‘Nothing.’
‘Precisely. My question was in fact rhetorical. Contact has ceased. We acquired nothing essential from them in any case. As for the Wastelands and the motley armies crawling about on them, well, they too have left our environs. We dog them at our peril, I believe.’
‘The Queen marches beside some of those armies, Highness. We must assume she has discovered something, providing a compelling reason for remaining in their company.’
‘They march to Kolanse.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And we don’t know why.’
The handmaid said nothing.
Felash sent a stream of smoke ceilingward. ‘Tell me again of the undead in the Wastelands.’
‘Which ones, Highness?’
‘The ones who move as dust on the winds.’
The handmaid frowned. ‘At first I thought that they alone were responsible for the impenetrable cloud defying my efforts. They number in the thousands, after all, and the one who leads them emanates such blinding power that I dare not look too long upon it. But now… Highness, there are others. Not dead to be sure. Even so. One of darkness and cold. One of golden fire high in the sky. Another at his side, a winged knot of grief harder and crueller than the sharpest cut diamond. Still others, hiding in the howl of wolves-’
‘Wolves?’ Felash cut in. ‘Do you mean the Perish?’
‘No and yes, Highness. I can be no clearer than that.’
‘Wonderful. Go on.’
‘Yet another, fiercer and wilder than all the others. It hides inside stone. It swims in a sea thick with the pungent flavours of serpents. It waits for the moment, and grows in its power, and facing it… Highness, whatever it faces is more dreadful than I can bear.’
‘This clash-will it occur on the Wastelands?’
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘Do you think my mother knows?’
The handmaid hesitated, and then said, ‘Highness, I cannot imagine her cedas to be anything but utterly blind and thus ignorant of that threat. It is only because I am able to see from this distance, from the outside, as it were, that I have gleaned as much as I have.’
‘Then she is in trouble.’
‘Yes. I think so, Highness.’
‘You must find a way,’ said Felash, ‘to reach through to her.’
‘Highness. There is one way, but it risks much.’
‘Who will bear that risk?’
‘Everyone aboard this ship.’
Felash pulled on her mouthpiece, blew rings that floated, wavered and slowly flattened out, drifting to form a chain in the air. Her eyes widened upon seeing it.
The handmaid simply nodded. ‘He is close, yes. My mind has spoken his name.’
‘And this omen here before us?’
‘Highness, one bargains with an Elder God at great peril. We must pay in blood.’
‘Whose blood?’
The handmaid shook her head.
Felash tapped the amber tube against her teeth, thinking. ‘Why is the sea so thirsty?’
Again, there was no possible answer to that question. ‘Highness?’
‘Has the damned thing a name? Do you know it?’
‘Many names, of course. When the colonists from the First Empire set forth, they made sacrifice to the salty seas in the name of Jhistal. The Tiste Edur in their great war canoes opened veins to feed the foam, and this red froth they called Bloodmane-in the Edur language that word was Mael. The Jheck who live upon the ice call the dark waters beneath that ice the Lady of Patience, Barutalan. The Shake speak of Neral, the Swallower.’
‘And on.’
‘And on, Highness.’
Felash sighed. ‘Summon him, and we shall see what cost this bargain.’
‘As you command, Highness.’
On the foredeck, Shurq Elalle straightened as the lookout cried out. She faced out to sea. That’s a squall. Looks to be a bad one. Where in the Errant’s bung-hole did that come from? ‘Pretty!’
Skorgen Kaban clumped into view from amidships. ‘Seen it, Cap’n!’
‘Swing her out, Pretty. If it’s gonna bite, best we lock jaws with it.’ The thought of the storm throwing Undying Gratitude on to that treefall shore wasn’t a pleasant one, not in the least.
The black wire-wool cloud seemed to be coming straight for them.
‘Piss in the boot, this dance won’t be fun.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE SEASON OF HIGH FLOOD
GAMAS ENICTEDON
Children will wander. they will walk as if the future did not exist. Among adults, the years behind one force focus upon what waits ahead, but with children this is not so. The past was a blur of befuddled sensations, the future was white as the face of the sun. Knowing this yielded no comfort. Badalle was still a child, should one imagine her of a certain age, but she walked like a crone, tottering, hobbling. Even her voice belonged to an old woman. And the dull, fused thing behind her eyes could not be shaken awake.
She had a vague recollection, a memory or an invention, of looking upon an ancient woman, a grandmother perhaps, or a great aunt. Lying shrunken on a bed, swaddled in wool blankets. Still breathing, still blinking, still listening. And yet those eyes, in their steady watching, their grainy observation, showed nothing. The stare of a dying person. Eyes spanning a gulf, slowly losing grip on the living side of the chasm, soon to release and slide to the side of death. Did those eyes feed thoughts? Or had things reduced to mere impressions, blobs of colour, blurred motions-as if in the closing of death one simply returned to the way things had been for a newborn? She could think of a babe’s eyes, in the moments and days after arriving in the world. Seeing but not seeing, a face of false smiles, the innocence of not-knowing.
She had knelt beside a nameless boy, there on the very edge of the Crystal City, and had stared into his eyes, knowing he saw her, but knowing nothing else. He was beyond expression (oh, the horror of that, to see a human face beyond expression, to wonder who was trapped inside, and why they’d given up getting out). He’d studied her in turn-she could see that much-and held her gaze, as if he’d wanted company in his last moments of life. She would not have turned away, not for anything. The gift was small for her, but all she had, and for him, perhaps it was everything.
Was it as simple as that? In dying, did he offer, there in his eyes, a blank slate? Upon which she could scribble anything she liked, anything and everything that eased her own torment?
She’d find those answers when her death drew close. And she knew she too would remain silent, watchful, revealing nothing. And her eyes would look both beyond and within, and in looking within she would find her private truths. Truths that belonged to her and no one else. Who cared to be generous in those final moments? She’d be past easing anyone else’s pain.