Here, There Be Dragons

Nemo held a clenched fist across his chest—a gesture of respect, captain to captain.
Aven returned the gesture and, shouting orders to her crew, turned the Indigo Dragon back with the wind. The ship, intuitive as ever, called upon her unique motive power and made full speed away from the fray.

Several leagues away from the battle, the damage to the ship had been assessed, and to everyone’s relief, it was minimal. With the repairs underway, Aven turned her attention, and her fury, to John.
“Enough of this! This is the second time I’ve risked my ship for you, and I’ve yet to see the reason why.”
Bert tried to intercede, but she was having none of it. “Not this time, Father. You’ve made all the excuses for him I can stomach.
“Every captain has maps of their own lands in the Archipelago, as well as of adjacent islands. Every captain, including the Winter King, can find their way around by trial and error. But only one atlas exists that contains them all, and only it can get us to where we need to be, when we need to be there. And only one person alive has been schooled and trained in the ancient languages and cultures that will allow him to interpret the directions in that atlas.
“Well,” she said, thumping a fist on the Geographica, “this is that atlas. And you,” she said jabbing a finger at John, “are the Caretaker. So can you read it or not?”
Defeated, John lowered his eyes in shame. “I can’t. I don’t know how.”

…the members of the Parliament filed in and took their seats…

Chapter Six

The Tick-Tock Parliament

“If that is true, then we may be lost,” said Bert. “Only a trained Caretaker can properly navigate a ship through the Archipelago of Dreams. The maps and notations are in a dozen languages, many of them long dead. There are very few people living who could make any sense of it at all.”

The lines could not have been more clearly drawn: Aven, Bert, and, and surprisingly, Jack on one side; John, Charles, and Bug on the other.

“Jack?” Charles said, a note of astonished surprise in his voice. “You can’t be siding with them. After all…” He began to say something, then seemed to reconsider, adding only a soft admonishment. “Bad form, Jack.”

“But Aven’s right,” said Jack. “We were chased out of London, running for our very lives, all because of him and that book. His teacher was killed for it. The entire Indigo Dragon was nearly just destroyed for it. And this entire…wherever we are, may be going to war over it. And he’s supposed to be the only one alive who can read it, and he’s failed.”

“Jack!” Charles said. “That’s quite enough.”

“But he’s right,” said John. “I have failed.”

Aven swore and reached for her broadsword, but Bert inter-ceded and held her arm. “There has to be an explanation, Aven. I’m the one who chose him.

“John,” Bert said, unable to hide the pleading in his voice, “I have read your work. You have the gift, I know it. And Stellan knew it too. That’s why he agreed to take you on. Why, I’ve seen the correspondence myself—he was training you.”

“Yes,” John said, “he was. But I wasn’t learning—not as I should have, at any rate.”

He turned to Charles and Jack, resigned. “It never seemed to be important,” he explained. “Ancient languages that no one else could read…Who could have imagined there would ever be a need? My friends at home, even my wife—they all questioned the wisdom of spending so much time on what seemed to be impractical pursuits.”

“Not so impractical now, is it?” Jack said.
“For God’s sake, Jack,” said John. “There is a war on! I could hardly be expected to spend what little free time I had reading and translating manuscripts in Old Teutonic.”
“Men will die because you didn’t,” Aven said. “And perhaps already have.”
“He doesn’t care,” Jack said.
“Yes, I do!” John shouted, grabbing Jack by the coat. “I do care, you fool! I have seen men die! I have felt the spray of their blood on my face as men I laughed with, ate with, sheltered with, died in front of me! Can you say the same?”
They were both shaking. John’s face had broken out in a sweat, and his breathing was fast and shallow. After a moment he released Jack and dropped his head into his hands.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” John said after a time. “I do feel as if I’ve failed all of you—but the professor most of all. Believe me, I didn’t know…I never knew what—”
“Enough, John,” said Charles, putting his arm around his companion’s shoulder. “Let’s all take a little while to compose ourselves, and then maybe we can have a look and decipher it together. Three heads are better than one, and all that. What do you say, Jack?”
But when they looked up, Jack and Aven had already moved to another part of the ship, commiserating. Bert stood in the doorway of the cabin, eyes downcast, caught in the middle of his hope and his fear. Only Bug remained with them, wanting to help, but obviously swept up in something bigger than his experience could provide for.
The fellowship had been broken. And there was nothing any of them could do but continue sailing toward Paralon.

Despite his positive demeanor, after an hour with the Geographica even Charles had to admit he was at a loggerheads with it. His editorial position at the Oxford University Press had allowed him a great deal of experience with Latin, so those passages and some of the Greek phrases were not totally undecipherable—not that it helped much.
“I also get a smattering of Old English, and a few words of Hebrew, but the rest is dead impossible,” said Charles. “There are a great deal of annotations in modern English, but there’s no hierarchy to it, no order, other than a rough chronological one.”
This pronouncement did little to assuage John’s melancholy mood, or Jack’s defiant one. Bert was still subdued, but hopeful. “Look,” he said, “since Paralon is the ‘capital’ of the Archipelago, its map has been extensively annotated in English.
“I myself have added to the listing, so I can read most of it myself from past experience. Besides,” he