The King immediately looked happier, and so did Sir Samuel.
Nat, however, gave me a troubled glance. “Didn’t you say yesterday that the river wouldn’t obey you?”
“Only when I try to use it against the creatures that are attacking us. It wants to protect them somehow. Other than that, my magic is as strong as ever.”
“Strong enough for my men to trust their lives to it?” Nat asked soberly.
It was hard to be questioned like this, but I knew he was asking in all good faith, for the sake of the men in his command. I would do as much for my own men.
Since our battle with the sea monster, I’d avoided meeting his eyes, but now I looked straight at him, commander to commander. “I believe the water will listen to me. If I have any doubts, I’ll warn you. I don’t want to put any lives at risk.”
As his eyes searched mine, my pulse kicked up. But I couldn’t look away. He had to understand that I was telling him the truth.
“All right,” Nat said. “We’ll try it.”
While the King and Sir Samuel went back to Whitehall, I stayed by the wall in Westminster with Nat and a small army of bricklayers and ironworkers. After talking a bit with the chief bricklayer, Nat came over to me. “How do you want to start?”
“I’ll sing the water away first,” I said. “It’s the kind of song-spell that will need constant replenishing, but I’ll keep it up as long as I can. I expect I could do it for several hours, if need be.”
Nat still looked worried. “If anything goes wrong, we’ll need to get the men out of there fast. Can we work out a warning signal, just in case?”
He wasn’t doubting me, I told myself. He was just being sensible. We settled on the waving of hands overhead, and then I gave myself over to the task at hand.
I listened hard, but to my relief I couldn’t hear even the faintest echo of the furious song I’d heard yesterday, only the usual strains of Wild Magic. When I sang to the river and the rain, coaxing them away from the wall, they were as docile as lambs. Within minutes, the entire face of the wall was dry, down to the pilings.
“All right, men,” Nat said. “Let’s get to work.”
The men looked at the river, openmouthed, and then at me. No one moved.
It was a lot to ask of them, to trust me with their lives.
I moved to the far end of the wall, where a rope ladder dangled over the edge. Still singing, I stepped onto it.
Alarmed, Nat came after me. “Lucy, no. There’s no need for this.”
I couldn’t spare the breath to answer him, not even when I saw him following me. Everything in me was bent on keeping the water back—and on placing each foot carefully on the rungs, until at last I stood at the foot of the wall.
I looked up at the men, and they looked down at me.
“Can’t leave a lady on her own like that, can we?” one of them called out. Within moments, there were ladders being lowered all along the line, and the men followed me down.
For the next three hours they laid bricks as fast as they were able, using pulleys and scaffolding and teamwork to speed the job. It must have been an amazing sight, but I hardly took in any of it. All my attention was trained on the watery wave that I was holding back with my music. Even at the start, it had towered over our heads. As the tide came in, it grew still higher—and not only higher but stronger.
It took all my skill to keep the wave back. Chantress singing didn’t tire the voice as normal singing would, but it required enormous strength and patience to keep it going for so long. As I listened carefully to the liquid nuances of the river’s songs, I became all but deaf to every other sound. The slap of bricks, the squeal of pulleys, the banging of hods—none of it made a dent in my concentration. And so I didn’t notice that the work was done, until Nat came up and gestured to me to turn around.
The men were back on land now, leaving behind the new wall, perfectly mended and riveted with iron spikes. Which meant I needed to rise to a new challenge, that of singing the