“I genuinely have no idea,” says Shara. She turns around and examines the spot they just passed through: it bears some minor effects from the Blink—the sand is molten together, and many of the trees appear bent and mutated—but otherwise you’d never be able to tell this spot had any trace of reality static to it.
She breaks off a branch from a nearby tree, peels back the bark so its green inner core is revealed in a slender stripe, and stabs it into the ground. “To mark our entry point,” she says. “Now—lead on.”
The trail leads down a valley, then up the hills, up and up, until they come to the crest, and then …
“Down,” whispers Sigrud. “Down!” He grabs her shoulder and rips her forward, crashing into the soft sand hills.
Shara lies still and listens. Then she hears it: voices, and hammers.
Sigrud peers through the undergrowth.
“Have we been spotted?” Shara whispers.
He shakes his head. “No. But I am not sure what I am looking at.”
“Is it safe for me to move?”
“I think so,” he says. “They are very far down in the valley. … And they are very busy.”
She lifts her head and crawls to a spot where she can see. The bottom of the valley is dotted with fires, as if the people there are preparing to work well into the night. But what they are working on is hard to discern: there are six long, wide shapes of gleaming metal that Shara first thinks are giant shoes, pointed at the front and square in the back like the clogs they wear in Voortyashtan, but there are doors and windows in the giant metal shoes, and stairs and trapdoors … and in the middle is something that looks like a mast with no sail.
Shara says, “They almost look like—”
“Ships,” says Sigrud. “Boats. Giant boats of metal, with no ocean, and no sails.”
She squints to see the figures scurrying around the ships, screwing in screws, welding plates together. All the workers are dressed in traditional Kolkashtani wraps.
“They’re definitely Restorationists,” she murmurs. “But why the hells would they build boats of metal out here in the country? We’re hundreds of miles from the ocean! I suppose that’s what they needed the steel for. …”
“That is not a terribly large fleet,” says Sigrud with some contempt. “Only six ships? If they were going to sail anywhere, there’s not much you could do with that.”
Shara considers it. “Almost two thousand pounds of steel a month, for a little over a year—that doesn’t make very many ships. But this must have been what they were using the steel for!”
“And then what?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps they found something in the Warehouse that could create ocean wherever you wanted it.”
Eight men are pushing something up a ramp into one of the metal boats. Even though the light is faint, Shara’s heart almost stops at the sight of it.
“Oh my,” she says.
“Is that what I think it is?” says Sigrud.
“Yes,” she says. “A six-inch cannon. I’ve only ever seen those on a Saypuri dreadnought.” She glances at the cannon shutters on the other ships. “And it looks like they have, or expect to have, thirty-six of the damn things.”
“And they plan to do what with them? Bombard the hills? Fight a war with the squirrels?”
“I don’t know,” says Shara. “But you’re going to find out.”
A pause.
Sigrud says, “What?”
“I’m going back to Bulikov”—Shara looks over her shoulder and is discomfited to see that the actual Bulikov is nowhere in sight—“to the actual Bulikov, to telegraph Mulaghesh. But we can’t just leave the Restorationists here to do … well … whatever it is they’re going to do.”
“So your plan,” says Sigrud, “is to leave me here to fight six metal ships loaded with cannons?”
“I’m asking to you watch. Only do something if they do something.”
“This something I should do being …”
“Infiltration, if you can. You must have dealt with a few stowaways in your time, right? Hopefully you learned something from them. If I get back to Bulikov in time, we can return with a small army within days.”
“Days plural?”
Shara squeezes his shoulder, says, “Good luck,” and crawls back down the hillside.
*
The journey back through the white city of Old Bulikov is a strange and heavy one for Shara. She tries to put her mind to the dozens of mysteries before her—landlocked ships preparing an invasion; Vohannes collaborating with Wiclov, and, possibly, arranging passage for the Restorationists in and out of Old Bulikov; yet her thoughts keep returning to the lump in her pocket, which jostles with each step.
I have on my person something that has tasted the blood of the Divine.
It takes her a moment to realize that this grants her a profound technological advantage: no matter what Wiclov, Vohannes, and the Restorationists are plotting, none of them could imagine she possesses a piece of the Kaj’s weaponry, however small. But how to use something that’s hardly bigger than a marble?
When she returns to Bulikov—the real, current Bulikov—she sheds the Kolkashtani wrap right away and goes straight to a metalworker’s shop.