The bank gave way where Chaska had been standing.
Not all of it. A slab of turf the length of a person slid down the wet clay beneath it. Lilt shifted with the ground, her broad body tipping toward the channel. Chaska caught the loose training line and ran uphill.
“Let her move!” Ysabet called.
“I am!”
The line in Chaska’s hand was slack. The line holding Lilt was something else.
It showed for an instant beneath the grass: old green fishing cord, laid between a stone post and a half-buried root. The flood had lifted it from the mud. A loop had caught around one of Lilt’s lower harness straps and drawn tight as she slid.
The sandray heaved. Her right edge rose into the air. Brown water washed over her left side, carrying small silver bodies that struck the harness with dry clicking sounds.
Chaska threw down the harmless line and went to the strap buckle.
Ysabet ran back for the oar. The skiff jerked at its painter below the upper step. She could not reach the boat safely by the edge, so she lay flat on the stones and drew the oar toward her with its loose safety cord. It knocked against a step, lodged, and came free at the second pull.
Behind her Ashaun said, “They’re cutting at her.”
The knife fish had narrow hard crests along their backs. In shallow water they twisted onto their sides to wriggle toward the deeper channel. Several had become trapped against Lilt’s soft edge. Each turn scored another pale line in her skin.
Ysabet laid the oar across the gap where the bank had fallen.
“Put her weight here!”
Chaska was lying on her stomach with both arms in the water. “Strap’s turned. I can’t get the tongue out.”
“Cut it.”
“The knife is under me.”
Ashaun drew the wrapped blade from her belt.
Pip passed between Ysabet’s knees.
It had climbed from its basket while all three looked toward Lilt. Now it ran with a lurching five-legged gait down the wet stones. Ysabet saw the pouch open, empty, and remembered the mouse in its dry box behind the statue. That was one danger she could leave behind her for a breath.
“Pip, wait.”
The creature did not wait.
It pushed from the bottom step and landed against Lilt’s trapped side. Its feet spread over the harness, trying to find a purchase. For one moment Ysabet thought it might stay there. Then a knife fish struck the strap, Lilt convulsed, and Pip slid into the channel.
Its head went under.
Ysabet lunged with the oar. Pip struck it with a foot, lost it, and came up jaw-first beside the submerged cord. It bit.
The cord tightened across its own folds.
“No.” The word tore out of Ysabet uselessly. She flattened herself again, reaching with the oar held in her left hand. Her right arm hooked over a surviving root to keep her from following it.
Pip’s feet moved against the water without effect. It had no stroke, no buoyancy that would keep its eyes clear. The hollow body filled and changed shape. A length of cord crossed its side and vanished under Lilt.
Chaska had the strap half-free now. She could not lift the ray and turn the buckle at once.
“Ashaun!”
The older woman stood on the upper edge with the narrow blade bare in her right hand.
It was smaller than Ysabet had expected. The dark metal had a pale seam along one edge, and its tip ended in a strange flat angle. It did not glitter. It looked like a broken tool someone had sharpened rather than discarded.
Pip saw it.
Or felt it. The creature’s smaller eye clamped shut. It released the cord and disappeared beneath the water.
Ashaun stepped down onto the surviving root. Her stone forearm struck the post with a hard sound. She braced there, reaching with her right hand.
Ysabet could not tell where the blade pointed.
The oar lifted as something caught beneath its broad end. Pip’s forefoot broke the surface, fine toes curled around empty air. Its body was held where the cords crossed. Ashaun bent closer, blade moving toward the white mark.
Chaska shouted Lilt’s name. The ray’s trapped edge beat once against the flooded bank. Water slapped Ysabet’s face, blinding her.
When she could see again, Ashaun’s hand had passed beneath Pip.
The dagger stopped against the cord.
For a terrible instant nothing moved except the fish, turning and turning in water too shallow to carry them away.