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sixteen

Tu had a smooth face so handsome it was no wonder it was plastered on so many billboards in Eden City. His straight black hair was tied in a high ponytail, but no one could possibly think it looked girly due to the sheer size of his shoulders and arms, made especially obvious by his lack of a shirt. Maybe he bench-pressed boulders in his free time at the Athenaeum. He was stocky but still taller than I expected. His dark eyes glinted at me with a mocking light as he glanced from Khaya back to me. “I mean, no offense, man, but she’s a little out of your league.”

The urge to attack him arose again, in spite of the fact that he was the Word of Earth. It was strange: before the last few days, I’d hardly had a violent impulse in my life. But since then, I’d stabbed a dog to death and nearly shot someone, and now I wanted to pound the smirk off this guy’s face. Maybe being chased, bitten, and drowned was having an effect on me. Never mind that I wanted to keep kissing Khaya almost more than I wanted to keep breathing—almost—and this bastard had just scared her away by telling a truth I didn’t care to hear:

She
was
out of my league.

I opened my mouth but Khaya spoke over me. Which was probably for the best.

“He’s saved me more than once, Tu, which means he’s saved
you
,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “Be grateful.”

Even though Khaya was shorter, dirtier, and scruffier than Tu, he took a step back after meeting her stare. He must have known better than to underestimate her. But he still threw out a muscled arm, gesturing at me in indignation. “What do you mean, he saved me? I just saved him! If you want to repay him like that for helping you, suit yourself, but don’t expect me to pucker up—”

“Tu,” said a female voice. “Do me a favor and shut the hell up instead.” The Word of Water walked up from behind him and held out a hand to me. Her face had an angular, carved quality to it, and I couldn’t place where her donor parent might have come from. “My name is Pavati. Nice to meet you.”

“Tavin,” I said, taking her hand. Her grip was alarmingly strong as she pulled me to my feet. I wasn’t exactly light.

She was only a couple of inches shorter than me and an inch or so taller than Tu, which put her at nearly six feet. All of us towered over Khaya, who looked uncomfortable as she stood between the three of us.

I wanted to get moving. If there was any chance that Drey was alive and I could get him a cure for the Word of Death, I had to go for it. But that didn’t change the fact that I was at the bottom of a lake, dependent on either Pavati or Tu to get me out. I couldn’t start making demands right after they’d already helped us. Besides, I didn’t think I had the strength to move very far.

“Nice,” I said, glancing at the curved walls of water for something to say. “I imagine lakes are heavy.”

Pavati grinned, a display of startlingly white teeth that sculpted her already beautiful face into something breathtaking. “It’s not hard. I actually used the weight of the water to keep the air trapped. The air wants to rise, so I’m sort of leaning on the lake rather than lifting, which is a lot easier.”

“Definitely,” I said, as if I had any idea what she was talking about.

“How did you even get down here without being followed?” Khaya asked, shooting me a look that made me hope I hadn’t been staring at Pavati. “Shouldn’t Luft be sucking the air out of here and suffocating us all? Oh—your monitors are gone!”

She seized Pavati’s wrist and turned over her hand. It was unmarked. No split-second thumb-chopping had occurred with either Pavati or Tu.

“Pavati was brilliant,” Tu said, tossing an arm around her shoulder. “It was her idea to blast them off—though of course she needed the strength of Earth to do it.” He flexed his other arm.

Khaya gave him a disgusted look that communicated precisely how I felt, while Pavati rolled her eyes and shrugged off his arm.

“You needed my strength, too, pal.” Pavati turned to me when she noticed the confusion that must have shown on my face. “See, the bracelets are made out of a para-aramid fiber, as I’m sure Khaya has told you—man-made, so Tu can’t manipulate them on an elemental level. And they’re fireproof and bulletproof; basically indestructible. I mean, they build spaceships out of this shit. But there’s a type of saw that can slice through nearly anything—diamond, titanium, you name it—using a simple jet. So I tucked the idea away when I heard about it.” She raised her hand in the air, wriggling her fingers. “And it worked!”

“A jet?” I asked, thinking of the aircraft even though I knew that couldn’t be right.

“A highly pressurized beam of some kind, like a laser. Tu can’t pressurize solid earth to that extent, and water alone isn’t abrasive enough. But together”—she swiped her hands across each other—“we cut through that crap like butter.” She made a face, laughing at her own comparison. “And we even did it during Tu’s earthquake, right before jumping in the lake.”

She put her hands on her hips, puffing out her chest with another mind-blowing grin. I liked Pavati instantly—unlike the other Word I’d just met. And it wasn’t because of her lithe, lean body, barely hidden by a midnight blue halter-top and tight pants that I couldn’t help but notice when she struck poses like that. I was doing my best to ignore it, especially with Khaya eyeing me.

“Swan-man never thought we’d have the guts to work together like that,” Pavati continued.

“Or the guts to chop off a thumb,” Tu said, then whistled. “Man, Khaya.”

Pavati’s grin fell like the moon out of the night sky. “If he had, we’d probably all be like Cruithear, with the monitors lodged in our brains. If it’d been anyone other than Khaya to escape first, that’s exactly how we would be.”

“Why?” I asked quickly. Khaya had glanced at me at the mention of “Swan-man,” and I didn’t want the conversation to turn toward Swanson.

“Why is Cruithear’s monitor in her brain?” Tu asked. “Or why would Khaya’s escape keep our brains safe?”

“Uh, both,” I said, ignoring the condescension that coated his words more thickly than the slime on the surrounding rocks.

Pavati glared at Tu and answered before he could. “Because Cruithear is the Word of Shaping. All she would have to do is give one of those bracelets a dirty look and it would fall off. But if she tries to reshape her brain to get the monitor out … ”

Tu drew a finger across his neck, making an exaggerated croaking noise.

“Thanks for demonstrating,” Pavati said without looking at him. “And that’s why Khaya was necessary for implanting one. She had to stand by in case the open-skull surgery went awry, or else the procedure would’ve been too risky. Even with her there, they only did it when absolutely necessary—really only in Cuithear’s case. They would probably reconsider that policy now that three Words have escaped, so it’s a good thing their life-support system was one of the three. Without her, no one is willing to chance losing a Word.”

Khaya winced, a rare occurrence. “And they almost caught me. Thank you, all of you. Even you,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Tu. “How did you coordinate with Pavati? She was the only one I could ever get messages to.”

“Right, all of your ‘swimming lessons’ together at the pool,” Tu said with a smirk. “The only reason Swanson let you spend so much one-on-one time with Pavati was because you were so depressed. Now I know your mood enhancement must have come from secret underwater conversations and not any hot girl-bonding sessions. I would have liked to be in on those nearly as much as this jailbreak.”

It amazed me to hear that the Godspeakers didn’t even let the Words mingle much among themselves, let alone with the rest of society. Tu’s crudeness was pretty impressive as well, enough to make even me cringe.

Pavati punched Tu’s arm hard enough to send him staggering, but he wasn’t deterred, grinning and deftly blocking another one of her fists. “You should see the Athenaeum’s pool, man,” he said to me. “It would blow your little mind. I’m more partial to the rock gym myself, but when I think about the fun I could have in that pool with these two, even I—”

“Tu, shut up!” Pavati cried. “Now that we can actually talk, it’s like you have diarrhea mouth.”

“Can you blame me?” Tu stretched his thick arms over his head as if he finally had the room to do so. “Gods! You’re lucky I’m even here, with as little as you gave me to go off o
f
! You were too subtle for your own good, with all your winks and hand signals. I was nearly as in the dark as Swanson when it came to your plan.”

That sounded familiar. Tu must have been following Pavati with the same blind trust I had in Khaya. I suddenly noticed the change in his scornful eyes whenever he glanced Pavati’s way—that probably would have been familiar, too, if I could have seen my own face whenever I looked at Khaya. I hoped I didn’t look quite so …
puppylike
was the best word I could come up with.

“So,” Tu said to Pavati when she only scowled at him. “What is the plan, anyway?”

“
My
plan was to help Khaya escape, then get myself gone,” she said, folding her arms. “When I heard about the fire, I was almost happy. Sorry, Khaya, I know you’re pissed at Agonya. But I knew water would be needed, along with Luft’s oxygen manipulation, to control the fire. He’s probably busy doing that right now.” She glanced upward. “Anyway, I convinced Swanson to take this guy, too,” she said, tossing her braids at Tu, “since he could theoretically smother the blaze with a ton of earth if it got too out-of-hand—a backup-backup to put the French at ease. But really I only wanted him along so he could help me get the monitor off.”

“That’s all?” Tu said. “Woman, you know you wanted me for more than that—my hot body, for one. And for two, who do you think threw all that earth around?
Him
?” He pointed disparagingly at me.

Khaya looked about ready to bite off his finger. She’d demonstrated her physical training to a small extent when she’d punched me in the stomach, which hadn’t been enjoyable, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing more if this guy was the recipient.

Pavati rounded on Tu. “And who kept everyone but us from uttering a single Word? If I hadn’t done that, you’d be tornadoed, torched, death-touched, and probably drowned, too, since I wouldn’t have been able to control myself with a Godspeaker blathering behind me.” She paused. “Or maybe I would have drowned you and just blamed it on a Godspeaker later.”

She sounded half-serious.

“How did you do that, anyway?” I asked, trying to prevent any more drownings—even Tu’s. My own experience was too fresh. In fact, I still felt like a garbage truck had backed over me a few times; I was worn out from simply standing there on the uneven, slippery rocks of the lake bottom. But I didn’t want to hear all the things Tu would say if I sat down. Nor did I want to encourage anyone else to get comfortable.

Pavati’s fierce glare transformed into a mischievous smile. “What do people use to speak?”

I shrugged. “A tongue?”

“Spit!” she said with an explosive laugh. “I drew the water out of their mouths and throats. It was some fine work, if I do say so mysel
f
!” She paused, looking at me with open curiosity. “What did Swanson have to say to you, anyway? His little conference was good timing. He couldn’t hear the commotion we made until it was too late.”

“Not much,” I said, without looking at Khaya. “We only had a few seconds before everything started shaking.”

Khaya didn’t contradict me. She must have gathered that I didn’t want anyone else to know what Swanson had said.

I didn’t even want to know. There was no way he could have been telling the truth about being my father. He’d had a gun in his face, after all. It had to have been some psychological maneuver to throw me off balance. I wanted to question Khaya to make absolutely sure, but it would have to wait until we had a moment alone—which I wanted for more than one reason. In the meantime, I didn’t even want to entertain the possibility.

Then again, I was happy to entertain the possibility that Drey was alive. And that there was a cure waiting for him at that address in the Alps. Swanson being my father might be equally as probable.

Shut up
, I told myself.

Pavati sighed. “To be fair, Luft knew something was up before the earthquake. He probably felt the moisture in the air as I drew it out of everyone else, then sucked up what he could and kept his throat hydrated. Sheesh, I thought the wind was about to tear my head off there at the end,” she said with another grin.

Her grins were contagious. Even though my face ached, I couldn’t help but grin too as I turned to Khaya. “See, I told you spit is useful in a pinch.”

Pavati arched an eyebrow while Tu said, “I’m curious. Under which circumstances did you say that? Was this while you were kissing her just now, or … ?”

I was trying to keep a tenuous hold of too many things at once: my thoughts, my upright position, my temper. My anger flared, nearly blinding me. “I was cleaning blood off her face, you piece of—”

“Hey, now,” Tu said, taking a step toward me. My words had wiped away his leer, but then a ferocious look appeared in its place. “Do you even know who you’re calling a—”

“Tu,” Khaya said. Her voice was flat; dangerous. “Pavati has already told you twice, and I’ll only tell you once: shut up.”

Tu actually did shut up. But his shoulders remained squared, his fists at his sides, as he tried to stare me down.

I stared back—and then burst out laughing. The accompanying pain in my raw throat and lungs made me stagger and nearly fall over, but even so, I couldn’t stop.

Khaya and Pavati both stared at me as if I’d gone insane.

But I wasn’t insane. I hadn’t survived all of this—escaping the city with Khaya and without Drey, almost drowning in Lake Eden, fighting a dog to the death, trekking through endless forest, running from a hellish fire,
actually
drowning in another lake—only to be killed in a showdown with the Word of Earth over who was the manliest.