close enough to look down into it, he saw something folded over, as if a random bolt of weathered canvas had been tossed into the tun and then forgotten. The canvas rippled, and Nikandr saw what looked to be a jaundiced eye.
“I bought it from a fisherman this morning.” Gravlos picked up a stick that had been resting against the door and poked the thing. It rippled again, and an enormous jaw unfolded itself, revealing a triple row of thorn-sharp teeth. A thin tongue whiter than fresh-fallen snow slithered out and glowed momentarily.
Nikandr laughed from the sheer horror of the thing.
“The old sailors call them tarpfish,” Gravlos continued. “It was caught off the coast of Duzol, only three leagues out to sea.”
“Excluding Nikandr,” Borund said with a distinct note of awe, “that is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Gravlos began poking the fish again. “Wait, it gets worse.”
Only a moment later, the fish belched out a stream of shit-colored ink and began flapping around the tun. Water sprayed everywhere. All three men backed away, laughing and holding their sleeves against the fierce smell of rotted cabbage.
Nikandr couldn’t help but think of the wasting, of the rot that was growing within him, but to laugh with Borund felt good. It felt like the days of old, and he wasn’t about to feel sorry for himself at a time like this.
Borund pointed at it, still laughing. “What in the wide great seas made you buy such a thing?”
Gravlos nodded toward Nikandr. “You’ve not heard?”
Borund looked between Nikandr and Gravlos. “Heard what?”
Gravlos caught Nikandr’s eye, waiting for permission. When Nikandr nodded, he said, “I thought My Lord Prince would want to see it. He’s been flying around the islands, every spare moment he’s had outside of our work on the Gorovna, searching for clues.”
“Clues to what?”
“To the blight,” Nikandr answered.
Borund chuckled, but stopped when he realized Nikandr was serious. “We should have asked for more ships if you have so many to go about.”
“Easy words for you, Bora. Vostroma has not been hit so hard as Khalakovo.”
“And Rhavanki is worse off than you.”
“But that’s all changing. Rhavanki’s hauls have been better. Their first plantings look to be healthier than years past.”
“This is my point, Nischka. Nature will do what it will. It matters not what attention you might pay to it.”
This was a thought that came to Nikandr every day, but he refused to believe it. “Did you know that when herds of goats become sick, we have found hordes of black fleas on them?”
“Not surprising with diseased animals.”
Nikandr shook his head. “When we take them in and wash them with vinegar, the goats become well again.”
Borund laughed. “You should have told us. We could have brought you a herd.”
“The potatoes,” Nikandr continued, “if we discover mold in the roots, we know which fields should go untended. I can tell you by looking at a pack of wolves which are infected and how many days it will be before the pack devours them. If I watch the coast of an island for a day, I can tell by the flights of the gulls which shoals will yield the most herring.”
“And by the time the ships get there, things will have changed.”
“That isn’t the point. We learn more all the time, and someday we hope to understand the blight. Perhaps the wasting as well.”
Borund’s expression turned to sadness. “Nischka, the news of your sister’s illness was tragic, but do you really think you can unlock the secrets of her disease?”
Let’s hope so, Nikandr thought. “I’ll never know unless I try.”
Borund shook his head. “The blight and the wasting are unpredictable workings of the world, and nothing you do will change that.”
Suddenly the sounds of a grumbling crowd grew, making it clear the business of unlading the haul had gotten underway. It also made it clear that it was a smaller catch than the crowd had been hoping for-with so many visiting Khalakovo for Council, the palotza would need the ship’s entire catch and most likely several more beyond it.
Gravlos’s smile faded. He led them away from the doors toward the wooden ponies and workbenches. “It’s been getting worse.” He glanced meaningfully at Nikandr. “Not that I’m complaining. I know the people on the Hill have to eat as well. But some don’t see it that way. They say too much is taken from the city, more than a fair share.”
“Our share is what we take,” Borund said before Nikandr could reply.
Gravlos dropped his gaze. “That’s as may be, My Lord Prince, but there’s enough grumbling stomachs to go about, of that I can assure you.”
Borund opened his mouth to reply, but Nikandr raised his hand. “The blight isn’t something we’ll solve by talking, and we have other things to discuss.”
Gravlos nodded and motioned them toward one of his workbenches, upon which sat a complicated mass of wood and iron. Six cylindrical sections of wood, each of which looked like they’d been sawed cleanly from a windship mast, were connected with an arrangement of iron levers and hinges. It looked like two logs laid across one another with a third skewering them both. A complicated mass of hinges at the very center allowed for free movement of each spar. Nikandr knew it was the Gorovna’s rudder, the very same one he’d shown them on the ship two days earlier.
A healthy rudder, when fixed properly in the center of a ship, would align with the keels, and by using the levers at the helm, the rudders would divert the flow of the aether that ran along them, thus turning the ship in the desired direction. The key was not the outer casing of wood, but the obsidian core enclosed within it.
Nikandr could already see that something wasn’t right. Lying on the table, just beneath one of the exposed pieces, was a pile of black powder and stone that looked to have been purposefully chipped away.
He bent over to inspect it. “Why did you do this?”
“Run your finger over the stone.”
Nikandr had no more than touched one of the exposed faces than a section of it crumbled away, adding to the small pile.
Borund did the same to another section. “Was it inferior?”
Gravlos looked insulted. “ Nyet, My Lord, it was not. I chose the blocks myself and inspected each section carefully after milling.”
Borund seemed less than convinced. “Then what happened?”
Gravlos shrugged. “Rudder stone can crack, but that’s after many years, and typically there are only a handful of fractures. Nothing like this.”
The stone hanging from Nikandr’s neck-hidden beneath his shirt-felt suddenly heavier. Clearly whatever had happened to the rudder had also affected his stone; at the very least they were loosely related. He nearly pulled it out to show Gravlos, to get his opinion, but his father’s words felt like they made more sense now-Borund was an old friend, but he couldn’t be trusted to keep word of it quiet-and so he left the stone where it was. “Could it have been the hezhan?”
“Perhaps.” Gravlos ran one hand over his bald head and shrugged. “Who would know?”
Borund rubbed the obsidian powder between his fingers and stared intently at the sparkle that remained. “Were the keels damaged?”
“ Da, which is why the repairs will take so-”
“We cannot accept a ship such as that, Nikandr.”
“The damage did not travel far,” Gravlos continued. “Less than the length of your hand. We’ll be able to cut the keel and lengthen the rudder to-”
Gravlos was cut off by sounds from the crowd. Their grumbling had grown steadily during their conversation, but it had spiked considerably; men were shouting and several women could be heard screaming over them.
They moved quickly to the front of the workshop to see what was happening. No sooner had Gravlos pulled
