Chapter 652: More Than One Word

Anastasia’s letter reached them on the morning they left Oruth, and it came the long way round.

It had gone from the capital to Aelstrom by courier, and from there across half the world on the wind, folded inside a knot of moving air that came down out of a clear sky onto the Lark’s deck just as Sarai Vell was casting off. The envoy caught it in one hand without looking, as though she had been expecting it, and held it out to Vane.

"From Thessaly," she said. "Forwarded. She says she didn’t read it." A pause. "She says that in a tone that suggests she did."

It was three pages, in Anastasia’s clean, upright hand. He read it once to himself, and then aloud.

Vane.

My father has gone to the coast. He took his charts, and the scale from the Hesket shelf, and two ships of the line, and no one else. He says he is going hunting. He means it literally. I don’t know what he is hunting. I don’t think he does either. That is what he likes about it.

Evangeline wrote to him that the last scale of that size came up three hundred and twelve years ago, that Zenith was built the next spring, and that the sea came ashore ten years later. She told him to take the hint. He took it as an invitation.

Valerica had gone very still beside him. Isaac had put down his book.

There is something else. A naval officer from the Hesket station reported that Ormond passed through the harbor a few days after Holloway, with a boy of about ten. He took a station boat and sailed west, past the shelf, alone. He did not say where. My father did not ask.

I think the boy is Corin. I think you thought so too.

I don’t know what is out past the shelf. Nobody here does. But Ormond never in his life went anywhere without a reason, and he has never in his life been wrong about what a child was worth to someone. I thought you should know. I thought you would want to.

I’m still reading the dispatches that nobody reads. If you need me to do something with my father’s seal that he won’t notice, write.

A.

There was a postscript, smaller, squeezed in at the bottom of the last page.

Tell Valerica I’m sorry about the letter at the gate. Tell her I’m not very sorry.

Valerica made a sound that was very nearly a laugh, and turned away to look at the sea.

"Past the shelf," Isaac said slowly.

Everyone looked at him.

He had gone pale, which was hard to tell on someone born in the Glacial Palace.

"When Mother told me about the Drowned Palace," he said, "I asked her where it was. She said nobody knew. She said that three hundred years ago it went down into the water somewhere west of the continent, and that every chart that ever marked it was lost or burned." He looked up. "But she said the last people to see it go down were standing on the Hesket shelf. That’s where the story starts. That’s the last place anyone saw the Drowned Palace above the water."

Nobody spoke for a moment. The Lark’s panes rang softly in the wind.

"He’s taking Corin there," said Vane.

"We don’t know that."

"Valerica."

"I know." She did not turn round from the rail. "I know. I think so too. I’m saying we don’t know it, because in about one minute you’re going to say we should turn west and fly out over the open Abyss looking for a Palace nobody has seen in three hundred years, and I’d like it on record that I said we don’t know."

Vane said nothing. She was right. He had been about to say it.

"It’s on record," said Isole quietly.

"Thank you." Valerica turned at last. Her face was very composed. "Here’s the problem. The Abyss is the largest thing in the world. If we fly out past the shelf without knowing where we’re going, we’ll fly until the Lark runs out of wind, and then we’ll fall into it. We need a chart. Not a story. A chart."

"Mother said they were all burned," said Isaac.

"Every chart in the Empire, perhaps. Every chart in the Glacial Palace." Valerica looked at Sarai Vell. "Thessaly’s list. The third name. The one in the middle of the continent."

The envoy’s eyebrows rose very slightly.

"The Meridian," she said.

"The Meridian Palace keeps records of everything that has ever crossed the sky," said Valerica. "Every star, every comet, every eclipse, for a thousand years. That’s what Thessaly’s letter says about them. And three hundred years ago, something very large went down into the sea west of the Hesket shelf, in full view of the stars." She folded her arms. "Someone wrote down where it went. I’d bet my life the Meridian wrote it down."

"You’d bet all our lives," said Ashe, from the center of the deck.

"Yes," Valerica agreed. "I would."

Vane looked west. There was nothing there but sea and morning light. Somewhere past the edge of it, a quiet boy from the hills who made silver sing was sitting in a small boat with the most patient man Vane had ever met.

"How far to the Meridian?" he asked.

"Five days," said Sarai Vell. "It’s on the way. More or less."

"Then the Meridian first."

They reached it on the fifth night, and Valerica stopped talking for the first time since Holloway.

The Meridian Palace stood on the highest plateau of the Spine, the long range of mountains that ran down the middle of the continent like the bones of a back. They came up to it through the clouds after dark, out of a grey wet murk into air so clear and thin and cold that it hurt, and then they were clear of the clouds and the sky opened over them.

Vane had never seen so many stars.

There were too many of them, and they were too bright, and they went all the way down to the edge of the cloud sea in every direction as if the Lark were floating in the middle of them. And beneath them, scattered across the bare stone of the plateau, were domes. Dozens of them. White and silver, each one open at the top, and from each opening a long brass instrument pointed up at the sky.

Valerica stood at the rail and did not move.

Vane felt it before he understood it. The Celestial Heart was moving in her. Not as it did in a fight, heavy and leaning, but softly, all through her, like a plucked string still ringing after the hand has gone. As though something up there had recognized her.

"Valerica?" Isole said gently.

Valerica did not answer. She was looking up, with her lips slightly parted, and her violet hair moving in the thin wind, and an expression on her face that Vane had seen there perhaps twice in four years.

"Oh, no," said Nyx softly. "She’s in love."

"With what?" said Ashe.

"The sky," said Nyx. "We’ve lost her. She’s going to leave us for the sky."

"I can hear you," said Valerica, without looking down.

But she was smiling. Beside her, Mara had begun counting the stars under her breath, and got as far as two hundred and eleven, and stopped. She opened her ledger and wrote, very neatly, Too many.