Ayae’s embarrassment over what she’d said when meeting Miat Dvir followed her into her dreams.
In her dreams, she wrote a letter to the Lord of the Saan and apologized for her behaviour. In it, she said that she knew better. She had been Samuel Orlan’s apprentice. On the first official day of her apprenticeship, he had told her how important it was to understand other cultures. He gave her a stack of books, books larger than she had ever read before, each of them filled with maps and with descriptions of cultures and leaders. He said to her that learning to speak as many languages as she could would be invaluable in her new world. ‘You will make maps for everyone,’ he said, ‘and each customer will have a different demand, a different desire, and a different way of thanking you.’ As she wrote, she could feel the paper beneath her hand so strongly that she knew it was thick and of a fine quality. The sturdy length of the quill was also fine. So much so that, after she awoke, she could still feel it in her hands.
Across from her, on her own roll, Caeli slept soundly. One foot had been thrust out from under the blanket and Ayae briefly considered dipping it into a bowl of water, or tying it to her boots in a small but petty revenge. Instead, she pulled on her clothes quietly and, with the sensation of the quill still in her fingers, stepped outside the tent. Beneath the firelit sky she pulled on her boots and laced them tightly, before she threaded the sheath of her sword in place. Making sure that the tent was shut, she made her way down to the stables, to where Jaysun waited. In the cart, she drove out to Eidan and Jae’le’s small camp.
Eidan waited outside his tent, sitting on a large log that lay before a dead fire pit. He was dressed in the same loose clothes that he always wore and, from a distance, she was struck by how harmless he looked. She wondered if the Lord of the Saan had thought that. Surely he would have made an attempt to see both brothers, even if he had not yet talked to them. She could see Jae’le standing in the shallows of Leviathan’s Blood and wondered what Dvir would have thought of him.
In Neela, Eidan checked the work that had been done on the city’s buildings and roads. In the last few nights, a sudden surge of progress had been made, with close to half of Neela becoming a series of straight, complete lines as scaffolding was removed and rebuilt around other buildings. It seemed to Ayae that, if Eidan wished, many of the lamps that lined the streets could now be lit and people could be let in.
When she mentioned it to him, he shook his head. ‘We don’t want people on Neela yet,’ he said. ‘There are still a number of factories to be demolished.’
They were close to the bridge that connected Neela to Mesi. When they stopped before it, Eidan left the cart, but instead of approaching it, he paused and stared out into Leviathan’s Blood, where the wreckage of the other cities lay beneath the water.
‘Is something wrong?’ Ayae asked.
‘No.’ He turned back to the bridge. ‘But from here we will need new stone.’
Did he plan to drag it up from the ocean? He had once told her that he had dived deep into the ocean to lay the original foundations. ‘The bridge doesn’t look that damaged,’ she said. She stepped out of the cart, approaching the stone arch.
Eidan followed her. ‘Cracks run all the way through it, but the real problem is on the other end, on the second bridge that connects to Ghaam. Chunks of stone have been torn out there. I’ll have to break the bridge between the two before we start work here.’
‘Isn’t that what is holding Ghaam in place?’
‘Yes.’
She could imagine the sound of stone grinding against stone, could see the churning black water devouring it. ‘When do you want to do that?’
‘Within the week,’ he said. ‘Before the Saan leave.’
‘Do you plan to leave with them?’
‘Do I look as if I want to fight Aela Ren?’ He chuckled and it was a low, dark sound, one that surprised her and appeared to contradict his earlier statement to Se’Saera. ‘No, that will simply be when I am ready. We will have to tell Wagan and Alahn. They should let everyone in the camp know before it happens.’
Maybe he’s just stating the obvious. Ayae found that easy to believe, but she was not sure that Eidan would admit to it being more than a joke. In many ways, he was no different to Zaifyr. In fact, both his brothers were, at times, very similar to him. They would pass off dangers with a shrug and little more. But in other ways, both Jae’le and Eidan were strikingly dissimilar to Zaifyr. He would have asked her what Miat Dvir said, for example, while Eidan’s mention of the Saan was the first he had made since she picked him up from his camp. He gave no thought to it because the Saan did not interest him, either as a threat, or a friend. Zaifyr would have asked because it had happened to her, and she would have told him in order to share that experience.
‘Come,’ Eidan said, climbing up onto the cart. ‘It is time to go back.’
‘Already?’ She was surprised: the morning’s sun had not yet begun to rise. ‘You don’t want to go into Mesi, or work on the bridge?’
He frowned. ‘Do you not feel it?’
‘Feel?’
‘Paper, in your hands.’ He lifted up his good hand and rubbed his fingers together. ‘An urge to write words you do not know?’
‘I—’ She paused. ‘I had a dream about writing a letter.’
‘And you thought nothing of it?’
‘Should I?’
He nodded, but said nothing else. As Ayae drove the cart through the streets of Neela, broken stone gave way to the clean streets where work had been complete. Throughout the journey, Eidan stared out at Leviathan’s Blood and the sensation of paper in Ayae’s hands increased. After a while, she began to smell ink. If he had been Zaifyr, she would have pressed him, to find out who was sending her this vision, for more details, but he was not his brother, and she remained quiet. She knew it was an immortal like the two of them and she tried to recall what it was that she had experienced when she had been in the presence of the Keepers. Quite often, she had felt a rush of sensations, because she had rarely been around one by herself. Being in the presence of all of them had made it difficult to separate who was who, but she could remember the calm of Aelyn Meah and the coldness of Eira. It was not them that she felt, that was certain. She tried to remember Kaqua, and was confident that it was not he whom she felt, either. Jaysun was surprised to see the two of them when they returned. He did not ask why they were early, but Ayae knew he watched them intently as they made their way out of the stables to the western edge of the camp. There, the fires burned strongly, and the tents where Sinae Al’tor kept his business were a small hub of men and women. The guards he employed took Jaysun’s place as watchers as Eidan led her out of the camp and along the shoreline.
The sky was beginning to lighten when they reached the shore and Ayae could see a ship out there. Unlike the ships of the Saan, this one was much smaller, and much older.
‘Who is it?’ she asked, finally.
‘My sister,’ he said. ‘Tinh Tu.’