by Jeff Minerd
Tears glimmered in the old woman’s eyes. “Still, something of Kaishou has returned to us after all these years. It is a miracle, a gift beyond any we could have hoped for, and a cause for joy.”
FOURTEEN
Tak squatted in the bow of the Arrow, trying to shift some of the supplies in the bow storage compartment, when Jon cleared his throat and spoke.
“I see something,” he said.
Tak jumped up, startled. This was the first complete sentence Jon had uttered all day. It signaled that something important, or unusual, was up. In the weeks they’d been traveling together, Tak had come to realize just how little Jon actually spoke. The scrawny giant stood in the stern, gazing westward behind them through his spyglass. Tak moved aft to join him, and scanned the sky with his own glass. The wind whipped their hair and tugged at their cloaks. Snowflakes whirled in the air. Their breath came out in cloudy puffs. The Arrow pitched and rocked on the current.
There it was! A sail. A silvery sail glinting in what little gray light filtered through the clouds of the Eastern Emptiness. Even at the extreme distance, Tak could tell by the way the sail glimmered that it was made of pure spider silk, just like the Arrow’s own sail. It wasn’t one of those second-rate jobs with vlisken fibers woven in. That meant the owner of the craft—for it clearly was a small craft, propelled by a single sail—had money. Tak gazed at it for a long time, straining his eyes, trying to discover anything more about it. It was the first ship of any kind they’d seen since they entered the Emptiness.
“It’s changed course,” Tak said. “It’s heading straight for us. And it’s gaining on us.”
Jon grunted in agreement. He chewed the beard under his lower lip. Then, with a sound like a rhinoceros suffering from a bad head cold, he snorted up an enormous quantity of phlegm and spit it over the side. The wintry chill made his nose run and clog, and that was how he cleared it.
Tak made a face and bit down on a snide remark. Jon’s near-perpetual silence, broken only by his grunting and that awful noise he made before spitting wads of mucus out into the Eastern Emptiness, was getting on his nerves. In fact, in the time they’d traveled together, Tak had discovered many things about Jon that annoyed him. The way he picked his teeth with his pinky fingernail after they ate. The way the dried beans they cooked gave him pungent gas, which he passed loudly, and often, and especially at night, when they slept side to side in the cramped space of the Arrow’s weather shelter. And Jon was irritated by many of the things that Tak did, especially his constant fussing over the balance of the ship, his continual, obsessive shifting of their supplies from one place to another. But there was no escaping each other. The Arrow was only eighteen feet long, its deck eight feet wide. The close quarters provided plenty of opportunities for the boys to grate on each other. The ever-increasing cold and lousy, mostly cold food didn’t help either.
Tak took a step backward and stumbled, nearly tripping over Jon’s axe, which he’d left lying around on the deck—again.
“Dammit!” Tak said. “I keep telling you, put this thing somewhere out of the way.”
The axe was another thing that annoyed Tak. It was a stupid, clunky, heavy thing to have aboard an airship. There was no good place to stow it, and wherever Jon tried to stow it, it always managed to get loose and slide around the deck. Tak was extremely sensitive to the weight and balance of the Arrow, and he could feel that ridiculously big iron axe head throwing things off. He fantasized about tossing the axe overboard. Sometimes, he fantasized about tossing Jon along with it.
Jon picked up the axe and gave Tak one of his eloquent looks. I know where I’d like to put it. He stowed the axe in one of the side compartments along the gunwale, but of course it didn’t fit. Half the handle stuck out.
Tak was irritated for another reason that had little to do with Jon. The Arrow, crammed full and weighed down with supplies, felt like a completely different ship. It responded sluggishly to the tiller. It rode the currents heavily. It was slow. The fact this mystery ship was gaining on them was proof of that.
Jon raised his spyglass again and fixed it on the ship behind them. He frowned and made a belligerent growl in the back of this throat. “Pirates?” he said.
Tak had been wondering the same thing. Jon voicing the thought made the possibility seem more real. The fact the ship had changed course and was clearly intent on overtaking them didn’t bode well. And pirates—good ones at least—definitely had money. They could afford spider silk sails.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Tak said. “If it is pirates, there can’t be many of them. It looks like just a two-man ship.” Of course, it could be a scouting party, with a bigger ship lurking somewhere just over the horizon. The mystery ship was close enough now that the boys could see it without their spyglasses. It was directly astern of them. Still gaining.
“I’m getting my axe,” Jon said. “No pirate’s gonna set foot on this ship without me doing something about it.”
“Yes, let’s have some weapons handy,” Tak said. “Just in case.”
As the ship approached within hailing distance, Tak crouched in the stern with his quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder, gripping his bow. He had an arrow nocked and the bow at half draw. Jon crouched next to him, gripping his axe with white-knuckled hands.
“Ho there!” Tak shouted, raising his bow and aiming his arrow at the ship. “Identify yourself or we will fire on you!”
For a long moment no answer came.
Then a man shouted back. “We’re looking for Taktinius Spinner junior. Are you him?”
Tak and Jon exchanged surprised looks. Tak relaxed the draw of his bow.
“Maybe,” he shouted. “Who are you?”
“Your father sent us. We have something for you.”
The mystery ship glided up to the Arrow, so close their hulls rasped together and their sails overlapped above them. Tak could see now that the ship was a messenger ship, built to be very light and fast. It was the kind of ship commonly used to ferry letters and information from mountain to mountain in the Kingdom of Spire. It had a crew of two. One man stood in the bow as the ship approached. The other worked the tiller and pedals in the stern. Tak caught glimpses of messenger livery underneath their cloaks.
“Thank the winds we found you!” the man in the bow said as he hopped onto the Arrow without asking permission to come aboard. “I didn’t fancy spending any more time out here looking for you.”
Jon of course said nothing. But his eyes blinked and his nose twitched inquisitively as he leaned on his axe.
Tak was too surprised to say anything more than “My father sent you…?” Sending a messenger ship out into the Eastern Emptiness to chase down another ship was not something that was done every day. In fact, it wasn’t done at all.
“He did,” the man said, grinning. “And he paid us well. He wanted us to give you this.”
The man handed him an old logbook with a well-worn oilskin cover. Inside, there was a folded navigational chart of the Eastern Emptiness and the Eastern Kingdoms. There was also a note.
Tak,
This book and chart are from my voyage to the Eastern Kingdoms, when I wasn’t much older than you are now. I hope they will be helpful to you.
I regret my harsh words at our last meeting. My only wish is for you to return home safely.
Your Father
Tak swallowed down a lump in his throat. His eyes glistened. “How did he look?” he asked. “When you saw him?”
“He looked good,” the man said, though there was a note of false cheer in his voice. “Definitely on the mend. He’ll be riding the currents again in no time.”
Tak took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. He, too, regretted his harsh words. And his actions. He very much wished he could see his father for himself. He wondered how he was faring, and what he was doing.
Taktinius Spinner senior lay in bed with the covers pulled up to his bearded
chin. He listened for sounds of his wife in the house, trying to determine where she was and what she was doing. Late-morning sunlight slanted through the windows. He strained his ears for any sound, and finally heard a chair scrape on the floor in the kitchen below. Then the unmistakable sound of a knife chopping vegetables on a wooden block. Good. That meant she’d be staying put for a while.
He groaned as he pulled himself up, threw off the covers, and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt lightheaded, and that small exertion brought perspiration to his upper lip. He took several deep breaths. Finally, he climbed completely out of bed, knelt on the floor, reached under the bed, and retrieved the chamber pot.
“My love?” Marghorettia called from below. “Are you up?”
“Yes my love,” he croaked back.
“Don’t forget to take your medicine.”
“I’m doing it now, my love.”
He uncorked the big bottle of greenish stuff on the night stand and poured a spoonful. But instead of taking the medicine, he tipped the spoonful into the chamber pot. He’d been getting rid of the stuff this way for more than a week now. He re-corked the bottle, and he was careful to lick the last of the medicine from the spoon. That way, his wife would taste it on his lips if she kissed him, and she would see the spoon had been used. Her sharp senses and keen mind missed very little that went on in the Spinner house.
He used the chamber pot and slid it back underneath the bed.
Now it was time to start his day. He had several tasks to complete. His brother Julius would be arriving at noon. Julius had been filling in for him as Chief Sailspinner, and they had important matters to discuss—especially the final tallies for the spider silk harvest on Silkmont, and the readiness of the factory in Selestria, which had suffered damage during the siege, for spinning the priceless silvery stuff into sails. Tak senior had some reports and correspondence to read to prepare for the meeting. These lay on his desk in his office, at the top story of the house.
He washed up with the pitcher of water and basin on the nightstand. He threw a dressing gown over his nightshirt and stepped into a pair of slippers. It was only Julius, so no use getting fully dressed. He took up the cane that leaned against the nightstand and, moving slowly, leaning heavily on the cane, headed for the stairs.
The wooden stairs creaked unnecessarily loudly as he climbed, one step at a time, firmly planting his cane and hauling himself up each step. He stopped and rested after only half-a-dozen steps. His head swam. Dark spots danced before his eyes. His breath came in ragged gulps, and his leg blazed with pain as if the Gublin sword that stabbed him were still there, buried in the flesh of his thigh. He felt the wound with his fingers through his gown. It was tender, swollen, and hot.
“Are you all right, my love?” Marghorettia called.
He wiped the sweat off his brow with a sleeve. “Perfectly fine, my dear.”
He looked up. So many stairs yet to go. He pulled himself together and hauled himself up another step. And another. His arm trembled. His legs didn’t want to obey him.
“I’m coming up there,” Marghorettia announced.
He opened his mouth to tell her not to come, that he was fine, but never spoke the words. The dark spots dancing before his eyes coalesced into blackness. The cane slipped from his fingers. His legs buckled. He collapsed and slid to the bottom of the stairs.
FIFTEEN
Brieze moved into the palace as a guest. The plan was for her to spend the winter in Kyo and return home in the spring. The Fujiwaras put out the word that she was an honored visitor, the apprentice of a powerful wizard. They did not mention she was Kaishou’s daughter, a Fujiwara herself, and they made her promise to keep the secret as well. She slept in a spacious stone room with glass windows and a canopied bed. She had the run of the palace, and she dined most evenings with the Fujiwaras. The Devious was brought to the castle quay. Brieze was given a permit to fly whenever she wished.
Captain Hiroshi kept his word and invited her to dinner at his house. He had two rambunctious children, a boy of seven and a girl of eight. His wife was younger and prettier than Brieze expected. The wife felt the same way about Brieze, judging from the displeased, suspicious looks she shot Brieze across the table when she thought she wasn’t looking. Looks that said, So you are the pretty young thing that slept in my husband’s bed and shared his meals? If I find out anything happened… Brieze wished she could have explained it wasn’t like that.
Hiroshi had obtained all the old aeronautical records pertaining to the Atago Maru. He spread them out on the table after dinner was finished and the children had been put to bed. He and Brieze poured through them. They concentrated on a report of the investigation that was made into the ship’s disappearance.
“This is the last recorded sighting,” Hiroshi said, tapping a page of the report with a finger. “The Atagu Maru traded news with another merchant ship as it was heading home, two days out from the Wind’s Teeth. The captain said he intended to take the middle passage, the same one we took.”
“Then the Atago Maru wrecked in the Teeth,” Brieze said.
“Or they were attacked by pirates,” Hiroshi said. “That is what the report concludes.”
“If they were attacked by pirates, what would have happened to the crew?”
“Killed or sold as slaves.”
“If Kaishou was sold as a slave, might he still be alive?”
Hiroshi shook his head grimly. “I’m afraid slaves don’t live that long. They are worked and starved to death. Most last only a year or two. Certainly not seventeen years.”
“How do you know that?”
Hiroshi stroked his beard. “Admittedly, these are only rumors. No slave has ever escaped from the Dragonlord’s realm. But the rumors come from the pirates who sell the slaves, so I believe them.”
Brieze chewed her lower lip and pondered. So her father had either perished in the Wind’s Teeth, and his remains lay in the wreck of the Atago Maru, or he had died a slave in the Dragonlord’s realm. She imagined returning home and telling this to her mother. It wouldn’t do. It didn’t answer the crucial question—had Kaishou intended to keep his promise and return to her mother, or had their romance been just a bit of fun for him?
She needed to answer that question, somehow.
When she dined with the Fujiwaras, she asked countless questions about Kaishou, and asked for stories about him. The stories painted a different picture than the one she’d had in her head. She had always imagined Kaishou as a drinker and a womanizer, the kind of man with a girl in every port. But according to the Fujiwaras, he was a quiet, serious boy, dedicated to his studies at the university. He didn’t frequent taverns, and he had few friends. He spent most of his time attending lectures at the university or studying in his room, reading late into the night by the light of an oil lamp.
“The boy hardly left his room. He was eighteen years old and he’d barely been outside the city of Kyo,” Takashi said one night as he passed Brieze a platter of dumplings. “That is why I made him take that voyage. I wanted him to see something of the world, to experience life.”
“It would appear that he did,” said the old woman, her great grandmother, looking at Brieze with a mixture of amusement and affection as she sipped her tea. The woman’s name was Mizuki.
A thought occurred to Brieze, and she asked Emiko, “Did Kaishou write any letters home from his voyage?”
Emiko glanced at Mizuki, who nodded.
“He wrote several letters, and I have kept them,” Emiko said. “But they were all written before his ship arrived in the West. We have no letters from him after that.”
“Clearly, he was preoccupied with other matters,” Takashi said.
“What about a diary, or a journal?” Brieze asked. “Did he keep one of those?”
“He kept a journal,” Emiko said. “He wrote in it every day. But he would never let anyone see it.”
“Is it here?”
“No. It was not in his room. Most certa
inly, he brought it with him on the voyage.”
“So if he had it with him, he might have written in it about my mother,” Brieze said.
There was a long silence at the table.
Takashi cleared his throat, “That journal, if it survived, would be with his remains and his personal effects in the wreck of the Atago Maru. Beneath the surface clouds in the great graveyard of ships strewn about the roots of the Wind’s Teeth. It might as well be on the moon.”
Brieze chewed her lower lip as she fiddled with the food on her plate, still trying to get used to using two wooden sticks instead of a fork. A plan was taking shape in her mind.
Mizuki narrowed her shrewd, bespectacled eyes at Brieze and frowned. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “A young girl scouting around under the clouds at the roots of the Wind’s Teeth? In the wintertime? You’d join your father’s bones down there for sure.”
“And there are an untold number of wrecks down there,” Takashi said. “You would never find the Atago Maru, even if you knew where to begin looking.”
Oh but I would, Brieze thought. I know exactly how.
And I will.
Brieze spent the next week exploring the city, both on foot and by air. She told the Fujiwaras that she was sightseeing, and she did actually see some sights—the great temple on Little Kyomont, the Library of Kyo with its staggeringly huge collection of books and scrolls—but what she was really doing was gathering supplies and loading them up in the Devious. For a trip to the Teeth and back, she needed as much food and water as the ship could hold. And there were several other things, some very specific things, that she needed to put her plan into place.
She transferred her clothes and personal things in her palace room little by little to the Devious, so that she wouldn’t be seen leaving the palace with a fully loaded pack on the night she slipped away. Her room grew suspiciously emptier and emptier, but nobody but the palace room keepers noticed, she supposed.