Chapter 56. River Lessons

Neris led me by paths the mapmakers had decided not to bother learning. Down through the undercourts, past a row of shuttered shops that sold nothing and rumor, through an iron gate that had not been locked because it could not pretend to keep anything out.

“The river remembers everything,” she said. “It forgets nothing. That’s why people pretend not to hear it.”

“What does it remember about me?”

“That you died badly and did not stay dead,” she said. “And that you love in present tense.”

We reached the river mouth beneath Veilgrove. Not a pretty place. A working place. The water came in black-green, moved like a body that had decided it did not answer to weather. Old sigils scored the tunnel walls—names of houses that no longer had houses to hold them.

Neris rolled her shoulders and shook out her hands like a card sharp. “Pressure valves,” she said. “You need them. Or the power will learn to choose its own.”

“How many?”

“As many as the river