Starside novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Ford of Names

At the river that drowns liars, Sorrel drags a boy out from under a killer's boots and tells the whole bank she wants the goddess dead.

The first thing Starside did was ask us a question.

We stood on a bank of black grass at the edge of a river that was the color of melted silver.

Above us the sky was thick with stars, and there were no clouds anywhere.

On the far bank, a hundred paces off, stood a single lit doorway in the air.

"The Ford of Names," Dain said beside me. "Wade in and the river asks what you want. Say the truth and it carries you across. Lie and it holds you."

"Holds you how?"

"By the ankles."

He didn't say anything more, and I didn't want him to.

The cord between our wrists hummed whenever either of us moved, and I could feel the warmth of it up to my elbow.

I tried not to feel it.

Forty-nine challengers stood in a line along the bank, each with a silver-coated Warden a pace behind.

A girl near me was talking without stopping.

She had freckles and curly brown hair and an apothecary's stained apron under her coat.

"I'm Tilda," she told me, though I hadn't asked. "I'm going to say I want a cure for my mother, because I do, and if I think about anything else it's going to hold me, and I don't know how to swim."

"Then think about your mother," I said.

"Right. Mother. Mother, mother, mother."

She went into the water first.

It came up to her waist, and a voice rose out of the river, cold and clear.

"What do you want?"

"A cure for my mother," said Tilda, crying a little. "Please."

The water lifted her and carried her gently to the far bank.

The line moved.

Challenger after challenger waded in and said what they wanted.

Gold. A husband. A name for their sons.

Some of them said it too fast, and the river held them by the ankles until they said the real thing, and then it let go.

Then a big man with a shaved head and split knuckles pushed to the front.

I had seen him at the Gate. He had not given his name to anyone.

"I want my father's debts paid," he said.

The water swirled.

"Liar," said the river.

Hands of silver water rose and clamped his ankles.

He didn't struggle. He looked around at the people nearest him.

Then he reached out, took a thin boy in a miller's smock by the back of his collar, and threw him in front of himself.

The boy went under and the big man stepped onto his back.

He used him as a stone. The boy's face was under the water, and the man walked across him in four long steps and went on up the far bank, dry to the knee.

"Marek Oss," Dain murmured, reading it from a card in his hand. "Dockside. Killed three men in Carrow."

"Do something," I said.

"I can't. A Warden may only witness."

"Then witness this."

I ran into the river.

The cord snapped tight and dragged Dain in after me, and he swore.

The water was so cold that it hurt my teeth.

I found the boy's smock under the surface and got both fists in it and pulled.

The silver hands rose around my ankles as well, and I kicked them off.

Nothing in the river liked that.

"Dain," I said through my teeth. "Take his arm."

He looked at the boy and at me, and then he broke the rule.

He seized the boy's other arm and the two of us dragged him up the bank and laid him on the grass.

The boy coughed up half the river and lay shaking.

I was soaked to the skin, and my hair dripped into my eyes.

Dain was soaked too, and he was staring at me with his mouth a little open.

"That's one rule," he said quietly. "You're going to get me killed."

"Good."

The voice rose out of the river again, and every head on the bank turned.

"Sorrel Aldane. What do you want?"

I stood up to my knees in silver water and said it so the whole bank could hear.

"Maelis dead."

The river went flat and still.

Along the line of challengers, someone drew a breath.

Behind me, the cord went tight, and I felt Dain close his eyes.

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