Iseult

Íde, brooding and sour-faced, stays in the cabin as I return to the deck of the Gundog Walking, following Sean. He’s leaning on a rain barrel, still sporting the livid black eye that one of his students gave him, and he takes one look at me as I stumbled choppily over to him and asks if I’m alright. I say yes, while choking down an acrid nausea. The answer is, of course, no. Haven’t done proper boats before. Up, and down. Up, and down. Sickening. He leaves to speak with Captain Holofernes about ten minutes later, so I am alone.

Sean told me to focus on the horizon, but Sean also said that ginger and time would help. There’s no sea within a hundred kilometres of Llancreg, so if Sean knows anything about sailing I will be-

“Fuck me in half, are you actually the Bullet Witch?”

The sailor who has appeared spontaneously at my elbow is barefoot, and must have tried to be quiet as he sidled up to me. I am very glad that my nausea keeps me from starting. I shoot him what I hope is a withering glare, stamp down my queasiness, and offer a retort. “Are all of you this forward?”

He grins, revealing a row of clean, uneven teeth. He slouches casually against the rail, entirely immune to the sea-sickness that is happily gurgling inside of me.

“Right you are. Don’t get a lot of celebrities on a little bilge-barge like ours. We wanted to know if you were the real bricky.”

“And what do you think?” I don’t even know what ‘bricky’ means.

That same ingratiated, safecracker’s smile.

“Not sure yet. Sure time’ll tell.”

He unfurls himself from his half-recline, and makes to leave. I hold up a hand. “One moment, sailor,”

“Óengus.”

“Sailor Óengus. Just one thing.”

The Gundog Walking dips, then begins to ascend a swell.

“If you or anyone else on the crew ever calls me a witch again, I will put these bullets in you by hand.” He opens his mouth, half serious, and I cut him off before he starts. “No. Do not. I am not joking. Miss Morrin will do. A witch is someone you behead, then bury, upside down, with a brick breaking her teeth. I am not a witch. You are treading waters here, sailor. And do you know what happens to men who tread water for too long?”

He looks at me, sneer frozen, and I see the concern in his eyes. He masks it with a short, hollow laugh. “No.”

“They drown.”

That flashy, pride-saving smile. “Alright! Alright, Miss Morrin. We’ll be seeing you.”

The sun blurs by. Eventually the queasiness does, too.

I spend most of the voyage in our little cabin, reading, and the days pass under my patience.

*

I don’t need a sextant to know we’ve crossed into the waters of the Wraithwild, because the air gradually becomes spangled with a smell like the ghosts of iron and pine. The sky is lacquered and radiant. I am coming home.

Captain Holofernes and the rest of the Gundog Walking notice it too, and change their movements accordingly. Everyone has shucked their Ildathach-garb, and a few of the sailors have stripped shirtless. The paler ones slather themselves with various pastes, grumbling about the glare of the western sun, the strange strength of the light that rolls off these emerald waves. Their tattoos are amazing, a hodgepodge of wards from different cultures. Al Khazraj glyphs, Yvreathan sigils. Some of those inks are, shockingly, still seething with latent power.

Technically, this trip is taking longer than it needs to. Captain Holofernes mentioned this in passing, and I asked a mate yesterday what she meant. He had grinned, and was more than willing to explain it, in seemingly excruciating detail. If he hoped to lose me in the jargon and the minutiae then he failed to do so.

Amongst the many, many dangers of the seas of Calacar (there are literally thousands, he told me, seemingly on the cusp of listing them all), the primary point of concern for the captain during our particular voyage is a vortex. This one, the one we gave a tremendously generous berth, is called Finbar’s Throat. The mate, an Al Khazraj, uses its proper name: Tawma Bayd. Either way, as with many of the other various whirlpools, vortices, and eddies that speckle the surface of Calacar’s oceans, the Tawma swirls near the western fringes of the Crowmere coast, sucking in the flotsam of the northern sea. This hunger would, the mate assured me, wholly consume the Gundog Walking, were she so careless as to sail near the mouth of the thing. Calacar’s various whirlpools are an established, charted hazard, and losing a ship to one is a sign of unbelievable carelessness. Sometimes ships make the more dangerous journey between the Tawma and the coast, and run the dual risks of either crashing into concealed sand banks amidst the Crowmere coast’s bewildering tides or being pulled into the merciless currents of the vortex. But there’s no reason for the ship to take that risk, so we add a considerable number of hours to our journey. As the crow flies, this trip could be completed in roughly five days. Safety, unfortunately, enforces a minutely longer schedule.

After I excused myself from the mate’s lecture, I returned to the stern of the Gundog Walking to join a member of the crew and watch a pair of dolphins crest the sea in our wake. Occasionally, they emerge through islands of matted, green scum, which break apart like the thin skeins of ice that form on the Ilda in the winter. Days into our voyage, I’ve mostly adjusted to the swaying of the ship, and alleviate the lightest brush of queasiness by staring at the sailor’s grip on the guard rail. Her head is shaved, aeronaut-style, and her hands are tattooed, knuckles to wrist. The swirling patterns of an air sailor, a verbiage that I’ve only recently begun to decipher. That particular spiral- a thousand miles. Repeated a dizzying array of times across her forearms, and who knows where else. Other shapes, some metaphorical, some literal. A painted tale of hunts and flights. I remember talking to her quietly, comparing tattoos and tall tales, on the second day of our voyage. What was her name? Alma? Alannah?

Another sailor sidles up to us, a cluster of billhooks bundled in his arms. He offers one to my quiet companion, then looks at me. I accept, though am not precisely sure what he intends me to do with the thing. He nods, gratefully, and the sailor (Awlda?) sets her face and spits into the sea. One of her forearms is dense with a tattooed knot of writhing snakeskin. These tattoos blur between overlapping shades of blue and black, courtesy of asymmetries in the way she has worn her sleeves and the way her skin has tanned and faded over the years. Stylised sea-monster coils- a sturwurm, I think. Seeing an actual sturwurm at sea would be a catastrophe. Having one engraved into flesh is, apparently, acceptable. Not for the first time, I regret not dedicating more time to studying the sea-ink, to teasing any of its useful secrets from the crew or from what scant literature I’ve seen in Ildathach.

She gestures towards one of the islands of viridian scum that is clinging to the ship’s hull, and speaks disdainfully. One of her front teeth is missing.

“Noble rot. Don’t have this problem in the sky, eh? Can never tell when it’s just a clump. Sometimes these rot pillars go down for miles. Not great for the ship.”

Most of the algal gunk is behind us, though this small islet has latched itself onto the stern of the Gundog Walking. It’s not moving, or coiling, but it does seem strangely interested in the wood of the ship. The pair lean over and hack at it with the billhooks. I stand beside them, occasionally hooking a meagre portion of the dense, cloying stuff. It’s not easy work, and a half an hour of labour in the midday sun has me sweating.

“Have to get rid of it as soon as it starts congealing on the hull. Always seems to attract more. Then you’ve got a rotberg, and then you’ve got a problem.”

We finish the job. I learn the slapdash insights that sailors have regarding the rot- that it washes up on shore when it wants to die, that eating it curses you, that it occasionally snatches ships, totally, from the open sea. I’ve never seen the rot act so aggressively. Unmoving piles of rot spackle beaches all along the coast of the continent, home to nothing but sand fleas and crabs. They leave, soon after, and leave me with the quiet beauty of the Wraithwild sea.

The dolphins disappear below the rot-flecked waves, and do not return. The drumroll strength of the sun, somehow the same temperature as it was in Yvreathe but noticeably more brutal, beats down upon the deck. Even before we see the shore, I can feel the potency of wilder magics in my clenched fists.

A few minutes later, Íde approaches me on the creaking deck. She’s still wearing Ildathach-clothes, and appears to not care about the change in climate. As with the sailor, we stand side-by-side, quietly. I wonder where Sean has gone. Normally she clings to his side, and the two have taken to spending an hour a day practicing Sean’s profession while abovedeck, much to the amusement of some of the sailors.

“So you’re from the Wraithwild?”

The ship lists like it’s punch-drunk, and I wonder if she’ll go away if I don’t speak.

Over the last few days, Sean mentioned to be nicer to her, on several occasions. Fine.

“Yes.” I debate saying more, and imagine Sean’s disapproving face at my frostiness.

This turns out to be unnecessary, because my reply releases an unexpected flood of words from Íde. “We’ve only read about the Bani Yathrib in books. You’re the first one I’ve met in real life. Well, really met. Obviously they come to Saint Listless’ every once in a while as visiting scholars. Is it true that most of you don’t live in cities? Are your tattoos from a specific tribe? Is it true that you don’t believe in the Saints? That you pray to the sun?”

Well, I know Sean isn’t always right about people. I debate telling her about the Wraithwild. The landscapes measured in miles, not yards. The unrelatable and the unreal. The biomes which shift by the decade. I opt instead to pluck at the wall of questions and hope that she’ll pick up on the vagueness of my responses.

“We believe in the holiness of the sun, yes.”

“But,” and here she reconsiders, as if waiting for the resolution of some internal dialogue. “The Saints actually existed.”

The Gundog Walking sags under a particularly large swell, and I consider how stupid this point is. “The sun actually exists.”

“Well, yes, of course the sun exists. But the Saints founded Yvreathe and Khazraj and the Wraithwild! They had actual real impact! You can see their work all over Ildathach! All over the continent!”

Be nice. “Yes. We don’t doubt the Saints existed. But do you believe in the Saints of Khazraj? Or even the Tecuani Tetrad, the Far Coast Saints?”

She shakes her head. “Well. No. They’re not our Saints.”

“Right. Yvreathe’s Saints extend to the western edge of the Aergan. But for us, we don’t believe in the holiness of people, Saints or not. We believe in stars.”

Íde cocks her head. “Wait. All of them?”

“Yes.”

“All of the stars?”

“Yes Íde. All of the stars.”

“You pray to all of the stars?”

Be. Nice.

“Well. No. We don’t pray to anything. We just know they’re there. And that they love us. And that we are made of the same fire that they are, and so is everything on Calacar. It’s hard, sometimes. To see the evil in the world, and to know it is a perversion of what was intended by the sun. The stars don’t tell us to do anything. They don’t give us tasks; they don’t ask for prayers. They just love us, totally and unconditionally.

“Maybe some of the Saints were never human. Maybe they were like stars.”

Miraculously, this minor blasphemy stops her. It’s not the type of thing I’d normally say, but she seems so… earnest. She doesn’t press the matter, doesn’t ask about how our religious differences fit into the Saint’s threefold deaths, or the mistletoe and the bulls, or any of the other religious incongruities that this divergence brings forth. Perhaps the part of her brain that fuels her curiosity has finally been caught by the part of her brain that realises that I’m forcing myself to be nice.

“When you say… they love us, do you mean-“

“No, not literally,” I cut her off. “Just… if you accept that the Saints built Yvreathe for you, and they founded your city, and they performed those miracle: understand that the stars built Calacar for everyone. That’s it.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Long minutes pass, and she squeaks out a goodbye before stepping back to the hatch that leads belowdecks.

A sailor saunters up to me, hands tight around a truly vicious looking harpoon, and asks me if the dolphins are still following us. I shake my head, and he shrugs noncommittally. He grins at Íde’s retreating shape, and makes sure she sees him leering when she turns around to descend the ladder. On the horizon, racing from one side of the ocean to the other, I spot the new moon. It moves across the eastern sky in a shallow arc before passing in front of a high, wispy cloud, then sinks gently under the horizon.

*

Docking at Brixa Thalaam is unremarkable. First mate Ceinfryn speaks a flat-accented Thalaami, with a fluency that surprises me. The overseer’s mood is more jovial than that of the sour-faced inspector who held our ship for an hour in the Ildathach docks. She’s not even carrying a weapon. When the men and women of the Gundog Walking share bread and coffee with the harbourmaster and his entourage, it’s not a forced friendliness. Maybe it’s the weather.

A colossal statue of Saint Teneral, Brixa Thalaam’s only Saint, welcomes us into the harbour. His two titan-feet are planted on opposite sides of the narrow canal that leads us to the city’s protected bay. I’ve never sailed into Brixa Thalaam, but the Saint looks just as majestic as he did two decades ago. His welcoming arm beckons the Gundog Walking to the docks, and gulls roost on the bronze halo that frames his affable features. The gleaming javelin in his other hand must be close to forty yards long.

When we’re sailing between his legs, one of the sailors points up, and makes a vulgar reference to the lack of detailing around the statue’s groin. It must be an old joke, because the rest of the crew groans before she finishes speaking.

We glide through the lapping tide, under the clear heat of the morning sun. In Ildathach, the heat follows the sun slowly, and the warmth of the day only really arrives hours after the sun has first emerged. Here, thank the stars, the light and the heat are drawn together, hand in hand. I smile as the sun suffuses my bones again, and bask in the heat that rises off the clear ocean waters.

Sean murmurs something behind me, and I glance over at him. He isn’t talking to me- he repeats himself, to Íde, who is slack-jawed next to us. “Clear the space.”

She looks over at him, confused, and he tugs her shirtsleeve with one gentle hand. When she steps forward, the sailors who take her place immediately start organising loose coils of nearby ropes, and nod their thanks to Sean.

Brixa Thalaam, the largest city in the Wraithwild, has sprouted and flourished inside of this protected bay, connected to the sea by the long canal carved by Saint Teneral. The sea is calm, and clear, and the bay floor can be seen clearly, perhaps eight or ten yards down from where we are now. I stare for a moment at the scintillating patchwork, mesmerised by the beauty of the water-polished stones. The Thalaami boast that their bay has colours that cannot be found anywhere else on Calacar. The movement of the Gundog Walking and the gentle sway of the sea transform swathes of the seabed into muted, glitter-hued rainbows.

A memory catches me by surprise, one of those ones that floats up, unbidden, after years. My first time in the city, as a teenager after leaving the Bani Yathrib. Spending those first few days outside, pulling a rock from the bay and being lost in its vibrant beauty. Ten seconds after fishing it out, I found it unbelievably gorgeous. Ten minutes later, after it had dried completely, it was just another rock.

I’m steeped in an unexpected feeling of sad romance, and I carry this memory with me as we spend several minutes docking, leaving the Gundog Walking, and prowling the streets for the building where Evin’s contact lives. Colt & Tumble has given us an address, but in true Thalaami style there are no actual street names anywhere.

It seemed bigger, the last time I was here. Ildathach is the biggest, densest city on Calacar- Brixa Thalaam is barely a third its size. The streets are more ordered than I remember, or perhaps they are simply better organised than Ildathach’s. Before leaving the docks, we pass a shockingly well-behaved flock of blunt-beaked naemi, marched down a wide avenue by a bored shepherd to whatever slaughterhouse awaits them. Two decades ago, these streets were overwhelming. Now all I notice is the flat beige of the stones and the centuries of dirt ground between worn flagstones.

Outsiders and Thalaamis mix at every intersection and street corner, merchants from across Calacar intersecting in this nexus, hawking and howling. Wherever we walk, we see quiet barefoot men and women, we hear the rustle of soft cloth, we smell the heady rush of cloves and charcoal. Everyone in Yvreathe wears clothes that are some variation of blue, green, or brown. Here the streets are rampant with gorgeous colours. There’s another difference, once that I only notice now, after spending so long in Ildathach. Everyone is carrying a weapon.

We attract the wary gaze of a Wraithwild thylacine as we drift too close to a Thalaami butcher, and Íde starts when the animal rolls itself upright from its reclined position and cough-barks at her. Its owner, who is gripping an immense cleaver in one hand and is gesticulating to a series of chopped organs with the other, doesn’t seem to care. The thylacine doesn’t break eye contact with Íde, who spends several seconds staring at it before we push on down the street.

Brixa Thalaam is cut in half by a single immense boulevard, and it is by this road that we tread, over the hours, towards where I think Evin Tumble’s contact should be. In Ildathach, everything is some sort of grey or green- even the sky generally keeps a sad, foggy hue. The Wraithwild sun beats flatly on all of us, but Brixa Thalaam, chased in orange and white, bears none of the melancholy that seems permanently seeped into Yvreathan stone. There are fewer people, yet a greater number of smiles. I smell cardamom. I feel happier.

I also get significantly less attention here than in Ildathach. Few pedestrians openly gawk at my tattoos, and the throngs of streetside hawkers and cart-salesmen switch to approximations of Bani Yathrib greetings when they see me approach. Sean, resting his hand on the hilt of a short sword the width of his palm, drinks everything in. Our young sigilist does the same, though her shock and glee are far less reserved.

Khazraj lies adjacent to the Wraithwild, so there’s many more Al Khazraj in Brixa Thalaam than there are in Ildathach. Five soldiers, Al Sāqa guards from the distant Hubal Queendom, march beside us. Their faces are hidden behind scowling white masks. Each carries an enormous cannister slung to their chests: Hubalite sun-spikers, kept in hard cases to protect their lenses. They entirely encircle a smaller figure, dressed head-to-foot in black lace and barely visible between her pack of Al Sāqa guardsmen. Whoever she is, this Hubalite dignitary, she’s a far long way from home, and important enough to warrant an immense degree of security. Nobody stays in the way of the pack for very long, and they plough through the crowd like a boat through the Thalaami bay.

This city has a sane government: fewer enemies, both inside and out. You get so used to seeing squadrons of heavily armed Constabulary in Ildathach that you forget what it’s like to be in a normal place. We settle into a slow stroll through the main thoroughfare, up light inclines and around the tiny green spaces that Brixa Thalaam is famous for. We hook off the path, tracing through streets that I half-remember- the storefronts have changed and shifted, but the buildings are the same. Either way, the sunlight and the sandstone are familiar enough, brief nostalgic totems of my adolescence. At one point we stop for coffee, and Íde drops her pack instantly, massaging her shoulders. She is captivated by a gently curving Thalaami building, a single stripe of wood some two stories tall that bends gracefully around an apartment block, sheathing the entire façade in a thick sheet of purpose-grown heartwood. No tool-marks mar its flawless, swirling surface, save for where its inhabitants have hewn great windows out of the timber.

We press on, coffee-fuelled, drawing closer to the address Evin gave us. There’s a heaviness in the afternoon light, and the blanketing vibrancy of the sun lends a pleasant, feral feel to the buildings. I pause to catch my breath on a flight of stairs. We’re six stories up, treading the bleached fungalboard stairwell of a seemingly endless row of apartments. Gorgeous iron balconies jut into the street from wide-windowed houses, shading the stones below.

This is the building that houses our contact.

These aren’t the solid stone steps of Ildathach. These aren’t even the vaguely treacherous wooden steps of Ildathach, for that matter. Our search for the address has led us deeper into Brixa Thalaam than foreigners normally travel. I spent less than a year in the city, almost two decades ago, and never ventured this far into the stranger quarters. Stares greet us from unfriendly figures lurking in hard shadows. Most of the windows here are intricately carved wooden frames, cut through with eddies and heavily-detailed holes to let the light in. The mushroom boards that this stairwell has been built from squelch pleasantly underfoot.

I look down at Tumble’s letter, and check the address against the tiles mounted above each door. No, no, no- yes. I knock.

The door squelches open, pleasantly- like a ripe mango ground underfoot. The man who opens the door is small, wizened, and wrapped in the alabaster cloth of an Al Khazraj nomad. Distant cousins of the Bani Yathrib. I greet him in polite Thalaami, and he gently nods without offering a response. He invites us past the threshold, vaguely waving us in with a shovel-like hand. I remove my shoes and tell Sean and Íde to do the same. Whether or not the old man cares about our manners is a mystery, for he disappears through another door and we are left standing, barefoot, in his foyer.

As with most Thalaami buildings, the walls here are tall and the corridor is thin. I’m struck with the beauty of the entrance- the simple designs worked into the tiles, the spotless interior. Sean leans forward, whispers awkwardly into my ear: “So do we… follow him?”

In truth, I have no idea. I was counting the number of slippers in our contact’s shoe cabinet, searching for non-Thalaami footwear in case there are other guests in the apartment.

The old man’s wiry head pokes out through doorway he disappeared into, and he again wordlessly gestures for us to follow. We do so.

Sickly waterpipe vapour billows from the room, the redolent smoky sweetness of the Far Coast. Tigerleaf, by the acridity. The old man holds the door open for us as we pass quietly inside. I know Sean will be fine in this setting, but I take a moment to glance back at Íde to make sure she’s not doing anything embarrassing. She’s not, for now, and follows us with curious eyes and a dazed smile.

Immense cushions in a parade of colours and patterns are scattered tastefully about the floor, and on one of these pillows perches our contact. Behind us, the old man closes the delicate fungalboard door in almost total silence. Our contact smiles, and welcomes us in accented Irdcheol: “Friends! Welcome. Please, sit.”

He offers us, Thalaami-style, to share from the shisha, and starts assembling extra hoses onto the gorgeous ivory vessel.

The man is dressed in traveller’s attire, in the manner of a Wraithwild city-dweller. His clothing is immaculate, so this attire is either for tradition or show. His loose white shirt is cinched at the waist by a belt of charmed discs, most of which have been inscribed with simple emptiness configurations. His hair is cropped short, as is his beard, and his face is long and patient. I graciously take the pipe that he offers, glad to feel the heat return to my lungs.

Besides the man, who is almost certainly Evin’s contact, the room is strewn with tasteful Thalaami designs. Thin scarlet rugs cover most of the tiled floor, and the ceiling has been vaulted and decorated with dense marquetry. A copper chandelier droops from a thick iron spine, which has been hammered into the centre of the ceiling. It sits, heavy and idle, bereft of candles or incense.

The tigerleaf is strong, significantly bitterer than the herbs that I am used to. He speaks to me, in Thalaami: “We make a different blend these days. Delicious.”

He blows a crimson cloud overhead, politely. Simultaneously worrying and frustrating: he’s clocked me as a new returnee to my own country. Or Evin Tumble gave him some forewarning. I, conversely, can read very little of him.

Sean, Íde and I are arrayed on various cushions, sitting cross-legged across from the contact and his squat glass table. Coffee has been arranged, apparently, and the old man who greeted us at the door arrives with extra cups and a dallah with no actual words exchanged between him and our contact. He leaves with the same eerie quiet.

I regard our contact over the rim of a delicate coffee cup, acknowledging that our hospitality has been confirmed and the conversation can properly start.

“I am, as you are aware, Ābreen il Kutrib,” he says, returning to Irdcheol and omitting the remainder of the title that he would normally reserve for polite Thalaami or Al Khazraj company. The delicate ivory of his waterpipe bounces in one hand. His own coffee lies on the table, untouched. I introduce myself, and Sean, and Íde, and slip into the easy ritual of Thalaami dialogue. We burn through several cups of coffee before any concrete questions start. Ābreen moves first, and with surprising bluntness.

“I am not entirely sure what Colt & Tumble plans to do with the material they’ve requested. It is a ghastly thing, oleum. Typical of the gentleman’s rather heavy touch. Tremendously difficult to make, quite specific in application. Used to be able to squeeze it out of whales, before that whole unpleasantness. But as for Colt & Tumble- what are their plans? Phosgene? Weapons? Please,” his voice has shifted to a purr. “Enlighten me.”

The man speaks with a specific articulation, like he believes that his words are going to someday be carved into stone. In most other situations, I’d be wary of revealing too much. I know that Sean would tell Ābreen the entire story immediately- not due to any sort of naivete, of course, just because that’s how Sean is. As for Íde, I have no idea, nor do I truly care. By the way she’s burning through the waterpipe, she’s content to simply simmer in the background.

I weigh the benefits of being deceitful. Ābreen and Evin certainly know each other. And besides which, Evin never explicitly told me to be discrete. Besides, Colt & Tumble are building a titanic artillery platform in the northern sea, from which they will try to kill a moon. How long can they keep that a secret? I start to summarise the story, then pause and start again, editing with only sparse omissions. He listens politely, alternating between coffee and tigerleaf.

A few minutes later, Ābreen holds up a long-fingered hand. “I understand for now. Truthfully, the truth is far stranger than I expected. You certainly possess a particular bravery to try.”

His hands move with a practiced precision as he refills the cups. First ours, then his. His skinny frame belies an unexpected strength, to lift a tin Al Khazraj dallah like that. During this refilling ceremony I track, through his immense windows, a seagull as it soars through the heavy summer heat.

“The entire stockpile of oleum under my control, and under the control of my associates, would weigh approximately five and a half tonnes. That will be a sufficient amount to pay for my previous engagement with Colt & Tumble.”

The way he says it, there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. His expression is polite, almost pained.

“Things aren’t, however, quite that linear. Ms. Colt’s activities around the Salting Bleaks laid me in her debt. They also, however, laid her in mine,” his eyes narrow, become pantherine. “There is a favour that must be repaid to me. To me and a number of others, in truth, but I will accept the compensation. How much do you know of the Shorn Peak?”

It’s a ridiculous question. I’m Bani Yathrib. He carries on, without waiting for me to respond, and I realise halfway through his explanation that this speech is for the benefit of the other two. It also has the added bonus of preventing me from asking him what Colt & Tumble actually did in the Salting Bleaks, a hundred miles northwest of here. Something heavy, by the way he’s choosing his words.

“The Peak is, of course, far, far southwest of Brixa Thalaam. It bleeds magic into the Wraithwild, and its foothills are a toxic wilderness. Until recently, these lands have been centralised around the mountain itself. The air is choked with poison, the water tends to boil the blood of men. Nobody actually makes it all the way to the base of the Peak, you understand. In recent months, though, there has been a,” he pauses, and fumbles for the word in Irdcheol. He asks me the phrase in Thalaami, and I translate the closest word I can, to which he nods and continues.

“-Sporing. A piece of forest we normally only associate with the foothills of the Peak has overgrown to an area that previously we understood, near the town of Nabat. Its presence is being very closely watched by all manner of Wraithwild actors, myself among them. I, however, am restricted from travelling to this forest- what we are calling a Bloom. As are all of my associates. But you are not, my friends.”

Íde cuts in, brow furrowed. It’s the first time she’s spoken the entire time she’s been here. “Sporing?”

Ābreen nods, and gestures towards the table, strewn with the accoutrements of his hospitality.

“Say that large bowl is the terrain that immediately surrounds the Peak. And say our cups are the various permanent settlements of the Wraithwild.” He pauses to rearrange the geography. “For reference, Brixa Thalaam would be somewhere over here.” and here he waves to a vague area of space about a yard away from the table’s edge.

It’s an easy enough metaphor. The bowl-and-cup arrangement has the look of an orrery, with the Shorn Peak/bowl occupying an empty circle of space in the middle of the table. Diametrically opposed, a small cup that must represent Cotton Castle, and the beginning of Khazraj proper, on the other side of the Wraithwild. A few scattered totems, each representing a Wraithwild town or village, keep a respectful distance from the central bowl.

“As you know, the closer you get to the Peak, the more potent the magic of the Wraithwild becomes.” His finger traces a graceful curve towards the bowl. “Very few Wraithwilders will ever even see the Peak, as we won’t risk crossing the thresholds close to the mountain. Even the bravest tribes barely reach the foothills,” his eyes flick to me, meaningfully, “and they are quick enough to leave. Too close to the Peak and living things change, or die. Or both.”

“Life still thrives in the shadow of the Peak. But people do not. If you find the Wraithwild steppe unusual, you have no idea how strange things can become that close to the Peak. And now, you see, a piece of that land has moved. Spored is, perhaps, the best word for it. It’s like the one of the strange zones that make up the outskirts around the Peak,” he leans over and plucks an empty bowl from a side table, “Is moving north. We refer to it as a Bloom.” He places the empty bowl down, closer to another cup on the table. His hands are pointed directly at it. “It’s within a dozen miles of the town of Nabat. It’s either moving slowly, or expanding daily.”

If Sean’s interested, he’s concealing it. Maybe he’s waiting for my reaction, or maybe the fact that a piece of Wraithwild can migrate doesn’t surprise him. Ābreen reaches the end of his monologue.

“I will arrange a Pathfinder for you. He will lead you to the Bloom. Tell no other Thalaami what the plan is. Once you’re in the Bloom, your guide will help you acquire something for me. Something that I have craved for quite some time now. Once I have it, the oleum is yours.”

The frankness of his request, combined with its unexpected caveats, takes me by surprise. I thought we were here simply here to collect cargo from the contact. Now he’s changed the parameters, leaving us wrong-footed.

Sean’s frowning, trying to catch my eye. We need to talk.

“Ābreen - thank you very much for your hospitality. And for the privilege of being offered this task. Do you mind if we retire for a moment to discuss this further?”

I unfold myself from the turquoise cushion before he offers a response, wincing as my knees pop. Sean does the same. There’s a little clinkclink as Íde returns her coffee cup to the table with caffeine-jittery hands. Evin’s contact doesn’t stir, but I feel his gaze settle on the nape of my neck as we leave the room and return to the foyer.

“What do you think?”

Sean’s question has a specific weight, and his grimace conveys the response he wants me to make.

I shrug, and counter simply. “Did you expect Colt & Tumble to give us an easy job? If it were something that could be done this simply, Captain Holofernes could have taken care of it. Besides which, it’s not like we have to go to the Peak. Just near something that used to be in its foothills. I’m actually more interested in finding out what they did at the Salting Bleaks. Why they even know this man in the first place.”

Sean raises his eyebrows, then frowns, absorbing this information. Íde speaks.

“But how are we even going to get to Nabat? Isn’t that at least a day south? And how sure are you that we can navigate in a Wraithwild forest?”

“We walk. Main road is safe, or should be safe enough. Fewer bandits out here than in Yvreathe, and I speak Mutafasih in case we run into any Bani Yathrib.” I don’t mention the faint hope I have of that precise eventuality. “Making our way to the Peak itself would be impossible. Everyone knows this. I’m not concerned that we’re being marched to our death- if this Bloom is similar to the forest around the Shorn Peak, without the threat of dying after being exposed to it for a few minutes, it should be doable.”

I’ve made up my mind.

“Yes. We go with this Pathfinder, we get whatever it is Ābreen wants, we get back. This is the Wraithwild. Nobody does any weird political games here, or tries that kind of scheming, not like in Ildathach. And it’s not like we can say no, unless you want to go back to Colt & Tumble empty handed.”

Sean looks at Íde, then back to me, and pinches the bridge of his nose. I wonder if he suspects that there’s some unstated reason why I want to head back into the Wraithwild. “Íde’s not wrong, you know. It could be dangerous. I trust you, but we’re not from this country. All I know about the Shorn Peak are the stories.”

I nail him with a look that I hope conveys my point. “Of course it’s dangerous. But it’s not like we’re helpless. Besides which, stop thinking in Yvreathan terms. We’re not being sent to die out in the woods, we’re not part of some master scheme. Colt & Tumble employed us. We can settle their debts. We’re getting paid for it. That’s it.

“And as for the stories- we’re not going to the Peak itself, because that would kill us. We’re going to something related to it. But we’ll never see the mountain itself.”

They both stare at me, clearly unhappy. To be honest, I don’t really care. There wasn’t ever really any doubt what the outcome would be. Yvreathans have a lot of stories about the Shorn Peak, though none of them ever travel near it. If these two are worried about being killed by a knotwork volcano or a star-signaller or whatever other theory about the Peak is currently being pushed around Ildathach, that’s their problem. Not mine.

We pad back to the meeting room, into the red-tinged haze. I bow, then sink back down onto the cushions. My companions remain standing, so I address our host in Thalaami.

“Ābreen il Kutrib. We, of course, accept.”