When we lost sight of the island on the evening of May 10, I had nothing to do but cross the sea as an idle passenger. Melowne and Stormy Petrel sailed across the longitudes. We were two ships standing out proud on the ocean.
I settled into my sleeping bag on my cabin floor, with a jug of coffee and cat, and some licorice root to chew. I filled my silver fountain pen, carefully propped the book on my sharp knees and began to read. I transcribed the first chapter of the small volume I had stolen from the library, A History of Tris, by Sillago of Capharnaum.
In the year 416-a date that every schoolchild knows-galleys from the mainland arrived at our then uninhabited island, and anchored in the mouth of Olio River. During the following day, the settlement of Capharnaum was founded on the northern bank and the mighty galleys were brought upriver and set aflame, a remarkable symbolic act that marked the dawn of our present society.
Why did this flotilla of galleys leave the mainland and put their hope in the creation of a new country? In this book I will argue that it was due to the ingress into the mainland of a swarm of Insects. According to the only manuscript surviving from the Pentadrica, Capelin’s account of the second decade of the fifth century, I maintain that Insects truly existed and were not the symbolic creatures that recently fashionable theories would have us believe. Moreover, they must have been rather larger than the ants of our island. My esteemed colleague Vadigo of Salmagundi has on numerous occasions criticized my belief in Insects. However, my research draws heavily on the precious Capelin manuscript housed in the Amarot library with which, perhaps as it is such a distance from Salmagundi, my colleague does not trouble himself.
The Queen of Pentadrica, Alyss, traveled with her court-a rudimentary senate-from her liberal and enlightened country known as the jewel of the Fivelands, to satisfy her curiosity about reports of the problematic Insects. Capelin, a scrivener at the Pentadrican court, relates that five Insects had appeared suddenly in the vale of northeast Awia and were the subject of much curiosity. Apparently of their own volition the Insects confined themselves in a small area behind a wall. The nearby Awians were observing and throwing logs into the enclosure when hundreds more manifested so suddenly they had to flee for their lives. When Alyss drew close to the boundary the creatures burst out, devouring the Queen and her entire entourage. Insects laid the fields waste, eating the crops and building as vigorously as our own ants. Capelin recorded that more Insects emerged than could ever have fitted inside, but this may be an understandable exaggeration or poetic flourish.
An envoy brought the news of Alyss’s death to her palace and to the King of Morenzia in Litanee. Various of the Morenzian nobility immediately laid claim to the leadership of Pentadrica-that is, the throne.
The crude southern horsemen, the Plainslanders, realized that they could also gain land. We do not know, unfortunately, what a horseman would look like. The Morenzian humans and the horsemen fought over Pentadrican land and many of the Morenzian nobility were killed. One suspects the Pentadricans defending their towns and hamlets could do little against forays from the barbarians beyond their southern borders. Capelin’s harrowing description of the destruction of Strip Linchit village forms the appendix to this book.
The kingdom of Awia tried to organize resistance to the Insects-presumably gathering young men whose hunting parties were now asked to net the maneaters. We know for certain that thousands of Awians were displaced southward and determined to settle the north of Pentadrica. Historians following Vadigo have stated that from this point the story seems credible, but have given no criteria for their method of determining between reality and allegory.
Awians and Pentadricans both appealed to San for help. This mythological figure was supposed to have been given eternal life by god before it left the world; to advise the world on god’s behalf. San seems to have been an itinerant sage who objectively advised all the courts of the five countries involved and was respected by them. Capelin assumes his reader knows the identity of San and gives no evidence to support immortality. It was probably a rumor arising around an extremely adroit and possibly aged wise man as it is not possible to credit the idea that he was wandering the world for four hundred years before the Insects appeared.
Some theoreticians postulate that San was god in a different guise; some hold that the appearance of Insects marked the return of god, or that god intended Insects to triumph over people and form the next phase of creation. The argument that there is a god at all is beyond the scope of this book.
It is self-evident that San realized the Insects were the greatest threat since he attempted to organize bands to hunt them. If Insects were some sort of metaphor for decadence and never in- tended to be understood literally as animals, how are we to explain the decision of San as recorded in Capelin’s document? It is the best evidence available that Insects, whatever they were, were tangible. San blamed the Morenzian nobles for the civil war and, although some accompanied him into Awia, fighting continued in the Pentadrica. The Pentadrica collapsed completely in the year 415.
The intensity of the skirmishes seems far-fetched to our imagination, but it is important to remember that in and around the fifth century all the land was owned by individuals dependent upon it for their survival. The pre-Senate times were indeed difficult. A further reason why the settlers founded a senate was simple horror at the fact that all this confusion resulted from the death of one woman, the beautiful Alyss.
To bring peace, San divided up the Pentadrica. From being the center of the Fivelands, its territories were distributed between Awia, the Plainslands and the new republic of Morenzia. Those three expanded countries were united and hostilities ceased. San proposed to lead volunteers from them against the Insects. In return, the several leaders met in Alyss’s empty palace and agreed to bequeath the building to San and proclaim him Emperor.
Now we come to the most exciting part of Capelin’s record. From all countries came a host of people who were appalled by the thought of one man, however wise, holding sway over the world. They met at the coast and numbered about one thousand. Awian refugees collaborated readily with men and women loyal to the Pentadrica who could not accept being subjected to the rule of savage horsemen and the greedy nobles who had so recently ravaged their land. They agreed to leave for an island well known to the Pentadricans. Under cover of the summer night, they escaped the mainland in a flotilla of galleys.
Today, if one strolls along the sandy bank of the Olio, it takes little imagination to envisage the travel-scarred galleys rowing upriver, their single square sails hanging stained and torn from the tribulations of the long crossing. Indeed, the site of their landing is numinous and sacrosanct, as if after their long voyage the ghosts of those tired but eager fugitives still frequent the beach.
Their outstanding achievements in founding the Senate and the colony of Capharnaum brought us to where we are today. Under the wisdom of a senatorial government, the colony thrived. Capharnaum grew rapidly and in the following century was embellished to its present radiance which, with the particulars of the naissance of Farrago community, will be the subject of my next chapter.
I turned the page, and almost dropped the book in astonishment. There was a portrait of the Emperor San. I recognized him instantly in the full-page illustration, although he was not in the Throne Room, seated on his dais in front of the electrum sunburst. He was sitting on a rock, and he wore breeches. A black and white cloak around his shoulders was secured with annular brooches. Across his knees, his ridged and wiry hands held a boar spear. The backdrop was a verdant plain of fields and, dotted into the distance, towns that were tiny collections of beautiful domes and stepped-gable houses. They reminded me of the broken domes of old Awia that project from the Paperlands; Awia has not built domes for nearly two thousand years. When Insects forced their country southward, Awians deliberately changed the style of their architecture to symbolize a new start and express their defiance.
San did not look stern and forbidding. He was smiling. He looked like a fyrd captain; he looked like one of us. The caption read: San, from Haclyth village, proclaimed Emperor in 415 on the dissolution of the Pentadrica.
I thought, this is what San looked like when he was the only immortal man; counselor turned warrior when, in another world, Insect eggs hatched, imagos amassed, and the swarm broke through into peaceful Awia. One would gain great wisdom by living through such times, witnessing incredible events-Litanee raiders sucked into the space Alyss left, riding at each other through standing crops and the smoke of burning thatch. Maybe the nomadic Plainslanders settled down somewhat once they’d gained Pentadrican farmland. So that, some sixteen centuries later, the Plainslands sprawls with twice the range, merchant families rule Morenzia and, in the city of San’s birth, waterwheels spin in industry.
Some of Sillago’s story fitted with what I already knew. I was keen to show Lightning my translation, because he had told me that his manor was created from land that was originally Pentadrican, where they prospered from the Donaise hills vineyards. In 549 wealth gained from the Gilt River gold rush brought his family to the throne. The Murrelet dynasty ended, and Esmerillion Micawater made her town the capital of Awia.
San has kept his position as Emperor for sixteen centuries, I thought. The current Circle is only his most recent system. If he had not founded the Circle, he might not still be Emperor. He must have come very close to being deposed in 619 when the First Circle was defeated. Our immortality seemed dangerously transient and unstable compared to San’s long life. If he found a better system and no longer needed us, I wondered what would happen.
I stopped transcribing and simply read until my eyes ached. Candlelight shadowed the texture of the page. Sillago’s prose tested my comprehension of old Morenzian but I read on, absorbed. In the Amarot library this was just a flawed textbook, but to the Fourlands it was a priceless artifact.
As I came down from my high, for the first time I felt the waves’ motion as lulling rather than threatening. Outside, the whistle blew for the three A.M. watch. With a warm feeling of achievement I nodded asleep, curled protectively over the book, the pages kept open with one loving hand.
I woke with a quick intake of breath. I lay listening, afraid to look around, feeling that something was standing over me. I was used to the wide sky and the enduring size of the Castle-the Melowne was a claustrophobic floating wooden box. I forced myself to ease the cabin door open and look out at the empty night. I thought: shit, someone’s stolen half the moon. But it was only clouds, I think. I must be more careful what I drink. Thin purple cirrus whipped past under the stars. There was no one about. Just a bad dream, I told myself. Go out and have a breath of fresh air.
I climbed down to the gallery and looked at the water. The open ocean was a wasteland. From edge to edge of its black expanse there was no visible life. But its endless sound and movement made the ocean itself seem like an animal. The whole febrile sea was horribly alive in a way that the static mountains could never be. A cold feeling lapped over me again. Something was wrong. What was that? Running alongside Melowne, about ten meters out from the hull, was a hollow in the inky water, silvery with the reflection of Melowne’s lamps. Is the hollow real? It must be, a trick of the light wouldn’t persist for so long. I thought I knew all the sea phenomena by now. I shrank back; was something sentient there? I glanced up to the lookout in the crow’s nest but he stared straight out ahead. Either he hadn’t noticed, or he thought nothing wrong. The wind was directly behind us. The indentation in the water was pointed at the front and rounded inside. I could see the far side of the wall of water inside, about two meters deep. The waves broke around it but didn’t fall into the hole. It was as if something pressed down on the brine, like it was being displaced by the hull of a nonexistent ship.
The indentation overtook us and veered away, gradually dissipating as it went. The hollow filled, leaving the surface smooth. I stared at the sea for a few minutes. Had I imagined it? Then a fin broke surface. I struggled with the perspective as the black triangle rose. Its wet tip came up to Melowne’s gallery, then passed it to the height of the deck. I could have touched it. It was fully five meters high. At its base, the rough back of a shark emerged, a thinner, more elongated shape than the ship. Way behind our stern, the tips of its tail flukes projected like a second dorsal fin, moving back and forth in the water. I froze. The shark was the same length as Melowne. It was fifty meters long. There were monsters out there. A flick of its tail would turn us to floating splinters.
The shark swam alongside. I suddenly wondered why the lookout hadn’t seen it. I leaned over the gallery. “Tarragon?” I called. “Tarragon? Tarragon!” The dorsal fin rolled away from the ship, bringing the pectoral fin to the surface. The shark’s silver fish eye, as big as a buckler, stared straight up at me for a second. Water washed through open gill slits like loose meter-long wounds. It rolled back. Water rose up around the wave-cutting dorsal fin as its body sank to the level of our keel.
“Tarragon…?” The shark gave a slow wriggle, left-right along its length. Its immense power sped the fin past me, then its long arched back, the vertical tail flukes. It was gone, deep under the ship.
I became aware of panic on the main deck above. Pale, frightened faces appeared at the rails. Shouts in three languages stopped abruptly when Fulmer’s voice bellowed something.
Tarragon said she would watch over us. Was it her down there? I thought she was a cute fish; I expected her to be girl-sized. I didn’t know she was a hundred-ton leviathan.
Fulmer slid down the ladder and confronted me with an intent look. “Are you awake, Jant? There’s nothing there.”
“Whatever it was,” I whispered, “she’s gone.”
For the sake of my reality, I was relieved I couldn’t see where Tarragon had gone, or what she could see underwater with her cold, filmed eyes.
WRENN’S DIARY
June 1, 2020
Today Mist and Fulmer had a blazing row and one of the sailors was put to death. He had been caught stealing a gold boot-scraper from a chest in the Melowne’s forecastle. He was one of the sailors who didn’t go ashore because we left before it was his turn. The men who missed their chance to see Capharnaum are very restless. Fulmer insisted discipline had to be kept, and for stealing cargo while under way the sentence is death. All seagoing vessels operate under Morenzian law. It is harsher than Awian justice-I think because Awia is in more danger of being wiped out by the Insects, we know better than to harm our own people. But Fulmer says that ruthlessness is needed at sea to stop mutinies happening.
This ship in Fulmer’s charge is worth a dynasty’s fortune. It’s so crammed that I have to sleep sitting upright between sacks of all-spice. Fulmer said that if the men before the mast can thieve as they wish there’ll be nothing left by the time he reaches Tanager.
Mist Ata yelled, “I forbid you! After all the losses to the Insect I’m not losing another crewman. Just put him in the hold and lock the hatch. Take your ‘I must make an example’ and stuff it!”
Fulmer yelled, “I’m sick of interfering Eszai! You’re no better than anyone else just because you can handle a tiller or sword!”
I learned that at sea a captain is like a governor; on a matter of law Eszai can only advise him, not overrule. Fulmer was adamant and he had the law on his side.
Mist piled extra sail on the Petrel and swept ahead as if she was abandoning us. Fulmer said, “Never trust a woman who has a point to prove. Yes? All hands to witness punishment!”
Jant refused to attend; he said it was stupid and brutal. He said that only Zascai exercise power so crudely and severely, but then only Zascai need to. He’s been acting even more weirdly than usual, he keeps saying how vulnerable our cobbled-together hollow ships would be, should any sea monsters actually exist.
The thief was bound, wrists and ankles. He begged and struggled all the time. He was thin as a lath, a weather-beaten man from Addald Island off the Ghallain Cape. I was sorry his life had to end this way when he had seen so much, navigated the storms of Cape Brattice on the southern tip of Morenzia, Tombolo and Teron Islands off Awia, the reef of Grass Isle, and the wild seas around the empty coast of the Neither Bight. He was brave enough even to have anchored in the rending whirlpools of the Awndyn Corriwreckan.
Two of Fulmer’s sailors passed a rope across the bow and paid out line until the loop dragged in the water. They each held it at their waists and walked the loop down under the ship to the main deck.
One end was made into a noose and the man’s ankles fitted through it. He kicked, both legs together, and screamed for mercy so horribly every man on the Melowne was chilled to the bone.
They picked him up and threw him over the side like a parcel. He splashed in, curled fetally, the loose rope snaked about him in the water. He bobbed to the surface, waggling his head and gasped, screamed.
Fulmer gave the order and a team pulled the other end of the rope that ran under the hull. The Plainslander’s yells cut short as it tightened and he sank under. His body was drawn down a long way, still thrashing and bubbles rising all around. He disappeared from view.
I heard knocks as his body scraped over the rough, barnacled hull. Blood swirled up, it looked black. I hoped that he had exhaled the air from his lungs and breathed brine in before the scraping started.
The wet rope coiled onto the deck, water ran from the hands of the men pulling it in. Behind them a team of men paid the dry rope out. Halfway through, Fulmer wanted to stop the teams and offer each man a tot of rum, leaving the body under the boat while they drank Queen Eleonora’s health. But the rope snapped. It went slack. Fulmer said, “Lads, reel him in, yes?”
The men pulled the rope up fast, hand over hand. They dragged a pale pink and shredded mass to the surface. The cable hadn’t broken, his body had. His arms were worn through, nothing was left of them. The noose had protected his ankles and feet but his legs were bare to the bone. Tiny waterlogged pieces of muscle tissue floated off, into the depths as fish food.
I saw his face had gone, just eyeballs in a fleshy cranium. His back teeth showed in the gums. Tufts of wet gray hair still stuck to the skull. His back was flayed.
This wet skull on a spinal column dropped to the deck. Fulmer made sure every man of his crew saw it before they washed it overboard.
Mist is still furious, and rightly so. I hope I live till god-comes-back, but if I die, I swear it will be by steel or chitin, and not by Morenzian law.
I was in my cabin, putting the finishing touches to A History of Tris, when the Petrel raised a series of flags. Mist was asking Wrenn and me to come across for a meeting. I found Wrenn talking uneasily to Fulmer. We were all three thinking of the mess she had made of diplomacy with Tris, although only I had witnessed the worst of it. Fulmer said, subdued, “She’s making preparations for landing. We want to avoid pirate vessels as we cross the trade routes, yes?”
I flew and reached the Petrel long before Wrenn’s boat rowed over the gently purling water. “It’s July the tenth,” Mist said. “I’m confident that sometime today we’ll have sight of the Fourlands. Watch for the coast, it’s heartwarming to see it appearing. It feels like the first time a newborn babe is placed in your arms.”
I sipped water that was faintly brackish, owing to the habit of refilling seawater ballast casks with drinking water. Mist watched the big, gimballed compass in the binnacle dipping as if it was dowsing for land. The morning sky was a slightly powdery pale blue that meant it was going to be a hot day. The haze had burned off by mid-morning and the temperature was so intolerable that I climbed the rigging and clung there, a black-clad starfish in a giant net, with my wings spread as a shade. When I opened my eyes the bright world was tainted blue.
Thick white salt dried on the stern carvings, encrusting them like the lumps of salt that fyrd throw into trapping ponds to immobilize Insects. It smelled as dirty as flotsam; I could practically hear it crystalizing.
Whale fins gnomoned all over the ocean. Seagulls trapezed in the sky. We came in slow. The lookout in the Petrel’s crow’s nest used his own feather as a plectrum to strum his guitar. He gave a false shout of “Land!” twice and Mist snarled that if he did it again she would slice his tongue out and fly it as a pennant. It must be her time of the month. There were tiny glossy plaques of severe suntan on her shoulders. A sweat sheen covered the golden-brown skin above her breasts, startling with her cream clothes. She had cut her platinum hair short and ruffled like dandelion fluff. She squinted at the sun glare and when she relaxed the folds at the edges of her eyes showed white.
Evening set in, and dry, porous ship’s biscuits were dealt out among the crew. Heat was radiating back out of my sunburned skin to fill the cool air. A thin black line began to rise on the horizon, becoming a part of the night sky where there were no stars, but nobody dared say anything until Wrenn strolled over and said, “I might have heatstroke, or is that land?”
“Aye, that is land,” Mist admitted, tiredly. She raised her voice. “Land, ho! We’re home, boys! Send a signal to Master Fulmer.”
The Melowne’s sailors read the series of flags. They took up the shout and jubilation broke out all over the ship, in the topgallants and below in the galley. From the Petrel’s half-deck I heard them shouting and cheering Mist. We had been on our own so far from anywhere that sighting the Cobalt coast was like seeing an old friend. We surveyed it with unbridled joy but, because we had been self-sufficient for three months, with slight trepidation.
“Drinks all around,” I said.
“Order!” Mist snapped. “We return as we left. Clear the decks shipshape and Sute fashion. Wait till you have your feet on dry land before howling with your hounds’ tongues, or by god I’ll separate them from you now.”
I was obsessively trying to judge the distance to the coast-the moment that I could safely fly back. I wanted to travel under my own power, at last! More important, I had to catch up on six months’ worth of news. I was desperate to know the latest, and even more keen-as a Messenger should be-to give San my report of Tris. I was also determined to face Tern and demand the truth from her about Tornado.
Mist observed me hopping from foot to foot at the prow. She collapsed her telescope back into its casing with a snap. “You want to fly?” she asked.
“I need to know the news.”
“Please don’t leave us. I need you to deliver my account of Tris to San. I’ve just finished writing it.”
“I intend to give my own; it’s Comet’s duty.”
Mist scratched her fluffy head. “Since when were you objective, Shira? You and your stupid eyeshadow.”
“It’s not eyeshadow it’s late nights. Look, Ata, I’ll come straight back. I only want to buy a newspaper.”
She looked at me closely. “If you go to land, promise not to breathe a word about what happened on Tris. Aye, god knows I can’t stop you, but I’m trying to contain this discovery and you can see how important it is not to blab.”
“I’ll just bring you the news, I promise.”
“Then off you go. And buy me a couple of bars of chocolate, as well.”
I landed on the dark strand, and jogged up the beach from the hard wet sand to the dry sand, then climbed some steps to the promenade. I looked back and laughed to see my footprints appear from nowhere at the point where I touched down. The days were already getting shorter; I somehow felt cheated. It was ten P.M. and the Artists’ Quarter, that reputedly never sleeps, was just beginning to wake up. One seafront kiosk was open. A gray, hircine old man chortled when he saw me. I asked why, and he pointed to the headlines.
I said, “Oh, fuck,” and bought a copy of every newspaper he had. I jammed them into my satchel. I gave the man a handful of pound coins and for my fifty-pence change he used a pair of clippers to cut the last one along the line stamped on it. He returned half the coin.
As instructed, I also picked up some chocolate but I had eaten most of it by the time I reached the Petrel. I called Mist, Lightning and Serein to Mist’s office and spread the newspapers on her table:
REBELLION POISED TO STRIKE THE CASTLE
Troops raised by Gio Ami are proceeding toward the Castle itself. Lady Governor Eske has, of her own accord, given over the first four divisions of General infantry and more than thirty Select Fyrd to his cause.
Gio Ami has also commandeered Insect-wall-breaking machines from Eske. They include two battering rams and seven catapults, probably midsized trebuchets although it is difficult to specify the exact type. At the time of going to press, the engines are en route along the Eske Road.
Gio Ami’s volunteer force and noncombatant supporters are extremely varied in background and opinion but are strongly united by their discontent at the Castle’s role in the slow recovery of the Empire from Insect damage. Gio Ami will address them in his second meeting, to be held at midnight on Thursday at the Ghallain Fencing Academy in Eske.
In response, the Castle has received command of four thousand General, one thousand Select Fyrd from Fescue and Shivel, placed under the control of Tornado and Hayl. The internal guard of the Castle, the Imperial Select, are on alert.
Sporadic clashes occurred today on the Dogvane Road from Ghallain between demobilized soldiers loyal to the Castle and rebels attempting to join Gio.
Kestrel Altergate
7/10/20
“How can Gio dare?” Wrenn said. “This is all on its head! We’re their guardians!”
“Many things are happening recently that have never occurred before,” Lightning said quietly, as if adrift.
“There’s an embargo on ships,” I read.
Mist pressed her hand on her belly, growled, “What kind of stupidity? Where does it say that?”
“Look, here. It says Gio’s men have occupied Awndyn and nothing can enter or leave the harbor, including your caravels.”
“Oh, for god’s sake. If I’d been here things would never have gone this far.”
I translated the Plainslands article aloud to make it easier for Lightning, and then I picked up the broadsheet he had been reading. He pointed out an editorial at the bottom of the page. “The Grand Tour just got longer,” he said.
RACE IS ON TO THE ISLAND OF DELIGHT
As Gio Ami’s uprising confounds the Plainslands, news spreads about the Island of Tris. It has caused a stir in Lakeland Awia. Our correspondent at the court writes that Queen Eleonora Tanager yesterday summoned to Rachiswater Palace one of the mariners of the 2019 expedition. The Court was entertained to hear, at first hand, the bizarre travelers’ tales currently filling the penny dreadfuls.
The Wrought Standard remains skeptical of the details, yet accepts that an island has been discovered since the flagship Stormy Petrel departed on another journey not one month after returning from the first. Mist’s statement that she returned empty-handed is now regarded as a half-truth at best. The Castle must have planned her venture because Stormy Petrel was careened and resupplied within a month; the Castle is invited to reply to allegations that it has been economical with the truth.
No place is perfect, but Tris comes close. The islanders are both winged and wingless people. The climate is good, and the soil on the slopes of the central mountain is as fertile as Plow’s black earth wheat fields. The sailor said their food was succulent fruit he had never seen before, and fish with sweet, rich flesh. The culture seems sophisticated, but sailors’ tales are not wholly to be trusted. They also tell of having seen men with paddles for hands and mountains that emit smoke like chimneys.
The island is mostly in a wild and natural state. There are no settlements in the interior; the natives travel around their rocky coast by canoe.
Queen Eleonora has expressed interest in mounting her own expedition, as has Lord Governor Brandoch. Tris offers opportunities to trade, and a place of settlement that can be offered to our displaced countrymen sadly suffering the lot of refugees. The race is on to construct or engage craft worthy of making this long sea voyage.
I was interrupted by a cry from Wrenn, who had turned straight to the sports pages. He pointed out a paragraph:
Gio Ami’s admirable life’s work was shattered in one flukish move by Wrenn, all reporters present at that immortal duel agreed. Wrenn proved that there are no universal laws in the Art; now, characteristically, the master of the Ghallain School seems determined to take unpredictability to extremes. His rebellion could not be foreseen by those of us who knew his cool fencing style. His aggression in the game used to be well controlled, he always kept some tricks back. Now he gains followers like swarms of Insects, determined to deal the Circle a mortal blow.
As Gio Ami told us, “Serein Wrenn is away, maybe lost at sea. If Eszai can’t give one hundred percent for the Empire, they should not be Eszai at all.”
D. Tir, Editor, Secret Cut Fencing Times
“So,” said Mist. “Gio Ami doesn’t know when to leave.” We were all silent, thinking of the man’s gall.
Lightning said, “There must be some mistake. It’s unthinkable! What does he imagine he can achieve?”
Wrenn tore the paper up and cast the shreds on the floor. “I’ll meet him for you.” He glared around at us. “I’ll take him back to the amphitheater and run him through!”
“It’s his followers I worry about,” said Lightning.
“They won’t stay with him,” I conjectured.
Mist slammed her hand on the table. “Gentlemen, a council to decide our course because we don’t know what we’ll find.”
“We should hasten to the Castle as quickly as possible,” Lightning said simply.
“Aye, but I won’t put in to Awndyn and risk a clash with any of Gio’s followers.”
Lightning said, “I will answer for Swallow Awndyn.”
“No, no, don’t be so unwise. We can’t trust any Zascai. Especially the allegiance of Swallow, whom San won’t allow into the Circle. I will not chance the safety of my ships. I’ll hide Stormy Petrel and leave an armed guard on her. You know in the past the most precarious times for the Castle are those when we’ve managed to beat back the Insects.”
Lightning nodded and said, “Well, Serein wanted a chance to prove himself.”
The next day the mainland was nearer. At first it was a pale gray silhouette, and at ten kilometers out I saw the exact instant when it became green. Colors on the coastline differentiated as we sailed nearer. The water had a blindingly bright mirror glare, as moving ripples reflected the sun. It was so calm it looked solid, almost as if I could walk on it.
At five kilometers out the sea was busy with traffic of various vessels coming and going, small sails in the distance. Ships turned left on sight, out of each other’s way; they hailed each other when gathering to approach the port. We were at the depth and bearings of the main north-south route along the coast, which the sailors called Carrack Roads. We anchored and all the Petrel’s crates of precious cargo were transported to the Melowne.
The Melowne sat lower in the water, a target for corsairs, so Mist ordered all her Castle pennants to be furled one by one until she only flew Tanager’s ensign. The Melowne then parted from us and Fulmer steered her northward, heading for Tanager harbor, where he and Mist had decided that the precious cargo would be most secure.
Gray dolphins packed our bow wave, jumping and snorting; their hard bodies slicked through the water. They rolled, breaking the surface and half-somersaulting as if they were spinning on a wheel. I wondered what Tarragon thought of them-snack food, probably.
“We’ll anchor in a sheltered bay I know well,” Mist said. But we headed for a blank chalk cliff with none of the cleavages where harbors lie. I didn’t much like it, so I climbed on the back railing, spread my wings and let the ship slip out from under me. I sailed up on a current, seeing the white chalk and lines of black flint speed past, till I was above the cliff. I looked down on the grassy top and realized that what I had thought was a continuous wall was an enormous flat, rugged stack hiding the narrow mouth of a cove. I soared along the cliff edge, hanging suspended in the wind which blew in from the sea and was driven vertically up its face.
Stormy Petrel tacked once, so close to the rock that the gallery at her waist scraped it. Mist and her bosun spun the wheel between them, and Petrel slipped through the passage behind the stack with only a couple of meters on either side. I turned again into the wind and glided back along the cliff top toward the inlet.
Stormy Petrel anchored herself fore and aft. She was hidden, but only from the sea. Anyone on the grass could look down two hundred meters to see the ship calmly bobbing in the dark quiet water crosshatched with ripples. Every wavelet made her dance; there was nothing in her hold but ballast and bilge water. The walls of the deep circular pool were sheer but there was a floating jetty constructed from barrels. From this landing stage a series of uneven steps hacked into the chalk led up to a cave entrance above the high-water line-a smugglers’ hideout. Though since Mist knew about it their contraband would be long gone.
Petrel lowered her landing craft and spewed out a procession of tattered sailors who climbed the steps into the cave, where they vanished, and more men behind them tramped into the grotto that surely couldn’t hold such numbers. It was like a conjuring trick. Half an hour later, the first man emerged onto the cliff top through a pothole I had not previously noticed. Another head-torso-legs followed, until all the sailors were sitting on the grass, scraping chalk sludge off their boots. Lightning and Wrenn climbed out last, absorbed in an intense conversation, but I couldn’t hear what they were talking about. I was having too much trouble defending myself from fluttering little song-birds. My big cross-shaped silhouette pinned in the sky on motionless wings reminded them of an eagle. They could out-fly me; they orbited and dived on my head. I tried batting them away, but their tiny beaks were very sharp.
Mist paid her crew and told them when to muster at the Puff Inn in Awndyn-on-the-Strand to gain a cut of the profit from the spice ship. She briefed them to hold their tongues about Tris with a promise of future employment, and dismissed them.
I flew into Awndyn feeling that the atmosphere had changed; people were looking up at me suspiciously. I visited the offices of the Black Coach, the postal system of stagecoaches that uses the stables and hostels of coaching inns. It was set up by my predecessors who were reliant on horses. Its mail network was nominally answerable to me as Comet, and despite their palpable disquiet the Awndyn branch seemed to be coping just as well as the last time I visited six years ago. I procured horses from their yard for Mist, Lightning and the Swordsman, and had to sign in triplicate for a carriage-and-pair for our luggage. I joined the others on the main road and directed them to the Remige Road in the direction of Eske manor and the Castle.
The sensation of the waves’ movement still lasted from the ship. I felt as if I was rising and falling although I had both feet on dry land. It was a pleasant feeling that lulled and confused my senses; coupled with the warmth of scolopendium it sent me into a condition of bliss.