in minutes? Or upstairs, where I’d have more time to prepare but a greater chance of being trapped?
Before I could decide, the men shouted again. This time, however, I could hear them more clearly, and the loudest voices sounded familiar. I ran to the windows at the back of the house. The tiny glass panes made the world outside look peculiar—all gray-green and curved—but if there had been a mob, it was gone now. Instead I saw Captain Knollys and my own loyal men ramming at the back door with their iron pikes.
“I’m all right,” I shouted through a crack in the window. “I’m coming to meet you.”
I raced through the house to get to them, but halfway there I jerked to a stop. My tinderbox was lying upended on the floor in front of me. Behind it, the door that had been so stubbornly locked now hung open, revealing a tiny room that smelled dankly of the river. A staircase led downward to the cellar, and at the top of its steps, Gabriel lay in a heap, his bright hair matted and bloody.
From the look of it, he’d been dragged there and left for dead, but I approached him with caution, fearing more deceit. It was only when I spied his iron ring, and touched my own bracelet to the back of his hand, that I stopped worrying.
By the time Knollys and the others came rushing in, I was holding my kerchief to Gabriel’s head. “He’s hurt, and badly,” I told them. “If we can’t stop the bleeding, he’ll die.”
After touching iron with me, they stanched Gabriel’s wound and bandaged it. Helping them as best I could, I told Knollys about the false Lord Gabriel, and what it had turned into before it had disappeared under the waves.
Had it really been Melisande I’d seen? Or had it been a trick of the Others? I wished again that I hadn’t lost my mother’s diary. Perhaps I’d have found answers in there.
“It’s a pity it’s gone,” Knollys agreed as the men carried Gabriel out on a makeshift litter. “But the King will be thankful you’re safe, my lady. We were concerned when we learned that you had gone to Audelin House. There were several reports of disturbances in this neighborhood.”
“I’m glad you came.” Even with magic, it would have been a job to get both myself and Gabriel out safely.
“The King asked that you come to Cornhill,” Knollys said as we reached a cross street, “and then—”
He broke off as Barrington came running up to us, shouting excitedly. “Chantress, Captain! Come see!” Motioning us forward, he pointed down the cross street. It resembled a shore at low tide, dotted with seaweed and soaked driftwood, its mud and cobbles slick and wet.
“Incredible.” Knollys seemed just as amazed as Barrington. “The river was halfway up this street when we came through earlier, but now it’s pulled back.”
“Check the other cross streets,” I told Barrington.
The men who were carrying Gabriel had already gone ahead, but the rest of our company fanned out to investigate what was happening. Soon the report came back: The river was definitely in retreat.
Knollys turned to me, eyes bright above his grizzled cheeks. “I think you’ve done it, Chantress. You’ve won the battle. You’ve defeated the enemy.”
I thought of the horrible smack I’d heard when my sack had hit the glass snake. “I’m not sure I killed the creature,” I said uncertainly. “It disappeared, just like the others.”
“Even so, you must have won.” Knollys gestured at the cross street. “There’s your proof. The river’s going down.”
It might be proof enough for Captain Knollys, but I needed something more. I walked down the street with Knollys until we found the edge of the flood. We were still a good way out from where the river normally flowed, but even as we stood there, I could see the waters ebbing away.
“At this rate, it’ll be back within its banks by nightfall,” Knollys judged. “I’ve never seen a flood go down so fast. But then it was a magic flood, and magic works by its own rules.”
I was surprised by the speed of the withdrawal too, but perhaps Knollys was right. Magic had its own rules. Although I listened long and hard, I couldn’t hear even a trace of the fury that had ruled earlier. Indeed, the river sounded normal in every way, except that it was slightly subdued—almost as if it were ashamed of the trouble it had caused.