It had been centuries since an Eastern fleet had crossed the Abyss. Armed to the hilt with harpoons, swivel guns and siege crossbows, the forty ships were covered by great plates of iron. Even their sails were coated with an iridescent wax, made from the bile of Seiikinese wyrms, that made the cloth harder to burn. The colossal Dancing Pearl was at the front, with the Defiance, which carried the Warlord of Seiiki, beside it.
And all around, the dragons swam.
Loth watched one of them from the staterooms of the Dancing Pearl. Every so often, its head broke the surface so its rider, who bestrode it on a saddle, could breathe. The woman wore facial armor and a helm with lames to protect her neck. She could be warm and dry on a ship, but instead she chose to stay in that black water with her wyrm.
If the two sides of the world could reconcile, this might soon be a common sight in all seas.
The Unceasing Emperor nursed a glass of Lacustrine rose wine. They were deep in a game of Knaves and Damsels, which Loth had taught him the day before.
“Tell me about your queen.”
Loth looked up from his hand of cards. “Majesty?”
“You wonder why I ask.” The Unceasing Emperor smiled. “I know very little of the rulers from over the Abyss, my lord. If Queen Sabran is to be an ally to my country, it would behoove me to know something more of her than her famous name. Do you not agree?”
“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.” Loth cleared his throat. “What do you wish to know?”
“You are her friend.”
Loth considered for some time. How to paint a portrait of Sabran, who had been in his life since he was six. Since a time when all they had worried about was how many adventures they could fit into a day.
“Queen Sabran is loyal to those who are loyal to her. She is kind-hearted,” he finally said, “but hides it well to protect herself. To seem untouched. Her people expect that of their queen.”
“You will find that people expect that of all rulers.”
That must be true.
“Sometimes a great melancholy comes upon her,” Loth continued, “and she takes to her bed for days. She calls them her shadow hours. Her mother, Queen Rosarian, was murdered when she was fourteen. Sabran was there. Since then, she has never been truly happy.”
“And her father?”
“Wilstan Fynch, who was once Duke of Temperance, is also dead.”
The Unceasing Emperor sighed. “I’m afraid we share in our orphanhood. My parents fell prey to smallpox when I was eight, but my grandmother hurried me away to our hunting lodge in the north while they sickened. I resented not being able to say goodbye. Now I see it was a mercy.” He drank. “What age was Her Majesty when she was crowned?”
“Fourteen.”
The coronation had taken place in the Sanctuary of Our Lady on a dark and snowy morning. Unlike her mother, who had famously gone to her coronation in a barge, Sabran had ridden through the streets in her carriage, cheered by two hundred thousand of her subjects-to-be, who had traveled from all over Inys to see their princess become a young queen.
“I assume there was a regent,” the Unceasing Emperor said.
“Her father was Lord Protector, supported by Lady Igrain Crest, the Duchess of Justice. Later, we discovered that Crest had a part in the death of Queen Rosarian. And . . . other atrocities.”
The Unceasing Emperor raised his eyebrows. “Another thing we have in common. After I was enthroned, there were almost nine years years of regency. And one of those regents grew too power-hungry to remain at court.” He put down his cup. “What else?”
“She likes to hunt and play music. When she was a child, she loved to dance. Every morning, she would dance six galliards.” His chest tightened when he thought of those days. “After her mother died, she stopped dancing for many years.”
The Unceasing Emperor watched his face. In the light from the bronze lantern on the table, his eyes looked infinite.
“Now tell me,” he said, “if she has a lover.”
“Majesty,” Loth began, unsure of what he was about to say.
“Peace. I’m afraid you would not make a good ruler, with a face that easy to read.” The Unceasing Emperor shook his head. “I wondered. When she withheld her hand. I cannot blame her.” He drank again. “Perhaps Her Majesty is braver than I was, to try to change tradition.”
Loth watched him pour more of the drink.
“You see, once, I fell in love myself. I was twenty when I met her in the palace. I could tell you of her beauty, Lord Arteloth, but I doubt the greatest writer in history could do justice to it, and alas, I never was a writer of much skill. But I can tell you that I could talk to her for hours; as I could with no one else.”
“What was her name?”
The Unceasing Emperor closed his eyes for a moment. Loth saw the lines of his throat shift.
“Let us just call her . . . the Sea Maiden.”
Loth waited for him to continue.
“Of course, others were talking, too. The Grand Secretariat soon learned of our relationship. They were not pleased, given her low rank and the fact that I had not yet married a suitable woman, but I knew my power. I told them I would do as I liked.” He let out a sharp breath through his nose. “Such arrogance. I had great power, but I owed it to the Imperial Dragon, my guiding star. I begged her, but though she saw my pain, she would not approve the match. She said there was a shadow in my lover that no one could control. She said that power would unleash it. For both our sakes, I must let her go.
“At first, I resisted. I lived in denial, and I would not stop the affair. Would not stop taking her to swim in the sacred lakes when she asked, or lavishing her with gifts in my palaces. But the stability of my land rested on the alliance of human and dragon. I could no more break it than I could stop a comet in its tracks . . . and I feared that, if I wed the woman I loved, the Grand Secretariat might find a way to make her disappear. Unless I was to treat her like a prisoner, to surround her with bodyguards, I would have to submit.”
Loth thought of how the Virtues Council had exiled Ead. All for the crime of love.
“I told her to leave me. She refused. Finally, I said I had never wanted her; that she would never be my empress. This time, I saw pain in her. And rage. She told me that she would build her own empire in defiance of me, and that one day she would drive her blade into my heart, as I had done to her.” His jaw flexed. “I never saw her again.”
Now it was Loth who poured himself a drink.
All his life, he had intended to find a companion. Now he wondered if he was fortunate to have never fallen in love.
The Unceasing Emperor lay on his bed, head pillowed on one arm, and gazed at the ceiling, heavy-eyed.
“In the Empire of the Twelve Lakes, there lives a bird with purple feathers.” The drink had stolen into his voice. “If you saw it in flight, you would think it was a jewel with wings. Many have hunted it . . . but seize it, and your hands will burn. Those feathers, precious as they are, are poison.” His eyes closed. “Thank your knights, Lord Arteloth, that you were not born to sit a throne.”
