The Rising Flood by Juliet Kemp

Author:Juliet Kemp
Format: epub

FIFTEEN

For Reb, the following days were a blur of moving people and things and earth and stone around. When she wasn’t out in the city shifting things, she was in her workroom making charms. No one, as far as anyone knew, had died. Quite a few people were very uncomfortable, and even more had lost belongings and would have a lot of work to dry their houses out. The swamp extension area was going to be a major problem; no one got swept away there but the water rose straight up through the landfill the builders had used. Reb received a note from Marcia while she and Jonas were helping drain water temporarily out of various areas (incredibly tiring work) which had made her grin viciously. Apparently the Council would be speaking to the builders.

They finally heard from the fishing village that day, too, and she saw Jonas’ shoulders sag in relief: houses had been lost, but the villagers had taken to their boats, and were accustomed enough to being flooded out that they’d had time to gather up nearly all of their possessions.

But once there was nothing left that couldn’t be more readily done by hand than by sorcery, it was time for Reb and Cato to deal with Jonas. They agreed to conduct the meeting in Reb’s front room. Not the most formal of settings, but it would suffice.

Cato rarely came to her place. He didn’t exactly look uncomfortable; Cato put some effort into looking relaxed in all situations. But he was pointier than normal around the edges.

Of course, that could be because he was about to rip Jonas a new arsehole.

Cato sat in her spare armchair, the one she’d got so Marcia had somewhere to sit, which was something she was not going to think about. Reb herself took the other, older, chair. Jonas stood in front of them, looking like he wished he was anywhere else.

“Weather magic,” Reb began. “What exactly did you do?”

“I went up to the roof,” Jonas said, twisting his fingers together, and Cato groaned.

“Because that’s a safe place to try something dangerous?”

Jonas’ jaw squared. “I like roofs.”

Cato sighed, and waved a hand for him to continue. It might have been an utterly stupid idea, but what Jonas described was a relatively well-conducted piece of magic, given that he was still an apprentice and he was making it up on the spot. Reb couldn’t envisage either Tait or Alyssa being able to do that.

Because you’re not allowing them enough scope to even begin to think that way.

“Right,” she said. “Not sure what Beckett was thinking, but, fine. So. Why did you do it?”

“Um.” Jonas’ eyes were wide, and he looked hopefully over at Cato, who just shrugged. “The storm was coming in,” he said. “I thought…I thought maybe I could help.”

“On your own? Just like that?” Reb demanded. What had he been thinking? “You just…saw the storm coming in, and thought you’d play around? Without even consulting Cato?”

“Cato said weather magic wouldn’t work.”

“So you…just ignored him?”

“I wanted to be able to save Salinas ships, maybe.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.