A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,241

everything else. Follow me down. I’m going to show you Pelenaut Röllend’s personal reef.”

“He has his own reef?”

“Yes. He sneaks out every morning and tends it. Takes a small net sometimes and catches his breakfast. And he allows a small daily harvest of the pelenaut’s reef to be sold at the Steam Spire restaurant. Have you ever been there?”

“No, but I’ve heard legends about its high quality and higher price tag.”

“Well-deserved legends, both. Follow.” She bends at the waist and dives, propelling herself to the south, and I trail after, opening my eyes and enjoying the swim. We don’t descend very far; we stay in the shallows where we still have light to see. I’ll have to ask her how she handles going deeper where the sun doesn’t penetrate. Do our eyes adjust due to some gift of the kenning or do we need luminous bulbs of some kind, like the fungus living on the walls of Bryn’s Lung?

She slows down as we approach a reef teeming with schools of shining fish, rays cruising along the sandy shallows, colorful banded eels, and all kinds of pulsing, feeding, crawling, squirming things I had never seen or even heard of before.

When we surface, she smiles. “Is that not beautiful?” I agree that it is. “You see his attention to making sure all the creatures thrive. It’s a consuming interest of the pelenaut’s, the flow and equitable distribution of resources, his passion for infrastructure as the basis of prosperity. He’s taught me so much. I have my own reefs being fed by currents, and they do well, too, but not so well as his. That’s primarily what tidal mariners do with our kenning in the absence of war.” Her face turns somber. “But there are obviously aggressive tactics. Ways to use water as a weapon. That method we use to pull the water out of our clothes, for example. What do you think would happen if you applied the same principle and forcibly pulled the water out of someone’s head through their ear?”

“Gods, they’d be dead before they dropped to the ground.”

“Exactly.”

She swims closer to me and speaks quietly. “People are mostly water to begin with. But tidal mariners are a bit more so. You belong to Bryn of the Deep now.”

“I, uh…I don’t follow.”

“You’re not going to leave anything behind you when you die except water.”

“Wow, this has taken a pretty dark turn all of a sudden. You mean…?”

“I mean to say I know you wanted to die when you jumped into Bryn’s Lung. And you can still die if you want. But not before every last Bone Giant in Göfyrd dies first.”

“You mean I have to go down there and do the exploding ear trick to every last—”

“No. That would take too long, and they’d overwhelm you. You’ll think of something else.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“They represent an imminent threat. We’ve seen scouts or messengers coming our way, and we’ve managed to pick them off so far. But eventually they’re going to figure out that Pelemyn and Tömerhil remain untouched and march against us. So there’s no time like the present.”

“Right, right. I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yes, indeed.” They’d been waiting for someone like me to come along, someone willing to return to the sea and take the enemy with him. I’m not saying the Second Könstad wasn’t willing to make sacrifices—she’d aged much in defense of Pelemyn, and I learned from Mynstad du Möcher that she got that limp from a spear in her foot, earned while stealing Bone Giant documents near Hillegöm—but she has kids to raise, and I don’t. “Leave it to me. Currents keep you safe, Second Könstad.”

“And you as well, Gerstad.”

She salutes me and then propels herself back to the Lung’s Locks. I tread water for a minute, taking a last look at Pelemyn’s domes and spires, and then decide I’m not quite ready to go just yet. I sleeve myself along the surface but do not return to the locks. I head for the docks instead and climb out there, wicking the water out of my uniform to drop back into the harbor. Longshoremen and fish heads alike look surprised and give me tight nods and wide berths. I walk back to my quarters, enjoying the morning sun, and once there I fetch a log book, ink and a pen, and a waterproof satchel issued to me by a surly sarstad at the armory. I check the contents of my purse, which is slightly swollen from the gerstad’s stipend