famous explorer and the Circle’s Sailor.
I said, “It’s terrible that Mist can never know how Tris turns out.”
Lightning glanced over the broken paving stones, the trebuchet shot and abandoned gold loot on the harbor pavement. His gaze loitered on the sea that splintered the dawn light. He was now as suspicious of the ocean as I used to be, and I loved it because it was not the same sea now the kraits swam in its depths. “Yes, it is, Comet. And I wonder if the Empire will ever regain a vestige of normality.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE CASTLE, JANUARY 2021
The paths under the Finial’s arches were slippery with snow that had partially melted and then frozen again. The translucent footprints preserved the detailed marks of boot treads and hobnails. Frost rime edged the stone leaves on the Architect’s Tower, and icicles so long you could spit Insects with them hung from the Bridge of Size, which took the cobbled Eske Road across the Moren River. On the lawns between the Simurgh Wing and outer wall, two centimeters of snow were sealed beneath a centimeter of sparkling ice, blue in the early morning light.
I waited outside the Throne Room in the small cloister, staring out of one of its pointed glassless windows. I was contemplating the fact that if you put the world’s finest-athletically or intellectually-into one Castle and let it stew for a thousand years, the results will not always be palatable.
Looking south between the outer wall and palace, the roof had been rebuilt on the Harcourt Barracks, where the Imperial Fyrd are based. Men were repairing the Dace Gate barbican, and all along the curtain wall flags flew at half-mast.
Next to me, on the spandrels between the little arched windows, were green-men carvings, dead faces with branches growing out of their loose decaying mouths. Their sole purpose was to remind us that one day we will die and be nothing but plant food. It is a thought that spurs Eszai to keep their places in the Circle and mortals to do great deeds and join them, or be remembered for their great deeds alone.
Tris would take years to recover from the damage Gio caused. Lightning, Wrenn, Rayne, Viridian and I had left the island one month after the riot. I last saw it diminishing in the distance under a sunset pink from the amount of soot and burned book dust high in the air. “Ata’s sunsets,” the Capharnai have come to call them.
Lightning was staying at Awndyn convalescing, and with Wrenn’s help he was arranging for a monument to be built on Grass Isle in honor of Ata. Thousands of her extended family had gathered there; I found the way her whole network had clung together rather alarming. But most of all I felt sympathy for Lightning because he also had to find some way of explaining it to Cyan.
I had spent yesterday relating the battle to San, the ensuing riot and the debt we owe to the fifth land: Tris, manorship of Capharnaum. I was now to answer for giving the sea kraits a lodging in our world.
I looked up as Rayne emerged from the Throne Room. “Now i’s your turn,” she said. “I told San everything I witnessed.”
“You told him about Vista Marchan?”
“Yes, but I couldn’ tell if he was surprised.”
I said, “It’s hard to believe I’m not the only Eszai who knows about the Shift. And to find out that
Rayne grinned like a crack in a walnut, showing mottled gums. “When I were a girl. I was a lass once, Jant; isn’t tha’ amazing? Rumors were rife a’ t’ university about i’s effects. I only experimen’ed once, in a spiri’ of scientific inquiry; I didn’ like t’ hallucinations because they were extremely intense. When I saw t’ snake I though’ i’ were like t’ krai’ I saw when I dreamed I was walking in Vista. Then I though’: hmm, that was under the influence of t’ fern scolopendium too. Jant, I
I sighed. “People can learn to meditate their way through the Shift worlds. I doubt I’ll ever be successful at it, but you might be able to-you’re good enough to feel the Circle.”
We looked at each other, wondering if the Emperor himself might have visited the Shift. For all we knew, he might walk there nightly, observing the Insect hordes preparing to burst through into different parts of the Fourlands.
“I have no desire to go back to the Shift, Rayne. Ever since seeing the King krait, how powerful he was, the beauty of his striking colors, and how content and happy the stinguish are, I feel freed from my craving. I’m ready to straighten out. When I’m through withdrawal and recovered from the trauma, I’m going to spend Gio’s treasure on Wrought.”
“For t’ stability of Awia.”
“To win Tern back.”
“You know, Tern felt t’ Circle break. She said tha’ she worried herself sick with t’ though’ tha’ i’ was you. She asked t’ Emperor if you had died and if she was aging, bu’ he wouldn’ tell her.”
I was aware that San was waiting. I pointed to the Throne Room door. “Come with me. I don’t want to walk in there by myself.”
We progressed down the scarlet carpet and through the portal in the screen like a couple about to be married: Rayne in her shawl that had seen better days at the turn of the millennium and me in a new shirt and waistcoat, with a long velvet scarf, fine black eyeliner and my hair cut so short it was cruel to my sharp-boned face.
Rayne curtsied and seated herself on the bench and I knelt before the dais. The shining sunburst behind the Emperor’s throne reflected light in all the zestful colors of the stained glass windows.
“Comet,” San said. “You brought serpents from the Shift to infest our ocean. I cannot think of anything more dangerous and irresponsible than your playing with the boundaries and indigenes of worlds.”
I bowed my head. “Tris is part of the Fourlands; the Fourlands is part of the Shift. They’ve always affected each other. As far as Insects, maritime creatures and…and myself are concerned, it’s a continuum.”
“The snakes will pose as big a problem in the sea as Insects do on land!”
“My lord, I assure you they won’t attack us. They only eat the huge whales that never come near land.”
“And do we not need the whales and shoals? Furthermore the sudden appearance of a sea serpent will threaten people’s very perception of reality.”
I was still desolated that Capharnaum library and its precious manuscripts had been lost. I looked up to let the Emperor perceive my anger. He couldn’t expel me from the Circle so soon after Gio’s rebellion. Although there was much less unrest in the Fourlands now, a bibliophile Messenger can be just as dangerous as a vengeful Swordsman. The Emperor needed me, a Trisian scholar known to the Senate and the sea beasts, and, though unwilling, his loyal servant all year. He sent us out to deal with battles and infernos and he offered no reward, just the measly Castle grant and yet more lifetime. I wondered again about his motivations, but no matter how much I cared I could do nothing. If I angered San he would make me mortal, and without him the Fourlands would be swamped by Insects.
I thought of the picture in the history book, showing San as an unassuming sage-turned-soldier. I spoke with determination: “I know that my decision was best. It saved us and Capharnaum. We stopped Gio, and the Senate will be governors of Tris. You gave me to understand that we should use whatever means necessary, and calling the kraits was the right thing to do…” My voice crawled slower and slower and dried up like a snail on a dirt track.
“You sound unrepentant, Comet.”
“My lord.” I fixed my gaze on the apse where the fifth land’s column should be.
The Emperor understood and regarded me for a long time. “Whatever happens, we can do little about sea kraits at the moment. If mariners and whalers sight them, hopefully they will believe that kraits have continually inhabited our sea. There have always been legends of monsters.” He paused. “Comet, you will not tell anyone of the Shift.”
“I promise.”
“I doubt a debauchee such as yourself can keep his word! How many times has the Circle brought you back
