Ruyo and Elly confronted the attackers by being there in person when the town's nobles passed judgment.

The people who'd been so intent on wrecking the temple got sentenced for property destruction and attempted murder, by being ordered to labor at rebuilding the town. Ruyo remained stone-faced as the culprits got led away to start their punishment, building anything other than another temple to Ruyo.

The angry water-mage was a special case, more directly guilty since she'd sabotaged the tower. That was a threat to the surrounding neighborhood, more than the attack on the altar itself. She got led into Ruyo's presence looking sullen and defiant.

"I'm going back to the harbor," Ruyo said. "Can you breathe underwater?"

The woman in a tattered black robe remained silent.

"All right, then. It's a tricky spell. Will you work with me in an air bubble to help clear your city's harbor, or would you prefer a prison cell?"

The mage stamped the ground. "This is your way of getting back at me? Making me work for the woman who wasn't there when my family died at Khyberian hands?"

Ruyo said, "No, this is Nusina's idea. My first thought was to just kill you. But I want this city operational again and I've already ticked off enough people. You don't have to see me again after this. What will it be?"

"Fine. For Port Desire, not for you."

Ruyo actually wasn't sure the lady would be helpful, but felt obligated to give her something to do, now.

#

The next morning, Ruyo felt stronger. Some prayers had come in. She spent her first hour of the day remotely supplying Wellspring and throwing in some goods for Trueharbor and for local use. She was glad to be done with that for the day! She recruited the air mage and the young water mage to help with the bubble again. With her assistants in tow, she dived.

This time, Ruyo's practice paid off. She found that she could breathe the water and still have enough effort to use her other powers. It was a complex task that required concentration but didn't endanger her anymore. She let Nusina and the air expert focus on keeping an air supply for the mortals.

Which included the two redhead youngsters, at first; they'd begged to watch. They could only contribute the most basic water-shaping to bolster the bubble, but the other assistants said it helped somewhat and would give them practice.

Ruyo descended with them to the ship she'd de-masted. There, she did another inspection and consultation with Nusina, and decided Elly's shadow tricks weren't worth bringing her in for. Nusina surfaced long enough to shoo the Lady of Night away from being on standby. Elly went off to resume something else she'd been working on already, involving the mines north of town.

Instead, Ruyo played with pressure. She held her hands together and destroyed some of the water inside this hull, giving her a faint sense of the "vacuum" Nusina had spoken of. But the shipwreck was so damaged that more water poured into any gap and she'd have trouble sealing it all off without also protecting it from collapse. The same problem prevented her from re-floating it all.

She reached into an enclosed space and froze its flooded interior. More and more of the water began to gleam and crystallize, swelling to fill more space and strain against the already damaged walls. She felt them creaking. But it wasn't enough harm to shatter the thing.

"These ships are too sturdy to smash and too weak to fix!" she complained.

Nusina answered, "Time for the brute force approach, then?"

Ruyo got a feel for that by floating outside, and conjuring a wave. The technique was somewhat new to her: control a large volume of water and send it rushing forward to pound something. The effect was bigger underwater than she could do on land but had its own tricky problem involving the water she was pushing into. The mightiest sword-blow would still meet resistance if it hit an anvil.

She got Nusina to speak aloud to the bubble-dwellers. They all returned to the surface since Ruyo was worrying about the air supply's safety anyway. The teenagers had to back off for this one.

The temple-smashing water mage wasn't enthused about the plan Ruyo explained. "You want me to help cast your spell?"

"Yes, by focusing on the incoming wave to make it hit the area I want." She ignored the lady's foul expression and turned to the other, more helpful water mage bobbing at the surface. "That's your job too. Focus and aim for me."

Ruyo was breathing air now, and stuck to that. It was easier to hold her breath for an unusually long time, a dolphin-inspired trick that she figured was part of some internal changes she was making by instinct. With nearly all her magical attention available, Ruyo drifted in front of the sunken ship.

She reached back, gathered mana, and made the sea roar. Many tons of water rushed forward in a torrent striking the hull.

Nusina urged her assistants on. Ruyo felt the spell tightening, hemmed in from a vague wave to a piercing beam. It swept across the sodden wood and made cracks, knocked splinters loose, and finally collapsed whole walls. The ocean rumbled from the impact and unnatural current. The ship folded down on itself, decks shattering and tumbling into a pile of rubble as more and more of the structure's key points broke. In a minute they all had to stop and rest, but the biggest obstacle in the harbor was now a broken mess that could be dredged out of the way or pulled up piecemeal.

"Again," said Ruyo, leading them to the next ship and then the next. She let the youngsters watch the third time; by then the boy had cobbled together an eye-mask for seeing better underwater.

Back at the surface, they cheered and waved to the harbor's onlookers. "It's flattened!" Ruyo called out.

One of the dockworkers said, "We saw the shaking and rippling even from the surface."

Lord Mendrettos smiled and spoke loudly so others could hear. "Then finally we can begin taking larger ships again. Thank you, Lady of Waters. Especially after losing the gift we gave you, you're generous to continue helping."

Ruyo rose to stand atop the water and bow slightly. "Each of my assistants helped. It's time for me to move on, but hopefully you'll think of me as an ally from now on."

"We will rebuild your temple when we can, better than before."

#

Ruyo attended an awkward meal with the nobles, who wanted her to stay longer. But she had no temple here and couldn't do the usual blessings at the moment.

Elly was along for this one. "Well, I now have a shrine here anyway. The miners built me one."

This didn't seem to surprise Mendrettos, though some of the other nobles tittered. He said, "May it please you, Lady Elinor. Will the miners find it useful?"

"I've granted a few of them my version of a light spell already. They say it might be a way to detect ore more easily, because of how rocks glow strangely under the spell."

A noblewoman said, "Watch out or the earth god will come after you!"

"He can get in line."

Changing the subject, Ruyo said, "When I arrived it occurred to me that the southlands ought to be working together more closely. I'd like to see better disaster relief efforts to handle situations like the harm Port Desire suffered."

"You and me both," groused one nobleman.

"And part of that effort can be to establish a traveling mage corps, separate from any council government or mercenary company. Tasked with using magic and other skills to deal with problems like your harbor."

"We don't need somebody from the far south saving us."

"I'm from Starshore myself. Your people would be helping the other city-states as well. And with the temples in place, a rapidly growing number of people are going to have access to basic spells. That's something I'm concerned about because of the position mages currently have."

Magic users tended to be skilled tradesmen, or the ruling class, because of their powers. And now they were going to be a lot less special.

Mendrettos took a drink. "That had occurred to us. We're going to need to adapt, under the guidance of the Church and its patrons."

Ruyo didn't have an actual answer to offer, for how all of society should handle the rise of widespread magic. She explained the experiments in Averell about food generation.

The nobles were especially interested in that. Mendrettos said, "We're in an unusually flexible position here, since we're involved in such a mix of activities between farming, mining and trade. Not to mention that we have free space for construction."

The wind-mage lord said, "Lady Ruyo, what's your take on the war? How much can we expect the metal trade to resume?"

"They must be hurting for southlands wood and cloth by now. With one of their main generals dead I'd expect them to back off for now and re-open trade. But I'm not a strategist."

The nobles conferred. They didn't seem pleased by the uncertain future ahead, but they were at least determined to find some way to exploit it. Ruyo counted that as a good thing.