The breathless page found them in the hallway outside the kitchens. "Ser Kahldar!" he cried, "Lady Magnus bids you attend her in the lower reaches."

Selida saw Kahldar swallow a curse. "Is he hurt?"

The page looked pale and confused—infected by Emmeline's urgency, but with no context for it. "Who? My Lady caught me outside the blacksmith."

"Return to the barracks and tell Ser Aegison where we have gone," Kahldar commanded.

Selida caught his shoulder. "Don't bull through the kitchens. You'll start a panic. I'll go first."

His expression flattened, but he let her precede him into the dense space.

"Lady Magnus walked this way not a quarter-hour ago," Dame Pottage said. "Is aught amiss?"

"Oh yes, she asked us to come attend her," Selida said as she eased Ser Kahldar through the minuet of scullery maids. "We'll be but a moment. Don't disrupt yourselves."

Once they had ducked into the first of the larders and past tunnels Ser Aegison had designated as castle gaol, Kahldar broke into a jog. "They'll be disrupted when Ser Aegison arrives," he said.

"Then we'd better return before that. I don't want dinner on my conscience in addition to everything else."

He glowered over his shoulder. "What else?"

She gritted her teeth and shoved Lydris's credulous eyes out of her mind. "All of this, obviously."

***

Selida had not visited Wyvernsvow's deepest caves since she was a girl. Their scent: salt and the grot of tidepools, resurrected a memory of Laurence, once Lydris's age. He had plunged into them, determined to find a secret passage connecting the keep to the beach. "We'll surprise all those Dawnlander lords." When she hesitated, he'd added: "Imagine how proud father would be."

Lord Coralglass pulled them out before they drowned in the flooding, twisted passages. You won't unite the Tidelands if you're dead. He lifted Laurence by the scruff of his tunic and shook him like an errant pup. Then he scowled at her, dripping and bedraggled, knees and hands dashed open by the coral. And you, snakelet, where was your good sense? Your mother didn't give her life just for you to let him drown.

As Selida followed Kahldar through the upper reaches of this maze, she whispered a prayer for the dead: the one that transformed ghosts back into memories. As she spoke the words, she imagined folding their images into the little driftwood box she wore on her girdle. So many ghosts; such a little box.

Kahldar stopped at the end of a corridor cluttered with empty fish drying racks. When he turned, the torch he'd retrieved from the wall exaggerated the severity of his features. "After this point, you must cover your eyes."

Selida pursed her lips. "Surely you jest."

"I do not. Even before Lord Lydris discovered the treasure, only he, myself, Ser Aegison and Lady Magnus were allowed beyond this passage."

"For security?" She and Laurence had not discovered a passage to the beach, but perhaps others' had.

"Yes." She blinked. Confirmation? "But also because the caves are treacherous. If you thought you knew how to navigate them, you might return."

"You do know that my brother and I played here when we were little."

"I... did not. But it has been many years, and the sea has likely changed them."

"Lady Magnus sounded urgent."

"I must insist," he said. "Or I will return you to Ser Aegison, and come back alone." He cocked his head. "I can hear the tide already. The lower passages are certainly flooded."

"You are wearing armor."

"I've learned to swim."

She stared at him. He was as inevitable as the dawn. "Fine. Shall I close my eyes or will merely pretending to close them be enough for you?"

Kahldar ignored her sarcasm. "Hold the torch."

Selida took it, pointing it well away from their bodies. He stepped closer, and drew the turquoise stole from her shoulders. It was voluminous enough to wrap twice around her head. When he reached past her to tie the ends behind her, she smelled heat and metal and sunlight, even down here in the womb of the ocean. Though she could feel urgency in his fingertips, he avoided catching her hair in the knot.

"You realize that if I cannot see our route and you slip on some seaweed and dash your head on a rock, we'll likely drown down here."

He caught her gesticulating hand in his mailed fist and placed it on his waist. The metal warmed under her skin. Then he reclaimed the torch from her.

"There," he said. "Are you ready?"

Selida took a cautious step. "You also did not bother to ask if a cleric's stole can be used as a blindfold." For extra security, she pressed her free hand to the other side of his chestplate. She could squeeze all she wanted, and he would never feel a thing. "Perhaps such blasphemy will curse you."

"If that were true, I trust you would have said so ere I finished. Now watch your step; as you said, the ground is slippery."

***

They had taken two right turns and one left over one hundred and fifty steps when Selida heard a whisper of prayer. She released Kahldar and jerked the stole down away from her eyes.

It was Emmeline. She was pale, taut, and wore only a half-soaked lawn shift. Her clothes and shoes sat in a neat heap beside a second, guttering torch. She knelt at the edge of a growing pool of black water. The moist walls pressed them close. High tide would half-submerge this place, Selida guessed from the shadows on the rock.

Kahldar immediately averted his eyes. "My Lady—"

"What happened?" Selida grabbed the kirtle off the pile and tried to swaddle it around Emmeline's shoulders.

Emmeline did not let her. She pushed the kirtle aside and wrapped frigid fingers over Selida's wrists. Through shivers she managed: "Good. He f-found you. Th—thank the A-aluna you've come." She turned her head to stare at the black water. "As s-soon as I r-realized he was m-missing, I came, but c-could not follow." Her eyes reflected black. "Go f-find him, and I will f-forgive you the s-stupidity of p-planting this t-thought in his m-mind."

Selida found her cleric's voice, the cool, soothing one, the one Aluna gave her to give in turn to mothers who grieved their children, and to children who grieved their mothers. "Slow down, Emmeline. Where should we look?"

"I remember how to find the treasure," Kahldar said as he stripped off gloves and plate. "How long has Lord Lydris been missing?"

Emmeline convulsed; her body one knotted mass, will and tension punctuated by helpless mortality. "He t-told m-me after breakfast he h-had a s-special p-practice. Archery. I d-din't think to look for him until after noon."

"And by then the tide was coming in," Kahldar said.

Selida felt her stomach flood with vinegar. "Is it still reachable?"

"There are pockets of air in the caves even when the water is at its zenith," Kahldar said. Breastplate, pauldrons and gorget hit the floor. "The treasure lies under one of them. If he is there, I will bring him back."

Emmeline shoved Selida away. "G-go with him."

"Selida must stay with you," Kahldar said. "I will go."

Emmeline turned her black eyes on him, and Selida saw him flinch. "Take her," Emmeline said, wrapping her arms around her slim torso. "Aluna w-will not l-let my son drown."

Selida inhaled. Aluna took many things. Everything, in the end. She imagined the energetic blond head disappearing into the depths, stilled by cold and blackness. She drew a deep breath and took off her shoes. The black, slimy sand squelched between her toes, numbing them.

Kahldar had stripped to his undershirt and chausses. He reached for but did not quite touch her shoulder. "Lady Cleric. Stay with Lady Magnus. I will return shortly."

"She m-must go with you," Emmeline said. "I command it."

"If Lydris is injured, Aluna will heal him," Selida said. "And, I can breathe under water."

Kahldar's mouth was a flat line as he lowered himself into the thigh-deep pool. "Fine." He held out a hand to her. "Grab on, and do not let go."

"Shall I share air with you?"

He looked impatient. "No."

The stab of annoyance she felt was a welcome reprieve from her other thoughts. "Serpents of the air, Aluna bids you to bolster my breath," she exhaled in the old tongue. Then she inhaled, in and in and in.

So he had learned to swim. They waded into the icy black. Selida grabbed his shoulders as he stepped off a shelf and plunged into the briny water. The cold hit her all over like a blow from a giant's mace. Tidemother take us.

Kahldar sank down, down, down, his weight dragging her after him. When she opened her eyes, stinging against the salt, she could already see the torchlight receding, as the rough walls closed in. She set her teeth to endure, and let him draw them both into the darkness.