She taps off the solar lantern. For a moment the world goes dark. Then he sees a thread of light at the eastern horizon. Dawn approaches.
“Would you like to remember everything?” she asks solemnly.
Nervously, it feels.
He has asked himself the same. He remembers many terrible things; who is to say that he wouldn’t remember more if his memory returned?
“Yes,” he answers. “I want to remember everything.”
Even if much of it hurts and infuriates, the rest is what makes life worth living, the people for whom he sacrificed his memories. And would again and again.
But of course, it’s a theoretical question. There is no equivalent of a dead letter office for lost memories, where one can go in search of a past that has gone astray.
Gently, she rakes her fingers through his short hair, but not in an amorous manner, more as if she’s trying to soothe away a headache. “The orca in the film strip, her name is Old Friend. You’ve known her most of your life. When you took my pain, she most likely saved your life, fishing you out of the water and tossing you on land. I’d guess she did the same when you took the tracking devices off your mother and your sister. She escorted them to New Ryukyu, then went off to live her own life. Your mother, Nin, and I, we sail out to see her a few times a year.”
“Old Friend,” he murmurs.
A small beep comes from the understructure. She excuses herself and descends. When she comes back up, she says, “Border patrol reports that torpedoes have been fired from the sub.”
The raft has been traveling north asThe Blue Sampanheads south. It’s now several klicks beyond the horizon. He puts a hand in the waves and senses the collision well before the expanding ripples from the impact reach them, bobbing the raft on the surface of the sea.
She descends into the understructure again and reports from there, “The sub is fleeing the scene. Border patrol will give chase—but only give chase. We want to make sure the crew in the sub live to report their success to Prince Four, or the new Potentate, rather.”
“Four already staged his coup?”
He expected it—once Four realized that he himself wouldn’t have the support of the Sea Witch, there was no more point waiting—but the news still makes him feel as if it’s raining needles.
He wishes he wasn’t born into a family and a realm where the worst win. And he has tried, alongside Five, to make a difference these last years—if nothing else, they could at least take credit for the banning of nerve weapons. But sometimes it’s too late to change course from within; sometimes larger forces have already been marshalled, and it’s all a man can do not to be caught in the vortex of a sinking ship.
“Prince Four has forced the High Potentate to yield the throne,” she answers, still in the understructure. “Prince Six is dead. I also heard from the former Prince Eighteen. He has rendezvoused with Prince Five and the entire entourage is safe, including your cook.”
How does she know Eighteen?
“How do you?—"
His voice falters. She has reemerged from the hatch and even in the barely-there light he can see the collar around her neck—and the device in her hand. The device that made him feel instantly uneasy when he searched her valise yesterday evening, while she was in the shower.
“What is that?” He can hear the agitation in his voice.
“This? A helpful apparatus I borrowed especially for this trip.”
She sits down and pats the spot next to her. He realizes belatedly that he’s shot to his feet. He lowers himself, glancing warily at the device to her other side.
“Why are you wearing this collar?”
She touches it, a tentative gesture, as if it were a poisonous snake wound about her neck. But she says, “Don’t you want to know how I know Eighteen?”
He does, but not as badly as he wants to rip off the collar and throw it into the waves, for once not remotely caring about the cardinal sin of waste.
He clenches his fingers together so he won’t do just that. “How do you know Eighteen?”
She wraps her hand around his fist, as if she too senses his violent desires. “I met him in the war zone ten years ago, not long before I met you. At that time, he was just a lieutenant who served under General Duval. Three years ago, he came as part of a diplomatic mission to New Ryukyu and we met again. That was when he pulled me aside and told me that he was once Prince Eighteen of Dawan.
“Even though he’d been an exile for most of his life, he never forgot those who were kind to him in the Potentate’s Palace. When he heard that your mother and your sister disappeared at sea, he harbored some hope that they might have ended up in New Ryukyu and wanted to pay his respects.”
She wraps her other arm around his shoulder. He craves the contact—he has lived for so long without physical proximity to anyone—yet even the comfort and reassurance of her embrace cannot lessen the frantic revulsion he feels at the sight of the collar. She might as well have put a noose around her neck and asked him to carry on as usual.
“To Prince Eighteen,” she continues, “I said that I had no idea if these specific refugees came through the Disputed Waters. But I passed on the request to your mother and eventually arranged a meeting because she did want to see him.
