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“Because my real victories,” the Red Emperor confided to his erstwhile foes, “were the friendships I made along the way. And friends let friends kidnap their children.”

Since Ecossia had no single ruler, the edict was applied to every clan leader, doge, and duchess. All of the many small-time bigwigs with a slice of land to call their own. Each must send a son if the Levy was called.

Surprisingly, though, after all the fuss, the Levy was never put into effect. The Red Emperor, chastened by his losses and perhaps a little wiser, decided to stop being quite so much of a dipshit. He halted his plan of world conquest and reduced the size of his army. Soon after, he declared that he would henceforth focus his attention on bringing about a golden age of peace and prosperity in the Red Empire.

Ecossia, however, never forgot the war, or the terms of the treaty. It lingered like a bad smell in the court of every local potentate, even after many years of peace. A quarter of a century passed without the Levy being called.

Until at last, with no warning, it was.

Chapter Seven

Seriously, Don’t Use the Bathroom

I peered into the mist and kept the tiller steady. Mostly because there was no point in trying to steer. I couldn’t see a damned thing. The fog was so thick that I’d been sailing by dead reckoning for nearly an hour, heading in what I hoped was the right direction and keeping my fingers crossed that the winds and currents wouldn’t push us too far off course.

We were making our passage through the haar, the dense sea fog that plagued the Ecossic coast from spring to autumn. On the bright side, that meant we hadn’t screwed up our navigation so much that we’d missed Ecossia entirely. I didn’t, however, want my return to my homeland to involve crashing into it.

It was almost time for Yudit to come out and relieve me. We’d decided to take alternating shifts at the tiller, four hours on and four hours off, watch and watch, as the sailors called it. It was exhausting. At least I got to spend my time on shift alone, hearing nothing but the sound of the wind and the waves. And the unsettling creaks the boat made as green, whip-thin stalks slowly spread across the hull. The hull of a ship always got colonized first, but if I sailed on one for long enough without Yudit close at hand, then every tar-filled gap between the deck planks would start to sport flowers as well.

You’d think the outside of a boat wouldn’t be very welcoming to flowering plants. Not many of them enjoy a near-constant immersion in salt water. But nature is glorious in its infinite variety, and “not many” still means somewhere around seventy species of seagrass. I wasn’t sure which type this was; even my expertise has limits.

Yudit emerged from the cabin, yawning and stretching, and stomped in a circuit around the deck. The seagrass rotted and sloughed off into the water. A good thing, too—when it’s left to grow, it can compromise the integrity of the hull. Piloting a leaky boat through an impenetrable fog isn’t my idea of a good time.

My sister joined me at the tiller and glanced around at the walls of opaque white mist surrounding us on all sides.

“Home sweet home,” I said.

“Mm-hm.” She scratched her armpit and spat a small frog onto the deck. “How much longer till we reach the shore?”

“Soon, if we haven’t strayed too far. I’ll stay out here with you. No point in getting up again in twenty minutes.”

Yudit brightened at that. “Oh, good. I could use the company. I’ve started a new poem, you can give it a listen.”

“Um, how long a poem—”

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / You both are pretty hot. / May I—”

“Who is this even for?” I interrupted. “If they’re back at Castle Tailliz, you might not see them again for months.”

“I’m writing it on spec. In case I meet someone on our travels.” She cleared her throat and continued where she had left off. “May I roughly shake your darling buds—”

“Land!” I shouted, pointing at half-visible shapes directly ahead of us.

The blurry ghost of a dock emerged from the fog, familiar piers and jetties gradually coming into view. The course we’d charted had been near perfect. But the fog had hidden the shoreline until we were much too close for safety. I dashed forward to lower the sails while Yudit grabbed the tiller.

The boat slowed as we approached, and with a neat piece of steering work on Yudit’s part, we eased into a slip and bumped against a piling with only a faint thump. I leapt onto the decking and tied the headline to the closest bollard.

Just as my sister joined me, killing off the daylilies that had begun to sprout from the mud beneath the pier, I heard the echoing clip-clop of horseshoes hitting wood.

Lulach came down the gangway mounted on a sorrel stallion with a generous scattering of white hairs around his eyes and muzzle. More white hairs than the last time I’d seen him. Yudit waved so enthusiastically that she dropped the stern line and had to scramble to pick it back up before it slithered off the dock.

“That was quick,” I said. “Were you waiting for us?”

The horse snorted. “After more than a year away, that’s the first thing you say to me? Not ‘Greetings, Sunbeam, my glorious steed of old!’ Not ‘Sunbeam! I have brought you a thousand delectable carrots to apologize for my absence!’ Not a single concerned question about my back pain or my chronic indigestion. No, I get ‘Oh, have you been waiting around for me?’ ”

“Well, have you?” I asked.

“Aye,” said Lulach, dismounting. “Ack!” He stumbled when he landed and would have fallen into the water if I hadn’t caught his arm. “We thought ye micht turn up sometime soon. We came tae the docks at dawn. We were here yesterday as well.”