The new soldiers of the High Sea Guard had been allowed to spend their last hours in Cape Hisan in whatever way they chose. Most of them had gone to bid farewell to friends. At the ninth hour of night, they would set off by palanquin to the capital.
The scholars had already left on the ship to Feather Island. Ishari had not stood on deck with the others to watch Seiiki disappear.
They had been close for years. Tané had nursed Ishari through a fever that had almost killed her. Ishari had been like a sister when Tané first bled, showing her how to make plugs out of paper. Now they might never see each other again. If only Ishari had studied harder—given more of herself to her training—they could have been riders together.
For now, Tané had to turn her mind toward another friend. She kept her head down as she wove through the clamor of Cape Hisan, where dancers and drummers were out to celebrate Choosing Day. Children skipped past, laughing, painted kites flying above them.
The streets heaved with people. They mopped at their faces with flat-woven linen. As Tané dodged merchants peddling trinkets, she breathed in the spice of incense, the scent of rain on sweat on skin, and the waft of sea-fresh fish. She listened to the tinsmiths and traders calling out and the gasps of delight as a tiny yellow bird warbled a song.
This might be the last time she walked in Cape Hisan, the only city she had ever known.
It had always been a risk to come here. The city was a dangerous place, where apprentices might be tempted to act in ways that would corrupt them. There were brothels and taverns, card games and cockfights, recruiters sent to press them into piracy. Tané had often wondered if the Houses of Learning had been built so close to all this as a test of will.
When she reached the inn, she let out her breath. There were no sentinels.
“Excuse me,” she called through the bars.
A tiny girl came to the gate. When she saw Tané, and the blue tunic of the High Sea Guard, the child knelt at once and set her forehead between her hands.
“I am looking for the honorable Susa,” Tané said gently. “Would you fetch her for me?”
The girl scurried back into the inn.
Nobody had ever bowed to Tané that way. She had been born in the impoverished village of Ampiki, on the southern tip of Seiiki, to a family of fisherfolk. One crisp winter day, a fire had sparked in the nearby forest and swallowed almost every house.
Tané had no memory of her parents. She had only avoided sharing their death because she had chased a butterfly out of the house, to the sea. Most foundlings and orphans washed up in the land army, but the butterfly had been interpreted by a holy woman as intervention from the gods, and it was decided that Tané must be trained as a rider.
Susa came to the gate in a robe of white silk, richly broidered. Her hair poured loose over her shoulders.
“Tané.” She slid the gate aside. “We must speak.”
Tané recognized the notch in her brow. They slipped into the alley beside the house, where Susa opened her umbrella and held it over them both.
“He is gone.”
Tané wet her lips. “The outsider?”
“Yes.” Susa looked nervous. She was never nervous. “There was gossip in the market earlier. A pirate ship was sighted off the coast of Cape Hisan. The sentinels looked all over the city for smuggled freight, but when they left, they had found nothing.”
“They searched in Orisima,” Tané realized, and Susa nodded. “Did they find the outsider?”
“No. But there is nowhere to hide there.” Susa glanced toward the street, her eyes reflecting its lanternlight. “He must have escaped while the sentinels were distracted.”
“No one could cross the bridge without the sentinels noticing. He must still be there.”
“The man must be half ghost if he can hide himself so well.” Susa tightened her grip on the umbrella. “Tané, do you think we should still tell the honored Governor about him?”
Tané had been asking herself the same question ever since the ceremony.
“I told Roos we would collect him, but . . . perhaps if he stays hidden in Orisima, he will be able to avoid the sword and slip away on the next ship back to Mentendon,” Susa went on. “They might mistake him for a legal settler. He was no older than us, Tané, and perhaps not here by choice. I have no desire to condemn him to death.”
“Then let us not. Let him make his own way.”
“What of the red sickness?”
“He had none of the signs. And if he is still in Orisima—and I cannot think it otherwise—the sickness cannot go far.” Tané spoke quietly. “Further association with him is too much of a risk, Susa. You took him somewhere safe. What happens now is up to him.”
“But if they find him, will he not tell them about us?” Susa whispered.
“Who would believe him?”
Susa took a deep breath, and her shoulders dropped. She looked Tané up and down.
“It seems all of the risk was worthwhile.” Her smile made her eyes sparkle. “Was Choosing Day everything you imagined?”
The need to talk had been welling up for hours. “And more. The dragons were so beautiful,” Tané said. “Did you see them?”
“No. I was asleep,” Susa admitted. She must have been awake all night. “How many riders will there be this year?”
“Twelve. The honored Unceasing Emperor has sent two great warriors to raise our numbers.”
“I have never seen a Lacustrine dragon. Are they very different to ours?”
“They have thicker bodies, and one more toe. It would be a privilege to ride with any of them.” Tané pressed closer under the umbrella. “I must be a rider, Susa. I feel guilty for wanting so much when I have already received so many blessings, but—”
“It has been your dream since you were a child. You have ambition, Tané. Never apologize for that.” Susa paused. “Are you afraid?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Fear will make you fight. Don’t let a little shit like Turosa get the better of you, whoever his mother is.” Tané gave her a scolding look, but smiled. “Now, you must hurry. Remember, no matter how far from Cape Hisan you fly, I will always be your friend.”
“And I yours.”
The gate to the inn slid open, making them both start. “Susa,” the girl called. “You need to come inside now.”
Susa glanced toward the house. “I must go.” She looked back at Tané, hesitated. “Will they let me write to you?”
“They must.” Tané had never known any commoner to maintain a friendship with a sea guardian, but she prayed they would be the exception. “Please, Susa, be careful.”
“Always.” Her smile quivered. “You won’t miss me so much. When you soar above the clouds, we will all seem very small down here.”
“Wherever I am,” Tané said, “I am with you.”
Susa had risked everything for a dream that was not hers. That sort of friendship was something not found more than once in a lifetime. Some might not find it at all.
The space between them was fraught with memory, and their faces were no longer damp only from rain. Perhaps Tané would return to Cape Hisan to guard the eastern coast, or perhaps Susa could visit her, but for once in her life, nothing was certain. Their paths were about to pull apart, and unless the dragon willed it, they might never meet again.
“If anything happens—if anyone names you in relation to the outsider—come with all speed to Ginura,” Tané said softly. “Come and find me, Susa. I will always keep you safe.”
In a cramped excuse for a workroom in Orisima, a lantern guttered as Niclays Roos held a phial into its light. The stained label read KIDNEY ORE. It was all he could do to keep Sulyard from his mind, but the surest way to manage it was to lose himself in his great work.
Not that he was getting much work done, great or otherwise. He was perilously low on ingredients, and his alchemical equipment was as old as he was, but he wanted one more stab at this before he wrote yet again for supplies. The Governor of Cape Hisan was sympathetic, but often checked in his generosity by the Warlord, who seemed to know everything that happened in Seiiki.
The Warlord was almost mythical. His family had taken power after the imperial House of Noziken had been destroyed in the Great Sorrow. All Niclays really knew about the man was that he lived in a castle in Ginura. Every year, the Viceroy of Orisima would be taken there in a locked palanquin to pay tribute, offer gifts from Mentendon, and receive gifts in return.
Niclays was the only person in the trading post who had never been invited to join her on the journey. His fellow Ments were civil to his face, but unlike the rest of them, he was here because he was in exile. The fact that none of them knew why did not endear them to him.
Sometimes he wanted to unmask himself, just to see their faces. To tell them that he was the alchemist who had convinced the young Queen of Inys that he could brew her an elixir of life, removing any need for marriage or an heir. That he was the wastrel who had used Berethnet money to prop up years of guesswork, experiments, and debauchery.
How horrified they would be. How scandalized by his dearth of virtue. They would have no idea that even when he had made his way to Inys ten years ago, a walking tinderbox of pain and anger, he had remained faithful, in some hidden chamber of his heart, to the tenets of alchemy. Distillation, Ceration, Sublimation—these were the only deities that he would ever praise. They would have no idea that while he had sweated at the crucible, certain he could discover a way to set a body in the prime of its youth, he had also been trying to melt the knife of grief that had been buried in his side. A knife that had finally led him away from the crucible, back to the comfort and oblivion of wine.
He had not succeeded in either venture. And for that, Sabran Berethnet had made him pay.
Not with his life. Leovart had told him he ought to be grateful for that so-called kindness from Her Enmity. No, Sabran had not taken his head—but she had taken everything else. Now he was trapped on the edge of the world, surrounded by people who despised him.
Let them whisper. If this experiment worked, they would all be knocking at his door for the elixir. Tongue pinched between his teeth, he poured the kidney ore into the crucible.
It might as well have been gunpowder. Before he knew it, the draft was seething. It bubbled over, on to the table, and belched a thunderhead of evil-smelling smoke.
Niclays peered desperately into the crucible. All that was left was a tar-black residue. With a sigh, he rubbed the soot from his eyeglasses. His creation looked more like night soil than the elixir of life.
Kidney ore was not the answer. Then again, the powder may not have been kidney ore at all. Panaya had bought it from a merchant on his behalf, and merchants were not renowned for their honesty.
The Nameless One take all of this. He would have given up on making the damned elixir if not for the fact that he had no means of escaping this island but to buy his way back to the West with it.
Of course, he had no intention of giving it to Sabran Berethnet. She could hang. But if he made it known to any ruler that he had it, they would see to it that he was brought back to Mentendon and allowed to live out the rest of his life in luxury and wealth. And he would see to it that Sabran knew what he could do, and when she came to him, pleading for a taste of eternity, there would be no sweeter pleasure than denying it to her.
Still, he was a long way from that happy day. He needed the costly substances that long-dead Lacustrine rulers had sought to stretch their lives, like gold and orpiment and rare plants. Even though most of those rulers had poisoned themselves trying to live forever, there was a chance that their recipes for the elixir might spark a new flame of inspiration.
Time to write to Leovart yet again and ask him to flatter the Warlord with some pretty letter. Only a prince might be able to coax him into handing over his gold to be melted.
Niclays finished his cold tea, wishing it was stronger. The Viceroy of Orisima had barred him from the alehouse and limited him to two cups of wine each week. His hands had trembled for months.
They shook now, but not with the need for oblivion. There was still no sign of Triam Sulyard.
The bells clanged in the city again. The sea guardians must be on their way to the capital. The other apprentices would be packed off to Feather Island, a high isle in the Sundance Sea, where all known wisdom about dragonkind was stored. Niclays had written to the Governor of Cape Hisan several times, requesting permission to travel there, but had always been rebuffed. Feather Island was not for outsiders.
Dragons might yet be the key to his work. They could live for thousands of years. Something in their bodies must allow them to keep renewing themselves.
They were not what they had once been. In Eastern legend, dragons had possessed mystical abilities, like shape-shifting and dream-making. The last time they had exhibited these powers was in the years following the end of the Great Sorrow. That night, a comet had crossed the sky, and while wyrms the world over had fallen into a stonelike sleep, the Eastern dragons had found themselves stronger than they had been in centuries.
Now their powers had dwindled again. And yet they lived on. The elixir incarnate.
Not that the theory would help Niclays much. On the contrary, the realization had driven his work into a dead end. The islanders saw their dragons as sacred. Consequently, trade in any substance from their bodies was outlawed on pain of a particularly slow and hideous death. Only pirates risked it.
With gritted teeth and a pounding headache, Niclays limped from his workshop. As he stepped onto the mats, he gaped.
Triam Sulyard was sitting by the hearth. He was soaked to the skin.
“By the Saint’s codpiece—” Niclays stared. “Sulyard!”
The boy looked wounded. “You should not take the Saint’s intimate parts in vain.”
“Hold your tongue,” Niclays snapped, heart pounding. “My word, but you are a lucky wretch. If you’ve found a way out of this place, say it now.”
“I tried to leave,” Sulyard said. “I managed to evade the guards and slip out of the house, but more were by the gate. I got into the water and hid beneath the bridge until the Eastern knight left.”
“The Chief Officer is no knight, you fool.” Niclays let out a growl of frustration. “Saint, why did you have to come back? What did I do to deserve you turning up to threaten what little I have left of an existence?” He paused. “Actually, don’t answer that.”
Sulyard was silent. Niclays stormed past him and set about lighting a fire.
“Doctor Roos,” Sulyard said, after a hesitation. “Why is Orisima so closely guarded?”
“Because outsiders cannot set foot in Seiiki on pain of death. And the Seiikinese, in turn, cannot leave.” Niclays hooked the kettle over the hearth. “They let us stay here so they can trade with us and absorb odds and ends of Mentish knowledge, and so we can give the Warlord at least a hazy impression of the other side of the Abyss, but we cannot go beyond Orisima or speak heresy to the Seiikinese.”
“Heresy like the Six Virtues?”
“Precisely. They also, understandably, suspect outsiders of carrying the Draconic plague—the red sickness, as they call it. If you had taken the trouble to do your research before you came here—”
“But they would surely listen if we asked for help,” Sulyard said, with conviction. “Indeed, while I was hiding, I had a thought that I might simply let them find me, so that they might take me to the capital.” He seemed not to see the appalled look Niclays dealt him. “I must speak with the Warlord, Doctor Roos. If you would only hear what I have come to—”
“As I said,” Niclays said tartly, “I have no interest in your mission, Master Sulyard.”
“But Virtudom is in peril. The world is in peril,” Sulyard pressed. “Queen Sabran needs our help.”
“In terrible danger, is she?” He tried not to sound too hopeful. “Life-threatening?”
“Yes, Doctor Roos. And I know a way to save her.”
“The richest woman in the West, venerated by three countries, needs a squire to save her. Fascinating.” Niclays heaved a sigh. “All right, Sulyard. I will indulge you. Enlighten me as to how you plan to spare Queen Sabran from this unspecified peril.”
“By interceding with the East.” Sulyard looked determined. “The Warlord of Seiiki must send his dragons to help Her Majesty. I mean to persuade him to do this. He must help Virtudom put down the Draconic beasts before they fully wake. Before—”
“Wait,” Niclays cut in. “Do you mean to say that you want . . . an alliance between Inys and Seiiki?”
“Not just between Inys and Seiiki, Doctor Roos. Between Virtudom and the East.”
Niclays let the words crystallize. The corner of his mouth twitched. And when Sulyard continued to look grave as a sanctarian, Niclays threw back his head and laughed.
“Oh, this is wonderful. Glorious,” he declared. Sulyard stared at him. “Oh, Sulyard. I have had precious little entertainment in this place. Thank you.”
“It is no joke, Doctor Roos,” Sulyard said, indignant.
“Oh, but it is, dear boy. You think that you alone can overturn the Great Edict, a law that has stood for five centuries, just by asking nicely. You really are young.” Niclays chuckled once more. “And who is your partner in this splendid endeavor?”
Sulyard huffed. “I know you are mocking me, sir,” he said, “but you must not mock my lady. She is someone for whom I would die a thousand times, whose name I cannot tell. Someone who is the light in my life, the breath in my breast, the sun to my—”
“Yes, all right, that’s quite sufficient. Did she not wish to come to Seiiki with you?”
“We planned to go together. But when I visited my mother in Perchling in the winter, I met a seafarer by chance. She offered me a place on a ship bound for Seiiki.” His shoulders hunched inward. “I sent word to my love at court . . . I pray she understands. That she forgives me.”
It had been a while since Niclays had indulged in a bit of court gossip. It spoke volumes for his boredom that he was all but salivating for it. He poured two cups of willow tea and sat on the mats, stretching his sore leg in front of him. “This lady is your betrothed, I take it.”
“My companion.” A smile touched the cracked lips. “We took our vows.”
“I assume Sabran gave her blessing to the match.”
Sulyard flushed. “We . . . did not ask Her Majesty for permission. No one knows of it.”
He was braver than he looked. Sabran dealt harsh punishments to those who married in secret. It was where she differed from the late Queen Mother, who had been fond of a good love story.
“Your lady must be of a low station if you had to marry her in secret,” Niclays mused.
“No! My lady is noble-born. She is as sweet as the richest honey, as beautiful as an autumn fore—”
“Saint, enough. You’re giving me a headache.” One had to wonder how Sabran had kept him around without having his tongue ripped out. “How old are you, exactly, Sulyard?”
“Eighteen.”
“A grown man, then. Old enough to know that not all dreams should be pursued, especially not dreams conceived on the feather-bed of love. If the Chief Officer had found you, you would have been taken to the Governor of Cape Hisan. Not to the Warlord.” Niclays sipped his tea. “I will humor you again, Sulyard. If you know Sabran to be in danger—so much danger that she needs assistance from Seiiki, which I doubt—then why not tell her?”
“Her Majesty mistrusts the East, to her own detriment,” he finally said, “and they are the only ones who can help us. Even when she is made aware of the danger she faces, which will no doubt be soon, her pride would never allow her to ask for Eastern aid. If I could only talk to the Warlord on her behalf, Truyde said she might realize the—”
“Truyde.”
The cup shook in his hands.
“Truyde,” he whispered. “Not—not Truyde utt Zeedeur. Daughter of Lord Oscarde.”
Sulyard was frozen.
“Doctor Roos,” he began, after an agony of stammering, “it must be a secret.”
Before he could stop it, Niclays laughed again. This time it had an edge of madness.
“My, my,” he cried, “but you are quite the companion, Master Sulyard! First you marry the Marchioness of Zeedeur without permission, an act that could destroy her reputation. Then you abandon her, and finally, you let slip her name to a man who knew her grandsire well.” He dabbed his eyes on his sleeve. Sulyard looked as if he might faint. “Ah, how worthy you are of her love. What will you tell me next—that you left her great with child, too?”
“No, no—” Sulyard crawled toward him. “I beseech you, Doctor Roos, do not expose our transgression. I am unworthy of her love, but . . . love her I do. It hurts my soul.”
Niclays kicked him away, disgusted. It hurt his soul that Truyde had chosen such a pail of Inysh milk for a companion.
“I won’t be exposing her, I assure you,” he sneered, making Sulyard weep harder. “She is the heir to the Duchy of Zeedeur, blood of the Vatten. Let us pray that, one day, she weds someone with a backbone.” He sat back. “Besides, even if I were to write to Prince Leovart to inform him that Lady Truyde has secretly wed beneath her station, it would take weeks for the ship to cross the Abyss. By that time, she will have forgotten you existed.”
Sniffing, Sulyard managed to say, “Prince Leovart is dead.”
The High Prince of Mentendon. The only person who had tried to help Niclays in Orisima.
“That would certainly explain why he ignores my letters.” Niclays raised his cup to his lips. “When?”
“Less than a year ago, Doctor Roos. A wyvern burned his hunting lodge to ashes.”
Niclays felt a pang of loss for Leovart. No doubt the Viceroy of Orisima had known the news, but chosen not to pass it on.
“I see,” he said. “Who now rules Mentendon?”
“Prince Aubrecht.”
Aubrecht. Niclays remembered him as a reserved young man who cared little for anything but prayer books. Though he had been of age when the sweat took his uncle, Edvart, it had been decided that Leovart—Edvart’s own uncle—would rule first, to show tender-hearted Aubrecht the way. Of course, once Leovart was on the throne, he had found excuses not to vacate it.
Now Aubrecht had taken his rightful place. He would need a will of iron if he meant to control Mentendon.
Niclays pulled his thoughts away from home before he could fall into them for good. Sulyard was still looking at him, face blotched with pink.
“Sulyard,” Niclays said, “go home. When the Mentish shipment arrives, stow away. Go back to Truyde and run away to the Milk Lagoon, or . . . wherever lovers go these days.” When Sulyard opened his mouth, he said, “Trust me. You can do nothing here but die.”
“But my task—”
“Not all of us can finish our great works.”
Sulyard fell silent. Niclays removed his eyeglasses and cleaned them on his sleeve.
“I have no love for your queen. In fact, I roundly despise her,” he said, making Sulyard flinch, “but I doubt very much that Sabran would want an eighteen-year-old squire to die for her.” A quake stole into his voice. “I want you to leave, Triam. And I want you to tell Truyde, from me, to stop involving herself in matters that could undo her.”
Sulyard dropped his gaze.
“Forgive me, Doctor Roos, but I cannot,” he said. “I must stay.”
Niclays looked at him wearily. “And do what?”
“I will find a way to put my case before the Warlord . . . but I shall not involve you any further.”
“Having you in my house is involvement enough for me to lose my head.”
Though Sulyard said nothing, his jaw was set. Niclays pursed his lips.
“You seem devout, Master Sulyard,” he said. “I suggest you pray. Pray that the sentinels stay away from my house until the Mentish shipment arrives, so you have time to come to your senses on this subject. If we survive the next few days, I might just pray again myself.”
