The following morning the mate and his man and the two genets shepherded me across the plains, taking turns propping me up or carrying me. I am ashamed of how much they had to drug me to make movement possible; even leaning on the genets and soaking in their delicious warmth didn’t offset the deleterious effects of the wet, clammy air, the days without proper sleep or food. Through the laudanum haze I could sense the angry reluctance of my limbs, the kind that warned that pushing too much further would result in permanent damage. I would have been afraid had it been possible.

We never regained the road, so my first view of Far Horizon came unexpectedly as we crested a particularly muddy hill. Supported between the first mate and Almond, I stared at the town through the mist on my glasses, at an impression of industry and vibrancy, of brown brick and wood-smoke and carriages and motion.

And yet... and yet... for all the bustle and distraction of the town, my eyes rose past it to fix on the ocean. And there they remained.

“Ahhhh,” the first mate said with a laugh. “You feel it.”

“The elves feel it too,” his man said behind him.

“Well, he’s either one of theirs or one of ours,” the first mate said. “And he looks like one of ours, so that’s what I’ll bank on. Come on, then, scholar. Let’s introduce you to the sea.”

“The sea,” Kelu added, “is nashfe.”

“Nashfe,” I murmured, and thought of coming home.

“This way,” the first mate said, and we set off across the field. For once I stumbled not because of my body-weakness, but because my eyes refused to stay on the uneven ground we crossed. They kept rising, as if buoyed, to the horizon and the gray water there, the endless sky with its complex palette of clouds. I had never felt the size of the sky until that moment, when it dwarfed the human settlement perched on the edge of the sea with the variety, the height and the depth of its clouds, filling it like a bottomless glass.

But then a building blocked my view and I found my boots clicking on cobblestones, and we were walking along the edge of the shore where Far Horizon’s poorest fishers hove to their rude docks, barely planks nailed to a single post.

“Stinks,” Kelu said, wrinkling her nose.

“You always say that, furry,” the mate’s companion said with a guffaw.

“It’s always true.”

I looked down at the genets and found them with nearly identical expressions of revulsion. The smell on the wind was pungent, yes, but... fascinating. Complex. Thick with rot and life, but wiped clean by the breeze’s briny sting, so damp it left my hair wet enough to cling to my jaw and throat.

“Good, eh?” the first mate said, laughing.

“Yes,” I said, as if punched. The word just spilled out. “Unbelievable.”

“He’ll get sea-sick, watch,” the second man said.

“I’ll wager on that.”

“Bottle of rum?”

“Cask of it.”

I listened but without urgency. All my attention was on the air, the cool wetness of it. Soft like a blanket. Restless like hunger. Playful: one moment brushing my hair from my face, the next catching it in my mouth and nostrils. Like the scent it had so much character I hardly knew what to think of it. I had taken the air in Evertrue for granted, but it had allowed me that by being bland and self-effacing. There was nothing demure about the air off the ocean.

The uneven cobbles became even ones, and then a raised wooden boardwalk, and soon our footfalls made hollow thumps as we walked past piers of increasing size and complexity, mooring vessels that could be called ships. They too fascinated me, with their purposeful lines and lacework rigging. The largest ones stole my breath entirely. Who had designed such amazingly complex things? How had they been built? They bobbed on the waves like the lightest of toys but they creaked and groaned with terrifying solidity. They had mass and weight and presence. They belonged to an entirely different world than the one I knew, and every line that defined them hinted at needs and laws I knew nothing about.

“Here we are, scholar,” the first mate said, and I looked up and out and felt my heart flutter.

“Beautiful,” I said.

“Eh, well, maybe he’s not all bad,” the second man said. They both laughed, these lined and weathered keepers-of-secrets, and I envied them.

It seemed incredible to me that such a vast vessel could float. As we drew closer it rose higher and higher over my head until it became as tall as a building with multiple stories studded with thick glass windows and the more ominous shadows of cannon ports. I stared up until the back of my neck ached and my eyes watered and realized only then that they had allowed me to stand there and gawk until I had had my fill.

“The company’s smallest galleon,” the first mate said, “but God will forgive me for believing she’s the best. That’s the Steadfast Dreamer.”

“Of course,” I said, because what else could she be called but something high-minded and fair?

“We’ll be leaving soon?” Kelu asked.

“Now that we’ve got your man, yes,” the first mate said. “We’re already done re-supplying and taking on cargo for the rest of the run. Just need to get you folk settled and we’ll cast off.”

“Good,” Kelu said. “I don’t want to keep her waiting.”

“Aye no, that we don’t,” the first mate said. “Go on up, then. I’ll take care of the rest.”

I looked uncertainly at the plank.

“Don’t worry,” Almond said. “I’ll hold your hand.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that if I tripped, she would hardly be enough to keep me from falling into the water. But truth be told, I was far more interested in reaching the top than in worrying that I wouldn’t. More than anything I wanted to stand on the deck of the Steadfast Dreamer. I did not for a moment believe that I was the heir to some estate in a foreign land, nor its long-lost prince or even that I was some other race entirely... but that this trip had ruined me forever for Evertrue I believed with all my heart. The idea of living so far inland, so far from the water, was heart-breaking. How devastating to be torn between family, friends and love... and the sea. I started up the plank, Almond’s hand in mine, and thought only of my longing to leave the coast behind.

And of course, I stumbled, tripped, and fell.

The sea was cold and complicated with currents, and my body refused to fight it. I floated on my back, stunned by how hard I’d struck the surface, and stared up in shock at Almond’s worried face. That I could still see it clearly was a relief; my glasses had stayed with me. I didn’t want to imagine them consigned to the floor of the harbor.

“Taking it like a man,” observed the man who’d accompanied us. Then he waved down a few sailors to help me back on board. My arrival onto the ship’s deck was unceremonious, uncomfortable, and embarrassing; worse, when I could focus it was on the sight of the squared-off points of two scuffed boots. I looked up and found myself at the feet of what could only be the ship’s captain.

“So the sea had a taste of you,” he said.

“And spit me back out again,” I said with a tired grin. “Is she always so fickle?”

“Like the girl you desperately want and can’t have,” the man said and offered me a hand up. “I’m Captain Gant of Merit.”

“Morgan Locke of Evertrue,” I said, taking it. For once it didn’t matter how much I hurt, or that I was soggy and exhausted. I was on a ship.

“You’re the one we’re taking to the eastern trade,” the captain said. “You don’t look as I was expecting.”

“I imagine not,” I said.

He studied me, then nodded. “Join me for a drink, eh?”

“Happy to.”

“Come along, fluff,” he added to Almond.

We followed him to a cozy cabin with distracting nautical maps for wall hangings. I stared at them while the captain poured two glasses at his sideboard and did not turn until I heard his footsteps behind me. The liquor was whisky, and smelled pungently of smoke and cedar.

“Most of the crew don’t know that we trade with elves, save the scant handful I need to help me in their business offices,” the captain said without preamble. “I’d appreciate you not spreading that.”

Taken aback, I said, “Of course.”

“Sit,” he said, pointing at one of the chairs before his desk. I did as he bade; Almond kneeled at my feet, something that would have disquieted me had I not been so intrigued by Gant.

“We’ll do as we always do for them,” he continued. “Drop you off at the easternmost island of their archipelago where they keep their outland-facing port, town by the name of Mene. You won’t be seeing any elves there either, only servants. What few elves live there don’t leave their houses of commerce. They are not so much secretive as that they can’t be troubled to meet with us directly, us being humans and not much better than cattle to them.”

“How have you explained them?” I asked, nodding at Almond.

He shrugged. “Exotics. There are enough things walking this earth to make a man accept a great deal... and a sailor anything. We see a lot, skirting the fringes of the world.”

“I imagine,” I said, envious. I sipped the whisky, wondering only after it had singed my throat if combining it with my poppy habit was a good idea.

“So then,” Gant said. “Maybe you can explain why the fluffs went looking for an elf and brought back you.”

“I wish I could,” I said. “But they seem convinced that I am what they seek.”

“And you believe them.”

I looked at him. “Why do I have the feeling you are about to suggest I do otherwise?”

“Because safety is important,” Gant said. He looked at Almond. “Have you given him a blood-flag name?”

Almond said, “Sir, he is a blood-flag. He is the brother of the king.”

“He looks human,” Gant said.

“He isn’t,” she replied, serene. Somehow she could make her contradictions sound like obedience, as if she was not correcting her betters, only stating facts so transcendently true that they were beyond anyone’s refutation.

“What’s a blood-flag?” I asked.

“The elves,” Gant said. “They have things like families, like noble houses. They call them blood-flags. All the important elves are a blood-flag and all the lessers owe affiliation to one... or had better, if they want to thrive. Everything an important elf owns is assigned to that flag. I am technically an asset of the blood-flag Sadar, because my ship and I and our missions are protected by the master of that blood-flag, what you might call the patriarch of it, Kemses e Sadar. He’s one of the wealthiest of elves: he has an entire city of his own, the port of Erevar on their mainland. If the fluffs want you to be safe, they’d give you a blood-flag name to claim as protection... so that the first elf that sees you wandering without one of them won’t steal you for his kennels.”

Aghast, I said, “They really would just take me away?”

He shrugged. “You’re human, Master Locke. You have no status in their society.” He looked at Almond. “If you want to convey him safely to whomever wanted him, you’ll give him a name.”

Her ears flattened. “He is his own, sir. But even if he were to take such a name for protection, there is no one to write out the name and brand him.”

“Brand me!” I exclaimed, horrified.

“Eh,” Gant said. “I suppose we could paint it on.”

She considered. “If we must.”

“I think it necessary.”

“Brand me?” I interrupted. “Do you mean to say that the elves mark their property like...” I trailed to a halt, remembering his original words.

“Like cattle,” Gant finished. “Didn’t I say?”

“Do you have one of these?” I asked.

He lifted his arm, unlaced his cuff and pulled it down. His wrist had been tattooed with an encircling band of round glyphs like the ones on my pendant.

“You let them do that to you?” I asked, incredulous.

“Small price to pay to keep their wars from spilling onto my ship and crew,” he said. “A little time, a little ink, and I can do business in one of the most lucrative and secretive ports on the sea under the protection of a powerful elf. It was a good trade.”

I looked down at Almond. “And who will protect me?”

“As I said to Captain Gant,” Almond said, “you are your own blood-flag, Master.”

“And if no one believes me, as I am currently masquerading as human?” I said dryly.

She licked her nose, ears drooping. “Then you will have to go under Lady Amoret’s name.”

“Fine,” I said. “As long as I have a name to give.”

“Write it on your wrist before you disembark,” Gant said. “Just to be safe.”

I glanced at Almond, who pointed at the tag hanging from her collar. “This is her mark.”

“All right,” I said. I found I had finished the whisky without realizing I’d been drinking and set the glass aside.

“You’ll have a cabin to yourself and the fluffs,” he said. “You’re our only paying passenger this round out. Your luggage will be put there.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Would that I had luggage to put there.”

He glanced at Almond, who said, “We ran into grave misfortune on our journey, sir. Not only did we lose the master’s trunk, but his medicine as well.”

“Medicine,” he said, looking at me now.

“Kelu has arranged for the purchase of more,” Almond said. “You will be repaid by the Lady on arrival.”

“I trust so,” Gant said. “As medicine is not cheap.” He stood and offered his hand. “Welcome aboard, then, Master Locke.”

“Thank you, Captain,” I said. And then because I could not resist, “I have never been aboard a ship before... and to be on such a beautiful one... I am looking forward to the trip.”

He smiled, and perhaps there was approval there; hard to tell on such a face. I could tell he was accustomed to keeping his own counsel.

We found ourselves outside the cabin on the deck, and there I drew in a long draught of the heavy, salt-brightened air. I couldn’t help a grin. “Ah, Almond. So invigorating!”

She beamed at me. I ruffled her hair and together we went to investigate the room we’d been assigned.

Thus began the most pleasant month in my recent memory; in perhaps my entire memory, for I was hard-pressed to recall any finer. What nausea afflicted me was only my habitual illness, not any sea-inspired ailment, and so daily I walked the length of the ship, staring at the waters, at the sky, at the horizon where they met in endless variations. The weather grew softer and warmer the longer we were at sea, and between that, the genets, and the laudanum I found relief from some of the worst of my pains. At times I would sit in quiet contemplation of the waves, entranced by the patterns formed by current, scent and sound... and when the hypersensitivity rose and succeeded in piercing the poppy fog, I wept silent tears for the beauty of the sea.

My language lessons continued unabated in our chambers with the genets; in addition, I discovered the captain had a broad mastery of Angel’s Gift and begged his aid, finding in him a delightful depth and complexity of vocabulary. Over our dinners in his cabin I began to understand and marvel at the subtlety of the tongue, and what strange things it chose to differentiate: for instance, the elves had not one single word for light, but multiples, the light of the sun, of the stars, of the moon... light cast by a torch, light changed by the seasons, light caused by reflection, even light that came from within.

“Such a fascination with it,” I mentioned to Gant, who said only, “Yes,” and commented on the matter no more.

Outside these private sessions I found that many of the sailors spoke the elven tongue with varying levels of fluency, a fact that surprised me until the captain shrugged and said it was the only language spoken at the eastern port; to them it was just another foreign tongue. When conversation proved inadequate to the subtleties Kelu wanted me to learn, I resorted to translating some of the folk and historical tales I’d been studying at Leigh and these stories brought me audiences. I became the Steadfast Dreamer’s folklorist, the cripple who loved the sea, and they made allowances for me I never noticed or understood until much, much later.

Of all the stories in my arsenal, the most requested were those of the Red Prince and the King. My repertoire of elven words did not suffice to explain the ancient roots of these characters and how they’d been twisted to suit the recent war for independence, but I did my small best. My scholarly interpretations of the connection between these ancient tales and recent history proved of far less interest to my listeners anyway. They wanted the gore, the epic battles, and the perverse subtexts of the originals.

“Was the Red Prince the King’s son? Or a stranger?” Kelu finally asked, exasperated.

“Or his brother?” one of the sailors said, picking his teeth. “I heard brother.”

“Cousins,” someone else said. “Them’s cousins.”

“No one knows,” I said.

“That’s an important detail to leave out,” Kelu said.

“It wasn’t left out,” I said, laughing. I could laugh—the sea made everything better, made it bearable. “It changed. In the beginning they weren’t even related. They were from different families. Then as the stories were retold, people changed them to suit their tastes.”

“But which is the truth?” Kelu asked, tail bristling.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There might not have even been a Red Prince and his King.”

“Aw, no,” said my third listener. “There’s a Red Prince and King, sure as storms.”

“How do you know?” Kelu asked him.

“Because there had to be,” he said.

I grinned and pushed my spectacles up my nose. When Kelu looked at me, ears flattened against her hair, I said, “Stories have to be told.”

“So the Red Prince is bad—” Almond said.

“Sometimes,” I interrupted.

“And his King is good?”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Well,” Almond asked, “which story do you prefer, Master?”

What an impossible question. I loved the Red Prince and King stories in all their permutations... I had to, for I’d studied them at length. And their most recent incarnations as masks for the evil of the monarchists... well, I’d been weaned on those versions, and it was hard to escape their power.

Then I remembered one scrap of a tale that I’d seen written only once, in the margin of a manuscript so old I’d had to turn it with metal tongs to keep the oils on my fingers from destroying it.

“Hist,” I said, grinning. “I’ll tell you a secret story about the Red Prince and his King.”

I swore they leaned toward me as if I had something delicate to divulge. And perhaps I did. “Once in time,” I began as tradition dictated, “there was a bleak glade, a bare copse of a place lit only by wan moonlight, seared by war and harrowed into silence by the guardianship of wights and crueler things. The shadows there were so dark and wet they clung to anyone traveling through them. It was a place of sorrow and peril. And it was there that the King found the Red Prince in a moment of repose.

“The King lifted his gory sword, but found himself too exhausted to swing it. So instead he bit the earth with its tip and leaned on its hilt and gazed upon the face of his foe.

“As if sensing his regard, the Red Prince woke. He did not reach for his weapon. He did not rise. He met the eyes of the King and said nothing, nothing at all.

“At last, the bloodied King knelt beside the Prince and asked, ‘Will you not cease to prosecute your war against me?’“

I paused, gathering in the eyes of my enrapt listeners. I lowered my voice and said, “And the Prince said, ‘I will not.’ And then... he wept.”

I leaned back.

“Then what happened?” one of the sailors asked.

“The words ended there,” I said.

“Ah, that’s a short tale,” the second said.

“He cried?” Kelu said. “What good is that?”

I laughed. “All right, all right. More stories about the violence.”

That won me cheers and I went back to it. I gathered a few more sailors, lost a few, and eventually the dark came and I was left to recoup my strength and listen to the waves slap the hull. Almond remained at my side, head leaning against my thigh. I found myself idly stroking the edge of one of her ears. She was so easy to caress; I thought I should be appalled, but she seemed to enjoy it. Surely it did her no harm... and the softness of her fur soothed me.

“Why that story, Master?” she asked.

Even hours later, I knew what she meant. “Because it was the only time I’d ever seen that there was some... hint... that both the Red Prince and the King knew they were characters in a story they were not writing. That they were there to be used for some purpose they could not understand, and it grieved them. That... if they could only win free of the constraints of fate, they would have chosen otherwise.”

She nodded beneath my hand. And offered shyly, “I was not surprised at your choice, Master.”

I smiled down at her. “Why is that?”

“Because,” she said, “you are so gentle at heart. And of all the stories full of violence, you chose the one of peace.”

My fingers faltered. “How predictable of me.”

“You do not think it a virtue, to love peace?” she asked me.

“Sometimes war is needed,” I said, thinking of the Revolution... wondering if I would have been brave enough to take part in it, if I had been alive then and healthy enough to lift a sword or man a cannon.

“Where we are from,” she said, her voice sad, “there is nothing but war.”

“War between people who cannot die must be terrible,” I said.

“You will see soon enough.” She sighed. “I do not think our masters would see the beauty of your story.”

It was the closest I’d ever heard from her to an indictment of the elves. I was so shocked I stopped petting her.

“Was that the end?” Almond asked, looking up at me.

Perhaps it was that state of shock that brought the words from me, the ones I’d been hiding, keeping for myself. “No. There was a drawing beneath it. Of the Red Prince and the King in one another’s arms, kissing.”

She nodded. “Love drives away demons,” she said only, and put her cheek back against my thigh.

Startled, I returned to stroking her hair. “Is that it?” I asked. “You accept that so easily?”

“Love?” she said. “What is there to deny, Master? Love is always good.”

It was hard to argue such a platitude, even with practicalities. Two men loving the same woman usually ended in disaster, after all, and that was only the first of the many ways that love could destroy. “It’s not a story of the Red Prince and his Queen,” I said.

“Does that matter?” she asked.

“Ah...” I trailed off. “Almond. It is... perverse, what they were doing in that drawing.”

She glanced up at me. “Were they doing it wrong?”

That startled a laugh from my mouth. “By nature, well, yes, yes indeed.”

Almond squinted. “This is a human habit, Master?”

“A human habit for men to love women, and women to love men?” I asked, bemused. “I took that to be a natural habit. A man does not get heirs on another man.”

“Among the elves,” Almond said, “children are so rarely gotten at all that no one cares who lies with whom. The few women who can conceive are cherished and have great status and influence.”

I said, “How... few... is ‘few’?”

Almond considered, leaning against me. “I have only known one, the Lady Amoret.”

“One... woman?” I asked, stunned. “Only one who could bear children?”

“There have been others,” Almond said. “Not many. Ten? Eleven? They are very famous.”

“But... but why?” I asked, horrified. “How can a race maintain itself without children—ah. They don’t die. I forget.” For a moment I could grasp it, the utter strangeness of these people, and it cut like broken glass. Wars without death. Lying with one another without children. To be barren, but never to die. I felt it like thirst, a lack of... of variation. Of newness. The same people persisting forever. Complete stasis. “My God.”

And then: “My God. I might be one of them.”

“You are the prince,” Almond said, slipping her arms around my knee and cuddling against my leg. “You are not just one of them, Master. You are one of the greatest among them.”

“I don’t want to li—” I stopped. Could I honestly say that I didn’t want to live forever? But the thought was exhausting merely to contemplate. I had no desire to die, but what would I do with eternity? “My God,” I said at last, drifting to a halt, all my thoughts in disarray.

“I wonder if they will tell stories about you as the Red Prince?” Almond asked, tracing my knee cap.

I stared down at her, my horror complete.