The lost reliquary, p.19
The Lost Reliquary, page 19
And while we might not need much sleep, that’s not to say it doesn’t help. Our patience frays in tandem, resulting in snipes about where to stop at night, how to build the fire to keep it from being seen, who takes first watch. It’s enough to make me wish we were still pretending.
Still days out from Carsaire, we are forced by a steady, stormy rain to stop early and take shelter beneath a rocky overhang off the road. Nolan’s temperament leaks almost as much as the stone; I can tell the delay needles him by the way he stabs at the fire we cobble together. And the way he gets up every quarter hour to check the sky.
“Is this cursed rain ever going to let up?” he grumbles, taking his seat again.
I don’t look up from Jogue’s diary. Not my preferred choice of reading material, but I’m not going to explain to Nolan why I’d steal a book that outlines how to chop me up like a fatted hog. I’ve only managed a few minutes with the Renderers’ tome here and there, during the bathroom breaks, which are my only chance at solitude, hoping to learn something helpful or decode the mystery signature. But though I find a number of strange, script-like markings—and a lot of descriptions that do wonders to keep my appetite at bay—they’re nothing like the blocky, more geometric symbols on the letter. “Not before morning, I’d wager.”
“Do the followers of the Storm have some special sense about the weather?”
A dozen snappy retorts spring to mind, along with the urge to toss back the sharpest one. Instead, I reply simply: “No.”
Silence follows, and I sense the briefest hint of remorse. No, not that. More like a wonderment of where the comment came from to begin with. Fake Nolan didn’t seem to take offense at my origins; I wonder whether that opinion is shared with Real Nolan. Either way, the jab clearly slipped out unbidden.
“I’m eager to get there too.” It’s a kinder concession than he deserves, but I’m tired, damp, and—for once—in no mood for an argument.
“We’re days away still.”
“That gives us time to figure out how we’re going to find one man in a port home to thousands.” Quiet follows. A suspicious amount of it. “Unless you have an idea already?”
At first, I don’t think I’m going to get an answer. Nolan stares into the fire. The furrows in his brow deepen, then loosen a little. “I got a look at him.” The admission is slow, reluctant. “The heretic, as he left Novena. It was from a distance, but close enough that I think I’d recognize him again. I didn’t want to risk getting too close, meant to follow his trail…”
“But—surprise—Renderers put a stop to that plan?” Maybe I’m not above a jab too. “Care to share a description? I mean, just in case anything tragic were to happen to you along the way?”
He ignores that. Which, fine. He can keep one card hidden in his sleeve; I have my own stashed away.
“It doesn’t matter,” he grumbles. “The heretic will have probably moved along by the time we get there.”
“Or not.” I close the book, whose pages are endangered by the misty spray carried in by the wind. “Just because a score of ships come and go from the port everyday doesn’t mean he won’t be waiting for a particular one. Or that he’s even leaving Carsaire. For all we know that’s where they are hiding the reliquary. Or it’s close.”
“Sure,” he says bitterly. “Maybe they’ve secreted it on one of the hundred little unoccupied islands that run along the coast nearby.”
“Even better. I’ve never seen the ocean.”
I don’t bother to see what kind of response that incurs. Instead, I pull out the letter from the dead woman yet again. The symbols on the bottom are as confounding as ever, but there’s a pull to them as well. Something I can’t quite let go of. With a stick, I start sketching the symbols out in the dirt next to the fire.
“You’re still trying to figure that out.” Nolan says it flatly, in a way that doesn’t tell me what he thinks of the endeavor.
“Gives me something to do.”
“You studied the same codes and cyphers as the Dusk Cloister did. It doesn’t bear a resemblance to any of them.”
“Nope,” I agree.
“So then how do you expect to unravel it?”
I finish copying the marks. “Stop trying to pick a fight because you need a distraction.”
His mouth thins. “I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
If his goal was to start an argument, he abandons it. I keep to the drawings, utterly clueless about what they might mean but happy to use the excuse of them as a focus for my attention. There’s a brief flicker of longing—Fake Nolan and I might have passed the time sparring, which had actually been kinda fun—but it extinguishes as quickly as the sparks that stir from the fire. We made our deal and being friendly again certainly isn’t part of it. I don’t regret having someone to watch my back, but I also can’t deny that Nolan’s concerns are legitimate. The trail turned cold when I decided to pursue the Renderers instead of the lead heretic. Now it’s practically frozen.
But there’s no unspilling that blood. So I quietly trace the symbols, over and over with my stick, until I know them by heart. Then, I trace normal letters below them, searching for any hints in the shape, the pattern, the design—
My stick stops and I stare at what I’ve been doing. Not the symbols, but rather the stick.
Something cracks open and a memory slips out, wispy and diminutive. It takes a minute to get a tight grasp on it, but when I do, I drop the stick and the letter, and return to Jogue’s diary, flipping to the sections near the front, where Jogue describes the deities’ places of worship. There’s nothing in the descriptions themselves, but the drawings he sketched in the margins of the page…
What I am looking for—that tiny pebble of recollection that’s been stuck in the shoe of my mind for the last couple of days—practically jumps off the page.
Nolan notices my agitation. “What?” He stands and moves around the fire when I don’t respond right away. “Did you find something?”
I pull the book to my chest. “Are you going to stop being a jerk if I show you?”
“Lys.”
“Fine. Here.” I reveal Jogue’s drawing. It depicts a street, or maybe an alley. He’s captured the scene in great detail, right down to the graffiti on the walls, a mash of symbols that look like nonsense, or a child’s scribblings.
Symbols that match the signature on the letter.
“Are there more?” There’s an eager tightness to Nolan’s words. “A translation of what they mean?”
“No. That’s the only drawing with them. But one of Jogue’s goals was to spot the nuances of his destinations, capturing the unique aspects of them.” I turn a few pages back, to show him what section the rendering is part of.
“Cyprene?” Nolan takes the book and examines it closer. “We can’t be sure.”
“Makes sense, though, doesn’t it?” The city of Cyprene lies on an island far from the mainland, in one of the most isolated areas in the Devoted Lands—the former territory of the Salt Goddess. And, most importantly, a place where no Chosen lasts long. It might technically owe fealty to Tempestra-Innara, but it hasn’t been directly within their control for nearly half a century. “The heretic headed to a port city. And where better to keep something as important as a stolen reliquary than as far beyond the reach of the Goddess as it can get?”
He wrestles with the revelation. “We should follow the heretic. That’s a solid lead.”
“Unless he’s already on a ship to Cyprene.”
“Which we could find too.”
“But would find faster if we detoured to a closer port.”
Everything about Cyprene is logical. He just doesn’t want to admit it. But I wait, and predictably, the desire to succeed wins out over the desire to prove me wrong. At least that hasn’t changed.
So, when the rain finally breaks around dawn, we turn our intentions south, toward the port of Phrygis.
* * *
“You want to book passage,” says the captain of the Squid’s Shadow, “on my ship?” Captain Cleophas’s voice is low and rich, her manner straight to the point. And a little bit suspicious, which it should be.
“I do.” The haughtiness in the response makes me want to cringe. I do not like this new Nolan, who appeared upon our arrival in Phrygis. Bold. Confident. With the mannerisms of someone who expects to get his way. He slipped on this new skin as easily as he shed the old one the moment he shoved me in the pit, the moment we finally reached the port. The tension of the road, his clear anxiety to gain ground on our target… gone like they were never there. Maybe this is who he really is: a manipulative, slimy liar who knows how to shift himself in order to play whomever he comes across.
Or maybe it simply bothers me that it seems to be working.
“Passage for myself and my bodyguard, as well as our horses.” A hand gestures vaguely my way, followed by a broad smile. “Your ship came highly recommended.”
I stifle a snort. This ship was the only one recommended, after two careful days of picking around Phrygis’s docks, making inquiries about reaching a destination that, strictly speaking, shouldn’t be one any upstanding citizen should be asking about. The crawl of eyes trying to glean our intentions made things even edgier than they’d been while traveling. Exhausted and twitchy, we keep our hoods drawn when on the streets, taking special care to avoid clerics and city officials—anyone whose social stratum might be worth infiltrating. Any gaze that lingers a little too long is suspect, and I find myself searching for hints of the unnatural—a too-bright glaze, a reddening, the gleam of realization. In Lumeris, Belspire, even Sethane, I wouldn’t have given these people a second glance. Common, weak, and meant to serve us. Now any of them could be a Renderer in disguise. Any one of them could be our undoing.
If this worry needles him as much as it does me, he hides it. “Let me do the talking,” Nolan said at the start of our search, more an order than a request. “You wanted us to work together,” he pressed when I objected. “So let’s work together. There’s no smashing through the door here, killing everyone to get what you want. And I’ve no interest in sneaking aboard and hiding in some musty corner of a hold. If we find a ship that goes to Cyprene, we need to make them think we are worth having aboard.” He waited for me to argue this. I couldn’t.
I have to admit that Nolan looks the part he’s playing, that of an enterprising, ambitious young merchant, clad in new garb we acquired for him upon arrival. Unassuming enough to not draw attention, high-quality enough to hint at means. Still, a boat to Cyprene isn’t as easy to find as a new jacket. But between that and his newly calibrated persona, the captain seems to be interested.
At least, she hasn’t tossed us out on our butts yet.
“And where exactly do you wish to go?” The captain doesn’t ask who recommended her ship, or why.
Which is interesting, though Nolan only smiles knowingly as he sips his tea. “To where your ship goes, and others don’t.”
Captain Cleophas refills his cup from an exquisitely patterned pot unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, then sits back, considering the request. She’s tall, with a very dark complexion that tells me either she or her recent ancestors were born somewhere beyond the Devoted Lands; bare, muscled arms; and what I suspect is real gold woven into her braided hair.
I like her almost immediately—her weird tea set, her cabin filled with exotic trinkets, but especially her maps pinned to the walls. For the first time, I am able to fill in the margins of Prior Petronilla’s map. There’s unfamiliar coastlines, inlets to foreign rivers, even an archipelago shaped like a sleeping cat. It sets off a deep ache in me, and a desire to contradict Nolan and pick out one of these other places instead. Except… I wouldn’t make it that far. Which adds jealousy to my longing. Captain Cleophas is clearly untethered, able to go where she wants, when she wants.
Meanwhile, she stares at Nolan, who remains unfazed by the lingering examination. If pressed, his story is that he is from a modest but upcoming family, with a very particular business opportunity. Which of course he couldn’t share, but is willing to pay handsomely to reach his desired destination. None of this has been spoken aloud, and yet he manages to exude the vague shape of it with unnerving ease.
“You’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid,” she says. “This ship goes many places.”
Wary. A good sign. Or bad, if we’ve made a poor choice. There’s nothing in Cleophas that indicates she’s thinking about picking us apart for a profit, but the wrong sort of request could get us reported to the local authorities, trouble we don’t need.
“Cyprene.” Nolan tosses the word out like a coin, telling me he doesn’t read anything threatening in the captain either. Or he’s eager enough not to care. “Though I’d rather keep my reasons for the destination to myself.”
“A common enough sentiment.” The unspoken finally spoken, the captain sits a little straighter. “The Goddess favors you. Cyprene is among the destinations we are headed to, and I have a cabin available. But this is not an inexpensive passage.” She names an exorbitant figure.
Nolan’s soft, satisfied smile doesn’t falter. “That’s robbery.”
“This isn’t a pleasure cruise.”
“Good,” says Nolan, “because I prefer business.” His teacup clinks gently as he returns it to its saucer. “Your price is acceptable. As long as it comes with privacy.”
Captain Cleophas’s lips spread into a feline smile. “Guaranteed, so long as you observe the same for the rest of the Squid’s passengers.”
“Of course. I would ask that we depart soon, though. My business is… pressing.” An impatient note leaks into his tone, though I can’t tell if it’s affected or real. Time is not on our side. At least no one in Phrygis is buzzing about any new avatars… yet. Still, if the heretic headed to Carsaire is already on his way to Cyprene, we can only hope they will linger there, give us time to arrive and root them out.
“We sail on the evening tide,” says Cleophas, “with stops along the coast before we reach your destination. My cabin boy Mishael will see your horses into the hold and your baggage to the cabin.”
“Excellent,” Nolan replies, though I can tell from the slight tightness of the word that, if he had his way, we’d be raising anchor immediately.
Twenty-five
There is nothing beyond the Unlit Seas that is not cold and dark compared to the Flame. I will not, cannot, ever call it home again.
—WRITINGS OF THE PILGRIM EKKRU, IN THE ERA OF TEMPESTRA-ENOCH
WHEN CLEOPHAS SAID SHE had a cabin available, apparently she meant one cabin, singular.
And only one bunk, of course. As far as amenities are concerned, they’re a bit lacking, consisting entirely of a small desk, one wobbly chair, and a salt-worn strip of rug. I awkwardly maneuver through the narrow doorway and dump our gear onto the floor, already growing tired of our little fiction.
Nolan leans against the doorframe, giving me a saucy smirk as he nods at the bed. “So… are we going to share?”
“You wish.” I extract my bedroll and blanket from the pile. “I’ll sleep in the hold with the horses. No offense, but Mortimer and Buttons smell better than you.”
He steps in and closes the cabin door, keeping his body between me and it, still smiling. “You won’t seem like a very good bodyguard.”
“I’m not. You should probably keep that in mind, seeing as how easy it is for someone to accidently fall overboard.”
“I thought we had a truce?”
“I said ‘accidentally,’ didn’t I?”
He falls onto the bunk, shedding his new persona and the teasing tone in a heartbeat. “It will look strange if you don’t keep to our story. We don’t need anyone getting more than the normal level of suspicious about what we are doing here. As you said, it’s easy enough for someone to disappear overboard.”
“Fine.” I drop my bedding. “Floor it is.” I can’t fault his logic, even if I don’t like it. Even if there’s as much potential danger within this cabin as without. Part of me doesn’t even care; after our anxious, sleepless journey to Phrygis, a floor is as inviting as a feather bed.
“Don’t worry.” Nolan stretches out, throwing one arm behind his head. “I’m not going to cut your throat while you sleep.”
“How reassuring. Especially given how truthful you’ve been so far.”
The air around him cools. “You know, eventually we will have to trust each other enough to let our guards down. Or this isn’t going to work.”
I snort. Clearly, I’m not the only one who is exhausted. “Oh, does someone need a nap?”
He frowns. “Lys—”
“Take your own advice. You’re the one with the history of betrayal.”
“It wasn’t personal.”
“Hmm, I guess that makes it okay then.”
“What I’m saying,” he continues, more tartly, “is that I would have done the same to any other Dawn Cloister candidate. It was a means to an end. It wasn’t as if I particularly wanted to kill you.”
I stop what I’m doing. Look him in the eyes. Whatever truths lie behind them might as well be locked in the vault with the Goddess’s reliquary. “I know it isn’t personal. It hardly ever is with us Chosen, but that doesn’t stop what we inflict on each other, does it?”
The ship creaks around us, more reaction than Nolan emits. For a moment, our truce feels as fragile as Cleophas’s pretty teacups—one decent wave and it will be upended, shattered. But I won’t be goaded again, or picked apart by Nolan’s mind games. “If we’re keeping up appearances, you’d best stay locked in the cabin when I’m not with you. And right now, I’m going to go make sure Mortimer and Buttons are nice and comfy.”
