A thick fog pressed on the Rose Eternal, keeping them in darkness even by day. The lanterns cast ghostly light on the waves. To avoid the cold, Loth kept to his cabin, where a Lacustrine gunner named Thim was charged with teaching him about the Empire of the Twelve Lakes.
Thim was eighteen and appeared to have infinite reserves of patience. He taught Loth about his native country, which was divided into twelve regions, each of which housed one of the Great Lakes. It was a vast domain that ended at the Lords of Fallen Night—mountains that closed the way to the rest of the continent, greatest amongst them the merciless Brhazat. Thim told Loth that many Easterners had tried to escape the Great Sorrow by crossing the Lords of Fallen Night, including the last Queen of Sepul, but none had returned. Long-frozen bodies still lay in the snow.
The Unceasing Emperor of the Twelve Lakes was the current head of the House of Lakseng and had been raised by his grandmother, the Grand Empress Dowager. Thim told Loth the proper way to bow, how to address him, and how to behave in his presence.
He learned that Dranghien Lakseng, though not quite a god, was close to it in the eyes of his people. His house claimed descent from the first human to find a dragon after it fell from the celestial plane. There were rumors among the commons (“which the House of Lakseng does not confirm or deny”) that some rulers of the dynasty had been dragons in human form. What was certain was that whenever a Lacustrine ruler was close to death, the Imperial Dragon would choose a successor from among their legitimate heirs.
It unnerved Loth that the court had an Imperial Dragon. How strange to be overseen by wyrms.
“That word is forbidden,” Thim said gravely when he used it once. “We call our dragons by their proper name, and the winged beasts from the West, fire-breathers.”
Loth took note. His life might depend on what he learned now.
When Thim was occupied elsewhere, Loth idled away the hours playing cards with the Knights of the Body and sometimes, in the rare hours she was at liberty, Melaugo. She beat them every time. When night fell, he tried to sleep—but once, he ventured alone to the deck, called from his berth by a haunting song.
The lanterns were extinguished, but the stars were almost bright enough to see by. Harlowe was smoking a pipe at the prow, where Loth joined him.
“Good evening, Captain—”
“Hush.” Harlowe was a statue. “Listen.”
The song drifted over the black waves. A chill slithered through Loth. “What is that?”
“Syrens.”
“Will they not lure us to our death?”
“Only in the stories.” Smoke plumed from his mouth. “Watch the sea. It’s the sea they call.”
At first, all Loth saw was the void. Then a flower of light bloomed in the water, illuminating its surface. Suddenly he could see fish, tens of thousands of them, each full of a rainbow glow.
He had heard tales of the sky lights of Hróth. Never had he thought to see them underwater.
“You see, my lord,” Harlowe murmured. The light feathered in his eyes. “You can find beauty anywhere.”
59
East
The Rose Eternal groaned as the waves heaved beneath it. The storm had blown in a week after they had crossed into the waters of the Sundance Sea, and had not relented since.
Water struck the hull with teeth-rattling force. Wind howled and thunder rumbled, drowning the crew’s bellows as they battled with the tempest. In his cabin, Loth prayed to the Saint under his breath, eyes closed, trying to quell his retches. When the next wave came, the lantern above him sputtered and went out.
He could stand it no longer. If he was to die tonight, it would not be in here. He fastened his cloak, his fingers slipping on the clasp, and shouldered his way through the door.
“My lord, the captain said to stay in our cabins,” one of his bodyguards called after him.
“The Knight of Courage tells us to look death in the eye,” he answered. “I intend to obey.”
He sounded bolder than he felt.
When he emerged onto the deck, he could smell the storm. Wind roared into his eyes. His boots slid on the planks as he lurched toward one of the masts and embraced it, already soaked to the bone. Lightning splintered overhead and blinded him.
“Get back to your cabin, lordling,” Melaugo shouted. Black paint ran from her eyes. “You want to die out here?”
Harlowe stood on the quarterdeck, his jaw set tight. Plume was at the wheel. When the Rose crested a mountainous wave, the sailors cried out. One of the swabbers was pitched over the side, her scream lost to a thunderclap, while another slipped from his handhold and went slithering down the deck. The sails billowed and rattled, twisting the image of Ascalon.
Loth pressed his cheek against the mast. This ship had felt solid as they crossed the Abyss; now he felt its hollowness. He had survived the plague, glimpsed death in the eye of a cockatrice, but it seemed it would be in the waters of the East that he would perish.
Waves battered the Rose Eternal from all sides as she crashed back down, soaking her crew. Water poured on to the deck. Rain pummeled their backs. Plume turned the wheel hard to port, but it was as though the Rose was taking on a life of her own.
The mast began to splinter. The wind was pulling it too hard. Loth made a break for the quarterdeck. Even if Harlowe was losing control of his ship, Loth felt safer with him than he did anywhere else. This was the man who had fought a pirate lord in a typhoon, who had weathered all the known seas of the world. As he ran, Melaugo screamed a word he couldn’t hear.
The rogue wave broke against the ship and took his feet from under him. His mouth and nostrils flooded. He was elbow-deep in water. Plume strained the wheel against it, but suddenly the Rose was almost on its side, and the tallest mast skirted the sea. As he slid across the deck, toward the waves, Loth scrabbled for a handhold and found the sinewy arm of the carpenter, who was clinging to the ratlines by his fingertips.
The Rose righted herself. The carpenter released Loth, leaving him to cough up water.
“Thank you,” Loth choked out. The carpenter waved him off, panting.
“Land ahoy,” came a distant shout. “Land!”
Harlowe looked up. Loth blinked sea and rain from his eyes as lightning flashed again. Through a watery smear, he saw the captain open his nightglass and squint into it.
“Hafrid,” he bellowed, “what’s here?”
The cartographer shielded her face from the rain. “There shouldn’t be anything this far south.”
“And yet.” Harlowe snapped the nightglass closed. “Master Plume, get us to that island.”
“If it’s inhabited, they’ll put us all to the sword,” Plume shouted back.
“Then the Rose will live, and we’ll die faster than we will out here,” Harlowe barked at his quartermaster. His eyes were lit by a thunderstroke. “Estina, muster the crew!”
The boatswain took a pipe from a brass chain around her neck and pinched it between her teeth. A high-pitched trill rode the wind. Loth held on to the gunwale, water beading on his lashes, as Melaugo piped orders to the pirates. They danced to the tune of the whistle, scaling the ratlines and heaving at ropes while the ship keened beneath them. It was chaos to Loth’s eye—yet soon enough, the island was in sight, drawing closer by the moment. Too close. More whistles, and the courses were taken up.
The Rose Eternal did not slow.
Harlowe narrowed his eyes. His ship kept carving its way toward the island, faster than ever.
“This is no natural thing. The tide shouldn’t be strong enough to reel us in.” His face tightened. “She’s going to run aground.”
As Loth wiped rain from his brow, a flash came from low down on the island. Bright as a mirror catching the sun.
“What in damsam is that?” Plume squinted as the moonburst of light came again. “Do you see it, Captain?”
“Aye.”
“Someone must be signaling us.” Melaugo clung to a dripping rope. “Captain?”
Harlowe kept his hands on the balustrade, his gaze on the island. Tines of lightning painted its heights.
“Captain,” the leadsman cried, “seventeen fathoms by the mark. We’re surrounded by reef.”
Melaugo went to the side and looked over. “I see it. Damsel save us, it’s everywhere.” She held on to the brim of her hat. “Captain, it’s almost like she knows her way. She’s missing it all by the skin of her barnacles.”
Harlowe brazened out the island, his expression set. Loth searched his face for any sign of hope.
“Belay last order,” Harlowe commanded. “Let fall all anchors and douse all sails.”
“We can’t stop now,” Plume shouted to him.
“We can try. If the Rose runs aground, she’s finished. And that, I cannot allow.”
“We can avoid it. Risk the storm—”