Chapter 6 Tide Five — The Quicksilver Bend

The Thorn moved fast after Mirefall. The river picked up speed as it dropped through the Quicksilver Bend—a long, curving stretch where the current accelerated over a bed of smooth stone. The surface went from brown to grey to silver as the water thinned and the sky showed through. The banks were wooded, dense with willow and alder, their roots trailing in the current like the fingers of drowning men. Corvin rowed hard. The skiff cut through the silver water, leaving a wake that spread and vanished behind him. He was alone. Bess was somewhere back in Mirefall, either on the tower or on her way to the river—he could not tell, and there was no time to go back. The compass was in Vael's hands. The gates were closing. And Corvin had an hour. He knew the Thorn. He had known it longer than most men alive. He had ferried its passengers, read its moods, fought its currents. He had lost things to it—a license, a reputation, a crew-mate's trust. But he had never lost a race to it. Until now. The Quicksilver Bend opened onto a broad pool where the Thorn met a tributary from the south. The water was calm here, deep, slow-moving. Corvin rested the oars, breathing hard, and looked upstream. No sign of Vael's boat. No sign of any boat. The river was empty, the banks silent. Then he saw the wake. It came from the south, cutting across the pool at an angle—a narrow, fast-moving wake, the kind left by a skiff under hard oars. Vael had taken the tributary, bypassing the Bend entirely. She was ahead of him. Corvin pulled hard on the oars. The skiff leaped forward, and he drove it toward the north bank, where the Thorn narrowed into a channel between two islands. The channel was shallow—he could see the bottom, a bed of smooth stones—but it was faster than the main current, and it cut three hundred yards off the distance. He poled through the channel, the pole scraping stone, the water lapping at the gunwales. The skiff slid between the islands, through a curtain of hanging willow branches, and emerged into the main river above the bend. Vael was there. She was fifty yards ahead, in a skiff of her own—a river-runner, built for speed, light and sharp-bowed. She rowed with the efficiency of someone who had spent years on the water, each stroke measured, the oars barely making a splash. The compass sat in the bow, its glow visible even in daylight, a pale blue-green star on the deck. Corvin saw her and set his jaw. He shipped the pole, took the oars, and rowed. The chase was silent. Two boats on a silver river, the only sound the creak of oarlocks and the murmur of current. Corvin gained. Vael saw him and rowed harder. The gap closed—forty yards, thirty, twenty. The current pushed at both skiffs equally. It was strength and skill now, nothing else. Fifteen yards. Corvin could see the compass clearly, its face dark, its light pulsing like a heartbeat. He could see Vael's hands, white-knuckled on the oars, her coat streaming behind her. She was fast. She was strong. And she was not going to give up. Ten yards. Corvin's arms burned. His breath came in ragged pulls. The oars dipped and rose, dipped and rose, the skiff cutting the water like a blade. Vael's rowing was beginning to slow—she was tired, or she was saving something for the end. Five yards. Vael turned her head and looked at him. Her face was calm, almost serene. She smiled. Then she turned back, set the oars in the locks, and shipped them. Corvin did not understand until he saw her reach for the compass. She lifted it from the deck, held it high, and threw it into the river. The compass hit the water with a splash and sank. Corvin stopped rowing. The skiff drifted. He stared at the place where the compass had gone under—a circle of ripples, widening, fading, disappearing. The river was eight feet deep there, maybe more. The current was fast. The compass was gone. Vael's skiff drifted past his, close enough to touch. She looked at him with those dark, assessing eyes. "I'm not going to let you have it," she said. "And I'm not going to let the Nine have it. It stays in the river. The river decides." "That's insane." "That's fair." She picked up her oars. "The gates close tonight. The compass is at the bottom of the Thorn. No one navigates. No one holds the toll. The river belongs to everyone and no one." She began to row, slow and steady. "Goodbye, Corvin. It was a good chase." She rowed away, her skiff gliding across the silver water, growing smaller, disappearing into the mist that hung above the river. Corvin watched her go. Then he looked down at the water where the compass had sunk. The compass was at the bottom. The current was fast. He could dive, but in this water, with this current, he would be swept downstream before he reached the bottom. He had no weights, no line, no way to anchor himself. But he had one thing Vael did not know about. The compass shed light. It always had—on the surface, in the water, on the trail that had led them here. If it shed light underwater, it would still be shining. And Corvin could see light through eight feet of brown water, especially in the grey-silver current of the Thorn. He stood in the skiff, leaned over the gunwale, and looked down. The water was clear enough. The current was fast. And there, on the bottom, a pale blue-green glow pulsed in the stony bed—a faint, steady light, barely visible, but there. Corvin stripped off his coat, tied it to the gunwale, and dove. The water was cold. The current hit him like a wall, pushing him downstream, trying to tear him from the rope. He kicked, fought, clawed at the riverbed. Stones shifted under his hands. His fingers found nothing but mud and gravel. Then the light shifted. It moved. Not with the current—against it. It moved toward him, toward his outstretched hand, as if it had heard him call. The compass, at the bottom of the Thorn, was moving toward him through the water. Corvin grabbed it. The metal was ice-cold, but the light was warm. It pulsed in his fist, bright, alive, and the needle surfaced from the dark face, spinning, then locking—pointing upriver, pointing toward the Ninth Gate, pointing home. He kicked for the surface. The current dragged at him. The rope pulled tight. He broke the surface, gasping, and hauled himself over the gunwale, collapsing into the bottom of the skiff with the compass pressed against his chest. The compass hummed. Its light spread across the deck, painting the wood in pale blue-green. The needle pointed steady and sure, upriver, toward the last gate. Corvin lay in the skiff, breathing hard, the river rushing past, the light of the compass warm on his face. He was alive. He had the compass. And the Ninth Gate was still ahead. He sat up, wiped the water from his eyes, and reached for the oars. The bell in Mirefall tolled two. One hour. Corvin rowed.