Chapter 4 Tide Three — The Broken Weir

The Broken Weir was not broken. It was unbroken, ancient, and enormous—a stone wall that spanned the Thorn from bank to bank, its top crusted with moss, its face worn smooth by three centuries of current. In the center of the wall, a single archway let the river through, and in that archway, a row of iron teeth rose from the floor. They were the gate markers of the old city-builders: at low water, the teeth stood proud and barred the arch; at high water, they sank beneath the surface and left a single clear channel in the middle. The Nine had welded chains across that middle channel. Corvin saw the chains from a hundred yards out, gleaming wet in the dark, slung from iron posts driven into the arch's shoulders. They hung at the water line, hard to see, impossible to dodge. A boat hitting those chains at speed would be stopped dead—and stopped dead in the archway meant pinned against the teeth. "Hungry work," Bess said. "They strung it to catch us." Corvin eased the skiff into a bay on the western bank, out of the current. "They knew we'd run through here tonight." "So what do we do?" Corvin looked at the chains, at the arch, at the black water sliding through it. Then he looked upstream, where the shimmer of the compass trail lay on the water like a rope thrown across the dark. "We don't go through the arch," he said. "We go over the wall." Bess stared at him. "That's a thirty-foot drop." "Ten feet of water at the base," Corvin said. "Deep enough to float a skiff if we hit it right. The old city-builders cut a slip in the wall for the flood years—a stone slide on the western shoulder. It only runs at high water." "The tide's still rising." "Then it's running." He poled the skiff along the bank, feeling for the slide. The wall loomed over them, black and dripping, its stone face alive with moss and the pale distress of lichens. The current pushed harder as they approached the shoulder. Corvin's pole found a groove, then a trough, then a long smooth ramp of stone that slanted upward into the night. "Hold on," he said. Bess gripped the thwarts. Corvin shoved the pole down, hard, and the skiff slid up the ramp, out of the water, and tipped over the crest. For one long second they hung there, the river roaring below, the stars tilted overhead. Then gravity took them. The skiff dropped down the far face of the wall, hitting the pool at the bottom with a slam that jarred every bone in Corvin's body. Water exploded over the bow. Bess shouted something lost in the noise. The skiff banged against the stone, spun, and caught the current again, racing down into open water beyond the weir. Behind them, a horn sounded. Distant, but unmistakable. The Nine had heard the splash. Corvin did not slow. He drove the skiff downstream, hard, his arms burning, his breath ragged, while the water carried them faster and faster toward the next gate. The shimmer of the compass trail lay ahead, bright against the dark, pulling them on. Two hours later, they caught up with the Nine's advance barge. It had been sent ahead of the camp—a fast little craft, shallow-drafted, crewed by four men. It was carrying something valuable in the bow under a canvas cover. Corvin did not need to guess what. The shimmer of the compass trail ran up the barge's hull and pooled on its deck like spilled light. "They didn't send it with the main fleet," Bess said. "They sent it ahead. Why?" "Because the handover at Mirefall is coming sooner than the lead captain said. She's trying to beat the tide." Corvin watched the barge drop into the channel ahead. "If that barge reaches Mirefall before the last tide turns, the compass goes past the Ninth Gate and we never see it again." "So we take it here." "We take it here." They had the speed. The skiff was faster than the barge in open water, lighter, more responsive. Corvin bided his time, holding back until the river narrowed into a channel between wooded banks, where the barge had no room to maneuver. Then he went for it. The skiff shot forward, closing the gap. The barge's deckhands saw them coming—shouts, a lantern swinging, a man running aft toward a crossbow. Bess rose in the bow with the grapple rope coiled in her hand. The skiff hit the barge's stern quarter. Bess threw the grapple. It bit the gunwale and she hauled, dragging the two boats together. Corvin shipped his oar, grabbed the rail, and vaulted onto the deck. The first deckhand came at him with a boat hook. Corvin stepped inside the swing, caught the shaft, and shoved the man over the side. He hit the water with a cry and was gone in the current. The second deckhand swung a cutlass. Corvin ducked, grabbed the man's wrist, and used the momentum to slam him against the mast. The cutlass clattered to the deck. The man followed it down, unconscious. The crossbowman raised his weapon. Bess's rope whistled—she had thrown the grapple's tail like a lasso—and the line caught the crossbowman's arm, jerking his shot wide. The bolt hissed past Corvin's ear and vanished into the dark. Corvin crossed the deck in three strides and hit the crossbowman low, taking him off his feet. They went down together in a tangle of rope and canvas. Corvin's fist connected once, twice. The man went still. The fourth deckhand had already gone over the side. Corvin stood, breathing hard. The barge rolled gently in the current, its rudder loose, its canvas cover stirring in the wind. Bess landed beside him on the deck. They lifted the canvas together. The star-compass lay in a wooden cradle, lashed down with leather straps. It was smaller than Corvin remembered—no larger than his palm—and in the dark it seemed to be made of nothing at all, a disc of black metal that drank the starlight instead of reflecting it. Its face was smooth, unmarked, and utterly dark. Corvin reached down and touched it. The compass was warm. Warmer than the air, warmer than the water, warm like a thing that had been alive a moment ago. The moment his fingers made contact, the needle surfaced from the dark face—a thin shaft of silver light that swung, steadied, and pointed upriver. It pointed toward Mirefall. Corvin lifted the compass from its cradle. The metal was lighter than air, it seemed; he had to tighten his grip to be sure he was holding anything at all. For a moment, standing on the stolen barge in the dark, he had the absurd thought that it wanted to go back to the water, that it would rather be in the current than in his hand. He tucked it inside his coat, against his chest, in the place where the leather case had hung for ten years. "Got it?" Bess asked. "Got it." "Then let's get off this barge before the rest of the Nine catch up." They dropped back into the skiff. Corvin cut the barge loose and let the current take it—a gift for whatever fisher found it downstream, minus the compass. Then he picked up the oars and pulled for the eastern bank, where the trees came down to the water and the river fog was already beginning to rise. Behind them, the horn sounded again. Closer this time. And ahead, glimmering on the water's skin like a path of spilled stars, the trail of light still reached toward Mirefall—bright, patient, and impossibly far away.