THOOM!
The crash of sound yanked him back to the present again, scattering his memories like dandelion fluff. He whirled around in the middle of the path to look back across the bay. It was hard to see what was making the noise, but thin streams of smoke were rising from the mainland town. For a moment, Barrick could almost tell himself it was the chimneys, that all was ordinary and he’d heard only thunder. After all, who would be firing a cannon… ?
THOOM! THOOM!
… No, several of them—the Qar? Did they even use them? And where had Saqri gone? Could she be hurt? Could the cannons throw one of their balls this far? He hurried up the hillside path.
No, she said, as close as his own thoughts. Move slowly, Barrick Eddon. There are many eyes watching.
He turned and, to his astonishment, saw that Saqri was now behind him—he had passed her along the way, somehow. She did not speak again when she caught up, but walked on through the grove of twisted, shaggy trees. When she reached the house, the door opened at her touch as though it had been waiting for her.
Barrick followed her inside, overwhelmed by the familiar, musty smells, but also by the exhaustion that dragged at him like a Skimmer net weighted with stones.
“Go and sleep,” Saqri told him, speaking words into the air like any ordinary mortal. “You are safe for the moment. There will be time later for everything else that must be. Sleep.”
Barrick did not argue. One of the beds was disarranged as though it had been slept in, although to judge by the sheets and blankets (which always stiffened in the salty air) that must have been weeks ago at least, but he couldn’t worry about it because sleep was tugging him down as powerfully as the waters of Brenn’s Bay had pulled him, and this time he did not have the strength to stay afloat.
So the bed was unmade. Just now he didn’t care if Kernios himself had slept in it. Barrick dragged off his wet clothes and climbed naked under the stiff sheets. In moments he had fallen into deep slumber.
“We have visitors,” Saqri said from somewhere close by.
Barrick struggled up from the tail end of a dream in which he had searched for Qinnitan up and down the streets of a desert city without ever catching up to her. He opened his eyes, uncertain at first of where he was, but then it all came back to him—the mirror, the green ocean, the god-haunted, dreaming depths. He sat up to find Saqri at the foot of his bed.
“What?” he said, trying to pull his thoughts together. “Visitors?”
He had been joking, but the fairy queen looked over her shoulder toward the main room of the lodge. “In truth, I suppose it is we who are the visitors and they have come to see whether we mean them any harm.”
Barrick could only shake his head, trying to clear out the confusion. “Visitors? Here on M’Helan’s Rock? But the place is empty… !”
Her pale, angular face seemed expressionless. “Do you think so?”
“Very well, then, I’ll come.” He waited for a moment, but she did not move. “Can you go out, please, so I can get dressed? I’m naked.”
Saqri gave him an amused look as she pulled the door closed behind her—but she was sort of his many-times-great-grandmother, wasn’t she? Surely it wouldn’t be proper to dress in front of her as if she were a servant? Barrick scowled as he wrestled on his Qar clothing. It was very odd for her to look so young and beautiful. It confused him.
When he stepped out into the main hall of the lodge, he was uncertain at first of what he was seeing. The very floor seemed alive with movement, as though a carpet had come to life. A hundred or more tiny people were waiting there, he realized with growing astonishment—people as small as the Tine Fay he had met behind the Shadowline, but dressed in hats and hose and jackets like ordinary folk. Their little faces, each smaller than a copper crab, turned toward him expectantly, but Barrick found himself speechless.
One of the tiny figures, a little bearded man, stepped out from the crowd. He was noticeably stout and looked very well dressed, with a fancy hat and minuscule gold chain draped across his chest that might have been part of a child’s bracelet, but which hung as heavily on him as a royal jewel. It was all Barrick could do not to bend down and pick him up to have a closer look.
“Duke Kettlehouse am I,” he said in a voice scarcely louder or deeper than a mouse’s squeak, “master by election of the esteemed Floorboard Assembly of Rooftop-over-Sea, as well as uncle of Queen Upsteeplebat (whom you may have encountered, may her grandiosity remain unambiguous) and I and my folk, whom you see gathered here most bravely before you, wish to welcome you, our lordly lords and ladies…”
A little man with a pointy beard standing next to him, only slightly less well-dressed, poked Kettlehouse with his elbow.
“… and, ah, of course.” Kettlehouse took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Yes. We welcome you to our country again, Queen Saqri. It has been long.”
“Since the war, or almost.” Saqri nodded her head seriously, as if she were not talking to a man smaller than a mouse. “Many times have the winds blown since then. I wish better days had brought us together.”
Kettlehouse looked pleased, if still tentative. “You are most kind, Majesty, most kind. We wish to speak with you about important matters—nay, incredulous matters! You know we have always, despite the difference in our onetime alliance, held the greatest and most tenacious respect for the old ones, our cousins, your people…” The pointy-bearded man gave him another nudge. “Ah. Your pardon. We wish to speak with you, if we may, about our peoples’ future disposition toward each other—if you understand our meaning… ?”
Saqri nodded in that smooth but abrupt and birdlike way she had. “I understand well. I say with only truth on my lips that if by some impossible chance our two peoples survive what is to come, there will no longer be a shadow between us. I say that from the very heart of the People’s House.”
Some of the little people let out a cheer at this pledge; others as far as Barrick could tell, were weeping and blowing their noses, or whispering in excitement. The Fireflower voices, mitigated by the apparent presence of Ynnir, gave him glimpses of the long centuries of estrangement that might end here today.
Was this why we came here? he wondered. Was there more to it than simply swimming to the nearest shore? It was almost impossible to tell with Saqri, as it had been with Ynnir: with both of them, that which was real and fleshly quickly became that which was uncanny. Even simply watching the Qar in their everyday moments was like trying to understand a conversation in someone else’s tongue.
“I am certain I speak for the Floorboard Assembly, then,” announced Duke Kettlehouse after a moment’s consultation with the pointy-bearded man, “when I say that we would be most happy to see that shadow of estrangement gone. Most extremefully happy. But now I must let my secretary, Lord Pindrop, explain to you things of which you may perhaps, begging the pardon of your infallibility, Mistress, not be aware.” He took a step back and allowed the slender, pointy-bearded man to step forward.
“See what is written here,” said Pindrop, proffering a sheet of parchment that seemed as large in his hands as a window shutter. “All the words spoken by Sulepis Autarch and Tolly, the Protector of Southmarch, when they met here only hours ago.”
“What?” Barrick thought he had misheard the tiny man. “Here? The autarch? With a Tolly?”