He rowed until midday, when he stopped to take noon sight under a blazing sun. But the rocking boat frustrated his efforts. He threw the sextant into the jumbled pile of his storm-weather gear, too tired and too irritable to persist. The wind had turned easterly and slackened off to a stiff breeze, which did little to cool him. He set his course by dead reckoning instead, assuming he hadn’t drifted too far since dark. But he couldn’t be sure exactly where he was. A north-west course would bring him to Irillia eventually, if his water didn’t run out first. He’d seen nothing of the Herald all morning.
On the evening of the third day he spotted an erokin samal drifting three hundred yards to the south. The jellyfish had captured at least three sharks in its tendrils, turned their corpses into the bloated grey masses of flesh that it used to catch the wind. Granger rowed his boat due north away from the creature until he could no longer see it. Even so, he did not sleep well that night, unsettled by the thought of tendrils reaching under the tarpaulin and into his boat.
The next morning he found himself enveloped in rust-coloured mist. He had travelled farther north than he’d intended, reaching the border waters where the Sea of Lights met the Sea of Kings. Here the oily red currents of the northern sea mingled with the brown waters of the southern one, whorling around the hull like spilled paint. Their interaction produced the haze of fumes through which the sun now glowered. Granger put his goggles and storm mask on and set his back to the oars again, now pushing due west. He did not wish to encounter any sea life here.
And then he thought he detected an unusual noise in the mist – a high-pitched hum almost beyond his range of hearing. His eyes strained to see through the haze. Was that a shadow? He took his goggles off again. There was definitely something out there in the fog, something huge and dark. It could almost be the outline of a ship. Granger turned his boat around and began to row towards it.
CHAPTER 15
THE FROG
Before the flooding, Irillia, Evensraum and Pertica had been parts of the same great landmass west of Anea. Now each remained as its own chain of islands, with Evensraum to the south and Pertica lying in the frozen north. While lower lands drowned, Irillia’s mountainous backbone had remained defiant in the face of the rising seas. More than a hundred islands stretched across the Sea of Lights and the Emerald Sea, but the most magnificent of these, Ianthe decided, had to be Awl.
As the Herald approached her berth she could see the remains of Port Awl’s three former harbours down under the crystal-clear green brine. Each had been constructed above the other upon a sunken slope. Only the main commercial jetty had been built up from the original foundations. It looked long enough to berth twenty warships and sank for at least fifty fathoms at its deepest end. Incredibly, Ianthe could see scores of Drowned going about their business down there, a whole community living in the flooded streets below the town.
‘Personally,’ Briana said, following the girl’s gaze, ‘they give me the shudders. But it annoys the emperor.’ They were standing with Captain Howlish behind the port bulwark, while Guild mariners worked around them, preparing the damaged warship for dock. The broken rudder made progress slow. ‘And annoying the emperor is one of life’s little pleasures,’ she added.
‘We had Drowned off the coast in Evensraum,’ Ianthe said, ‘until Hu caught them all in nets. He tried using their corpses to fertilize the land, but it just poisoned everything. So he burned them instead.’
‘What a lovely image,’ Briana remarked.
Howlish grinned. ‘Hu once offered the Guild a thousand hectares of Anean farmland for a single hectare in Awl,’ he said to Ianthe. ‘And the Guild refused him.’
Ianthe gazed at the island in wonder. Her new lenses made the scene seem all the more magical. Her heart felt full to bursting with the thrill of viewing all this beauty first-hand. The Irillian mountains rose up into the morning sky, crisp tiers of faintly blue and lavender rock with numerous white streams and waterfalls that fell thousands of feet into mist. Tails of green forest rooted the lower slopes to the foothills below, while the highest peaks wore paper hats of snow. Port Awl sprawled over a steep ridge above the water’s edge, overlooking a rocky bay between two heavily wooded peninsulas. Stone buildings clung to the hillside, one above the other, in a pleasant jumble of yellow cubes. Six men-o’-war lay tied up at the main jetty, four with red dragon-scale hulls and two with green; their serpent figureheads glinted in the sunshine. Dock hands threw ropes across to the Herald and began to winch the warship closer to the wharf.
‘You grow flowers here!’ Ianthe exclaimed. She had spotted flower sellers at the town end of the dock, their stalls bursting with every imaginable colour of bloom. ‘We never had the land for it in Evensraum. Even after we had our own garden, we used every corner for growing food. You have to, or the servants talk.’
Briana frowned. ‘Why not just beat the servants?’
Ianthe felt her face redden.
Moments later the gangplank came down with a clunk, and Ianthe followed the Haurstaf witch and the captain off the ship. Briana Marks looked especially pretty in her flowing white gown and ruby necklace; the weariness just evaporated from her as she stepped onto the stone wharf. ‘Hand Maskelyne and his men over to the port constable,’ Briana said to Howlish. ‘He can do what he likes with the men, but I want Maskelyne brought to the palace.’
‘What about his wife and child, ma’am?’
‘Put them up at the Nuwega,’ Briana replied. ‘Guests of the Guild.’
The captain nodded.
‘A cheap room.’
‘Very good, ma’am.’
The rising sweep of Port Awl’s main street reminded Ianthe of Port Vassar in Evensraum. Here were the same bakers, grocers, fishmongers, weavers and oil sellers. Other shops sold books, gem lanterns, jewellery, paintings, pottery, medicines and even Unmer trove. The Hotel Nuwega occupied a position midway up the hill, its grand facades and clock tower overlooking the harbour. Ianthe counted six taverns, each with tables and benches outside, where people drank and smoked and chatted. A number of young women in Guild robes sat amidst the locals. As they passed them by, Ianthe drew curious glances.
‘They’re wondering why you’re wearing Unmer spectacles,’ Briana said.
Ianthe lowered her head.
Briana sighed. ‘You should really let me take a look at them,’ she added. ‘God knows what sort of damage they could be doing to your mind.’
‘There’s nothing sorcerous about them,’ Ianthe said.
‘Then why wear them?’
She shrugged. ‘They help me see better.’
The Haurstaf witch looked at her strangely but said nothing more about it. They walked to the top of the hill and into a leafy plaza where Briana said the morning farmers’ market was held. Birds chattered and hopped across the cobbles. On the northern edge of the square a low stone rampart offered views out across the interior of the island. Between the town ridge and the Irillian mountains lay a broad patchwork of green and yellow fields bisected by a looping river. A warm breeze coming up from the valley carried with it the scent of cut hay.
In the shade of a nearby tree stood four open carriages, their glossy black cabs resting on dragon-bone springs. Four men, evidently their drivers, played dice on a stone bench nearby. As soon as they saw Briana, one of them abandoned his game and hurried over.
‘Guild Palace, ma’am?’ He opened the door, unfolded a set of steps from the undercarriage and then waited until the two women had taken their seats. Then he grabbed the horses’ reins and took his own position in the front of the carriage.