Niclays Roos was conniving. And it was a plan so dangerous and unflinching that he almost wondered if he really had come up with it, eternal coward that he was.
He was going to make the elixir and buy his way back to the West if it killed him. And it very well might. To escape Orisima for good, and to breathe life back into his work, he needed to take a risk. He needed what Eastern law had denied him.
He needed blood from a dragon, to see how gods renewed themselves.
And he knew just where to start.
The servants were busy in the kitchen. “What help can we be, learnèd Doctor Roos?” one asked when Niclays appeared in the doorway.
“I need to send a message.” Before Niclays could lose the speck of courage that remained to him, he held out the letter. “It must reach the honored Lady Tané at Salt Flower Castle before sunset. Will you take it to the postriders for me?”
“Yes, learnèd Doctor Roos. It will be done.”
“Do not tell them who sent it,” he added quietly. She looked uncertain, but promised she would not. He handed her money enough to pay a postrider, and she left.
All he could do now was wait.
Fortunately, waiting meant more time to read. While Eizaru was at the market and Purumé was tending to patients, Niclays sat in his room, the bobtail cat purring beside him, and perused The Price of Gold, his favorite text on alchemy. His copy was well worn.
As he turned to a new chapter that afternoon, a sliver of delicate silk fluttered out.
His breath caught. He retrieved the fragment from the floor and smoothed it out before the cat could claw it to shreds. It had been years since he had last brought himself to look at the greatest mystery of his life.
Most of the books and documents in his possession had once belonged to Jannart, who had bequeathed half of his library to Niclays, as well as his armillary sphere, a Lacustrine candle clock, and a host of other curiosities. There had been many beautiful tomes in the collection—illuminated manuscripts, rare tracts, miniature prayer books—but nothing had obsessed Niclays more than this tiny scrap of silk. Not because it was brushed with a language he could not decipher, and not because it was clearly very old—but because in attempting to unlock its secret, Jannart had lost his life.
Aleidine, his widow, had given it to Truyde, who had mourned for her grandfather by fixating on his possessions. The child had kept the fragment in a locket for a year.
Just before Niclays had left for Inys, Truyde had come to his house in Brygstad. She had worn a little ruff, and her hair—Jannart’s hair—had curled around her shoulders.
Uncle Niclays, she had said gravely, I know you are leaving soon. My lord grandsire was holding this piece of paper when he died. I have tried to work out what it says, but the petty school has not taught me enough. She had offered it with a gloved hand. Papa says you are very clever. I think you will be able to work out what the writing means.
This belongs to you, child, he had said, even as he had ached to take it. Your lady grandmother gave it to you.
I think it was supposed to be for you. I would like you to have it. Only write to me and tell me if you work out what it means.
He had never been able to send her good news. Based on the script and material, the fragment was certainly from the ancient East, but that was all Jannart had gleaned from it at the time of his death. Years had passed, and still Niclays did not know why he had been clutching it on his deathbed.
He rolled it now, carefully, and slotted it into the ornate case Eizaru had gifted him. He dried his eyes, breathed in deeply, and opened The Price of Gold once again.
That evening, Niclays supped with Eizaru and Purumé before feigning sleep. As night fell, he crept from his room and put on a hat that belonged to Eizaru. Then he stole into the dark.
He knew his way to the beach. Evading the sentinels, he hurried past the night markets, head down and cane in hand.
There were no lantems to betray his arrival on the beach. It was empty of everyone but her.
Tané Miduchi waited beside a rock pool. The brim of a helm cast her face into shadow. Niclays sat at a distance.
“You honor me with your presence, Lady Tané.”
It was some time before she answered. “You speak Seiikinese.”
“Of course.”
“What do you want?”
“A favor.”
“I owe you no favors.” Her voice was cold and soft. “I could kill you here.”
“I suspected you might threaten me, which is why I left a note about your crime with the learnèd Doctor Moyaka.” A lie, but she had no way of knowing that. “His household is asleep now—but if I do not return to burned that note, all of them will know what you have done. I doubt the Sea General will allow you to keep your place among the riders—you, who might have let the red sickness into Seiiki.”
“You misjudge what I would do to keep that place.”
Niclays chuckled. “You left an innocent man and a young woman to die in the shit and piss of a jailhouse, all so your special ceremony would go just as you wanted,” he reminded her. “No, Lady Tané. I have not misjudged you. I feel as if I know you very well.”
She was quiet for some time. Then: “You said young woman.”
Of course, she could have no idea. “I doubt you care for poor Sulyard,” Niclays said, “but your friend from the theatre was arrested, too. I shudder to think of what they might have done to try to draw your name from her.”
“You are lying.”
Niclays watched her lips press together. They were all he could see of her face.
“I offer you a fair bargain,” he said. “I will leave here tonight and say nothing of your involvement with Sulyard. In exchange for my silence, you will bring me blood and scale from your dragon.”
She moved like a bird taking wing. Suddenly a keen-edged blade was pressed against his throat.
“Blood,” she whispered, “and scale.”
Her hand was shaking. Instinct screamed at Niclays to recoil, but he found himself anchored in place.
“You would have me mutilate a dragon. Defile the flesh of a god,” the dragonrider said. He could see her eyes now, and they cut deeper than her blade. “The authorities will do worse to you than beheading. You will be burned alive. The water in you is too polluted to cleanse.”
“I wonder if they will burn you for your crimes. Abetting a trespasser. Contempt of the sea ban. Putting the whole of Seiiki at risk.” Niclays gritted his teeth when her knife bit into his neck. “Sulyard will confirm what I say. He remembered your face in great detail, I’m afraid, down to that scar of yours. No one listened, of course, but if I join my voice to his . . .”
She was shivering now.
“So,” she said, “you are threatening me.” She withdrew the knife. “But not to save Sulyard. You use the suffering of others for your own gain. You are a servant of the Nameless One.”
“Oh, nothing as exciting as that, Lady Tané. Just a lonely old man, trying to get off this island so I can die in my own country.” Warmth dampened his collar. “I understand you may need some time to obtain what I need. I will be on this beach four days from now, at dusk. If you do not come, I advise you to leave Ginura with all speed.”
He bowed deeply and left her there, alone beneath the stars.
The sun welled up like blood from a wound. Tané sat on the cliff that overlooked Ginura Bay, watching the waves shatter into white crystal on the rocks below.
Her shoulder throbbed where Turosa had sliced into it. She drank the wine she had taken from the kitchens, and it burned her from the roof of her mouth to her chest.
These were her last hours as Lady Tané of Clan Miduchi. Only a few days after receiving her new name, she would be stripped of it.
Tané traced the scar on her cheek, the scar that had made her memorable to Sulyard. The scar from saving Susa. It was not her only scar—she had another, deeper mark on her side. She had no memory of receiving that one.
She thought of Susa, languishing in jail. And then she thought of what Roos wanted her to do, and her stomach flopped like a fish on dry land.
Even disfiguring an image of a dragon was forbidden on pain of death. To steal the blood and armor of a god was more than criminal. There were pirates who used firecloud to put dragons to sleep, haul them into stolen treasure ships, and strip them of everything they could sell on the shadow market in Kawontay, from their teeth to the blubber under their scales. It was the gravest of all crimes in the East, and past Warlords had been known to punish those involved with brutal public executions.
She would have no part in that cruelty. After all the battles Nayimathun must have fought in the Great Sorrow, all the scars she already had, Tané would not mutilate her also. Whatever Roos wanted with her sacred blood, it did not bode well for Seiiki.
And yet she could not gamble with Susa’s life—not when she had been the one to drag her friend into this morass.
Tané scraped her fingers over her scalp, pulling at her hair in the way she sometimes had when she was younger. Her teachers had always slapped her hands to stop her.
No. She would not do what Roos wanted. She would go to the Sea General and confess what she had done. It would cost her Nayimathun and her place among the riders. It would cost her everything she had worked for since she was a child—but it was what she deserved, and it might save her only friend from the sword.
“Tané.”
She looked up.
Nayimathun was drifting at the edge of the cliff. Her crown pulsed with light.
“Great Nayimathun,” Tané rasped.
Nayimathun tilted her head. Her body drifted with the wind, as though she were as light as paper. Tané placed her hands in front of her and pressed her brow into the ground.
“You did not come to the Grieving Orphan tonight,” Nayimathun said.
“Forgive me.” Since she could not touch the dragon, Tané signed the words with her hands as she spoke them. “I cannot see you any more. Truly, great Nayimathun, I am sorry.” Her voice was breaking, like rotted wood under strain. “I must go to the honored Sea General. I have something to confess.”
“I would like you to fly with me, Tané. We will talk about what troubles you.”
“I would dishonor you.”
“Do you also disobey me, child of flesh?”
Those eyes were blazing rings of fire, and that mouthful of teeth invited no argument. Tané could not disobey a god. Her body was a vessel of water, and all water was theirs.
It was dangerous, but possible, to ride on dragonback without a saddle. She rose and stepped toward the edge of the cliff. Shivers flickered up her sides as Nayimathun lowered her head, allowing Tané to grip her mane, plant a boot on her neck, and sit astride her. Nayimathun flowed away from the castle—
—and dived.
A thrill sang through Tané as they plummeted toward the sea. She could not breathe for dread and joy. It was as if her heart had been hooked from her mouth, caught like a fish on a line.
A spine of rocks rushed up to meet them. The wind roared in her ears. Just before they hit the water, instinct pushed her head down.
The impact almost unseated her. Water flooded her mouth and nose. Her thighs ached and her fingers cramped with the effort of holding on as Nayimathun swam, tail sweeping, legs clawing, graceful as a blackfish. Tané forced her eyes open. Her shoulder burned with the healing fire only the sea could light.
Bubbles drifted like sea-moons around her. Nayimathun broke the surface, and Tané followed.
“Up,” Nayimathun said, “or down?”
“Up.”
Scale and muscle flexed beneath Tané. She tightened her hands in the slick of mane. With one great leap, Nayimathun was high over the bay, raining water down upon the waves.
Tané turned to see over her shoulder. Ginura was already far below. It looked like a painting, real and unreal, a floating world on the verge of the sea. She felt alive, truly alive, as if she had never breathed until now. Here, she was no longer Lady Tané of Clan Miduchi, or anyone at all. She was faceless in the gloaming. A breath of wind over the sea.
This was what her death would feel like. Jeweled turtles would come to escort her spirit to the Palace of Many Pearls, and her body would be given to the waves. All that would be left of it was foam.
At least, that was what would have happened if she had not transgressed. Only riders could rest with their dragons. Instead, she would haunt the ocean for eternity.
The drink was heavy in her blood. Nayimathun soared higher, singing in an ancient language. The breath of both human and dragon came like cloud.
The sea was vast below them. Tané nestled into Nayimathun’s mane, where the wind could hardly touch her. Countless stars glistened above, crystal-clear without cloud to obscure them. Eyes of dragons never born. When she slept, she dreamed of them, an army falling from the skies to drive away the shadows. She dreamed she was small as a seedling, and that all her hopes grew branches, like a tree.
She stirred, warm and listless, with a light ache in her temples.
It took her some time to wake fully, so deep was she in dreaming. As she remembered everything, her skin turned cold again, and she realized she was lying upon rock.
She rolled on to her hip. In the darkness, she could just make out the shape of her dragon.
“Where are we, Nayimathun?”
Scale hissed on rock.
“Somewhere,” the dragon rumbled. “Nowhere.”
They were in a tidal cave. Water washed in from outside. Where it broke against the rock, pale lights bloomed and dwindled, like the tiny glowing squid that had sometimes washed up on the beaches of Cape Hisan.
“Tell me,” Nayimathun said, “how you have dishonored us.”
Tané wrapped one arm around her knees. If there was any courage left in her, there was not enough to refuse a dragon twice.
She spoke softly. Nothing was secret. As she recounted everything that had happened since the outsider had blundered onto that beach, Nayimathun made no sound. Tané pressed her brow to the ground and waited for judgment.
“Rise,” Nayimathun said.
Tané obeyed.
“What has happened does not dishonor me,” the dragon said. “It dishonors the world.”
Tané ducked her head. She had promised herself she would not cry again.
“I know I cannot be forgiven, great Nayimathun.” She kept her gaze on her boots, but her jaw trembled. “I will go to the honored Sea General in the morning. You c-can choose another rider.”
“No, child of flesh. You are my rider, sworn to me before the sea. And you are right that you cannot be forgiven,” Nayimathun said, “but only because there was no crime.”
Tané stared up at her. “There was a crime.” Her voice quaked. “I broke seclusion. I hid an outsider. I disobeyed the Great Edict.”
“No.” A hiss echoed through the cave. “West or East, North or South—it makes no difference to the fire. The threat comes from beneath, not from afar.” The dragon lay flat on the ground, so her eyes were as close as possible to Tané. “You hid the boy. Spared him the sword.”
“I did not do it out of kindness,” Tané said. “I did it because—” Her stomach twisted. “Because I wanted my life to run a smooth course. And I thought that he would ruin that.”
“That disappoints me. That dishonors you. But not beyond forgiveness.” Nayimathun tilted her head. “Tell me, little kin. Why did the Inysh man come to Seiiki?”
“He wanted to see the all-honored Warlord.” Tané wet her lips. “He seemed desperate.”
“Then the Warlord must see him. The Emperor of the Twelve Lakes must also hear his words.” The quills on her back stiffened. “The earth will shake beneath the sea. He stirs.”
Tané dared not ask who she meant. “What must I do, Nayimathun?”
“That is not the question you must ask. You must ask what we must do.”
