Brandon Sanderson: Firefight

“It’s an honor,” Exel said to me, stepping back.

They expected me to climb onto the boat. That shouldn’t be a problem, right? I realized I was sweating, but I forced myself to step onto the unsteady vehicle. It rocked a lot more than I’d have wanted-and then rocked even more as Mizzy climbed on. Were we really going to cross this enormous river in something so small? I sat down, discomforted. That was a lot of water.

“Is this it, sir?” Exel asked once we were all on.

“This is everyone,” Prof said, settling himself by the prow of the boat. “Let’s move.”

Val took the seat at the back next to the small outboard motor. She started it with a soft sputtering sound, and we pulled away from the dock onto the choppy black water.

I held on to the rail tightly, watching the water. All of that blackness beneath us. Who knew what was down there? The waves weren’t huge, but they did rock us. Again, I wondered if we shouldn’t have something larger. I scooted closer to the middle of the vessel.

“So,” Val said as she steered us along. “Have you prepped the new guy?”

“No,” Prof said.

“Now might be a good time, considering …,” Val said, nodding toward the distant lights.

Prof turned toward me, his form mostly hidden in shadows. The wind ruffled his dark lab coat. I hadn’t completely gotten over the awe I’d felt upon first meeting him. Yes, we were close now, but occasionally it still struck me-this was Jonathan Phaedrus , founder of the Reckoners. A man I’d practically worshipped for most of my life.

“The one who rules this city,” he said to me, “is a hydromancer.”

I nodded eagerly. “Rega-” I began.

“Don’t say her name,” Prof interrupted. “What do you know of her abilities?”

“Well,” I said, “supposedly she can send out a projection of herself, so when you see her, it might just be her duplicate. She also has the portfolio of a standard water Epic. She can raise and lower water, control it with her mind, that sort of thing.”

“She can also see out of any open surface of water,” Prof said. “And can hear anything spoken near the water. Do you have any idea of the ramifications of that?”

I glanced at the open water around us. “Right,” I said, shivering.

“At any time,” Exel said from nearby, “she could be watching us. We have to work under that assumption … and that fear.”

“How are you still alive?” I asked. “If she can see so widely …”

“She’s not omniscient,” Prof said to me, speaking firmly. “She can only see one place at a time, and it’s not particularly easy for her. She looks into a dish of water she’s holding, and can use it to see out of any surface of water that touches air.”

“Like a witch,” I said. “From the stories.”

“Sure, like that,” Exel said, chuckling. “I doubt she has a cauldron though.”

“Anyway,” Prof said, “her powers are extensive-but they don’t make it easy for her to scan and find things randomly. Something has to draw her attention.”

“It’s why we avoid saying her name,” Val added from the back of the boat. “Unless we’re whispering over the mobile network.”

Prof tapped his earpiece. I turned on my mobile, with voice amplification, and wirelessly connected it to my earpiece.

“Like this,” Prof whispered, but it came into my ear loud enough to be heard.

I nodded.

“Right now,” he continued, “we are in her power. We float across the open sea. If she knew we were here, she could summon tendrils of water and drag this ship into the depths. In this city, like most others, the Reckoners can exist because we are careful, quiet, and hidden. Don’t let the way we’ve been acting in Newcago make you sloppy here. Understood?”

“Yeah,” I said, whispering like he did, trusting that the sensors on my earpiece would pick up my voice and transmit it. “Good thing we’ll be out of open water soon, eh?”

Prof turned toward the city and fell silent. We passed something nearby in the water, a large, towering length of steel. I frowned. What was that, and why had it been built into the middle of the river like this? There was another in the distance.

The tops of a suspension bridge’s towers , I realized, spotting wires trailing down into the water. The entire bridge had been sunk.

Or … the water had risen.

“Sparks,” I whispered. “We’re never going to get off the open water, are we? She’s sunk the city.”

“Yes,” Prof said.

I was stunned. I’d heard that Regalia had raised the water level around Manhattan, but this was far beyond what I’d taken that to mean. That bridge had probably once loomed a hundred feet or more above the river; now it was beneath the surface, only its support towers visible.

I turned and looked at the water we’d crossed. Now I could see a subtle slope to the water. The water bulged here, and we had to move up at an incline to approach Babilar, as if we were climbing a hill of water. How bizarre. As we drew closer to the city itself, I saw that the entire city was indeed sunken. Skyscrapers rose like stone sentries from the waters, the streets having become waterways.

As I took in the strange sight, I realized something even odder. The glowing lights I’d seen on our approach didn’t come out of the windows of the skyscrapers; they came from the walls of the skyscrapers. Light shone in patches, bright and fluorescent, like the illumination from an emergency glowstick.

Glowing paint? That was what it seemed to be. I held to the side of the boat, frowning. This was not what I had expected. “Where are they getting their electricity?” I asked over the line.

“They aren’t,” Val said in my ear, whispering but fully audible to me. “There’s no electricity in the city other than in our own hidden base.”

“But the lights! How do they work?”

Suddenly the sides of our boat began to glow. I jumped, looking down. The glow came on like a dimmed light that slowly gained strength. Blue … paint . The side of the boat had been spraypainted. That was what was on the buildings too. Spraypaint … graffiti. In all its various colors, the graffiti was glowing vibrantly, like colored moss.

“How do the lights work?” Val said. “I wish I knew.” She slowed the boat, and we sailed between two large buildings. Their tops glowed and, squinting, I made out spraypainted boards rimming the roofs. They shone with vibrant reds, oranges, greens.

“Welcome to Babylon Restored, David,” Prof said from the prow. “The world’s greatest enigma.”

Val cut the motor and handed oars to me, Mizzy, and Exel, keeping one for herself. The four of us took up rowing duty. We floated out from between the two taller buildings and approached a series of much lower structures, their tops only a few feet above the water.

They might have once been small apartment buildings, now submerged except for the uppermost floor or so of each. People lived on the roofs, mostly in tents-vibrant, colorful tents that glowed from the spraypaint casually marking them with symbols and designs. Some of the paintings were beautiful while others displayed no skill whatsoever. I even saw some glows beneath the water-graffiti that had been flooded over. So old spraypaint glowed as well as newer paintings like the ones atop the skyscrapers.

The city was so alive . Lines strung between poles hung with drying clothing. Children sat on the sides of the lowest buildings, kicking their legs in the water, watching us pass. A man rowed a small barge past us-it looked like it was constructed out of a bunch of wooden doors lashed together. Each had been spraypainted with circles of different colors.