The journey to the capital was hideous. Niclays was jounced along for days in the stuffy palanquin with little to do but doze, or squint at bits of scenery between the wooden blinds.
Ginura lay north of the Bear’s Jaw, the mountain range that guarded Cape Hisan. The trade road cleaved to the foothills before it struck a crossway.
Ever since the day Niclays had arrived in Seiiki, it had been his dream to visit Ginura. Back then, he had been grateful for the chance to live in a place few Westerners would ever see.
He remembered being called to Brygstad Palace, where Leovart had broken the news that Sabran had ordered his expulsion from Virtudom. He had thought her rage quenched after Seyton Combe had questioned him at length in the Dearn Tower about his misuse of Berethnet money. Naïvely, he had believed it would be a short exile.
Only after the third year had he understood that the tiny house on the edge of the world was to be his final resting place. That was when he had stopped dreaming of discovery, and had dreamed only of home. Now he could feel his old curiosity in the world awakening.
On the first night of the journey, they stopped at an inn in the foothills, where Niclays bathed in a hot spring. He looked at the far-off lights of Cape Hisan, and the ember that was Orisima, and for the first time in close to seven years, he started to feel as if he could breathe again.
The feeling did not last. The next morning, the chair-carriers began to complain about the owl-faced Ment they were lugging north, the spy of a prince who spat upon dragons, who must have the red sickness in his breath. Certain words were said in return, and from that point on, the jolting grew worse. The chair-carriers also began to sing about an insolent man no one liked, who was left crying on the side of the road for the mountain cats to take away.
“Yes, yes, very funny,” Niclays barked at them in Seiikinese. “Shall I sing about the four chair-carriers who fell down a cliff and into the river, never to be seen again?”
All that did was make them laugh.
Countless things went wrong following that incident. A handhold broke off the palanquin (“Great Kwiriki wash away this owl man!”) and they were forced to delay their journey while a carpenter was fetched to repair it. Once they were on their way again, the chair-carriers finally let Niclays sleep.
When he heard voices, his eyes cracked open. The chair-carriers were singing a lullaby from the Great Sorrow.
Hush, my child, the wind is rising.
Even the birds are quiet.
Stop your tears. The fire-breathers will hear us.
Sleep now, sleep, or you will see them coming.
Hold on to me and close your eyes.
There were cradle songs like this in Mentendon. Niclays strained his memory to when he was small enough for his mother to sit him on her lap and croon to him while his father drank himself into rages that had left them both quaking in fear of his belt. Fortunately, he had drunk himself into such a fury on one occasion that he had been good enough to stumble off a cliff, and that was the end of that.
For a time, all had been peaceful. Then was when Helchen Roos had convinced herself that her son would grow up to be a sanctarian and atone for the many sins of his father. She had prayed for that outcome every day. Instead, Niclays had become, in her view, a morbid hedonist who spent his time either slicing open dead bodies or tinkering with potions like a sorcerer, all while drinking himself sodden. (This was not, Niclays conceded, a baseless impression.) To her, science was the greatest sin of all, anathema to virtue.
Of course, she had still written to him at once when she had discovered his unexpected friendships with the Marquess of Zeedeur and Prince Edvart, demanding he invite her to court, as if the years she had tormented him about every facet of his existence were nothing. He and Jannart had made a sport out of finding ways to destroy her letters.
Thinking of that made him smile for the first time in days. The trill of insects in the forest sent him back to sleep.
After two more painful days, during which he thought he might die of the heat and boredom and confinement, the palanquin stopped. A bang on the roof shunted him from a doze.
“Out.”
The door slid open, letting in a glare of sunlight. Niclays got down blearily from the palanquin, straight into a puddle.
“Galian’s girdle—”
One of the chair-carriers lobbed his cane after him. They hefted the palanquin on to their shoulders and turned back to the road.
“Hold a moment,” Niclays shouted after them. “I said hold, damn you! Where am I to go?”
Laughter was his only reply. Niclays cursed, picked up his cane, and trudged toward the west gate of the city. By the time he reached it, the hem of his robe was soaked and sweat dripped down his face. He had expected soldiers, but there was nobody in armor to be seen. The sun burned on the crown of his head as he entered the ancient capital of Seiiki.
Ginura Castle was a behemoth. The white-walled complex bestrode a great hill in the middle of the city. A friend had told Niclays that the paths in its gardens were made of seashells, and its salt-water moat sparkled with fish, their bodies clear as crystal.
He walked past the bustling markets of what he assumed was Seabed Town, the outermost district of the city. Its stone-paved streets billowed with oil-paper umbrellas and fans and hats. This close to court, people wore cooler shades than they did in Cape Hisan—green and blue and silver—and their hair was waxed and wound into ostentive styles, adorned with sea-glass ornaments, salt flowers, and cowry shells. Robes here were slippery and lustrous, so when the wearer moved, they glistened in the sun. Niclays dimly remembered that it was the height of fashion in Ginura to appear as if you had just emerged from the sea. Some courtiers even oiled their eyelashes.
Necks were encircled by branching coral or tiny plates of steel arranged to look like overlapping fish scales. Lips and cheeks sparkled with crushed pearl. Most citizens were forbidden to wear dancing pearls, as they were symbols of the royal and god-chosen, but Niclays had heard that misshapen ones without a core were often powdered and sold to the wealthy.
In the shade of a maple, two women batted a featherball to one another. The sun sparkled on the canals, where merchants and fishers unloaded their wares from graceful cedar boats. It was difficult to imagine that most of this city had burned down in the Great Sorrow five centuries ago.
As Niclays walked, unease eclipsed his wonder. The chair-carriers, damn them to the Womb of Fire, had taken the letter from the Governor, along with all his other possessions. That meant he could now be mistaken for an outsider, and he could hardly go up to Ginura Castle to explain himself in this state. The sentinels would think him a cutthroat.
Still, he had no other choice. People were catching on to his presence. Nervous looks came at him from all directions.
“Doctor Roos?”
The voice spoke in Mentish. Niclays turned.
When he saw who had hailed him, he beamed. A fine-boned man in tortoiseshell eyeglasses was weaving his way through the crowd. His black hair, cut short, was gray at the temples.
“Doctor Moyaka,” Niclays called, delighted. “Oh, Eizaru, how marvelous to see you!”
Finally, some good fortune. Eizaru was a gifted surgeon Niclays had taught for a year in Orisima. He and his daughter, Purumé, had been among the first to sign up for anatomy lessons, and never in his life had Niclays seen two people so willing to learn. They had taught him a great deal about Seiikinese medicine in exchange for his knowledge. Meeting them had been a bright spot in his exile.
Eizaru broke free of the throng, and they bowed to one another before embracing. Seeing that the outsider was with someone, people returned to their business.
“My friend,” Eizaru said warmly, still in Mentish. “I was just thinking of writing to you. What are you doing in Ginura?”
“Due to various disagreeable circumstances, I have some respite from Orisima,” Niclays said in Seiikinese. “The honored Governor of Cape Hisan decided to send me here to be placed under house arrest.”
“Whoever brought you here should not have abandoned you in the street. Did you come by palanquin?”
“Sadly.”
“Ah. Those who carry them are often mischief-makers.” Eizaru grimaced. “Please, come to my house, before someone wonders why you are here. I will let the honored Governor of Ginura know what happened.”
“You are too kind.”
Niclays followed Eizaru over a bridge, into a much wider street that led straight to the main gate of Ginura Castle. Musicians played in pools of shade while vendors touted fresh clams and sea grapes.
He had never thought to lay eyes upon the famous season trees of Ginura. Their branches formed a natural pavilion over the street. At present, they wore dazzling yellow for the summer.
Eizaru lived in a modest house near the silk market, which backed onto one of the many canals that latticed Ginura. He had been widowed for a decade, but his daughter had stayed with him so that they could pursue their passion for medicine together. Rainflowers frothed over the exterior wall, and the garden was redolent of mugwort and purple-leaved mint and other herbs.
It was Purumé who opened the door to them. A bobtail cat snaked around her ankles.
“Niclays!” Purumé smiled before bowing. She favored the same eyeglasses as her father, but the sun had tanned her skin to a deeper brown than his, and her hair, held back with a strip of cloth, was still black at the roots. “Please, come in. What an unexpected pleasure.”
Niclays bowed in return. “Please forgive me for disturbing you, Purumé. This is unexpected for me, too.”
“We were your honored guests in Orisima. You are always welcome.” She took one look at his travel-soiled clothes and chuckled. “But you will need something else to wear.”
“I quite agree.”
When they were inside, Eizaru sent his two servants to the well. “Rest for a while,” he told Niclays. “You may have the sun quake after that journey. I will go at once to White River Castle and ask to speak to the honored Governor. Then we can eat.”
Niclays sighed with relief. “That would be wonderful.”
When the servants had returned from the well and filled a tub, Niclays divested himself of his garments and laved away the mud and sweat. The cold water was bliss.
Damned if he was ever traveling in a palanquin again. They could drag him back to Orisima.
Reinvigorated, he donned the summer robe the servants had left in the guest room. A cup of tea steamed on the balcony. He sat drinking it in the shade, watching boats glide past on the canal. After years of imprisonment, Orisima had never seemed farther away.
“Learnèd Doctor Roos.”
He stirred from a contented doze. One of the servants had appeared on the balcony.
“The learnèd Doctor Moyaka is back,” she said. “He requests your presence.”
“Thank you.”
Downstairs, Eizaru awaited him.
“Niclays.” There was a hint of mischief in his smile. “I spoke to the honored Governor. She has agreed to my request that you remain with Purumé and myself while you are in the city.”
“Oh, Eizaru.” Perhaps it was the heat or his exhaustion, but the good news almost brought Niclays to tears. “Are you quite sure it’s no trouble?”
“Of course not.” Eizaru ushered him into the next room. “Come, now. You must be famished.”
The servants had done what they could to keep the heat out. Every door had been opened, screens blocked the sunlight, and bowls of ice waited on the table. Niclays knelt with Purumé and Eizaru, and they dined on marbled beef and salt-pickled vegetables and sweetfish and sea lettuce and little cups of toasted seaweed, each bursting with roe. While they ate, they spoke of what they had all been doing since last they had met.
It had been a long time since Niclays had been allowed the pleasure of a conversation with like-minded people. Eizaru was still running his medical practice, which now offered both Seiikinese and Mentish remedies for ailments. Purumé, meanwhile, was working on a herbal concoction that brought on a deep sleep, allowing a surgeon to remove carnosities from the body without causing pain.
“I call it blossom sleep,” she said, “as the final ingredient was a flower from the South Mountains.”
“She trekked for days to find that flower in the spring,” Eizaru said, with a proud smile at his daughter.
“It sounds revolutionary,” Niclays said, stunned. “You could use it to study the interior of living bodies. In Mentendon, all we can do is cut open corpses.” His heart thumped. “Purumé, you must publish these findings. Think of how anatomy would change.”
“I would,” she said, with a weary smile, “but there is one problem, Niclays. Firecloud.”
“Firecloud?”
“A restricted substance. Alchemists make it from the bile of fire-breathers,” Eizaru explained. “The bile is smuggled into the East by Southern pirates, treated in some way, then stuffed into a ceramic orb with a dab of gunpowder. When the wick is lit, the orb explodes and releases a smoke as black and thick as tar. If a dragon breathes it in, it falls asleep for many days. The pirates can then sell its body parts.”
“An evil practice,” Purumé said.
Niclays shook his head. “What has that to do with blossom sleep?”
“If the authorities believe my creation might be used for similar means, they will stop my research. They may even close down our practice.”
Niclays was speechless.
“It is very sad,” Eizaru said heavily. “Tell us, Niclays—are any Seiikinese medical documents translated in Mentendon? Perhaps Purumé could publish her findings there.”
Niclays sighed. “Unless things have changed dramatically in the years I have been away, I doubt it. Pamphlets change hands in some circles, but they are not approved by the crown. Virtudom does not hold with heresy, or with the knowledge of heretics.”
Purumé shook her head. As Niclays helped himself to some prawns, a young man appeared in the doorway, dewy from the heat.
“Learnèd Doctor Roos.” He bowed, panting. “I come from the honored Governor of Ginura.”
Niclays braced himself. She must have changed her mind about letting him stay here.
“She asks me to inform you,” the servant said, “that you will be expected at Ginura Castle for an audience when it pleases the all-honored Warlord.”
Niclays raised his eyebrows. “The all-honored Warlord wishes to see me? Are you quite sure?”
“Yes.”
The servant bowed out of the room.
“So you will be received at court.” Eizaru looked amused. “Be ready. They say it is like a reef of sea flowers. Beautiful, but everything you touch will sting.”
“I can hardly wait,” Niclays said, but his brow knitted. “I wonder why he wants to see me.”
“The all-honored Warlord likes to hear from the Mentish settlers. Sometimes he will ask to hear a song or a story from your country. Or he may wish to know what sort of work you are doing,” Eizaru said. “It will be nothing to worry about, Niclays, truly.”
“And until then, you are free,” Purumé pointed out, eyes twinkling. “Let us show you our city while you are out of Orisima. We could visit the theatre, speak about medicine, see the dragons in flight—anything you have wanted to do since you arrived.”
Niclays could have wept with gratitude.
“Truly, my friends,” he said, “I should like nothing better.”
