“Do tell me more,” Niclays said, as gamely as he could.
“The fragment is many centuries old. I almost fear to handle it in case it falls apart. According to her journal, my aunt received it from a man who told her to carry it far from the East and never bring it back.”
“How mysterious.” Niclays couched his head on his arms. “What has this to do with your going away?”
“I cannot read the text. I must go to the University of Ostendeur to see if anyone knows the language. I think it is an ancient form of Seiikinese, but something about the characters sits oddly with me. Some are larger, others smaller, and they are spaced in a strange manner.” His gaze was distant. “There is a hidden message in it, Clay. Intuition tells me that it is a vital piece of history. Something of more importance than anything I have studied before. I must understand it. I have heard of a library that might help me do that.”
“Where is this place, exactly?” Niclays asked. “Is it part of the University?”
“No. It is … rather isolated. A few miles from Wilgastrōm.”
“Oh, Wilgastrōm. Thrilling.” It was a sleepy town on the River Lint. No wyverns there. “Well, come back soon. The moment you leave, Ed tries to involve me in hunting or battledore or some other pastime that involves talking to courtiers.”
Jannart pressed closer. “You will survive.” His smile faded and, just for a moment, there was darkness in his eyes. “I would never leave you without reason, Clay. On my oath.”
“I will hold you to it, Zeedeur.”
There existed a realm between dreaming and waking, and Niclays was imprisoned in it. As he stirred, a tear squeezed from the corner of his eye.
Rain dusted his face. He was in a rowing boat, swayed like an infant in a cradle. Figures hunkered around him, trading words, and a fearsome thirst blazed in his throat.
Dim memories swam at the back of his mind. Hands dragging him. Food being shoveled between his lips, almost choking him. A cloth over his nose and mouth.
He groped for the side of the boat and retched. All around the vessel were green waves, clear as forest glass.
“Saint—” His voice was dry. “Water,” he said in Seiikinese. “Please.”
Nobody answered.
It was twilight. Or dawn. The sky was bruised with cloud, but the sun had left a finger-smear of honey. Niclays blinked the rain from his eyes and beheld the fire-orange sails that loomed over the boat, illuminated by scores of lanterns.
A ghost ship, wreathed in sea mist. One of his captors slapped him across the head and barked something in Lacustrine.
“All right,” Niclays murmured. “All right.”
He was heaved up by the ropes that bound his wrists and forced at knifepoint to a ladder. The sight of the ship undid his jaw and shook the last of the drowse from him.
A nine-masted galleon, its hull banded with iron, at least twice the length of a High Western. Niclays had never seen a ship as colossal as this, not even in Inysh waters. He placed his bare feet on the wooden slats and climbed, chased by shouts and jeers.
He was among pirates, undoubtedly. From the jade-green of the waves, this was most likely the Sundance Sea, which bled into the Abyss—the dark ocean that separated East from West and North and South. This was the sea he had crossed when he had sailed toward Seiiki all those years ago.
It would also be the sea he died in. Pirates were not known for their mercy, or their civil treatment of hostages. It was a wonder he had made it this far without having his throat slit.
At the top, he was led by his ropes across the deck. All around him were Eastern men and women, with a handful of Southerners scattered among them. Several of the pirates nailed suspicious looks on Niclays, while others ignored him. Many had a Seiikinese word inked on to their brows: murder, theft, arson, blasphemy—the crimes for which they had been punished.
Niclays was lashed to one of the masts, where he reflected on the misery of his condition. This had to be the largest ship in existence, which meant he had been snatched by the Fleet of the Tiger Eye: pirates who specialized in the shadow-market trade in parts taken from dragons. They also, like all pirates, indulged in many other crimes.
They had taken all his possessions, including the text Jannart had died for—the fragment that was never supposed to have come back to the East. It was the last piece of him Niclays still possessed and, damn his soul, he had lost it. The thought made him want to weep, but he had to convince these pirates that they needed an old man. Sobbing in terror was not the way to achieve that end.
It felt like months before somebody approached him. By that time, the sun was rising.
A Lacustrine woman came to stand before him. Paint darkened her lips. Over her grizzled hair was a headdress, golden and heavy with razor-sharp ornaments, each a little work of art. At her side was a sword just as golden and twice as sharp. The lines etched into her brown skin spoke of many years spent under the sun.
She was flanked by six pirates, including a moustachioed giant of a Sepuli fellow, whose bare chest was so smothered in tattoos that there was no virgin skin left on him. Giant tigers ripped dragons apart across his torso, and the blood swirled amid sea foam to his shoulders. A pearl sat right over his heart.
The leader—for leader she unquestionably was—wore a long coat of black watersilk. Her missing right arm had been replaced by an articulated wooden substitute, complete with an elbow, fingers, and a thumb, fitted with a cage over her shoulder and secured with a leather strap across her chest. Niclays doubted it was much use to her in the heat of battle, but it was a remarkable innovation, quite unlike anything he had seen in the West.
The woman regarded Niclays, then marched back into the crowd of pirates, who parted to let her through. The giant unraveled the ropes and bundled Niclays into her cabin, which was decorated with swords and bloody flags.
Two people stood in the corner. A thickset woman with freckled brown skin and lines around her mouth, and a bone-thin man, tall and pale, who frankly looked ancient. A tunic of tattered red silk came past his knees.
The pirate sprawled on a throne, accepted a wood-and-bronze pipe from the man, and inhaled whatever vapors were within. She considered Niclays through a blue-tinged haze before addressing him in Lacustrine. Her voice was deep and measured.
“My pirates do not usually take hostages,” the freckled woman translated into Seiikinese, “except when we are short of seafarers.” She arched an eyebrow at Niclays. “You are special.”
He knew better than to speak without permission, but inclined his head. The interpreter waited while the captain spoke again.
“You were found on the beach in Ginura, carrying certain documents,” the interpreter continued. “One of them is part of an ancient manuscript. How did you come into possession of this item?”
Niclays bowed low. “Honored captain,” he said, addressing the Lacustrine woman, “it was bequeathed to me by a dear friend after his death. I brought it with me when I came to Seiiki from the Free State of Mentendon, hoping to find some meaning behind it.”
His words were passed back to the woman in Lacustrine.
“And did you?” came the reply.
“Not yet.”
Her eyes were shards of volcanic glass.
“You have had this item for a decade and carry it on your person like a talisman, but you say you know nothing about it. A fascinating claim,” the interpreter said, once the captain had spoken. “Perhaps a beating will inspire you to tell the truth. When a person vomits blood, secrets often spill out with it.”
Sweat soaked his back.
“Please,” he said, “it is the truth. Have mercy.”
She laughed softly as she answered.
“I did not become the lord of all pirates by showing mercy to thieving liars.”
Lord of all pirates.
This was not just any pirate captain. This was the dread sovereign of the Sundance Sea, the conqueror of myriad ships, a mistress of chaos with forty thousand pirates under her command. This was the Golden Empress, the enemy of order, who had clawed herself from poverty to construct her own nation on the waves—a nation beyond the dominion of dragons.
“All-honored Golden Empress.” Niclays prostrated himself. “Forgive me for not showing you the appropriate respect. I did not know who you were.” His knees screamed, but he kept his brow against the floor. “Let me sail with you. I will give you my skills as an anatomist, my knowledge, my loyalty. I will do anything you ask. Only spare my life.”
The Golden Empress took up her pipe again. “I would have asked your name, had you proven the existence of your backbone,” was her answer, “but you shall be called Sea-Moon now.”