Something pulled steadily at his wrist and started to draw him free of the falling water, and he realized it was the line to the rowboat. He allowed it to pull on him, and he kicked clear of the turbulence, surfacing in calmer water. He gasped and sputtered for air. He’d been so lucky that in the onrush of water he had not been pummeled with loose debris carried down the tailrace. A brick could have ended everything. He could only guess that the explosion he’d heard had broken the sluice gate that damned the intake at the canal, thus loosing the water and sending it cascading down the tunnel.
Karigan! he thought, remembering he was not alone.
The boat was drifting downstream, and he with it. He tread water looking frantically around.
“Karigan?” he called out. No answer. She’d been so drugged. She could have drowned already. He whirled around, searching, searching. Had she, too, got caught in the outflow from the tailrace? Was she still down there, churning in the pounding water? He swam against the current back toward the tailrace, towing the boat behind him.
The fire plumed, brightening the sky and river, and there, floating just yards away on her back, with arms splayed out, was Karigan, bathed in the reflected firelight as though she drifted in liquid flame.
Cade changed course, keeping an eye on her even as the glow of the fire dimmed. When he reached her, he saw her eyes were open, also glistening with the fire’s light.
“Karigan?”
“Fergal?”
“No, no, it’s me, Cade.”
She blinked, and in a weary voice said, “Why do I always end up in rivers?”
Cade was too relieved to care about her odd comment or wonder who Fergal was. “Can you swim?”
“Of course I can swim.”
“Then let’s make our way to the far bank.” On the far bank, there was no sheer stone retaining wall supporting the tailraces of mills, just the boggy edge of the river. He started to swim away, but she just floated there staring at the sky.
“Karigan?”
“I’m swimming,” she said. “Just swimming in flames.”
With the reflection, the image was apt. Cade sighed and secured the line of the rowboat around his waist, then he grabbed Karigan by the collar and stroked for the river bank.
“I am swimming faster,” Karigan observed. “Swimming in the pretty light.”
Cade started to curse the professor for the morphia, but stopped. The professor was gone. He knew it. Like a captain going down with his ship, the professor would have gone up in flames with the mill, sacrificing himself alongside his beloved artifacts, atoning for the slaves who had perished there, sacrificing himself for the good of the opposition. A dead man could not be interrogated.
When finally Cade crawled onto the river bank, he pulled Karigan up beside him and, exhausted, just held her. It was too painful to watch the roiling flames across the river that were the professor’s pyre, so he nestled his face in the nape of her neck, where he would not have to see.
* * *
• • •
Cade rowed down the river, the current helping to carry the small boat along. It had taken him awhile to decide what to do next, to consider the few options available to him. Widow Hettle’s house was out—the Inspectors would search for him there, plus, her house was too far from the river. He also thought about the old slave market, but it too, was logistically difficult to get to while carrying an unconscious woman over his shoulder. The Inspectors would be out in force, and he’d be sure to get caught. He needed someplace near the river, someplace where he and Karigan could get dry and warm. One place did come to mind.
The rowing kept his blood flowing, and while the night was not cold, it was cool enough that a person in wet clothes could get chilled. He worried about Karigan, curled in the bottom of the boat, as bouts of chills racked her body even as she lay unconscious.
“Oh, professor,” he murmured for the hundredth time, as he hastily blinked away tears and dragged on the oars with more urgency.
He could still see the mill fire up river, lighting the sky, but farther down, the river banks were serene. Silent, dark mills loomed on his left, and the waterfront warehouses, shops, and hovels shouldered together to his right. He tried not to watch the fire glow, but searched instead for a certain dock he wanted, the one that catered to fishermen. Fishing was not a true industry in Mill City, and was illegal without an imperial license, but those who fished surreptitiously were able to supplement their meager larder. Cade did not think there was much caught other than carp—the dams and locks had killed off most everything else.
He was past the dock before he realized he was anywhere near it and plowed the oars in the water to slow his momentum. The dock canted at a precarious angle on its pilings. There was a bait shop directly on shore. Cade worked the bow around, oars groaning, and headed in.
When the hull bumped alongside the dock, Cade nosed the boat in as close to shore as possible. Well past curfew, the shorefront was quiet. He saw no sign of Inspectors, so he tied the boat’s line to a cleat and placed the staff and satchel on the dock. Fortunately they had stayed safe in the bottom of the boat where he’d stowed them, even after he and Karigan had ended up in the river. He then tended to transferring her to the dock without tipping the boat over and giving them both another soaking.
She murmured something as he shifted her, but she did not wake up. With a deep breath, he hoisted her onto the dock. His body was beginning to feel the strain of having carried her through the tailrace tunnel, then fighting the outflow in the river that had almost drowned him. He decided to look upon his travails as strength training. Karigan was the perfect weight to challenge him, to help increase his stamina. This was what he told himself, anyway.