Rain sheeted over the Sundance Sea. It was forenoon, but the Fleet of the Tiger Eye kept its lanterns burning.
Laya Yidagé strode across the Pursuit. As he followed her, shivering in his sodden cloak, Niclays could not help but glance toward the contused sky, as he had every day for weeks.
Valeysa the Harrower was awake. The sight of her above the ships, crowing and infernal, was seared into his mind forever.
He had seen enough paintings to know her. With scales of burnt orange and golden spines, she was a living ember, as bright as if she had just been retched from the Dreadmount.
Now she was back, and at any moment, she could reappear and reduce the Pursuit to cinders. It might, at least, be quicker than whatever gruesome death the pirates would invent for him if he had the misfortune to vex them. He had been on the treasure ship for weeks and had so far managed not to have his tongue cut out or a hand lopped off, but he lived in expectation of it.
His gaze darted to the horizon. Three Seiikinese iron ships had tailed them for days, but just as the Golden Empress had predicted, they had not drawn close enough to engage. Now the Pursuit was moving east again, heading for Kawontay, where the pirates would sell the Lacustrine dragon. Niclays wished he knew what they would do to him.
Rain speckled his eyeglasses. He rubbed at them fruitlessly and hurried after Laya.
The Golden Empress had summoned them both to her cabin, where a stove offset the chill. She stood at the head of the table, wearing a padded coat and a hat of otter fur.
“Sea-Moon,” she said, “do sit down.”
Niclays had scarcely opened his mouth since Valeysa had terrified the wits out of him, but now he found himself blurting out, “You speak Seiikinese, all-honored Captain?”
“Of course I speak fucking Seiikinese.” Her gaze was on the table, where a detailed map of the East was painted. “Did you think me a fool?”
“Well, ah, no. But the presence of your interpreter led me to believe—”
“I have an interpreter so my hostages will think me a fool. Did Yidagé do a poor job?”
“No, no,” Niclays said, aghast. “No, all-honored Golden Empress. She did excellently.”
“So you do think me a fool.”
Lost for words, he shut up. She finally looked up at him.
“Sit.”
He sat. Eyeing him, the Golden Empress took an eating knife from her belt and ran its tip under her inch-long fingernails, each of which was painted black.
“I have spent thirty years on the high seas,” she said. “I have dealt with many manner of people, from fisherfolk to viceroys. I have learned who I need to torture, who I need to kill, and who will tell their secrets, or share their riches, with no bloodshed at all.” She spun the knife in her hand. “Before I was taken hostage by pirates, I owned a brothel in Xothu. I know more about people than they know themselves. I know women. I know men, too, from their minds to their cocks. And I know how to judge them almost on sight.”
Niclays swallowed.
“If we could leave the cocks out of this.” He offered a strained grin. “Old as it is, I am still attached to mine.”
The Golden Empress barked a laugh at that.
“You are funny, Sea-Moon,” she said. “You people from over the Abyss are always laughing. No wonder you have so many jesters in your courts.” Those black eyes bored into him. “I see you. I know what you want, and it has nothing to do with your cock. It has to do with the dragon we took from Ginura.”
Niclays deemed it best to remain silent at this point. An armed madwoman was not to be taken lightly.
“What do you want from it?” she asked. “Saliva, perhaps, to perfume a lover? Brains to cure the bloody flux?”
“Anything.” Niclays cleared his throat. “I am an alchemist, you see, all-honored Golden Empress.”
“An alchemist.”
Her tone was scathing. “Yes,” Niclays said, with great feeling. “A method-master. I studied the art at university.”
“I was under the impression that you had studied anatomy. That was why I gave you a post. Let you live.”
“Oh, yes,” he said hastily. “I am an anatomist—an excellent one, I assure you, a giant of my field—but I also pursued alchemy out of passion for the subject. I have sought the secret of eternal life for many years. Though I have not yet been able to brew an elixir, I believe Eastern dragons could help me. Their bodies age over thousands of years, and if I could only re-create that—”
He stopped dead, awaiting her judgment. She had never taken her gaze off him.
“So,” she said, “you wish to persuade me that your brain is not as soft as your spine. Doubtless it would be simpler for me to cut off the top of your skull and see for myself.”
Niclays dared not answer.
“I think we could strike a bargain, Sea-Moon. Perhaps you are the sort of man who knows how to do business.” The Golden Empress reached into her coat. “You said this item was bequeathed to you by a friend. Tell me more about him.”
She pulled out a familiar scrap of writing. In her gloved hand was the last piece of Jannart.
“I want to know,” she said, “who gave this to you.” When he was silent, she held it toward the stove. “Answer me.”
“The love of my life,” Niclays said, heart pounding. “Jannart, Duke of Zeedeur.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No. Only that he bequeathed it to me.”
“Why?”
“Would that I knew.”
The Golden Empress narrowed her eyes.
“Please,” Niclays said hoarsely. “That fragment of writing is all I have left of him. All that remains.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. She laid the fragment on the table. The gentleness with which she handled it made Niclays realize she would never have set it on fire.
Fool, he thought. Never show your weakness.
“This writing,” the Golden Empress said, “is part of an Eastern text from long ago. It tells of a source of eternal life. A mulberry tree.” She patted it. “I have been searching for this missing piece for many years. I expected it to contain directions, but it does not yield the location of this tree. All it does is complete the story.”
“Is this not just . . . a legend, all-honored Golden Empress?”
“All legends have truth in them. I should know,” she said. “Some say I ate the heart of a tiger and it sent me mad. Some say I am a water ghost. What is true is that I despise the so-called gods of the East. All rumor that surrounds me stemmed from that.” She tapped a finger on the text. “I doubt the mulberry tree grew from the heart of the world, as the tale claims. What I do not doubt is that it hides the secret to eternal life. So you see, you will not need to damage a dragon.”
Niclays could not quite take this in. Jannart had inherited the key to alchemy.
The Golden Empress considered him. He noticed for the first time that there were notches down the length of her wooden arm. She beckoned to Laya, who had retrieved a gilded wooden box from under the throne.
“Here is my offer. If you can solve this puzzle and find us the route to the mulberry tree,” the Golden Empress said, “I will let you drink the elixir of life from it yourself. You will share in our spoils.”
Laya brought the box to Niclays and lifted the lid. Inside, nestled in watersilk, lay a thin book. Shining on its wooden cover were the remains of a gold-leaf mulberry tree. Reverently, Niclays took it. It was bound in a Seiikinese style, the leaves stitched into an open spine. Each page was made of silk. Whoever had made it had wanted it to weather many centuries, and so it had.
This was the book Jannart would have dreamed of seeing.
“I have read every possible meaning into each word in Old Seiikinese, yet I have found nothing but a story,” the Golden Empress said. “Perhaps a Mentish mind can see it in a different way. Or perhaps the love of your life sent you some message you have yet to hear. Bring me an answer by sunrise in three days, or you may find I grow tired of my new surgeon. And when I grow tired of things, they are not long for this world.”
Stomach roiling, Niclays ran his thumbs over the book.
“Yes, all-honored Golden Empress,” he murmured.
Laya led him away.
Outside, the air was taut and cold. “Well,” Niclays said heavily, “I suspect this will be one of our last meetings, Laya.”
She frowned. “Are you giving up hope, Niclays?”
“I will not solve this mystery in three days, Laya. Even if I had three hundred, I could not.”
Laya took him by the shoulders, and the force of her grasp stopped him. “This Jannart—the man you loved,” she said, looking him dead in the eye. “Do you think he would want you to give up, or carry on?”
“I don’t want to carry on! Do you not understand? Does nobody in this world understand, damn you? Is no one else haunted?” A quiver of wrath entered his voice. “Everything I did—everything I was—everything I am, is because of him. He was someone before me. I am no one without him. I am tired of living without him at my side. He left me for that book and, by the Saint, I resent him for it. I resent him every minute of every day.” His voice cracked. “You Lasians believe in an afterlife, don’t you?”
Laya studied him.
“Some of us, yes. The Orchard of Divinities,” she said. “He may be waiting for you there, or at the Great Table of the Saint. Or perhaps he is nowhere at all. Whatever has become of him, you are still here. And you are here for a reason.” She held a callused palm to his cheek. “You have a ghost, Niclays. Do not become a ghost yourself.”
How many years had it been since anyone had touched his face, or looked at him with sympathy?
“Goodnight,” he said. “And thank you, Laya.”
He left her.
On his stretch of floor, he lay on his side and pressed one fist over his mouth. He had fled from Mentendon. He had fled from the West. No matter how far he ran, his ghost still followed him.
It was too late. He was mad with grief. He had been mad for years. He had lost his mind the night he had found Jannart dead at the Sun in Splendor, the inn that had been their love nest.
It had been a week since Jannart was supposed to return from his journey, but no one had seen him. Unable to find him at court, and with word from Aleidine that he was not in Zeedeur, Niclays had gone to the only other place he could be.
The smell of vinegar had hit him first. A physician in a plague mask had been outside the room, painting red wings on the door. And when Niclays had shoved past her, into their room, there was Jannart, lying as if asleep, his red hands folded on his chest.
Jannart had lied to everyone. The library where he had hoped to find answers was not in Wilgastrōm, but in Gulthaga, the city razed in the eruption of the Dreadmount. Doubtless he had thought the ruins would be safe, but he must have known there was a risk. Deceived his family and the man he loved. All so he could stitch a single hole in history.
A wyvern had been sleeping in the long-dead halls of Gulthaga. One bite had been all it took.
There was no cure. Jannart had known that, and had wanted to leave before his blood started to burn and his soul was scorched away. And so he had gone to the shadow market in disguise and procured a poison named eternity dust. It gave a quiet death.
Niclays trembled. He could still see the scene now, detailed as a painting. Jannart in the bed, their bed. In one hand, the locket Niclays had given him the morning after their first kiss, with the fragment inside. In the other, an empty vial.
It had taken the physician, the innkeeper, and four others to hold Niclays back. He could still hear his own howls of denial, taste the tears, smell the sweetness of the poison.
You fool, he had screamed. You fucking selfish fool. I waited for you. I waited thirty years . . .
Did lovers ever reach the Milk Lagoon, or did they only dream of it?
He gripped his head between his hands. With Jannart’s death, he had lost one half of himself. The part of him worth living for. He closed his eyes, head aching, chest heaving—and when he fell into a fitful doze, he dreamed of the room at the top of Brygstad Palace.
There is a hidden message in it, Clay.
He tasted black wine on his tongue.
Intuition tells me that it is a vital piece of history.
He felt the heat of the fire on his skin. He saw the stars, richly painted in their constellations, as real as if their love nest opened out on to the sky.
Something about the characters sits oddly with me. Some are larger, others smaller, and they are spaced in a strange manner.
His eyes snapped open.
“Jan,” he breathed. “Oh, Jan. Your golden fox still has his cunning.”
