’s face twisted into a look of pure disgust. “I would never believe anyone who’d bound a spirit in service could think such thoughts.”
“Well, you never were any good at knowing what I was thinking,” Sara said bitterly, crossing her arms. “And I only ever bound one spirit.”
“I remember,” Banage said. “I was there. Ollor was a calm, deep water spirit. When I first heard that the Relay’s full name was the Ollor Relay, my heart lifted. I thought it was proof that a part of you remembered your oaths. Now, I’m not so ignorant.” His eyes darkened as he stepped forward. “Which tank is he in, Sara?”
Sara stiffened, then forced herself to relax. There was no point in lying anymore.
“The center one,” she said. “He was the first, the spirit who helped me learn how to make the Relay work. It seemed only fitting the final product should bear his name.”
Banage closed his eyes. “After such loyalty,” he whispered. “That spirit stayed with you when you renounced your oaths. He followed you here, let you experiment on his water. He served you faithfully, and this was how you rewarded him?”
“I put him to sleep,” Sara countered. “I’ve seen your own protege do as much to the sea she shoved down her throat. And now that sea is lost to the waves while my Ollor is the anchor for a network of spirits that are helping to bring world peace.” She lifted her chin with a haughty stare. “Who served their spirit better, Etmon?”
Banage looked away in disgust. “Enough,” he said, raising his arm. “This ends now, Sara.”
“And what will you do?” Sara said. “Destroy everything I’ve built? Make yourself a true enemy of the Council? Whitefall will have to kill you for this, you know. The Spirit Court won’t be able to stop him, not that they’ll want to. The Relay is the heart of the Council. Destroy it and you’ll be known forever as the man who killed our best hope for peace.”
Banage hesitated then, and Sara bit her lip, reaching down to call her fire spirit for a surprise attack on his open back. But before she could reach the red jewel at her waist, a slow smile, the same one she’d once found so handsome, spread across Banage’s face.
“Better to be the man who destroyed peace than the man who saw suffering and did nothing,” he said, clenching his fist.
“No!” Sara shrieked, but she was too late. Even as her fire spirit roared forward, Banage brought his fist down.
As it fell, the ground began to rumble, the quiet water shaking in delicate waves that grew larger and larger, soaking her legs. All across the cavern, the tanks were shaking, bobbing back and forth like corks. And then, with an enormous rumbling crack, Banage’s fully opened spirit struck her like a hammer, and the ground exploded.
Deep black stone shot up from the floor, but it wasn’t her bedrock. It was Banage’s stone spirit in its full glory, the huge rocky outcropping he’d won over years ago, when they were still in love. Then, it had been the size of a small castle. Now, with the help of his will, the rock had broken itself into hundreds of enormous hands, and each one was gripping the bottom of a tank. High overhead, the fire bird screamed. The jade horse galloped through the water, bucking in triumph while the tangled roots retreated to form a ring around her and Banage, a barrier against what would happen next.
Banage flexed his fingers, and the black stone hands responded in kind, filling the air with the squeal of crumpling metal. Etmon’s eyes never left hers as he flipped his hand over, his wrist turning in a quick, snapping motion, like he was breaking a neck.
The stone hands mirrored his movement, and the tanks collapsed, each one falling like a felled tree. They
