“Maybe,” I said. “There are folk legends and intriguing place names that provide clues. I can’t make any guarantees, but give me half a day and a pick-axe once we’re back in Commonground and I can probably root out the truth.”
“You can draw me a map?” she said.
“Already drawn,” I said, motioning toward the desk.
“Show me. You’re free to move as you wish, though I do not release you from the command to save me from harm.”
I walked to the pile of documents and pulled the corner of a sheet of parchment jutting out from beneath the stack. It had a purple ring on it from where I’d sat a bottle of wine while discussing the map with a potential buyer at the Black Swan. I tapped a roughly sketched rectangle next to the ring. “This place is called the Knight’s Castle. It’s a complex of stonework a few miles upriver from the bay. It’s been picked over pretty thoroughly, but there is one noteworthy feature, several hundred yards off the main complex. It’s overgrown with trees, but when I surveyed the land here” – I took a quill from the ink bottle and drew an X at the western edge of the castle – “there are several acres marked by evenly-spaced, rectangular depressions. No headstones, but even without them, it looks exactly like a graveyard where all the coffins have disintegrated, letting the soil collapse down into the graves.”
My ‘X’ looked a little barren. So I drew a circle around it, then jotted ‘Witch Graveyard’ above it. Those words looked lonely, so I wrote beneath them, ‘Treasure!’
“The embellishment isn’t necessary,” said Sorrow.
“Sorry,” I said. “Old habit. In the dry spells between finding actual relics, I supplemented my income by selling maps to treasure hunters from the Silver Isles. I saw a steady stream of barbers, barristers and haberdashers who’d run away from their boring lives and demanding wives to get rich quick by looting the Vanished Kingdom. Nearly all my customers got themselves killed during their first week in the jungle, so repeat business was lousy.”
“Couldn’t the hollow depressions be evidence the graves have been dug up?”
“There would be mounds next to the depressions. This is just gut instinct, but I don’t think anyone’s dug there because the area’s kind of boring. Every year or two somebody stumbles over a vine-covered temple housing idols with jade eyes and golden earrings. The folks who built the Vanished Kingdom weren’t noted for doing things small or subtle. Treasure hunters would rather hack away vines from a hundred mounds of boulders hoping to find an old temple than take a shovel to unmarked graves where everything has probably rotted.”
“The nails I’m seeking wouldn’t rot,” said Sorrow.
“Why not? Bone rots. Wood rots. Iron rusts. I guess the gold and glass might survive a long time underground.”
Sorrow gave my arguments a dismissive wave.
“You know little of the higher arts of weaving.”
“I know damn little of the lower arts, for that matter. Considering that the church has pretty much wiped out your kind, I think I can be forgiven a little ignorance.”
“While I’ve perfected the manipulation of the material world, within limits, there is self-evidently more to the known world than matter. This ship currently sails in one of the abstract realms.”
“I know a little bit about abstract realms,” I said. “They’re like dream worlds, only shared. They form the foundation of somnomancy.”
“I would dispute this,” said Sorrow. “Somnomancy isn’t a distinct magical art in my opinion. It’s more akin to the reality manipulation of the deceivers, only the somnomancer is being lied to by his unconscious mind. The abstract realms, on the other hand, are real, unless you believe we are dreaming now.”
“Do you have any convincing evidence that we’re not?”
“Don’t try to play games with me. I’ve no patience for such things. My body weakens with the passage of each day; each heartbeat is like a grain of sand through an hourglass. I’m keenly aware that death waits for me if I don’t reverse the damage to my body.”
“And your plan to save yourself is... abstract nails?”
“Avaris is said to have possessed a nail of time. Imagine the power to being able to sculpt and mold seconds and moments to your will! I thought the Black Swan possessed it, but her skull was unblemished.”
“What would such a nail look like? How would you even hammer it in?”
Sorrow sighed. “Sensible questions. I don’t know. I’m hoping to gather clues from context when I finally discover the skull of an ancient witch.”
“If I weren’t a walking, talking pile of driftwood, I might be inclined to call you crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” said Sorrow, clenching her right fist. “I’m mad. Mad at my father, mad at the church and the damned Divine Author. I’m mad because I see the world as it truly is, not as the veil of convenient and comforting illusions everyone else embraces. I’m mad to be facing this fight alone.”
I shrugged. “You could try being nicer to people. Commonground is full of people who have grudges against the church. Hell, a lot of people probably have grudges against your father personally. You could probably make some allies if you weren’t so, uh... um... intense.”
“You were about to say ‘bitchy.’”
“Maybe.”
“My father is blunt, demanding and stubborn. People call him a great leader. Yet when I display these same qualities, I’m dismissed as a bitch.”
“Please note that I did avoid the word,” said Stagger. “Twenty years ago, the execration would have crossed my tongue with barely a thought. But I’ve heard Infidel called a bitch a thousand times, when her greatest sin has been that she is insufficiently fearful of men who enjoy being feared. If you must fuss at me, please focus on things I actually say.”
“My apologies,” said Sorrow. To my surprise, she sounded sincere. “Perhaps I’m overly defensive. I’ve survived as long as I have by being suspicious of everyone.”
I sighed, though my paper tongue turned the sound into the buzz of fly wings. “I’m really not your enemy. I couldn’t care less if you wish to wage war against the church. I live in Commonground because it’s one of the few places on earth where the church has no power. Hell, that’s pretty much why everyone who isn’t a Wanderer or a pygmy comes to Commonground. A lot of them would probably cheer you on.”
Sorrow’s shoulders sagged as she shook her head. “In some circumstances, the enemy of an enemy can be a friend; for me, the enemies of my enemies almost always prove to be unreliable scoundrels who view me as an easy victim.”
Part of me wanted to pat her on the back and say, “There, there.” She sounded lonely and worn out, and I’m a man with an excess of empathy. On the other hand, given that she had enslaved me and showed no inclination toward releasing me, my empathy could only go so far.
She rubbed her eyes. “I need to sleep. It will be hours before Captain Romer has recovered from her excursion into the Sea of Wine. I’m interested in learning how we got here. I assume Mako knows more than he’s telling.”
“I have a few insights. I saw Captain Romer lean down, touch the bare wood of the deck, and announce we were sailing the Sea of Wine. I also know from talking to Wanderers in the past that the Sea of Wine is sort of a gateway to their afterlife. If she dies, do you think we’ll be trapped here?”
“She won’t die,” said Sorrow. “And don’t think of our situation as trapped. We’re in the safest place imaginable at the moment. We don’t have to worry about assault by the Judgment Fleet, pirates, or Skellings while we’re here. We’re the only living things upon these waves.”
“But maybe not beneath them. I saw... something... lurking beneath the ship. A big, black serpent.” I was hesitant to say all I knew. I didn’t want to accidentally reveal the ghost of Jasmine Romer to Sorrow.
“Abyss, perhaps? The primal dragon of the sea has a pact to protect Wanderers.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve seen Abyss. He’s more of a giant turtle. This thing was covered in big black snake scales.”
“Hmm. That fits the description of Rott,” said Sorrow. “It would be appropriate that the dragon of decay would dwell here. Wine is a product of rotting grapes, after all.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say about one of my favorite beverages.”
“I appreciate wine not for its flavor but for its inspiration. Destruction is the precursor of creation. Perfectly good fruit when crushed and allowed to molder releases something new and precious. I would not be so eager to bring the kingdoms of the world to ruin if I didn’t believe something far more vibrant would emerge.”
“You’re not going to be overthrowing anything if Rott gets a sudden whim to swallow this ship.”
Sorrow shrugged. “If he does, he does. Some things are too big even for me to worry about. For now, it looks like Infidel will get to use the stateroom after all. I’ll go sleep in her bunk.”
“Where should I go?”
Sorrow shrugged again. “Stay by her side, if you wish. For now, I release you of all restrictions save the command to protect me.”
She opened the door, took her cloak, and left.
I was alone with Infidel, who had turned onto her side and was hugging her pillow. Her sleep now looked more natural than it had when she’d first been tucked in. I had renewed hope that she would recover fully.
If I’d been a courageous man, I might have woken her.
Now that I had the freedom to speak to her, I knew that I couldn’t. Between her quest and her pregnancy, she had enough worries without having to concern herself about my fate. And yet, there was still so much I wish I’d told her when I was alive.
I went to the desk, to the notebook with its neatly trimmed page cut to build my tongue. At least a hundred sheets of blank paper remained. This book had always looked so pristine and promising that any words I’d contemplated filling it with had seemed unworthy to stain its pages. Now, at last, I had a message deserving of its snow white fibers.
I took the book and the bottle of ink and crouched as I left the cabin. The Romer men were arranging their captives in the hold. Many of the ice-maidens had been taken alive, and we now had quite a cargo of prisoners.
Above deck, the sky was the same unchanging omnidirectional sunset. The waters had grown still, and the sails hung limp in the quiet air. The ice was nearly gone, leaving only a few puddles here and there.
I moved to the bow and sat cross-legged, placing the book before me. I steadied my ink and quill.
Dearest Infidel
, I began.
It is a great injustice upon my part that I have spent so many years in your company, pen and paper always at hand, and somehow failed to write you a love letter. Yet fate has granted me the chance to atone for this oversight. Perhaps the Divine Author is a romantic after all.
And so the words flowed, page after page, as I spoke of my hopes and confessed my regrets, and told her of my love. My normally opulent vocabulary faded as I wrote, as my language turned simple and sincere. Perhaps, in their simplicity, I even managed to capture some truth, though I fear that words will ever be inadequate vessels for the cargo of emotions. Yet on I wrote, undaunted, placing heart to paper in a setting that, while strange, was also familiar. In death as in life, I felt at home adrift on a Sea of Wine.
CHAPTER NINE
THE VESTIBULE OF SELF-ABNEGATION
I
HAD NO
way to measure the time I spent writing. My body no longer possessed the natural rhythms of weariness or hunger, and the unnatural sky gave no hint of the passage of time. I filled twenty pages with my scratchings. My wooden fingers were numb instruments, so my clumsy cursive was a mess of smears and smudges. The only saving grace was that, for the first time in memory, I was writing completely sober. My lines of script were attractively parallel, rather than undulating serpents that sometimes overlapped one another.
It’s possible I could have kept writing until the book was filled. I’d moved on from singing the praises of Infidel’s virtues and was now discussing the future, specifically our unborn daughter. Infidel and I were both from a culture where women were regarded as inferior and subordinate. Infidel, born a princess, had less freedom than the most humble baker or candle-stick maker in the Silver City. Men were allowed to own property; women were allowed to be property.
Commonground, for all its anarchistic freedom, was little better. While it’s true that an exceptional woman like the Black Swan could become a powerful force, and strong women like Infidel and Aurora were essentially free to live as they wished, the reality was most women in Commonground survived as whores. The notable exceptions, of course, were the Wanderers. Of all the various societies throughout the long string of islands sometimes called the Shining Lands, only among the Wanderers was there a true sense of equality between the sexes. I suppose it rose both from their professed belief in individual freedom and the practical realities of their lives. They lived as close family units on boats. Even in traditional homes on land, women frequently are the true masters of a household, the ones whose decisions are treated as final by the children, while the men serve mainly as enforcers of the women’s will. On land, women are mostly trapped within their own houses, kept busy raising children and cooking meals, while men are free to roam about and engage in commerce and spend their relatively plentiful free time plotting wars and forming governments. Among the Wanderers, the men are just as confined to the ships as the women, and when it’s time to visit a neighbor, the whole household moves as one.