“Your mother has been taken away for her own safety.She is not herself, Samuel.Open your eyes, let me see you.”
I complied and found my uncle’s face, illuminated not by fire but by the steady warmth of an oil lamp on a table beside my bed.My bed, in my own room.
My uncle smiled.His smile was a dependable thing, kind but brief, always the bridge between other expressions.
“Now,” he said, turning graver.“Ben is here too.He woke up a little before you and is in the kitchen eating.Your father, Samuel, is dead.”
I stared up at him, his familiar face losing its consolation with every thinning breath I took.
“John!Now is not the time!”my aunt hissed, shoving at her husband and going to her knees beside my bed, trying to take my hand.
I pulled it away and shifted back, staring at the pair of them.My father, dead?That could not be.He was one of Her Majesty’s finest officers, a hero, rarely seen but as fixed in my world as the sun or seasons.
“There is no good time to tell a child their father has died,” my uncle countered, rising to stand over the pair of us but keeping his gaze on me.“And Saint knows the boy’s mother put it off too long, poor mad creature.Your father died at sea six months ago, a good, honorable death defending Aeadine.I will take you to his memorial in Ismoathe as soon as you are well.They have put a fine plaque in the cathedral.”
His words dripped through my mind like oil, smearing at the slightest touch.“Ben,” I croaked.
My aunt stood and offered me her hands, which I finally accepted.“Come, I’ll take you to him.Carefully, now.”
A handful of minutes later, I stood in the doorway of the back kitchen.The flagstones were warm beneath my stockinged feet, and the fire was high, the ovens built into the enormous fireplace radiating a dozen good smells.The sky outside the single window was bright and clear, at odds with the ache in my chest.
“Sam.”Ben looked up from where he sat too close to the fire, the edge of the blanket he wore like a cloak inches from the neatly raked coals.His face was bruised, and one foot, also too close to the coals, was wrapped in bandages.
Tsking, our aunt bustled forward and reached for Ben.“I’ll help you up now, Ben, and move your chair.You will be singed, my love.”
“No,” Ben replied.He did not move.He did not even look at her.Instead, his eyes moved from me, back to the flames.
It was not his wounds that made me stare, nor the realization that they were well into healing and that I must have been lost in the Dark Water for quite some time.It was the emptiness in his eyes as he said that singular, “No,” and his total disregard for my aunt—not simply as a fussing adult, but as a human altogether.
“Ben?”I asked tentatively.
I noticed that behind him, on the kitchen’s heavy table, several of the cook’s habitually decorous platters of food lay scattered.They looked as though a feral dog had been at them.
“Did they tell you Father is dead?”Ben asked, not a scrap of regret in his voice.“And Mother went mad.So now we will go to the Naval Academy and learn how to sink ships and cut apart pirates.I think I will enjoy that.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Ostchen
SAMUEL
Eventually, after days of arduous travel, we reached Ostchen.The port city, home of the king’s summer palace and the heart of the Mereish Navy, poured over the low mountains at the hilt of a deep bay in three distinct layers.
The ancient heart of this sprawling settlement was marked out by narrow, layered roofs, and tall stone buildings crammed shoulder to shoulder and racing one another towards the sky.This was surrounded by a thick wall, which divided the ancient from the simply old.Remnants of a secondary wall then divided old from new, and there the main body of the city rambled down to the shore of the water and a complex network of docks, locks, and seemingly isolated villages on stilts and lofty, irregular rocky islets.I saw masts of at least a hundred ships, and longed forHartas I never had before.Was he there, now, within sight?Surely I would know.
Or perhaps I would not, with my Sight stifled.I felt blind.“What isthat?”Mary breathed.We had just dismounted and now stood at the top a long, switchbacking road down into the city.Black sheep dusted with white snow watched us over a mossy wall, and the scent of warm manure permeated the air.
Other travelers passed us by in clattering streams—carts and sleighs, riders and people on foot.Most headed into the city, and only the sleighs seemed to be heading out.
None paid us any mind.We were simply road-worn pilgrims and not worth more than a nod.
Following the line of Mary’s pointing finger, I saw a huge cathedral with four spires, tucked into the city just before the docks.It perched above the sprawl, within the city but not part of it, and faced north down the length of the bay to the distant, fog-shrouded sea.
“The Cathedral of the Four Faces, which I understand to be the points of the compass,” Grant replied.
We all glanced at him.
“How would you know that?”Ben asked.
