True to Ruth’s prediction, Dannie had settled right in. She was intrigued by the ship and spent hour upon hour exploring its every corridor and chamber. She often sat with the crew on the command deck discussing mechanics. But she didn’t stop there. Less than three hours in, she was scrambling through chutes in the walls and under the carpet to examine the inner workings of The Golden Turtle. Dannie had an adaptability and buoyant optimism that Jack instinctively warmed to.
Sardâr, recovering from his latest alchemical injury, took things easier for those two days, mostly remaining in his room. As usual, Bál kept to himself. But Jack and Ruth passed the time with Dannie, soon finding they had something in common.
“So you’re an orphan as well, then?” she asked Jack after the three of them had been talking for a while.
“Join the club,” Ruth remarked drily.
“How were things for you?” Dannie asked them both.
After Ruth explained about her amnesia, Jack began talking about his orphanage: that it had been in a depressing ex-prison and was chronically underfunded, though the staff had tried their best, and that he’d never really got on with the other children.
Dannie listened with raised eyebrows. “You think that’s bad? You’ve never seen a workhouse.” And by the time she’d related the squalor, the lingering hunger, the constant threat of disease, the staff’s physical and mental abuse, the regular fights and occasional murder, Jack and Ruth’s mouths were hanging open.
“Yep, you’ve definitely had the worst luck of us all,” Ruth said weakly.
“Well, I don’t know for sure whether I’m an orphan,” Dannie qualified. “I never knew my mum; she disappeared pretty much as soon as I was out of her body. She might still be around somewhere, but I’m not fussed. As far as I’m concerned, I only had one parent.”
Jack realized it was a mark of how much he liked Dannie that he wasn’t annoyed that he couldn’t be alone with Ruth. They hadn’t spent any time together, just the two of them, since the previous Sunday, and the chances were increasingly unlikely with Ruth’s renewed duties as captain of The Golden Turtle.
The first night, he had been so exhausted from factory work and their anti-Cult escapades that he’d been asleep as soon as he’d hit the bunk and for fourteen hours solid afterward. But the second, he found himself rolling over and over, each position less comfortable than the last, unable to rest his mind. His thoughts were on Lucy and Alex.
It had been over a week now since he had heard from Inari. He wondered if it was possible to summon the fox—he’d never tried it; the spirit had always appeared to him—but, he supposed, if there was nothing to report, then everything must be fine. He knew Lucy could look after herself, probably better than he could, but that didn’t stop him from worrying about her or the three others with her, even though he didn’t know them nearly as well. He imagined it must be something like how a big brother would feel towards a little sister.
In fact, he was much more concerned about Alex, who he’d received no news about at all since their departure from Earth six weeks ago. Jack agreed with Sardâr that Alex was probably still alive: Icarus wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of abducting him unless he was more useful to the Cult alive than dead. But that introduced a whole new range of unpleasant ideas, like what the Cultists might do to get him to talk. He knew Alex was resilient, more so than anyone else he’d ever met, but how long could he hold out against Dark alchemy and demons? And if he had already cracked, would they just kill him as he was of no more use to them?
Finally, he gave up trying to sleep and went to see if Sardâr, in the next cabin, was awake. He knocked, and the elf called for him to come in.
As he entered, Jack was struck by a strong sense of déjà vu from the very first time the two of them had spoken at length, after Sardâr had been rescued from the heart of Mount Fafnir. The amber lights were low, shadows stretching across the floor and collecting in the corners of the cabin. The elf lay in bed, looking just as physically drained as he had after coming out of the volcano, his ochre eyes half-closed and his face drawn between curtains of grey-flecked dark hair. As before, Jack saw a strong semblance of a Zoroastrian priest in deep thought.
The elf beckoned him to sit on the end of the bed. “You couldn’t sleep either, I take it?”
“Nope,” Jack replied, leaning back against the wall.
“What’s on your mind?”
Jack explained his concerns about Lucy and Alex.
“Yes, I miss Adâ too. And Hakim, obviously. And Vincent. But we haven’t chosen an easy life, have we? I suppose it’s up to us to sacrifice comfort and the closeness of loved ones for the good of everyone else.”
“I’m not complaining.” Jack replied quickly, “I made my choice, the same as you. I had Lucy and Alex, but other than that I never really had any friends at home. But I’ve got friends in the Apollonians I wouldn’t give up for anything. I’ve known you lot for such a short time, but still…” He was afraid he was becoming too sentimental, but Sardâr smiled encouragingly.
“I’m glad you feel that way. Think of it like this: every Cult plot foiled, every Shard discovered is one step closer to reuniting with Lucy and freeing Alex. And maybe we Apollonians can spend some time together as friends rather than agents when this is all over.”
Jack hadn’t thought ahead to it being over. He was slightly surprised at the suggestion. So far, it had been about getting over the next hurdle, fighting the next demon, finding the next Shard. “I’d like that. I’ve never been on a proper holiday.”
They were both silent for a moment before Jack built up the courage to ask the question burning on his lips. “So you think there can be an all over, then? You think we can beat the Cult for good, and that’ll be that?”
Sardâr inhaled slowly, gazing at the ceiling. “Even if we stop the Cult, it won’t be all finished. The Cult of Dionysus think they manipulate the Darkness, but the Darkness really manipulates them. That’s their biggest folly. It’s sheer arrogance for a group of mortals to think they can control a cosmic force which, as far as we know, has been around indefinitely. You already know that. We can bring an end to the Cult, but the Darkness will still seek to consume the Light, even if it doesn’t have mortal pawns to act for it. That’s why finding the Shards of the Risa Star is so important—not just to keep them from the Cult but because we rely on this Übermensch legend to bring an end to the Light-Dark conflict for good.
“If only we still had Isaac here…”
Sardâr’s eyes clouded over, and Jack instantly regretted bringing up the elf’s old friend. He didn’t know what to say. “Were you close?”
“Yes, we were. Isaac, Charles, and I were the first Apollonians: three mortals from three different worlds. We were all, if you don’t mind me saying, great minds, but Isaac was greatest of all. He invented the first of our dimension ships almost single-handedly—he and his brother Ishmael built The Golden Turtle together. And he had this way of inspiring people, of helping them believe that even when the future looks like an abyss, we can change the world for the better.”
“He sounds very like you.”
“You are very kind, but—”
“No, I mean it. I’ve seen it. People look to you for leadership; they’re comforted by you being there. Do you think the Apollonians would have gone inside Mount Fafnir or into the middle of a battlefield just for any old person?”
Sardâr smiled again. “Thank you.” He paused. “Jack, there’s something you should probably know before we go any further. A suspicion of mine. It’s only that at the moment, but even so—” He broke off. “No, don’t worry. It can wait. We should probably both get some sleep.”
Anxiety not entirely assuaged, Jack bid Sardâr good night and returned to his own room.
Their voyage ended two days after it had begun, when The Golden Turtle was at the closest part of the river to the destination marked on the map. The group departing the ship—Jack, Ruth, Dannie, Sardâr, and Bál—had, for lack of any other appropriate clothing, been equipped with Thorin Salr-style tunics, boots and cloaks, and, to the dwarf’s relief, their swords. This time, without the need for stealth in a city center, they were able to lower the ramp so the five could scramble ashore without first soaking themselves in water.
“We can’t have got here before the Cult, can we?” Ruth said to Sardâr, looking around the riverbank.
Jack silently seconded her caution. There was nothing to suggest anyone else had been here, but as they had found out before in a bad way, sight definitely wasn’t a reliable sense when Dark alchemy was involved.
“We might well have,” the elf replied, gazing at the trees. “Nimue may not have been able to travel using Darkness. The Cult back in Thorin Salr transported a bridge that way, but that was a fairly simple structure. Whatever this new machine they’ve built is, it looked a lot more complex…”
The forest stretched out before them, peaks of whispering green clustering up the rise from the river and rolling over hills in the distance. The sky was much clearer here than back in the city. Trails of frosted white laced across the azure sky, free from the excrement of smog-choked chimneys. In stark contrast to the stone and pummelled mud of the Albion streets, the ground beneath them here was springy and alive with grass and bracken. Gone, too, was the stench of charring that had stuck in their noses and throats for the entire time in the city. Here, they could breathe clearly again.
They moved up the rise and into the thick of the forest, following Sardâr’s map reading. Jack was taken aback by the new surroundings. He had seen an orchard on Earth, but it had been circumvented on all sides by buildings, anything mildly threatening removed by generations of human locals. This place, he could tell, hadn’t been manufactured at all. Pockets of uneven grass and leaves sprang up here and there around his feet, and clumps of moss clung to the sides of trees. Wild banks of stinging nettles and other flora considered unfashionable in civilized society were in the full throes of life all around. Fallen branches had been left as they were, becoming colonized by mushrooms and absorbed into the ground. It was enough to make any landscape gardener suffer a breakdown.
It might have been his imagination, but everything seemed greener here too. The sunlight filtering through the clustering canopy of leaves was dyed a brilliant patchwork of emerald and gold, speckled patterns darting with the breeze over the ground. It must have been late November or early December on Earth now, but here the world seemed in the thick of spring.
Sardâr led them up the rise and then down into a wide tree-covered valley. Several other landmarks had been indicated on the map, and they ticked them off as they passed: a narrow ravine, at the bottom of which a brook gurgled; a large tree stump in the shape of devil’s horns; a ring of fungi-encrusted standing stones. Finally, after at least an hour’s walk, they passed between two grassy banks and moved out of the cover of the trees.
They stood on the edge of a wide glade, trees surrounding them completely. The sun was directly above, set like a jewel in sapphire surroundings. It must have been about midday.
“It should be here,” Sardâr said slowly, examining the map as he strode into the center of the ring. “The X is marked right here…”
The others began looking around. Other than that it was the first one they’d come across, the glade seemed entirely unremarkable. If possible, Jack thought, this area seemed the greenest and liveliest place yet: even in the shade of the trees, there was not an inch of bare earth where some life had not sprouted.
“Well, then what are we miss—?” Bál broke off his sentence with a gasp.
Jack wasn’t listening. He had caught sight of something glimmering in the shadow of a sycamore. When he moved closer, it looked as though two toffee-colored jewels had been set into the bark, glinting in the sunlight. He blinked.
The pair of jewels blinked back.