Following his inglorious arrival in Ginura, Niclays Roos was an honored guest in the Moyaka household. Until the Warlord deigned to see him, he was free to do as he pleased, so long as he had his Seiikinese chaperons. Happily, Eizaru and Purumé were pleased to fulfill that role.
The three of them joined a great throng in the streets for the festival of Summerfall, which celebrated the beginning of autumn. Many Seiikinese citizens traveled to Ginura for what was commonly agreed to be the most spectacular of the four tree festivals. Peddlers grilled bladefish over their stoves, simmered bites of sweet pumpkin in broth, and handed out hot wine and tea to keep the chill at bay. People took their meals outside, crowned with the golden leaves that whiffled like maple seeds from the branches, and when the final leaf had fallen, they watched new ones bud and spring forth, red as dawn, throughout the night.
For Niclays, every day was a new lease of life. His friends took him for strolls across the beach. They pointed out the Grieving Orphan, the largest volcanic stack in the East, which formed a sole tooth in the mouth of the bay. They used a spyglass to watch mereswine in the sea.
And slowly, perilously, Niclays allowed himself to dream of a future in this city. Perhaps the Seiikinese authorities would forget he existed. Perhaps, since he had been so well behaved, they would decide to let him live out the rest of his exile beyond Orisima. It was a sliver of hope, and he clung to it like a drowning sailor to flotsam.
Panaya sent his books from Orisima with a note from Muste, who told him that his friends at the trading post gave him their warmest regards and hoped he would return soon. Niclays might have been touched had he considered any of them friends, or been interested in their regards, warm or otherwise. Now he had tasted freedom, the thought of returning to Orisima, to the same twenty faces and the same grid of streets, was intolerable.
The Mentish ship Gadeltha docked at the landing gate, bringing with it a stack of letters from home. Niclays had received two.
The first letter was closed with the seal of the House of Lievelyn. He fumbled it open and read the lines of neat handwriting.
From Brygstad, Free State of Mentendon,
by way of Ostendeur Port Authority
Late Spring, 1005 CE
Sir,
I gather from my late grand-uncle’s records that you remain in a state of exile in our trading post of Orisima, and that you have petitioned for clemency from the House of Lievelyn. Having reviewed your case, I regret to conclude that I cannot give you permission to return to Mentendon. Your conduct caused some great affront to Queen Sabran of Inys, and to invite you back to court presently may serve to foster her rancor.
If you can devise some way to appease Queen Sabran, I will be delighted to reconsider this unhappy conclusion.
Your servant,
Aubrecht II, High Prince of the Free State of
Mentendon, Archduke of Brygstad, Defender of the Virtues,
Protector of the Sovereignty of Mentendon, &c.
Niclays crushed the letter into his hand. There must be some political reason that the new High Prince was wary of provoking Sabran. At least he was courteous, and willing to return to the matter if Niclays could find some way of pacifying Her Acrimony. Or Lievelyn himself. Even he might be tempted by the elixir of life.
He opened the second letter, heart thumping. This one had been written over a year ago.
From Ascalon, Queendom of Inys,
by way of Zeedeur Custom House
Early Summer, 1004 CE
Dearest Uncle Niclays,
Forgive me for not writing for some time. Duties in Upper Household keep me occupied & seldom allowed to go anywhere without a chaperon. Inysh court concerns itself most deeply with the private time of its young ladies! I pray this reaches Ostendeur before the next shipment eastward.
I do bid you send me word how that you do in Orisima. Have been occupying myself in the meantime with remembering the books you left to me, which are presently held in the Silk Hall. I believe I have a theory & am certain the significance of a certain object has been overlooked. Will you write with all you know of the Tablet of Rumelabar? Have you an answer to its riddle?
All my love, Truyde
(Note to Zeedeur Custom House: I would appreciate your due haste in conferring this to Ostendeur Port Authority. Regards, your Marchioness.)
Niclays read the words again, half-smiling, eyes hot.
He was supposed to have received this letter long before Sulyard arrived. She might have warned him to expect the boy, but Lord Seyton Combe, the spymaster of Inys, would have seen through any code.
He had sent replies to her earlier letters, but he suspected they had been destroyed. Exiles were not permitted to write home. Even if he had been able to reach her, he had no good tidings.
That evening, Purumé and Eizaru took him to the river to spot night-flying herons. The day after, Niclays elected to keep to his room and ice his ankle. While he nursed an excitement-induced headache, he found himself thinking of Sulyard.
He ought to feel shame for enjoying himself while the boy rotted in jail, especially when he believed that Niclays was finishing his quest for him. A quest based on an unsolved riddle and the dangerous passion Truyde had inherited from Jannart.
A passion for truth. A riddle that now refused to leave Niclays alone. At midday, he asked the servants for a writing box and painted out the words, just so he could see them on the page.
What is below must be balanced by what is above,
and in this is the precision of the universe.
Fire ascends from the earth, light descends from the sky.
Too much of one doth inflame the other,
and in this is the extinction of the universe.
Niclays thought back to what he had learned about the riddle at university. It was from the Tablet of Rumelabar, found many centuries ago in the Sarras Mountains.
Ersyri miners had discovered a subterranean temple in those mountains. Stars had been carved on its ceiling, flaming trees onto its floor. A block of skystone had stood at its heart, and the words scored into it, written in the script of the first Southern civilization, had captivated academic minds the world over.
Niclays underlined one part of the riddle and contemplated its meaning.
Fire ascends from the earth.
Wyrms, perhaps. The Nameless One and his followers were said to have come from the Womb of Fire in the core of the world.
Light descends from the sky.
The meteor shower. The one that had ended the Grief of Ages, weakened the wyrms, and granted strength to the Eastern dragons.
Too much of one doth inflame the other, and in this is the extinction of the universe.
A warning of disparity. This theory posited the universe as yoked to the balance of fire and starlight, weighed on a set of cosmic scales. Too much of either would tip them.
The extinction of the universe.
The closest the world had ever come to ending was the arrival of the Nameless One and his followers. Had some sort of imbalance in the universe created these beasts of fire?
The sun beat hard on the back of his head. He found himself drowsing. When Eizaru woke him, his cheek was stuck to the parchment, and he felt as heavy as a sack of millet.
“Good afternoon, my friend.” Eizaru chuckled. “Were you working on something?”
“Eizaru.” Clearing his throat, Niclays peeled himself free. “No, no. Merely a trifle.”
“I see. Well,” Eizaru said, “if you are finished, I wondered if you might like to come with me into the city. The fisherfolk have brought a haul of silver crab from the Unending Sea, but it sells out quickly at the market. You must try it before you return to Orisima.”
“I fondly hope that I never will return to Orisima.”
His friend hesitated.
“Eizaru,” Niclays said, wary. “What is it?”
Eizaru reached into his robe, tight-lipped, and pulled out and handed him a scroll. The seal was broken, but Niclays could see it belonged to the Viceroy of Orisima.
“I received this today,” Eizaru said. “After your audience with the all-honored Warlord, you are to return to Orisima. A palanquin will collect you.”
Suddenly the scroll weighed more than a boulder. It might have been his death warrant.
“Do not despair, Niclays.” Eizaru laid a hand on his shoulder. “The honored Queen Sabran will relent. Until then, Purumé and I will seek permission to visit you in Orisima.”
It took Niclays all his strength to swallow his disappointment. It went down like a mouthful of thorns.
“That would be wonderful.” He dredged up a smile. “Come, then. I suppose I had better enjoy the city while I can.”
Purumé was absorbed in setting a bone, so once he was dressed, Niclays set out alone with Eizaru to the fish market. The sea lashed a stinging wind across the city, fogging his eyeglasses, and in his jaundiced state, the gazes he received seemed more suspicious than ever. As they passed a robe shop, its owner scowled at him. “Sickness-bearer,” she snapped.
Niclays was too downcast to respond. Eizaru directed a stern look at the woman over his eyeglasses, and she turned away.
In the moment his attention was diverted, Niclays trod on a booted foot.
He heard an intake of breath. Eizaru clutched him in time to break his fall, but the young Seiikinese woman whose foot he had squashed was not so fortunate. Her elbow knocked into a vase, which shattered on the paving stones.
Damn it all, he was like an olyphant in a teahouse.
“Excuse me, honorable lady,” Niclays said, and bowed deep. “I was not paying attention.”
The merchant stared glumly at the shards. Slowly, the woman turned to face Niclays.
Black hair was wrapped into a knot at the crown of her head. She wore pleated trousers, a tunic of deep blue silk, and a velvet surcoat. A fine sword hung at her side. When he saw the sheen on the tunic, Niclays was unable to stop his mouth popping open. Unless he was mistaken, that was watersilk. Erroneously named—it was not a silk at all, but hair. The manehair of dragons, to be precise. It repelled moisture like oil.
The woman took a step toward him. Her face was angular and brown, her lips chapped. Dancing pearls adorned her throat.
But what seared itself into his memory, in the few moments their gazes held, was the scar. It whipped across her left cheekbone before curling toward the corner of her eye.
Exactly like a fishhook.
“Outsider,” she murmured.
Niclays realized that the crowd around them had fallen almost silent. The back of his neck prickled. He had the sense that he had just committed a greater transgression than blundering.
“Honorable citizen, what is this man doing in Ginura?” the woman asked Eizaru curtly. “He should be in Orisima, with the other Mentish settlers.”
“Honored Miduchi.” Eizaru bowed. “We humbly apologize for interrupting your day. This is the learnèd Doctor Roos, an anatomist of the Free State of Mentendon. He is here to see the all-honored Warlord.”
The woman cut her gaze between them. There was a rawness in her eyes that spoke of disturbed nights.
“What is your name?” she asked Eizaru.
“Moyaka Eizaru, honored Miduchi.”
“Do not let this man out of your sight, honorable Moyaka. He must always have an escort.”
“I understand.”
She tossed Niclays a final look before she strode away. As she turned, he caught sight of a golden dragon on the back of her jacket.
She had long, dark hair, and a scar at the top of her left cheek. Like a fishhook.
By the Saint, it had to be her.
Eizaru paid the merchant for his loss and hurried Niclays into a cobbled lane. “Who was that, Eizaru?” Niclays asked in Mentish.
“The honored Lady Tané. She is Miduchi. Rider of the great Nayimathun of the Deep Snows.” Eizaru dabbed his neck with a cloth. “I should have bowed lower.”
“I will repay you for the vase. At, er, some point.”
“It is only a few coins, Niclays. The knowledge you gave me in Orisima is worth far more.”
Eizaru, Niclays decided, was as close as anyone could get to being flawless.
The two of them reached the fish market in the nick of time. Silver crabs spilled from nets of wheatstraw, gleaming like the steel armor of knights. Niclays almost lost Eizaru in the ensuing scramble, but his friend emerged triumphant, his eyeglasses askew.
It was almost sunset by the time they got back to the house. Niclays feigned another headache and retreated to his room, where he sat beside the lantern and rubbed his brow.
He had always prided himself on his brain, but it had been idle of late. It was high time he set it to work.
Tané Miduchi was, without question, the woman Sulyard had seen on the beach. Her scar betrayed her. She had brought an outsider into Cape Hisan on that fateful night and then handed him over to a musician, who was now languishing in prison. Or headless.
The bobtail cat jumped into his lap, purring. Niclays absently scratched between its ears.
The Great Edict required islanders to report trespassers to the authorities without delay. Miduchi should have done that. Why, instead, had she enlisted a friend to hide him in the Mentish trading post?
When he realized, Niclays let out such a loud “ha!” that the cat sprang off his lap in fright.
The bells.
The bells had been ringing the next day, heralding the ceremony that would open the way for Miduchi to become a dragonrider. If an outsider had been discovered in Cape Hisan the night before, the port would have been closed to ensure there was no trace of the red sickness. Miduchi had hidden Sulyard in Orisima—isolated from the rest of the city—so as not to disturb the ceremony. She had put her ambition above the law.
Niclays weighed his options.
Sulyard had agreed to tell his questioners about the woman with the fishhook scar. Perhaps he had, but no one had realized who it was. Or taken a trespasser at his word. Niclays, however, was protected by the alliance between Seiiki and Mentendon. That had shielded him against punishment before, and it might just aid him now.
He might still save Sulyard. If he could muster the courage to accuse Miduchi during his audience with the Warlord, before witnesses, the House of Nadama would have to act upon it, or risk appearing to dismiss their Mentish trading partners.
Niclays was quite sure there was some way to turn this to his advantage. If only he knew what it was.
Purumé came home at nightfall with bloodshot eyes, and the servants prepared the silver crab with fine-cut vegetables and rice steamed with chestnuts. The flaky white meat was delectable, but Niclays was too deep in thought to appreciate it. When they were finished, Purumé retired, while Niclays stayed at the table with Eizaru.
“My friend,” Niclays said, “please pardon me if this is an ignorant question.”
“Only ignorant men do not ask questions.”
Niclays cleared his throat. “This dragonrider, Lady Tané,” he began. “From what I can tell, the riders are almost as esteemed as the dragons. Is that correct?”
His friend considered for some time.
“They are not gods,” he said. “There are no shrines in their honor—but they are revered. The all-honored Warlord is descended from a rider who fought in the Great Sorrow, as you know. The dragons see their riders as their equals among humankind, which is the greatest honor.”
“With that in mind,” Niclays said, trying to sound casual, “if you knew that one of them had committed a crime, what would you do?”
“If I knew beyond all possible doubt that it was true, I would report it to their commander, the honored Sea General, at Salt Flower Castle.” Eizaru tilted his head. “Why do you ask, my friend? Do you believe one of them has committed a crime?”
Niclays smiled to himself.
“No, Eizaru,” he said. “I was only speculating.” He changed the subject: “I have heard that the moat around Ginura Castle is full of fish with bodies like glass. That when they glow at night, you can see right the way to their bones. Tell me, is that true?”
He did love the delicious onset of a good idea.
Tané found a foothold and pushed with all her strength, reaching for an overhang. Beneath her, the sea crashed against a smattering of rocks.
She was halfway up the volcanic stack that rose from the sea at the mouth of Ginura Bay. It was called the Grieving Orphan, for it stood alone, like a child whose parents had been shipwrecked. As her fingertips touched stone, her other hand slipped on sea moss.
Her stomach lurched. For a moment, she thought she would fall and shatter every bone—then she shoved herself upward, snatched the overhang, and clung to it like a barnacle. With a last, tremendous effort, she got on to the ledge above and lay there, breathing hard. It had been reckless to climb without her gloves, but she had wanted to prove to herself that she could.
Her mind kept returning to that Ment in the street, and the way he had stared at her. As if he had recognized her. It was impossible, of course—she had never seen him before. But why that look of shock?
He was a large man. Wide in the shoulders, broad in the chest, paunchy in the stomach. Eyes like clove, hooded with age, set in a sallow and blunt-edged face. Gray hair that held glints of copper. A mouth with a history of laughter etched around it. Round eyeglasses.
Roos.
Finally, it came to her.
Roos. A name Susa had whispered to her so briefly, it had almost been carried away by the wind.
He was the one who had hidden the outsider.
There was no reason he should be in Ginura. Not unless he was here to testify about that night. The thought locked her chest. She recalled his perceptive look in the street, and it sent a shudder through her.
With a clenched jaw, she stretched toward the next handhold. Whatever Roos thought he knew about her or Susa, he had no proof. And the outsider would be dead by now.
When she reached the top, she stood, palms bloody. The watersilks worked like feathers—one quick shake and they were dry.
She could see the whole of Ginura from here. Salt Flower Castle shone in the last of the sunlight.
The dragon awaited her in a natural shelter. Her true name was impossible for humans to pronounce, so she was known to them as Nayimathun. Hatched long ago in the Lake of Deep Snows, she now bore countless scars from the Great Sorrow. Every night, Tané would climb to the shelter and sit beside her dragon until the sun rose. It was just as she had always dreamed.
Talking had been hard at first. Nayimathun would not hear of Tané using the sort of respectful language that befitted a god. They were to be as kin, she said. As sisters. Anything else, and they would not be able to fly together. Dragon and rider had to share one heart.
Tané had not known how to cope with this rule. All her life she had spoken to her elders with respect, and now a god wished for them to speak as if they were the closest of friends. Gradually, haltingly, she had told the dragon about her childhood in Ampiki, the fire that had taken her parents, and her years of training in the South House. Nayimathun had listened patiently.
Now, as the ocean swallowed the sun, Tané walked barefoot to the dragon, whose head was curled against her neck. The position reminded Tané of a sleeping duck.
She knelt beside Nayimathun and placed a hand flat on her scales. Dragons did not hear in quite the same way humans did. Touch helped them to feel the vibrations of a voice.
“Good evening, Nayimathun.”
“Tané.” Nayimathun half-opened one eye. “Sit with me.”
Her voice was war conch and whale song and the distant rumble of a storm, all smoothed into words like glass shaped by the sea. Listening to it made Tané drowsy.
She sat down and leaned against the ever-damp scales of her dragon. They were wonderfully cool.
Nayimathun sniffed. “You are wounded.”
Blood was still leaking from her hand. Tané closed it. “Only a little,” she said. “I left in haste and forgot my gloves.”
“No need for haste, small one. The night is newborn.” A rattling breath passed through the dragon, right down the length of her body. “I thought we might talk about stars.”
Tané looked to the sky, where tiny eyes of silver were starting to peer out. “Stars, Nayimathun?”
“Yes. Do they teach the lore of stars in your Houses of Learning?”
“A little. In the South House, our teachers told us the names of the constellations, and how to find our way with them.” Tané hesitated. “In the village I was born in, they say stars are the spirits of people who fled from the Nameless One. They climbed up ladders and hid in the heavens to await the day when every fire-breather lies dead in the sea.”
“Villagers can be wiser than scholars.” Nayimathun looked down at her. “You are my rider now, Tané. You are therefore entitled to the knowledge of my kind.”
Not one of her teachers had ever told her this would happen.
“It would be my honor to receive it,” she said.
Nayimathun turned her gaze skyward. Her eyes grew brighter, as if they were mirrors for the moon.
“Starlight,” she said, “is what birthed us. All dragons of the East came first from the heavens.”
As she sat beside the dragon, Tané admired her bright horns, the fringe of spines beneath her jaw, and her crown, blue as a fresh bruise. That was the organ that allowed her to fly.
Nayimathun saw her looking. “That part of me marks the place where my ancestors fell from the stars and struck their heads against the seabed,” she said.
“I thought—” Tané wet her lips. “Nayimathun, forgive me, but I thought dragons came from eggs.”
She knew they did. Eggs like clouded glass, smooth and wet, each with an iridescent shine. They could sit for centuries in water before a dragon wriggled out as a tiny, fragile being. Still, questioning a god made her voice quake.
“Now, yes,” Nayimathun said. “But it was not always so.” She raised her head to face the sky again. “Our ancestors came from the comet you call Kwiriki’s Lantern, before there were any children of the flesh. It rained light into the water, and from that water, dragonkind came forth.”
Tané stared at her. “But, Nayimathun,” she said, “how can a comet make a dragon?”
“It leaves behind a substance. Molten starlight that falls into the sea and the lakes. As to how the substance grew into dragons, that is knowledge I do not possess. The comet comes from the celestial plane, and I have yet to occupy it.
“When the comet passes,” Nayimathun continued, “we are at full strength. We lay eggs, and they hatch, and we regain every gift that we once possessed. But slowly, our strength fades. And we must await the next coming of the comet to return it.”
“Is there no other way to regain your strength?”
Nayimathun looked at her with those ancient eyes. Tané felt very small under her gaze.
“Other dragons may not share this with their riders, Miduchi Tané,” she rumbled, “but I will make you a gift of another piece of knowledge.”
“Thank you.”
Shivers twitched through her. Surely no one living was worthy of so much wisdom from a god.
“The comet ended the Great Sorrow, but it has come to this world many times before,” Nayimathun said. “Once, many moons ago, it left behind two celestial jewels, each infused with its power. Solid fragments of itself. With them, our ancestors could control the waves. Their presence allowed us to hold on to our strength for longer than we could before. But they have been lost for almost a thousand years.”
Sensing the sadness in the dragon, Tané stroked a hand over her scales. Though they gleamed like the scales of a fish, they were hatched with scars, rent by teeth and horns.
“How were such precious objects lost?” she asked.
Nayimathun let out the softest rattle through her teeth. “Almost a thousand years ago, a human used them to fold the sea over the Nameless One,” she said. “That was how he was defeated. After that, the two jewels passed out of history, as if they never were.”
Tané shook her head. “A human,” she repeated. She remembered the legends from the West. “Was he called Berethnet?”
“No. It was a woman of the East.”
They sat in silence. Water dripped from the rock above their heads.
“We had many ancient powers once, Tané,” Nayimathun said. “We could shed our skins like snakes, and change our forms. You have heard the Seiikinese legend of Kwiriki and the Snow-Walking Maiden?”
“Yes.” Tané had heard it many times in the South House. It was one of the oldest stories in Seiiki.
Long ago, when they had first emerged from the waves, the dragons of the Sundance Sea had agreed among themselves to befriend the children of the flesh, whose fires they had seen on a nearby beach. They had brought them gifts of golden fish to show their good intent—but the islanders, suspicious and afraid, threw spears at the dragons, and they disappeared sadly to the depths of the sea, not to be seen again for years.
One young woman, however, had witnessed the coming of the dragons and mourned their absence. Every day she would wander into the great forest and sing of her sorrow for the beautiful creatures that had come to the island for such a brief time. In the story, she had no name, like too many women in stories of old. She was only Snow-Walking Maiden.
One bitter morning, Snow-Walking Maiden came across a wounded bird in a stream. She mended its wing and fed it with drops of milk. After a year in her care, the bird grew strong, and she carried it to the cliffs to let it fly away.
That was when the bird had transformed into Kwiriki, the Great Elder, who had been wounded at sea and taken a new form to escape. Snow-Walking Maiden was filled with joy, and so was the great Kwiriki, for he knew now that the children of the flesh had good in them.
To thank Snow-Walking Maiden for caring for him, the great Kwiriki carved her a throne out of his own horn, which was called the Rainbow Throne, and made her a handsome consort, Night-Dancing Prince, out of sea foam. Snow-Walking Maiden became the first Empress of Seiiki, and she flew over the island with the great Kwiriki, teaching the people to love the dragons and harm them no more. Her bloodline had ruled Seiiki until they had perished in the Great Sorrow, and the First Warlord had taken up arms to avenge them.
“The story is true. Kwiriki did take the form of a bird. With time, we could learn to take many shapes,” Nayimathun said. “We could change our size, weave illusions, bestow dreams—such was our power.”
But no longer.
Tané listened to the sea below. She imagined herself as a conch, carrying that roar in her belly. As her eyelids grew heavier, Nayimathun looked down at her.
“Something troubles you.”
Tané tensed. “No,” she said. “I was just thinking how happy I am. I have everything I ever wanted.”
Nayimathun rumbled, and mist puffed from her nostrils. “There is nothing you cannot tell me.”
Tané could not meet her gaze. Every grain of her being told her not to lie in the presence of a god, but she could not tell the truth about the outsider. For that crime, her dragon would cast her aside.
She would sooner die than have that happen.
“I know,” was all she said.
The pupil of the dragon’s eye grew to a pool of darkness. Tané could see her own face inside it. “I meant to fly you back to the castle,” Nayimathun said, “but I must rest tonight.”
“I understand.”
A low growl rolled through Nayimathun. She spoke as if to herself. “He is stirring. The shadow lies heavy on the West.”
“Who is stirring?”
The dragon closed her eyes and lowered her head back on to her neck. “Stay with me until sunrise, Tané.”
“Of course.”
Tané lay on her side. Nayimathun shifted closer and coiled around her.
“Sleep,” she said. “The stars will watch over us.”
Her body shut out the wind. As Tané drowsed against the dragon she had always dreamed about, lulled by her heartbeat, she had the curious sense that she was in the womb again.
She also had the sense that something was closing in on her. Like a net around a writhing fish.
