Then he pointed with a long hand to the river water rushing past the small spit of muddy ground upon which they stood. “Your message to me was in the form of a single bone.”
“The one that floated upriver,” she whispered.
“Do you know why this is so, that a single bone exists in the whole of a cat that can do this, and why that bone alone may be used to summon me?”
She shook her head.
“There is a sort of magic called orphan magic,” he said. “It is the magic of that-which-remains, of that-which-is-alone. It is, in many ways, the magic of desperation, but it is never the magic of chance. When one remains, it is the one that was meant to remain. It is the one that is special; it is precious because it is unique; it is powerful because that is how it survived.” The man took something from his pocket, and she recognized it as the white bone she had set adrift on the river an hour before. “There is one bone in a cat that may call me, but it must be separated from the others to do its work. It has potential when it is connected to the rest, but when it is sundered away, its potential becomes power.”
She nodded, trying not to think of what she had had to do to the cat to release that one tiny bone’s orphan magic.
He lifted his head just a fraction, just enough for her to catch the glint of his eyes through the drops cascading from his hat brim. “You have been sundered from your people by violence. You are the last to stand, an orphan. You are the bone that will float upriver.”
“I don’t understand.” But that wasn’t quite true. She understood just enough to be afraid.
His expression became sympathetic. “I know. And I cannot explain it to you in a way that will make you understand, not fully. But you are the orphan bone. Just as one bone was sufficient to call me, you will be sufficient to stop the water.” He stepped to her side, put one arm around her shoulder, and pointed upriver with that long hand. “There are great forces in the middle country, and at the source of the river is the reason its waters keep on rising. If you wish to stop them, you will have to confront the source of the waters. And you will likely not survive,” he added. “However, it is equally likely you will be able to stop the rising and keep the town from being drowned completely.”
“How?” she asked with a shaking voice. “How will I find the source in time? How will I know what to do?” She tried not to think about what he had said about her not surviving.
“Finding it is the easy part. Because of the orphan magic, the Skidwrack will take you upriver if you ask it to, just as it carried the cat’s bone. Knowing what to do . . . You will simply have to hope you are clever as well as an orphan. The magic may well help you accomplish what you set out to do, because what else is magic good for? But magic won’t make you clever. Magic won’t tell you what to do, or how.”
“Can’t you tell me?” she asked desperately. “That’s what I asked, after all!”
“You asked how you could stop the waters rising, and I tell you: you can stop it by letting the river carry you to its source to confront what waits there. I tell you orphan magic will carry you upriver, and orphan magic will help you accomplish your task. But one magic bone isn’t worth all the answers in the world, even if I had them.” He pushed his hat back and leaned down so they were eye to eye. He was handsome beyond imagination, and his eyes were worse than any nightmare. But there was nothing but honesty in them as he added, “And I don’t have all the answers in the world, Nell.”
He spoke her name as if he’d said the word goodbye instead, and she knew there was nothing more to learn from the man who had answered the summons of the bone. So she nodded and looked down at the river at their feet.
His arm was still around her shoulder. “Would you like me to help you into the water?” His voice was gentle, muted by the rain, and it was as if he had asked for a dance. She nodded, and he swept her into his arms, and, without appearing to have a care for his expensive-looking suit, he stepped down the muddy bank and into the Skidwrack with Nell held tight against his chest.
His dark coat fanned out across the surface. “Don’t fear the river,” he whispered. “You are that-which-remains. It will carry you, if you let it.”
She held her breath and closed her eyes as the strong arms released her into the current. At the very last moment, she felt him tuck something small and thin into the fingers she clenched over her stomach: the bone that had called him in the first place.
The dark man stood in the surging river and watched her disappear upriver with the slender bit of bone in her hand. Then, with a very small frown of regret between his eyes, he took hold of a tree root and climbed the muddy bank.
For Nell, being carried by the river was strangely peaceful. Fear seemed beside the point, and she was too tired for it anyway. She was exhausted. She ached with sadness. The sensation was like being swung in a hammock, which was good, because her mind was
