The abyss roared, a hungry beast beneath Kaddis’s boot. Zirra didn’t think. Her body moved, a primal surge of adrenaline tightening every muscle. She clamped her left hand onto the strut Kaddis clung to, bracing herself. Her right arm snaked out, snatching his wrist in a grip that would leave bruises. His calloused skin was slick with sluice water, but she held on, knuckles white, arms straining as if tearing stone from bedrock. “Don’t look down, Obal,” she gritted out, her voice a low rumble. “Look at me.” His head snapped up, staring up through the spray, jaw set hard against panic. She saw the familiar self-loathing there, the urge to simply let go. Not on her watch. “You wanted to make me rich, didn’t you?” she said, a wicked grin splitting her face despite the tremor in her arms. “Can’t do that from the bottom of a ravine, can you, darling?” He gave a strangled cough, a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. That was her opening. With a grunt that tore from her throat, Zirra heaved. Her boots dug into the slick stone coping. Her shoulder joints burned beneath his downward drag, but she hauled backward against the torque. Inch by agonizing inch, he scraped against the rough rock, his free hand scrabbling for purchase. His other hand found the coping, then his forearm. Zirra didn’t release his wrist until his chest was flat against the cold stone, gasping, soaked, and shuddering. She collapsed next to him, chest heaving, a thin sheen of sweat on her brow. The blue glow in her veins pulsed with cold warmth, though the strain remained deep in her arms. “You’re welcome,” she panted, pushing wet hair from her face. “You nearly broke my ribs against the ledge. Don’t tell me you were just trying to get out of your marital duties already.” Kaddis rolled onto his back, eyes still fixed on her, no trace of his usual reticence. He didn't answer with words. Instead, he reached out, pulling her head down to his. His lips were cold and tasted of stone and fear, but the kiss was fierce, desperate, claiming. It wasn't the tentative touch of earlier, but a raw confession of the edge he’d just skirted. The copper taste of damp masonry cut through her, leaving her lungs hollow. When he finally pulled back, his gaze was unwavering. “Thank you,” he rasped, rough and quiet against the roar of the chute. Her cheek flushed, a sensation she rarely permitted herself. She pushed a hand against his chest, a casual gesture to hide her discomposure. “Let’s just get out of here before the water pressure decides to take us both,” Zirra murmured, scrambling to her feet. The fractured conduit shuddered behind them, dumping its azure brine upward through the limestone runnels. *** Years before, slumped across an embroidered daybed after three cups of Arcan-root mash, Taphath had summoned the blind diviner Elenor. The crone, sour with pipe-smoke and reeking of damp hemp, had been promised silver to map the coming decades. Taphath, then a blossoming adolescent, had preened, eager for affirmation. “The soil shifts,” the crone had wheezed into the incense. “The tiller, scorned and low, will drink the sun. He will rise tall, his yield unending. And the physician, lauded high, will find his harvest choked by weeds, his draughts turned to venom.” She had hiccuped, clutching her empty bowl, before muttering into her greasy shawls. Taphath, already half-drunk on her own ego, had heard only what she wished. To Taphath, the meaning had seemed obvious. The outcast tiller, Kaddis, would stay in the muck; the celebrated healer, Ashmar, held the key to the terraces. Her destiny, bound to Tel, would outshine the city. She had paid the crone handsomely, confident she understood the signs. *** The morning sun, usually a benediction on the Upper Tiers, broke over the Grand Conduits to reveal a scene of botanical carnage. The Vash family’s prized botanical gardens, lay flattened in blue brine. What had once been meticulously cultivated beds of crimson Belladonna and golden Solanaceae now lay choked beneath a rampant, aggressive growth of vibrant blue weeds. They shimmered with an almost artificial intensity, clinging to every branch, every root, their tendrils suffocating the delicate, aristocratic plants. The air, usually fragrant with exotic blossoms, now carried the sharp, earthy scent of Kaddis’s blue resin, an aroma utterly foreign and unwelcome. Taphath Vash appeared in the central square of the Upper Tiers, a figure of barely contained hysteria. Her silken gown was rumpled, her usually pristine hair a disheveled mess. Bloodshot and disheveled, she glared past the terrace rim at the assembling guildsmen. Her manicured hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. “It is a lie!” she shrieked, voice cracking across the flagstones. “The script is broken! It was meant to be *him*!” Her shaking hand jabbed toward the sludge-choked beds, then whipped around toward Ashmar Tel’s clinic. Ashmar, emerging from his clinic, wore a mask of stiff, bloodless panic. His wealthy patrons, their faces pale with illness or anxiety, were already streaming *away* from his doors, murmuring amongst themselves about the sudden, miraculous recovery in the Lower Tiers. The sudden disappearance of the plague meant a sudden disappearance of his business. “My destiny!” Taphath shrieked, kohl running down her cheeks as she spouted garbled lines of the old prophecy to anyone who would listen. The watching terrace-masters looked away, muttering in disgust. The Vash wealth lay drowned under inches of alkaline silt. As Taphath’s shrieks reached a crescendo, a contingent of Royal Auditors, their ceremonial robes a stark white against the blue blight, marched into the square. They carried heavy ledgers and carried iron seals and ink-horns. Their leader, a stern woman with a severe topknot, surveyed the botanical devastation with a critical eye, then strode directly toward Ashmar Tel’s clinic. “Master Tel,” she announced, cutting across Taphath’s wails, “we have reports tracing terrace blight directly to your conduit junction. We are sequestering your records for audit.” Ashmar, his face a mask of carefully constructed composure, took a step back. His gaze flickered from the encroaching Auditors to Taphath, still hyperventilating beside him. With a sudden jerk, he seized Taphath by the collar, dragging her back against his chest. A glint of polished silver appeared in his hand – a scalpel, its blade pressed cold and sharp against her throat.

The Price of Prescience