Because that’s not the nature of it. You might as well ask why you can’t walk on water, or build a fire with water or use water to fly.
Water can’t tell me that Gavin stubbed his toe this morning. It couldn’t tell me every time he snuck off with some staff girl.
Nate forced down his alarm. Did he do that a lot? Did any of them ever get pregnant? If there was another heir somewhere—more of Elban’s foul blood—
If they did, they ended up in the midden yard. The membrane between Judah’s fingers blazed scarlet. That’s what Darid said would happen.
Even the mention of the stableman’s name was enough to make Nate feel faintly queasy. And he didn’t like the way her hands moved to the tether in her chest, the thick rope of membrane that bound her to Gavin—the way her fingers began to tease, and dig—
No! Nate leapt for her, took her hands in his. Although they weren’t his real hands and they weren’t hers either, their real hands were in the real tower lying limp beside their real bodies. No. Not yet.
Why not?
It’s too dangerous. It might hurt you. You have to be patient.
A burst of stubbornness, like a flapping bat. Sick of being trapped, she said.
He made his thoughts gentle. Look in my memories. Can you find the Temple Argent? Can you take me there?
It’s real? she said.
Look and see, he said.
He felt her inside him. She was gentler now. Suddenly they stood together on the edge of a cliff. Hundreds of feet below, the raging ocean threw itself on the rocks, over and over. The ruined Temple was a massive tumble of stone scattered behind them. Tiny succulents crawled quietly over the surface, giving no hint of the force that had torn the citadel apart. She had seen many things through Nate’s eyes over the past weeks, mountains and plains and cities, but he had deliberately kept the ocean in reserve. He was stunned by how real the waves were, when her Work unfolded them from his mind: salt spray landed like needles of ice on their cheeks, and a cold breeze pulled at the hem of her dress. The horizon was not merely two lines meeting, but a reality that went on and on, infinitely. He would suffer for this later, he thought, feeling his own strength draining away—but he had drawn Derie’s sigil and Caterina’s before he’d even entered the tower, and he could feel them feeding him threads of their own power. These he sucked at greedily, not caring that they coursed through him and melted him the way lightning did sand. Judah’s depthless eyes were wide, transfixed. She had no idea how amazing she was, how terrifying her power. He wanted to hurl himself at her feet, to worship her; to evaporate so she could inhale him, to tear himself apart.
Good, he said. Let’s try something else.
* * *
“Make her come down,” the Seneschal said. “The managers want this land and I want my guild.” Frustration burned in the gray man’s face. He was not a man who was accustomed to being frustrated, not anymore.
Nate wobbled back and forth in reality like a loose tooth. The empty courtyard around them was simultaneously desolate and alive with carriages, and thick with the trees that had been felled to clear space for it. The rush of the Argent Sea was loud in his ears. The oil-soaked air of the Safe Passage was empty and packed with shouting bodies and on fire. It was all incredibly distracting. “I’m trying.”
“Try harder,” the Seneschal said. “And I will try not to think about how much easier it would be to throw some boards on the damn stairs and drag her out in chains.”
“Do that, and she’ll chew your throat out with her teeth if she can’t find a knife.”
“Yes, yes, it must be done willingly,” the Seneschal said. “So says the chieftain. He’s had a good bit of time to consider the problem in his prison cell. Perhaps you would find that setting equally productive.”
Prison cell. In Nate’s unreal state, thinking of the prison was as good as actually being there. He’d felt the chieftain’s power outside the man’s cell: like the old days, going village to village searching for unaware Workers, sensing power like music. The song in the prison had been playing in a key he’d never heard before. “You need me,” he said. “I’m the only one she trusts.”