A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,225

family in much the same way: I had been far too late to help.

But my breathing continued and even calmed, and the water felt pleasant instead of freezing, and it finally penetrated that I had become one of Bryn’s blessed and could not drown or suffer any ills from water.

I should have been elated—I think that’s the proper response—but instead I felt cheated of my peace. I would have to grieve longer and start some new career determined by the nature of my blessing. Whatever new talents I possessed, they didn’t include forgetfulness.

Forty-two years old, widowed and childless, import business a ruin, but suddenly a man with prospects in an underwater cave.

Another Seeker dropped down out of the chimney, weakly clawing through the water, but I turned my back so that I wouldn’t have to watch him die. There was nothing I could do except get on with being whoever I was supposed to be now.

The cave was serene and beautiful as long as you didn’t look down at the floor of corpses and the clawed or writhing things feasting on them. I bet all that beauty was fed by the deaths of Seekers somehow and the soft glow of those plants was concentrated despair, fear, and desperation.

Outside the cave the water darkened, but something darted toward me in the gloom. I thought it was a bladefin at first, but it pulled up and resolved itself into a clothed woman in military colors. She was much younger than I, and when she waved and smiled, I suddenly remembered that I was acutely naked.

I hadn’t cared about diving into Bryn’s Lung naked, thinking I would be dead soon, but now I felt I might die of embarrassment.

She pointed up to the surface with one hand, wordlessly suggesting that we ascend, and I nodded. She offered her other hand, and I took it. Her grip was strong, and I soon discovered the reason as she pulled me up through the water not by swimming but by using her kenning to propel us. It was strange and exhilarating, moving that fast and feeling the ocean flow around us. When we broke the surface, we both took a moment to sheet the moisture away from our eyes, and she smiled again.

“Congratulations, sir! You’ve been blessed by the lord Bryn! You’re a Water Breather.”

“Thank you,” I said, because I couldn’t think of what else to say.

“I’m Gerstad Nara du Fesset, a rapid in the pelenaut’s service. I’m going to help you figure out your blessing, and then we’ll get you ashore and settled. What’s your name?”

I told her, and she said it was a pleasure to meet me.

“First, cup your hand like this and scoop out a handful of water,” she said, demonstrating. When I did so, treading water with the rest of my limbs, she continued. “I want you to focus on the water in your hand, not the water all around. Really concentrate on it and ask yourself if it’s clean. You should be able to tell.”

“Really?”

“Try it.”

It looked clean to me, just like any other handful of water, but I couldn’t tell anything special about it. “I don’t know. I guess it’s clean?”

Nara shook her head. I had guessed wrong.

“Then it’s dirty water,” I said, trying to recover. “Bad, naughty water.”

No smile, just a raised eyebrow. “You should know precisely what’s wrong with it.”

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not a hygienist, then. That means you’re one of the fast swimmers.”

“I am? I don’t think so, because down in the Lung I was terribly slow.”

“You wouldn’t have known yet. It takes a while to develop, and even if you did get it right away, you wouldn’t know how to access it. I’m going to teach you.”

“All right.”

“Think about putting on clothes—”

“I’ve been thinking about that since we met. Do you think we can get some?”

That earned a smile. “Soon; don’t worry. When you put on pants, you push your leg down as you pull the pants up. Both are happening, but the pushing is in the center moving in one direction while the pulling is on the outside moving in the other. That’s how you use your kenning to travel through water—you pull the water ahead of you down to your feet and then push up through the center, and you naturally move into the space ahead of you where you displaced water. So visualize your body as the foot moving through the pants leg or your fist pushing through the sleeve of a