Anjine recalled the story of how Korastine himself had unexpectedly come to the throne. King Kiracle, her grandfather, had
loved to ride his horses, and while visiting Erietta he had gone out on an impulsive ride, ignoring the dark thunderclouds.
When Kiracle had stopped on a hilltop to survey the reach, a bolt of lightning struck him. The horse miraculously lived and
bore the dead king back to the stables of the Erietta destrar. Thus, Korastine had come to the throne.
Anjine spoke up for the first time during the meeting. “Didn’t Aiden write that the air smells freshest after a storm? His
Arkship may be gone, but the memory is still there, the truth is still there—in Ishalem. The spot is still there.”
Sen Leo chuckled. “We have indeed been through a terrible storm.”
Prester-Marshall Baine said, “Your daughter will be a wise queen one day, Majesty. Perhaps reigning over many new lands, if
the
Luminara
’s voyage is successful.” He glanced at the intricate model mounted on a firm wooden shelf.
The perfect scale replica of the
Luminara
was held in this secure tower room—a detailed copy down to the last rigging rope and sailcloth, every piece made from counterpart
materials on the ship herself so that it was connected by sympathetic magic. The wood of the model’s hull had been cut from
the same planks; the sails were swatches trimmed from larger sailcloth; the ropes were strands taken from the thick rigging
ropes. Through careful observation of the model, Korastine’s advisers would have some inkling as to what was happening to
the actual ship. The model was a thing of beauty in itself.
Anjine knew all about chasing dreams. In Calay, with its mixture of cultures from the five reaches, as well as being the center
of trade for exotic Uraban goods, her upbringing had been asparkle with myths and stories. Anjine had always seen them as
possibilities
. Sometimes, Mateo lured her away from her tutors and diplomatic teachers so the two of them could explore the city. “Practical
learning instead of book learning,” he’d told her with a grin. “A queen needs both.”
Wanting to see the city as average people did, without anyone recognizing Anjine as the king’s daughter, Mateo had scrounged
a drab but comfortable outfit from one of the serving girls; a smudge of hearth soot on Anjine’s left cheek and a yarn hat
pulled down over her golden hair completed her transformation into a scamp. After Mateo picked suitable clothes for himself,
the two appeared to be street urchins out running errands or causing mischief.
To amuse them, one of the washerwomen had spun tales of two lovable scamps, an orphaned boy and girl named Tycho and Tolli,
who had all sorts of adventures: being shanghaied aboard Urecari ships, running afoul of pickpockets, discovering buried treasure
along a riverbank, or rescuing children even less fortunate than themselves.
Whenever the two of them went out into the sunny streets of Calay, Mateo and Anjine took those names for themselves. Tycho
and Tolli. It was a perfect disguise because, Anjine later realized, the washerwoman had modeled her stories after the two
of them anyway.
She remembered their first secret outing so clearly. Jewelers called out their wares, offering abalone pearls of the darkest
luster, web-fine golden chains said to be spun from undine hair, masculine pendants crafted of gold-plated sharks’ teeth.
Scruffy merchants offered pilgrims’ badges from Ishalem, so that any worshipper could pretend to have made the journey to
the holy city.
The disguises worked so well that most of the traders had chased them away, sure the two were thieves. Anjine sat down on
a crate in an alley, wiping sweat from her brow and adjusting her yarn cap. She said with a sniff, “What
I’m
looking for won’t be set out among all the other wares. If it existed, then everyone would know about it.”
“Oh? What are we looking for?”
“Aiden’s Compass,” she said in an awed whisper.
“That was lost centuries ago!”
“It was
broken
centuries ago. But Ondun created it to guide Aiden on his voyage. Do you really think it can’t be fixed?”
His brow furrowed. “If it could be fixed, wouldn’t somebody have done it by now?”
“Maybe it’s just been hidden away, waiting for the right time. Maybe Aiden locked it away somewhere, left it for some later
generation… like us.”
Though intrigued by the idea, Mateo remained skeptical. “Like Tycho and Tolli, you mean? And how do you expect to find it?”
“By
looking,
of course. You can’t expect to accomplish something difficult the first time you try. We’ll just have to keep sneaking out
of the castle and exploring.” Mateo had completely agreed with her.
Not the first time you try…
Now, bringing herself back to the discussion in the castle tower room, Anjine turned to Korastine. “You don’t want to be known
only as the king who reigned when the city burned, Father. If you rebuild Ishalem, you will become a legend.”
The king turned away, but not before she saw unshed tears sparkling in his eyes. He said, “Tierra will throw its resources
into the holy city. I will command all destrars to send workers and materials to Ishalem. And to show how important this is,
Prester-Marshall Baine,
you
will lead the construction mission. Maybe Soldan-Shah Imir will see what we are doing and help us rebuild the city to the
greater glory of Ondun, rather than continuing strife between the brothers.”
Though he had already spent months studying volumes and maps in the Saedran libraries, Aldo still waited to be assigned his
first mission. Whenever Aldo expressed impatience to go off to sea, the old scholar simply sent him back to the tomes. “Before
a Saedran chartsman can leave home, he must build a perfect map of the known world in his mind.”
When he wasn’t studying books, Aldo took it upon himself to acquire knowledge in other ways. Down in the Merchants’ District
he watched arriving vessels tie up to docks and unload their cargoes to a flurry of eager merchants and curiosity seekers.
Aldo studied the ships’ profiles and forms, the length-to-beam ratios, the varying arrangements of rigging, the square-rigged
or lateen-rigged sails, or a combination of both.
He talked to sailors returning to port, whether they were captains or regular seaman, pumping them for information. He became
an astute observer of human expressions, watching how the men’s eyes would light up or flicker away. He learned to distinguish
when they were telling the truth from when they were deceiving their listeners. He did not forget how Yal Dolicar had duped
him with his fake map. When he smelled the salt air, watched the shifting tides, and saw seabirds wheeling overhead, Aldo
felt the invisible currents and tides of the Oceansea.
He waited with all the patience he could muster, longing for the day when Sen Leo would send him out on an exploration of
his own. Finally, one morning the old scholar came to him in the underground temple vault with rolled-up hand-drawn blueprints.
“I have a mission for you.”
Aldo was diligently reading the last few books he had not yet memorized in the Saedran library. His face lit up, already imagining
forgotten shores and exotic seaports.
“I am sending you inland,” Sen Leo said. “I have work for you in the mountains of Corag.” The scholar spread his drawings
on the table, moving the open books aside. Aldo could not hide his crestfallen expression, but Sen Leo gruffly kept his attention
on the matter at hand. He tapped the blueprints, which showed intricate gears and graduated metal arcs, angles and dials to
be calibrated and set by the stars. “These are new navigation instruments for Saedran chartsmen. The workings are complex,
and the manufacture must be precise. There is little tolerance for error.”
He revealed another drawing, a set of gears, springs, and spinning counterweights. “This is a sealed navigation clock, vital
for determining longitude. A variation and improvement on our other models. If our designs are followed properly, the clock
will be accurate enough for a chartsman to pinpoint his position, latitude and longitude.”
Aldo could not make sense of the designs, but Sen Leo dropped a bag of silver pieces next to the blueprints. “Sophisticated
metal-workers in Corag Reach can make these instruments with the required accuracy. If you promise not to spend this money
on another silly map of imaginary lands, I entrust you with this mission to Corag Reach. See that these instruments are made
precisely according to design.”
Though he was disappointed that he would not be going off to sea—yet—Aldo turned his mind eastward, looking at the rivers,
imagining the open lands of Tierra. For Aldo, the whole world, not just the sea, was unexplored territory. He resolved to
fill his mind with sights of cliffs and crags, rather than islands and waves.
His mother helped him pack for the journey, while his younger brother and sister seemed more excited than he was. With his
satchel in hand, Aldo followed his father to the shallow interior basin at the far end of the Butchers’ District, into which
one of the primary rivers emptied. There, upon locating a flat riverboat designed for hauling both cargo and passengers, Biento
bargained with its bearlike captain, who smelled of cloves and sweat, booking passage for his son. Aldo said goodbye to his
father and stepped aboard with his pack of clothes, the drawings Sen Leo had given him (rolled up and sealed inside a special
locked cylinder), and carefully hidden coins to pay for the instruments.
Grinning, Aldo found a spot for himself on the wide deck. With all the space belowdecks reserved for cargo, the handful of
passengers had to spend their time out in the open air or under fabric awnings. At this time of year, though, the weather
was fine, and he didn’t mind. When he was settled, he turned to wave farewell to his father; Biento stood on the dock, waving
back.
The itinerant rivermen pledged loyalty to no particular destrar and claimed no individual reach as their own. They plied their
trade up and down the rivers, always moving; their homes were their boats. The flatboat was broad and sturdy, its construction
entirely different from the oceangoing vessels Aldo had studied. A mast and sails could be set out to take advantage of a
favorable breeze, or the muscular men could use long oars to row against the current. In shallow waters they could push the
craft with long poles.
Every man wore a beard; all the women covered their heads with scarves that were dyed and embroidered in a riot of colors,
and the women looked just as powerful as the men, bred for heavy labor.
Aldo stared at everything, drinking in details as the boat pushed off and began to make its way upstream. It did not take
him long to notice that the rivermen laughed a great deal more, and over more trivial things, than Saedrans did. They broke
into song for no reason whatsoever, and each riverman carried some sort of musical instrument, either a jangling tambourine,
a raucous-sounding squeezebox, a shrill flute, or a fiddle. They played whenever they felt like it, whenever a tune struck
them. They made no attempt to coordinate as a symphony, but the conflicting strains of music made a song all their own.
Over the next hour, Aldo watched Calay diminish into the distance, vanishing as the river curved around a line of hills. Never
in his life had he been away from the great city, and now the open lands of Tierra swallowed him up.
After speaking with them, Aldo learned that the rivermen were bound by family ties. The barge captain was a man named Sazar,
a leader of several interconnected clans. A bearlike dark-bearded man with a gold ring in each ear, he called himself the
“destrar of the River Reach.” The big captain took Aldo under his wing, chatting with him during the slow voyage.
“We don’t often get a Saedran chartsman on the river. Some would say you’re going the wrong way.” Sazar laughed. “My clan
has mapped all the rivers and streams, the tributaries, the oxbows and the mud shoals, just like you Saedrans know the way
of the oceans. If you tell me all your secrets of the sea, lad, I’ll tell you the secrets of Tierra’s rivers.”
Aldo had seen the serpentine blue lines drawn on the Mappa Mundi, so he knew that Saedrans had already charted the inland
rivers. “This is the first time I have ever left Calay. What makes you think I know any secrets of the world?” As a chartsman,
he had sworn to keep their proprietary knowledge from falling into the hands of any outsider.
The burly river-destrar let out a booming laugh. “Because you’re a Saedran. And Saedrans know everything.” He lowered his
voice and leaned forward. “Except how to lie. Lad, the truth is as plain as a mud smear on your face.”
Destrar Sazar had his own violin, and he stood at the bow of the barge gazing upriver. He sawed his tunes—sometimes mournful
and beautiful, other times reminiscent of a tortured cat. He launched into a deep-throated song, making up words that rarely
rhymed, with a tune that did not match the music he played. Sazar sang about the wealth of the people of the River Reach,
about mysterious stashes of treasure that the clans stored in uncharted swamps, caches of supplies that only a river-man could
find. Aldo didn’t know whether to believe the tales, though, for Sazar sang with equal gusto about the beauty of their women,
and so far Aldo had seen little evidence of that.
At night, the barge pulled into a calm oxbow; crewmen lit lamps around the barge, and food was served—cold smoked fish, beets,
and a mush of overcooked greens. Aldo didn’t care for the peculiar spices, but he ate and listened and watched.
Sitting alone under one of the awnings, he worked the intricate seal at the end of the watertight cylinder that held the blueprints.
The lock was keyed to Saedran symbols and could be opened only by someone who understood the code. Aldo unrolled the drawings
of the navigation devices and leaned forward to study them by the light of a lantern, intent on grasping the secret workings.
This would be a very complex task for even a highly skilled metalworker, but his brow furrowed as he tried to understand the
design.