WITH NO EMPEROR to guide the Empire, chaos ruled instead.
Many of the colonies, Lunar Island included, used the resulting turmoil to formally secede from the Empire. Civil war ravaged the mainland for a few years, and by the time a new Emperor was crowned—a distant niece of Auguste—the Empire was much smaller than it had been before.
Lunar Island, however, escaped mostly unscathed. An unimposing man who cared for the island from the sewers to the towers rose to the occasion. No one had ever looked at Hamish Hamlayton as the type of man who would rule effectively, but he was the one who stepped forward with a plan and a system and the strength of will to see it through. Under his leadership, not as governor ruling as regent of the Empire but as the rightfully elected prime minister of a free nation, Lunar Island grew to be stable and prosperous—both in the south and the north. Authentic iron rings from Lunar Island became a popular fashion thanks to their dual association with rebellion.
Grey and I saw none of it.
Grey took the money Hamish offered him as reward for services rendered, and we bought a small ship. We set sail from Blackdocks before news of the Emperor’s death reached Miraband. We went east first. The Empire could fight its battles without us.
Sometimes, I hold my hand over my chest. The black stain of Wellebourne’s soul has disappeared, but there is a scar over my heart where I clutched the pieces of my broken crucible. The edges of the scar are as ragged and uneven as the shards of iron were, but I like to trace them with my finger and remind myself that life, too, is not perfectly formed.
On the first night, I discovered the greatest gift Grey had ever given me. Hanging in the main cabin, framed in elegantly carved mahogany, was the map Papa had given me when I first left for Yūgen. I had no idea how Grey had retrieved it from my dormitory.
We’ll see the whole world, just the two of us. We’ll go to every city on the map.
We will live all the life that we can live.