Page 30 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

“What a question.” Amusement skittered across Adelheid’s face. “But no. Not anymore. I used to despise him.”

Now,thatwas a surprise. In the last five years, Lorelei could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen Adelheid without Johann at her side. He was her unwieldy, sullen shadow, darkening every doorway she passed through and lapping up every word she spoke like honey. “Why?”

Adelheid looked at her as though the answer was obvious. “Even as a boy, he was cruel and petty. I suppose with time, I came to understand him. His father did not give him much choice in the matter.”

Adelheid settled onto the side of the boat. The grime on the deck seeped into her dress, and splinters in the wood snagged at the coarseweave, but she paid it no mind. She focused instead on unwinding a coil of wire and fed it slowly into the water. She had callused fingers and fine lines around her eyes from squinting into the sun. She was almost striking in her plainness: the rare kind of noblewoman who did what needed to be done herself.

“We were raised on the same tales of knights and fed the same stories about what it means to be a noble. But where I admired their chivalry, Johann was fixated on their valor. He liked the idea of slaying dragons, not protecting the people they tormented. When he was sent towar—toserve in my brother’s battalion, noless—Iwas furious. He was in it for the wrong reasons. He was always bored as a child. He wanted something to entertain him.”

War seemed an odd choice of diversion, but Lorelei refrained from commenting. “I didn’t realize he knew your brother.”

Adelheid brought up Alexander often enough, the same way one might evoke the name of a favored saint. Although Lorelei knew little of the specifics, she knew he had fallen in battle. AmongBrunnestaaders—andespecially among thenobility—itwas the most honorable death there was.

“He does not like to talk about it,” she said stiffly. “But, yes, they knew each other. He swore Alexander an oath to protect me. It was apparently his dying wish. When he told me that, I punched him.”

“You...punchedhim.”

“I did.” A small smile tugged on her lips. “In any case, his protection was as unnecessary then as it is now. That is why he is here on this expedition, I suspect.”

“Would you rather him be elsewhere?”

“No,” Adelheid replied. “I love him dearly, and it is good for him to have something to do. He gets so restless. Now sit. I will show you how this works.”

Lorelei eased herself onto the deck beside her. She found herself reluctantly interested. Adelheid traveled often for fieldwork, so Lorelei had never learned from her directly.

“When the instrument detects magic, the wires inside will nod. The meter will then give you a number.” Adelheid tapped a glass circle on the base of the machine. It glinted like the face of a watch.

“That’s it?” Lorelei asked skeptically.

For the second time in five minutes, she got the sense that she had gravely disappointed Adelheid. She pressed a notebook into Lorelei’s hands and said witheringly, “It is a simple machine, but it requires some practice to interpret the data. Take notes.”

Lorelei watched the wires bob up and down, like a ship borne on a tide. Every now and again, a glimmer of blue light would ripple through the chamber of the machine, and Adelheid would make a little disapproving sound. There seemed to be no pattern Lorelei could discern. Adelheid read out a number every few seconds, and Lorelei would dutifully transcribe it. By the end of an hour, she had almost three full pages of numbers, five columns each. It seemed unlikely that this sequence of numbers would lead them to the Ursprung.

As she worked, she turned over their conversation. Johann was hateful and cruel,yes—butalso loyal enough to keep an oath he swore to his friend’s dead brother. If he truly cared about things like honor and duty, would he betray Wilhelm, even if he disagreed with him? She supposed it all depended on whether he placed the demands of his god over the demands of his king.

“Johannis—”

“You have never shown any interest in us before today.” Adelheid’s polite tone and neutral expression betrayed nothing of her thoughts.

She knows.

Lorelei did her best not to react. “Surely I have. You are interesting people.”

“I’m not a fool, Lorelei. I am not as eloquent as Sylvia is, nor am I as sensitive as Heike.” She saideloquentandsensitivewith the tone one might reserve for describing a wasting illness. “But I do know about loss. Grieve her, but do not let this become an obsession. It will sink you in the end.”

Lorelei stood abruptly and straightened the lapels of her greatcoat. Coldly, she said, “Thank you for the advice.”

Adelheid let her go without another word.

Lorelei slipped back into the cabin of thePrinzessin. An obsession. She wanted to scoff at it. But sometimes she believed she had been doomed to misery, like the victim of some fairy-tale curse. It was a devouring sort of sadness, the kind that did not grow lighter when you shared it. She had scrubbed through her life, searching for the root of it. If she spelled it out in black-and-white like one of her stories, perhaps it would all make sense.

Back in the days when wishes still held power, there was a cobbler who had three children. His youngest daughter was as joyful as daybreak after a long winter night and as warm as a summer breeze. His only son, the middle child, was the most beloved of the three: the sweetest mensch in the Ruhigburg Yevanverte, who knew everyone and their mother, too. And then, there was his irrepressible oldest daughter, who spent her days turning over stones to see what writhed beneath in the cold, dark earth.

Lorelei and her brother, Aaron, had been inseparable. He was nothing at all like her, the kind of child who begged to be allowed to tie off every box of shoes with a neat, fastidious bow. Who did everything that was asked of him with a smile. But as he grew older, he began to fear for his future. He had been apprenticed to the butcher. One day, they both watched as the butcher took the gleaming chalef and slaughtered a goat: a swift slice to the throat, blood waterfalling from its neck. Aaron had gone deathly pale as it crumpled to the ground, and Lorelei had to drag him outside when he fainted. She crouched beside him and dabbed the cold sweat from his brow until the color returned to his lips.

He’ll be so disappointed, he moaned.What am I going to do?

After weeks of needling, Lorelei had finally convinced him to come on an “expedition” with her, to the stretch of river their parents had forbidden her from visiting alone: where the wall of the Yevanverte blocked out the rest of the city and cast its long, long shadow. They hadbeen walking home, their pockets full of specimens, when a group of men from Ruhigburg opened the gates, laughing and slurring. They shattered the glass windows of storefronts as they passed, sending brittle, sparkling sounds like rain echoing down the alleyways.