Voyage of the Basilisk

ELEVEN

One consequence of my eventful life is that it has given me an utter horror of helplessness.

Put me in peril, and so long as it is something I may struggle against, I will be well. Not happy—for despite what others say about me, peril is not a thing I enjoy—but I will keep my equilibrium, diverting all my fears into the effort to find safety once more. This tendency has preserved my life in a variety of circumstances and places, from the skies above the Green Hell to the lethal slopes of the Mrtyahaima peaks.

What I do not handle half so well are situations in which I may do nothing. This is why disease is one of my especial nemeses: when I am ill, I am capable of little more than refusing to die, and when others are ill, I cannot even do that. I was helpless when my husband died in Vystrana—and perhaps that incident, even more than the general tenor of my life, has instilled this horror in me, for I have never forgotten the fact that I could do nothing to save him.

All of which is by way of explaining that when the great storm arose on the Broken Sea, it began what may well have been the most wretched span of time in my entire voyage. I suffered other misfortunes that were arguably worse, but in those cases I could do something. On this occasion, however, I was rendered totally helpless.

Ackinitos had warned me of the storms, but thus far I had only seen rain showers, blowing past so regularly you might set your pocket-watch by them. When I saw clouds on the horizon that day, I felt no particular apprehension. Aekinitos, however, spent a minute and a half contemplating them in silence. Then, nodding once, he turned and ordered all his passengers below.

“How long are we expected to stay there?” I asked him—for I lacked the captain’s weather sense, and did not understand what the shadow in the distance portended.

“Until it is safe,” Aekinitos said.

This was not a reassuring answer. First, because it advertised danger; second, because it was so very unspecific; and third, because Aekinitos delivered those words with a mad gleam in his eye. As I have said before, he was of my mind in preferring perils against which he could pit all of his strength. He was not quite so mad as to seek out such things, at needless risk to the lives of his men; but if such incidents presented themselves, then he did not hesitate to throw himself into the fray.

I tempered my frustration and asked, “Is there nothing we can do?”

Aekinitos said, “Stay out of the way.”

It was the worst possible instruction he could have given me. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to obey. My time aboard the Basilisk had given me a very rudimentary understanding of which bits were which, but not enough to be useful even in calm weather. In a storm, I would be a positive liability, as conditions required the men to do precisely the right thing at precisely the right time—without any landlubber standing in the way.

Jake protested when he heard he was to be sent below. “I’m not a passenger!” he insisted. I privately cursed the arrangement that treated him as a “ship’s boy,” which now gave him notions. (Though I cannot fault Jake for wanting to help. My impulse had, after all, been the same.)

Aekinitos settled the matter quite tidily. “You are not a passenger, and so you obey my orders. Which are to go into my cabin and stay there with the others.”

It is a mark of how much our voyage and that arrangement had transformed my son that Jake did not continue his protest. He looked mulish and set his jaw, but he did not argue against Aekinitos’ logic. Instead he turned to me and proferred his arm, saying, “Ma’am, if you’ll come below with me?” Abby muffled a laugh.

There was no laughter an hour later, when the first edges of the storm reached us. We had been in tempests before, this past year and more. On those occasions Tom had been permitted to help, and Jake as well; Abby and I had not so much been ordered out of the way as advised to step aside, and we had occupied ourselves with tasks such as making certain food and drink were distributed when conditions allowed. Now, however, the lot of us were packed into the captain’s cabin, Suhail included—that being the only space where we could all fit and be out of the way.

Nearly everything on a ship is “stowed,” meaning that there are measures in place to make certain things will not fall out or down or over when the ship pitches or rolls. In our own tiny cabin, for example, thick straps held the books on the shelves. In the captain’s own quarters, everything was as neatly stowed as could be, and yet soon after we had a demonstration of the limitations of such measures.

It began with an ominous creaking and swaying as the winds rose. The lights had been extinguished, but in the grey gloom that came through the stern windows, we could see the hammock and hanging sacks swing in ever-wider arcs. This lasted until a sailor hurried in and closed the shutters, to protect us against the possibility of broken glass; in exchange he left us one meager lantern. The latter risked fire, but I am glad we had that one allowance, for otherwise we would have spent the next two days in utter darkness.

Yes, we were two days in the grip of that storm—or perhaps it was a whole series of them, striking us one after the other. I cannot tell you the details of what transpired outside the cabin, for I was not there to see them, and what explanation we got afterward was both incomplete and somewhat incomprehensible to me. It was not a hurricane; had it been that severe, the Basilisk should certainly have been sunk. But a whole ocean of rain came thundering down upon us, drowning the decks and half-drowning the men, and the wind whipped the seas into waves that must have made the ship look like a toy lost in the bath. Against this, Aekinitos and his men struggled not to sail to safety—we were caught too far from land to have any chance of that—but simply to keep our bow turned into the waves. If at any point the ship turned broadside to the waves, the next one would have swamped us, sending the Basilisk’s masts into the water and dooming us all.

Had there been a harbour available nearby, we might have tried to run for it and take refuge there. This would certainly have doomed the Basilisk—we would have found her wreckage scattered across the Broken Sea—but we ourselves might have been safer. Lacking such an option, however, the open waters in which we found ourselves became a blessing, for they meant we could run as the winds and waves directed us… to a point. But I get ahead of myself.

For those two days, the five of us huddled in Aekinitos’ cabin, safe from the battle on the decks but suffering in our own way. Every one of us was most miserably sick at some point, even those who had not previously had any trouble at sea. We had only hardtack and water to sustain us, for there was no hope of hot food in such a storm, and the cook was busy elsewhere regardless. The smell soon mounted to dreadful levels, from illness and sweat and the chamber pot in its little closet; the latter got emptied only once, when Jake defied the captain and crept out to fling its contents through a porthole. None of us got a wink of sleep, and if you have ever gone two days without rest, you will understand the kind of madness that overcomes you when you pass through exhaustion to another realm entirely.

I was terrified, and nauseated, and furious with my utter inability to do anything. I almost wished Jake would collapse in tears; then at least I could busy myself with comforting him, which would give me the illusion of use. But my son, though afraid, was made of stuff too stern to oblige me. He said at intervals that the captain was a brilliant man who could overcome any storm, and occupied himself with comforting Abby, who was the most ill of us all. I take pride in his conduct, but it left me with nothing to do but endure.

I could scarcely even converse with Tom and Suhail, the clamour of the storm was so great. Besides, what was there for us to speak of? We could not take refuge in discussing dragons or archaeology; it was impossible to maintain coherent thought for long in the chaos. We spoke in brief, elliptical turns about the conditions and what we might do to better them, but little more. After a time, Suhail began to sing quietly, I think to give himself something to focus on besides our circumstances. He had not much range, and the Akhian songs he sang (lullabies and children’s songs, I think) were unfamiliar to me, but the sound was comforting nonetheless.

So for two days there was neither night nor day, but only the continual gloom, relieved by that single lantern, whose refilling provided brief moments of painstaking terror. Then, just as we began to tell ourselves that the winds were slackening, there came a dreadful, grinding shudder from below—and the Basilisk ceased to move.

“What was that?” Abby cried.

I met Tom’s eyes, and Suhail’s, and Jake’s. All four of us were thinking it, I believe, but I was the one who gave it voice. “We have run aground.”

In a storm, this can be a death sentence. So long as the Basilisk ran freely, she could mitigate the force of the winds by giving in to them. Trapped against a sandbar or reef, however, she had no such defense. The storm would force her farther into the obstacle, until one or more things gave way: the masts, perhaps, or the hull.

The loss of our masts would cripple us, but the shattering of the hull could kill us.

“The bilge,” Tom said, and Suhail nodded. Then they were out the door, and I only just caught Jake when he tried to follow. He fought against me, but ship’s boy or no, he would not be of much use now. If the hull had cracked, the men would need to bail against our sinking, and Jake was not strong enough for that.

(In fact the men had been bailing the whole time, taking shifts at the hand-cranked pumps that siphoned water from the bilge and disposed of it outside once more. I did not know then that the planking of a ship flexes quite a bit even when intact, and a storm may cause it to spring any number of leaks. But the point still stands that running aground increased the danger.)

Jake, Abby, and I waited in the cabin, listening to the Basilisk groan. I understand why men speak of ships as if they are alive; we could feel her pain in the vibration of her boards. But the winds were slackening, and I was just beginning to hope that we might yet survive this when I heard a great crack from above, and then a crash that shook the whole stern.

It was the mizzenmast: the very same pole whose presence I had cursed for consuming so much space where it ran through our tiny cabin. Weakened by two days of the storm, it had broken at last, slamming down across the decks with all its rigging in tow. It knocked one man overboard and broke the captain’s leg. But as wounds go, the Basilisk could have suffered much worse.

At the time we did not know that. All the three of us knew was that something dreadful had happened, and more such things might follow. We stayed huddled in the cabin until Tom came to the door and said, “The storm is passing. You can come out now.”

Emerging from that dark little room after so long was like being born again. The wind, still stiff, was flogging the tail ends of the clouds into the distance; the clearing sky was pink with dawn light. We came on deck through a hatch amidships, for the one closest to the cabin had been blocked by the wreckage of the mizzenmast. Around us was choppy, white-capped sea—and islands.

They reared up from the waves like solid shadows, broad shapes furred with trees. As the light grew stronger, the darkness turned to emerald green, and the edges gleamed like pearls: sandy beaches, much spotted with seaweed and fallen palm branches after the storm, but radiant in the dawn. They were not so very far away, either. Suhail and some of the others could swim to shore, if it proved necessary.

We did not need to abandon ship, though. The Basilisk was sorely damaged by her encounter with the reef, but not sinking, at least not at present. Aekinitos was soon on deck once more; he could not walk, but the doctor had set his leg, and from a throne of crates the captain directed the efforts of his men. Their first concern was to cut away the wreckage of the mizzenmast, which was dragging in the surf and causing the Basilisk to shift uneasily; then they took stock of our losses.

At least, they began to. Not long after the mast splashed free, Jake tugged at my sleeve and pointed outward. “Mama, look.”

I was already looking, but too high. One promontory above the sea had an oddly regular shape; there were no trees there, and the corner looked suspiciously square, as if someone had built a platform of stone. Jake directed my attention lower, to the water. Two canoes—no, three—were rounding the base of the promontory and making all speed toward us.

So these islands were inhabited. It was no particular surprise; whether it would be a blessing or a curse remained to be seen. We certainly needed assistance, but would these people be inclined to give it?

I hastened to notify Aekinitos. He called his men away from all but the most vital of tasks, and they surreptitiously brought out their guns and cutlasses. The captain did not want to present a hostile face, but he did wish to be ready in case it was needed. I recalled Jake to my side, and waited to see what would happen.

Two of the canoes stopped at a little distance, their rowers occasionally dipping oars into the water to maintain their position against the waves. The third circled the Basilisk, no doubt taking stock of our condition. Then it returned to its companions, and the men aboard conferred.

They were of course Puian, clad in loincloths, with tattoos marking their faces in patterns whose significance I could not decipher. None of them were small. Puians in general are a large people, tall of stature and generous of flesh, but these fellows were robust even by the standards of the region. From the crow’s nest of the mainmast, one of the sailors called down in a hushed voice, “They have weapons. Slings, spears—looks like clubs, too, with stones or teeth or summat in them.” He did not say, though, that they held the weapons in hand.

One of the two canoes that had waited now came forward a bit, the oarsmen steering it with expert skill. In the bow, a man stood up and called out in a strong voice.

I caught only some of what followed. He was not speaking simplified trade Atau, but rather the dialect common to those islands. Two of the sailors and Suhail spoke in low voices to sort out their translations, then conveyed the result to Aekinitos. To begin with, the man in the canoe had said, “I wish to speak with your chief.”

Aekinitos gestured for Mr. Dolin and Cranby to help him. The rest of the crew crowded to the rail, obscuring the view from the water; they did not clear away until Aekinitos had been carried forward and propped against a barrel, so that his crippled condition would not immediately show. Then he nodded to one of the interpreters, who called an introduction down.

In many fits and starts, through confusions of dialect and the elaborately flowery speech Puians affect when they need to be formal, Aekinitos told them that we were survivors of the great storm, and our ship was trapped on the reef.

Their answer, when it came, was startling. “You are not Yelangese. Are you Scirling?”

The captain was exhausted from the storm and in no small amount of pain, with his leg only recently splinted, but he did not betray surprise by so much as a blink. “Some of my crew are Scirling,” he answered in even tones. “But I am Nichaean. We hail from all over.”

I was glad not to be standing where the men in the canoes could see me. My confusion was mirrored in Tom’s eyes. “That didn’t sound friendly,” I whispered to him.

He shook his head. “Trouble with the Yelangese—that I can see,” he murmured back. “Raengaui and some of the other islands are in conflict with them, after all. But what has Scirland done to offend the people here?”

There were possibilities. A belligerent trading expedition; sheluhim come to proselytize the Magisterial faith; even a hunter like Velloin, though the Puian region as a rule boasts little in the way of large game. Someone might have come poaching sea-serpent teeth, though.

Aekinitos was not being entirely truthful with the islanders. He might be Nichaean, but the Basilisk was commissioned as a Royal Survey Ship, under the authority of the Scirling crown. I cast a surreptitious glance upward and saw that the Scirling flag no longer flew from the masthead; I later learned it had been carried away in the storm. There was nothing to identify us as hailing from that country, then, in more than an individual sense.

The conversation had continued while I pursued these thoughts. Aekinitos assured the men below of our peaceful intent, and begged for assistance in repairing and resupplying the Basilisk.

It pained him to beg, I could see. A captain is a king aboard his vessel, but the simple fact of the matter was that we had only two options here: to ask for what we needed, or to take it by force. He was not innately inclined to the latter, and furthermore pragmatism constrained him. We did not know how many people were in this island chain, but they were sure to outnumber us, even with the advantage of our guns.

Fortunately the islanders, once assured of our neutral origin, were willing to let us come ashore and speak with their chief. They had knowledge of guns, and told us to leave ours on the ship, which Aekinitos agreed to with reluctance. Then they stood their canoes clear while we lowered one of the ship’s boats, into which we loaded a slew of other people: Aekinitos, Mr. Dolin, four other sailors, myself, Tom, Suhail, Abby—and Jake.

You may question the decision to bring Jake along. To be quite blunt, it was a calculated defense on our part. In most parts of the world, the Broken Sea not excepted, a group composed entirely of grown men gives a different impression than one that includes two women and a child. I even thought—too late to change my attire—that I should have put on a dress, to reinforce my harmless civilian qualities. But in any event, I calculated that my son would be safer in the long run if I brought him with me than if I left him on the ship.

And so, escorted by the trio of canoes, we came ashore at Keonga.

The beach opposite the Basilisk had seemed all but deserted, apart from the rock platform I glimpsed on the promontory. It turned out this was because we had run aground on the wrong part of the island.

Just on the other side of the promontory was a thriving little village. At least, I thought of it in those terms; not until later did I understand this was the largest settlement on the island, most of the population being scattered in farms connected by footpaths. Here stood the chiefly residence and those of the priests, who carried out their ceremonies on the platform I had seen, which was a great temple.

Their position on the far side of the promontory had given them a degree of shelter from the storm, but not enough to escape damage. We saw many huts without roofs, their thatch having been torn off and strewn across the beach. Some of the weaker trees had been downed, and one of those had crushed a storehouse. There were some injuries among the common folk, for although they know these storms well and take what precautions they can, few structures can stand against such force. (The chief and his priests, I later heard, had sheltered in an old lava tube some distance up the slopes, which I would visit in due course.)

We landed on the beach and were taken toward an open space before a large building. The space was marked with stones along its edge, and the posts and boards of the building were splendidly carved. We were made to wait outside that stone border, while a crowd gathered to gawk at us. I took some comfort in seeing women and children among this group as well, though it seemed virtually every man was armed in some fashion, even if only with a knife.

“Do we have any notion where we are?” I asked Aekinitos. He had been given a large bundle to sit on; any attempt to hide his injured state became impossible the moment he left the Basilisk.

He snorted. “Do you think I ceased to pay attention, simply because of a storm? If I do not miss my guess, we are in Keonga.”

I had seen that name on his charts. This was not a place we had intended to go; it lay on the fringes of the Raengaui island cluster, and was therefore judged too far out of our way to be worth visiting, especially as the waters around it were said to be especially treacherous. Before I could ask Aekinitos more, however, someone began to chant in a loud voice, taking my attention away from the captain entirely.

The first greeters we saw did not look welcoming in the least. Three men, their loincloth-clad bodies magnificently tattooed, stamped toward us brandishing weapons. I think the only thing that prevented us from misreading their intention was the obviously stylized nature of their movements: they hammered their feet against the ground, slapped their chests and legs, and contorted their faces in terrifying expressions. “Hold your ground,” Aekinitos growled. “It is only a test.”

I had cause to be glad of the discipline with which his sailors followed him, for he seemed to be right. Although the men threatened us for at least a full minute, they made no move to attack—and then, just as suddenly as they had begun, it was done. They set leaves on the ground before us and retreated, their expressions now watchful. The chant shifted tone, and we were beckoned forward, into the marked space of the courtyard.

Others came out of the building then. It was not difficult to pick the chief out from among them. He was flanked by two men carrying great plumy things on sticks—overgrown cousins of fly-whisks, which seemed to be symbols of the chief’s status—and wore a splendid feather cape that would have been the envy of any Coyahuac lord. Moreover, like rulers the world over, he was accompanied by an entourage of other resplendent people, whose presence announced very clearly his importance.

He walked with measured steps and halted some distance from us. Then, in a fashion that reminded me strongly of the oba of Bayembe, he spoke through one of his heralds. “Who are you, that have come to the shores of my island?”

We made a sorry lot in comparison. No member of our delegation had changed their clothes in days, and the only wash-water anyone had seen was the rain that sluiced down on the sailors. Furthermore, the man who spoke for us was exercising all his will to remain upright on a barkcloth-wrapped bundle, with his splinted leg obvious for all to see. But we could not leave Aekinitos behind; what we knew of Puian customs said it was vital to bring the most important person among us to converse with the chief, no matter what state he might be in.

It was a mark of the improved relations between Aekinitos and Suhail that the latter was permitted to speak for us—though not, of course, without direction. Suhail was unquestionably the best linguist among us, but that would not necessarily have swayed Aekinitos two months ago.

He introduced our group, and received the entire recitation of the chief’s lineage in return. This, of course, was designed to impress upon us the mighty nature of the man we faced, and our own insignificance in return. I could not repeat the whole thing for you if I tried; his given name seemed to be Pa’oarakiki, and that is what we called him amongst ourselves. We later learned that he headed one of the greatest chiefly lineages in the archipelago, second only to that of the king, who ruled the neighbouring island of Aluko’o. Indeed, his mother’s sister had been wife to the current king’s uncle, which make Pa’oarakiki a great man indeed.

Undoubtedly he had already been told about our troubles, but Suhail repeated them now for his benefit. I could not follow half of what he said; not only was he endeavouring to describe the situation of the Basilisk, which involved a great deal of technical terminology I did not recognize even before Suhail found a way to express it in the Atau pidgin, but my exhausted brain simply lacked the will to struggle with a foreign language in the first place. My wandering gaze took in the battered state of the village, then studied the green slopes of the volcano above us, in which I could begin to pick out the signs of farms and the occasional hut.

And, in the air above the trees, a flock of shapes whose recognizable outlines immediately woke me from my stupor.

I did not realize I had made a little exclamation of pleasure until everyone turned to stare at me. Then I flushed hot and stammered out an apology. “I did not mean to interrupt. It is only that I saw a flight of fire-lizards up there.”

I said this in Scirling, which meant of course that it had to be translated for the islanders. Then someone else spoke up, in a clear enough tone that I could understand. “What is your interest in them?”

The speaker was a large, deep-voiced woman in the king’s entourage. She seemed to be about my age, perhaps a little older, and she was looking at me with a sharp expression. I surmised that she had some special position in his court, for her appearance was odd: the tattoos on her face exaggerated her eyes and her mouth, the barkcloth draped over one shoulder was thick and bulky, and the skirt wrapped about her lower half was extravagantly padded at the hips.

I attempted an explanation, but soon foundered on my tiredness and lack of fluency. Suhail raised his eyebrows, and when I nodded in gratitude, he explained on my behalf. To them he said, “She seeks to know all there is to be known about creatures like the fire-lizards.”

The woman’s dark brows rose at his words. Much too late, I found myself wishing I had held my tongue. Our experiences in the Puian regions of the Broken Sea had introduced me to the word tapu, which indicates the restrictions and prohibitions that mark a thing off as sacred. I had not yet encountered any tapu which interfered with my studies, but such things vary from place to place, and it was entirely possible that my interest violated one here. I hastened to say, “Please, do not let that stand in the way of our negotiations. I do not wish to give offense. What matters is that we repair the ship.”

I do not think the Keongans would have ever refused us outright. Their archipelago is rather isolated—a fact which served us well during the storm, for it meant the Basilisk could run freely before the wind. That isolation causes them to be an insular folk indeed (if I may be forgiven the etymological pun). But they are not so xenophobic as to kill outsiders who are careful to offer them no violence. Indeed, like many people in societies without cities, they place a great deal of importance on hospitality. But Puians are also a trading people, and they recognized that in this instance, they held all the advantage—for we could not leave without their help.

We might have done without the mizzenmast. Alert readers may recall that it was a later addition to the vessel’s structure anyway; she could sail without it. But she could not sail as well: the captain and crew knew her as a bark, not as a brig sloop, and would need to change their arrangements of sail and ballast and all the rest if they wished to do anything more than limp clumsily along.

With a mizzenmast or without, however, we could go nowhere while the Basilisk was pinned atop that reef; and likely not for some time after, as the coral had assuredly done sufficient damage to her structure as to warrant repair. We would at a minimum require the hospitality of the Keongans while those repairs were done, and likely some assistance besides. It was for this that Suhail had to bargain, translating the demands of Pa’oarakiki for Aekinitos, and the captain’s counteroffers in return.

The barriers of language and exhaustion meant I followed very little of this. I can only marvel at both Suhail’s linguistic agility and Aekinitos’ strength of focus, for I doubted the captain had slept more than two winks at a stretch through the storm; and yet he sat there on his bundle with his broken leg before him and haggled like a Monnashire housewife on market day. The result was a payment of cargo and various other oddments in exchange for a beach to live on, some assistance with the ship—and a promise.

“They are insisting that we remain on Keonga until the repairs are done,” Suhail said to the captain. “Neither you nor anyone else from the ship may travel to the other islands, without his express permission. As soon as the Basilisk is seaworthy once more, we are to sail away and not return.”

It was an oddly cold demand, for a people who seemed otherwise friendly. (I had the impression Pa’oarakiki could have mulcted us for a good deal more than he did.) Aekinitos said, “What if we need timber or such that cannot be found on this island?”

“I inquired about that. He said it could be fetched for us, but we may not seek it ourselves.”

Aekinitos grunted and shifted his injured leg. With so many eyes upon him, he did not permit himself the luxury of a wince. “As restrictions go, that one is easy enough, I suppose. I will make certain my men know.”

He did not ask after the reason then, nor any time later—at least not directly. I know Pa’oarakiki’s demand roused his curiosity, though, as it did mine. The prohibition might have been a matter of tapu, and in any event we had no desire to pry into the private affairs of the islanders. But it did raise questions, even if we kept them to ourselves.

Although it will put my narrative somewhat out of order, I must first relate what transpired with the Basilisk, for it is the framework that shapes everything else which happened during our stay. We could not leave until the ship was repaired; we could not go anywhere else in the islands while the repairs were conducted; and so we found ways to fill the time. Had we been able to leave sooner, a great deal of what follows would never have occurred.

The receding flood of the storm had left the Basilisk stranded atop the reef, in a kind of saddle between two higher bits of rock. This was a dangerous position to be in, for every wave that came in shifted her on her perch, and coral is not forgiving. Given sufficient time, the sea would have pounded our ship to pieces.

Unfortunately, she could not be retrieved at once. Discussion with the Keongans established that the next high tide would not be at all sufficient to float the Basilisk free. Aekinitos would have to wait for the “spring tide,” a higher surge which comes on the new and full moons; and the new moon was not for more than a week.

For the men still on board the ship, this was dreadful news. By working the pumps they could keep the hold from filling with water—but to man them for a week and more could not be borne. Fortunately, they were able to devise a “fother,” a patch of sail filled with oakum and tar, which is sucked into the breaches by the inrushing water and thus seals them, at least partially, against their doom. Inspired by this, Aekinitos had more such patches made, buying barkcloth and fiber in great quantities from the islanders, which his men then lashed in place where the coral ground worst against the hull. These had to be replaced on a frequent basis, but they preserved the ship against some of the damage she might otherwise have taken.

Dragging her free of the reef required tremendous effort from not only the sailors but also the Keongans, who tied cables to their canoes and paddled mightily to haul the Basilisk clear. At that point we faced new problems, for deprived of that support, however destructive it may have been, the Basilisk promptly began to sink in earnest. It was a race between the sea on one side and the rowers on the other (not to mention the fellows manning the pumps belowdecks) as to whether they could get the ship to safety before she foundered irretrievably. This meant bringing her along the fore reef until there was a gap through which she could enter the lagoon, and then drawing her as far onto shore as Aekinitos dared, without beaching her so thoroughly she could never be removed again. This is called careening, and in the absence of a dry-dock, it was the best we could do.

His carpenter and other skilled men dove into the water to investigate the damage; the rest of us had to wait until the tide went out to see it. When the ship’s hull was exposed, I shuddered at the sight. I had not known before that the Basilisk, like many ships, bears a “false keel” and a sheathing of thin boards over the keel and hull proper; these protect the structural fabric of the vessel from shipworms and other troubles, collisions with the seafloor included. The reef had torn away much of the false keel and a good deal of the sheathing, cracking the planks beneath. Aekinitos swore for a full ten minutes after he heard the report, in a medley of languages that impressed even Suhail. Even for a linguistically inept landlubber such as myself, the message was clear: we would not be going anywhere any time soon.

That simple fact dominated our thoughts throughout our enforced stay on Keonga. It could hardly do otherwise; the immense hull and tilted masts of the Basilisk towered over our encampment, heaved first to one side, then to the other, while the men worked to make her seaworthy once more. It was an inescapable reminder of our misfortune, and our hope of returning home.

We knew that we were in the Keongan Islands; we knew very little more.

That part of the Broken Sea was but very poorly charted by Anthiopean sailors; indeed, few other than Puians knew the secret of reaching it, for doing so required a vessel to thread a maze of shoals and reefs and underwater mounts whose treacherous currents could easily sink the unwary—unless the unwary happened to be riding the surge of a storm. Aekinitos’ charts, rescued from his cabin, showed the type of vague markings that said the draughtsman had no idea how many islands were in the chain, much less their size and individual coastlines.

The Scirling Geographical Association would have given several left arms for accurate charts of the archipelago and its surrounding waters; alas, Pa’oarakiki’s interdiction meant we could not oblige them. Judicious questioning of the islanders taught us there were eleven islands that merited settlement, and several more that were barren volcanic rocks, waterless atolls, or otherwise unfit for human habitation. The largest of these was the neighbouring Aluko’o, which lies to the northeast of Keonga, and is the direct domain of the archipelago’s king.

The island upon which we had wrecked ourselves is the one known properly as Keonga. It gives its name to the chain courtesy of a mythology that attributes great religious significance to the two volcanoes that make up its bulk. These stand a little distance apart, and must originally have been two separate islands, but their ejecta have run together in the middle, leaving a saddle of lower-lying terrain in between. Owing to the orientation of this saddle, which lies parallel to the prevailing winds, the area receives a great deal of rain and wind, and is the breadbasket of the archipelago (so to speak—Keongans cultivate no grains, but only tubers, fruit, sugarcane, and some vegetables).

In ancient times the island chain was divided between a number of chieftains who amounted to petty kings, but for the last few generations they have been under the rule of a single man. We had no direct dealings with the king until shortly before our departure; we could not go to Aluko’o to present ourselves, and we were not important enough for so august a personage to greet. “Bigger fish to fry,” Tom said to me, during the days before the Basilisk was freed and then careened. “Do you remember that Raengaui pirate-king Aekinitos mentioned? Waikango? It seems he’s been captured by the Yelangese.”

“He does not rule here, does he?” I asked. I knew he had been extending his reach, but I did not think it had yet encompassed this outlying archipelago.

“No,” Tom said, “but the king’s wife is a cousin of Waikango.”

Then it was easy to guess why the people here did not like the Yelangese. But what had my countrymen done to offend them? I thought of Princess Miriam’s embassy, which ought to have arrived in Yelang some time after I was deported. The news-sheets had blown a lot of hot air about how her visit was to “deepen the bonds of amity between our two great nations,” but everyone knew that was a polite way of saying she was there to see if Scirland and Yelang could be induced to get along. If they had, perhaps the Puians of the Broken Sea had taken it as a hostile sign. But I could hardly imagine the princess had worked so quickly in establishing rapport; was it merely the fact of her visit that had offended them?

I could not ask. The people we dealt with had no reason to follow such matters, and the chief and his close retainers avoided us as much as they could. In the meanwhile, of course, we had our own affairs to address.

Much of the work in dealing with the Basilisk, first on the reef and then careened on the shore, was carried out under the supervision of Mr. Dolin, for the breaking of Aekinitos’ leg greatly hampered his movements; but the captain was up and about before we were ready to leave. He took very badly to the limitations of his injury, and was a tyrant in the beach camp. All of his supernumerary passengers were pressed into service on such tasks as we were fit for—even Jake.

“He is crew,” Aekinitos growled when I protested. (Virtually everything he said in that time came out as a growl, for enforced sedentism had made him a bear.) “If he wishes to sail from here on the Basilisk, he will work. As for you, Mrs. Camherst—there is no time to chase after dragons when my ship is wrecked. Much less ancient ruins.”

That last, of course, was directed at Suhail, who had not protested at all. I resented the captain a great deal for his declaration, but he had the right of it: restoring our ability to travel took precedence over anything else. I was not much use in anything ship-related, nor things that required physical strength, but I sighed and joined Abby in making our beach camp a habitable place. If we were to be there for as long as it seemed, I had rather our quarters be something other than makeshift.

I cannot pretend our situation was entirely comfortable. (For one accustomed to the life of a Scirling gentlewoman, anything that does not involve padded armchairs cannot be termed “comfortable.”) But the climate of Keonga is exceedingly agreeable, and after more than a year cooped up in that snuff-box of a cabin, the freedom to stretch out my limbs was a positive delight. I acquired a particular fondness for the ceaseless rush of the waves upon the shore, which I believe to be the most soothing sound in the world. It is because of my time on Keonga that I have made a habit of spending time on Prania in my later years—now that I can afford to do so.

We attracted a great deal of interest from the Keongans, of course. Much of our official cargo had gone in the bargain for supplies and assistance, but all the sailors had possessions of their own, and there was soon a brisk market between them and the islanders, each craving what they saw as exotic from the other. Tobacco pipes, penny whistles, and broken pocket watches were soon to be found in the proud keeping of the locals, while the sailors competed with one another to see who could obtain the most splendid flower wreath or shark-tooth club.

I took little part in this, as most of what I had with me was either scientific equipment I needed or specimens I had collected for my work. I did, however, converse with the islanders as much as I could, cudgeling my brain into accepting the sound changes and subtleties of grammar that differentiated their tongue from the trade pidgin I had previously learned. And, as you may imagine, I asked them about dragons.

My interest was divided between the sea-serpents I knew must be in the region and the fire-lizards I had seen with my own eyes. At first the locals could not understand my words; then, once the words became comprehensible, they did not understand my purpose; then, the more I questioned them, the more they retreated from me, their friendliness draining away.

“Am I giving offense?” I asked Suhail, knowing his command of the language far outstripped my own. “I know they have many customs I am not familiar with, and I may have violated one. Is it wrong for me to ask about dragons?”

He shook his head, brows knitting in thought. “Not that I have heard. There are things that are forbidden to talk about, at least for the likes of me—but they make it clear when that is the case. I can try to find out, though.”

“Please do.” I did not like the thought that I might, out of sheer ignorance, close the doors that needed to be open for me. I could not heed tapu if I did not know where its boundaries lay.

Out of habit, I glanced up the slope of the nearby mountain. Once again, small figures were circling in the air: a flight of fire-lizards. I wanted to observe them, but until I cleared this matter up, it would be better for me to pretend they were not there… however much of a wrench it might be.

Turning away from the fire-lizards, I saw someone partway up the path that led to the village. It was the woman from the chief’s entourage; I had learned her name was Heali’i. She had been lurking about our camp for some time now, watching us.

Or rather, watching me. I was sure of it now. Her eyes remained on me as Suhail went down to the water’s edge. I nodded to her, reflexively polite, and she laughed—I could see the motion, though she was too far for me to hear the sound. Then she turned and began climbing the path, vanishing into the growing dusk.

TWELVE

Heali’i was a point of great gossip among the sailors. As I noted before, her appearance was not quite like that of other Keongan women, with her tattoos and her exaggerated clothing. She was said to live with her husband partway up the slopes of Homa’apia—the volcano at whose base we crouched—but somewhere in the course of things, a rumour started that her marriage was in some fashion peculiar. The men took this in predictable directions, and so whenever they encountered Heali’i (which they did often, on account of her tendency to lurk about camp and watch me), they greeted her with increasingly unsubtle propositions, all of which she laughed off with a flirtatious but unyielding refusal.

She did not seem to engage in the routine life of Keongan women. They spend some time in garden cultivation, and a great deal more making textiles: rope, twine, and above all barkcloth, which among them is a high art. (Larger-scale agriculture, hunting and fishing, canoe-making, and most aspects of warfare are the province of men—along with cooking, which I initially found to be a charming reversal, as I have never learned to love the task.) She did not quite seem to be a priestess either, though. As in many societies, the clergy of Keonga are drawn from particular bloodlines closely allied with those of the chieftains and the king, and they spend their time in activities such as the interpretation of omens and the conduct of rituals. They also dwell close by their leaders, in houses whose support posts and ridge beams were grandly carved with images of great significance. None of this described Heali’i, either.

Indeed, had I been forced to choose a single word to describe her status, it might have been “outcast.” Her husband—a fellow named Mokoane—was a bit solitary, but seemed to be accepted well enough by Keongan society. Heali’i, by contrast, fit in nowhere. And yet she was not shunned, either. When islanders encountered her, they always greeted her with careful respect—unlike our own sailors. I could not make sense of it, and I could find no graceful way to ask why she was watching me.

Being who I am, when the graceful way failed, I decided to be more direct.

If this seems unwise, you must understand the circumstances I found myself in. Even though I had curtailed my questions about dragons, turning my eyes from the high peak where the fire-lizards flew, I found myself hedged about with growing hostility. Suhail had attempted to discover whether I had somehow violated tapu, but with no real success. “They all say no,” he reported to me. “But it is the sort of no that means, ‘you are asking the wrong question.’ And yet no one will tell me what I should ask.”

On the theory that perhaps it was not the question but the questioner that was wrong, I tried asking them myself. I say “tried” because no one even allowed me to finish, let alone answered. They all backed away, making signs I presumed were wards against evil. My frustration began to take on the cast of fear. I had once earned the hostility of Vystrani peasants by trespassing in ignorance, and it had almost resulted in us being chased out of town. Here we had no means of fleeing. If the current shunning turned to violence, I could destroy much more than simply my hopes of conducting research.

In all of this, Heali’i stood out as an exception. She did not approach me or speak to me, but where others turned their eyes away and abandoned my presence at the first opportunity, she was constantly there, watching. “I know it is not on your list of tasks to be performed,” I told Aekinitos, “but I should like to try and talk to her.”

He knew as well as I how the local mood was turning. “Go,” he said. “Try not to get yourself killed.” (I told you his mood was foul.)

I did take some precautions before approaching her. Tapu, you see, extends not only to certain subjects, but also to people and how one interacts with them. And while the common people observe a few forms of tapu—men and women, for example, may not eat together, which fortunately we discovered before we appalled the locals with our degenerate ways—individuals of importance observe many more. Thus far I had not been able to determine Heali’i’s exact position in society, but I did inquire as to whether I would commit any unforgivable offense by trying to speak with her. (In a place where standing on the king’s shadow is a crime punishable by death, this is no trivial consideration.)

I expected grudging permission at best, stony refusal at worst. For once I was shown to be a pessimist: the reaction from the woman I questioned appeared to be nothing less than sheer relief. From this I could only surmise that I had confirmed some hidden suspicion, but in a fashion that said the problem would soon be mended.

And so one day, with Jake in tow—leaving Abby to enjoy a well-earned rest—I hiked up the path to Heali’i’s hut.

The track that led there was well maintained, relatively clear of vegetation and graveled with chips of stone where a dip made it muddy. Paths like this were to be found all around the islands; larger ones circled the perimeters, while smaller ones marked the boundaries between the districts and penetrated the interior to various locations of note. All around us was forest, as the ground here was too steep for much cultivation, but outcroppings of basalt occasionally served to remind me that we stood on the slope of a volcano—one that was most certainly not dormant. The wisps of steam continually drifting up from its caldera made that quite clear.

Heali’i was there, braiding cord into some kind of small shape. She paused in this work as we approached, studying us with unabashed curiosity. I wondered how we appeared to her: a pale woman covered in close-fitting fabric, and a nut-brown boy whose arms and legs were shooting out of his clothing. (Jake had grown nearly ten centimeters since our voyage began.) We certainly did not look Puian, but neither did we look much like the crew of the Basilisk.

I gave her a Keongan greeting, then said, “Please pardon my ignorance. I should like to be polite, but I do not know how I ought to address you.”

Her eyebrows did a brief dance, from which I interpreted surprise, confusion, and amusement. (Heali’i often seemed to be laughing at me when we spoke, but I never did determine how much of that was her natural demeanor and how much was a reaction to my follies.)

She considered my words for a moment, but not with the wary hostility I had received from so many others. “Who are you?”

“I am Isabella Camherst,” I said, and nudged my son forward with one hand. “This is Jake.”

Heali’i shook her head. “No. Who are you?”

“We came on the Basilisk,” I said. “The ship out in the bay.” My words came slowly, because it was inconceivable that she could have forgotten that—and yet I could not think what else she might mean.

Body language is not the same in every culture, but I thought the tilt of her head was the equivalent of rolling her eyes heavenward, asking her gods for patience in dealing with so ignorant a visitor. “I cannot say how we should speak unless I know who you are. Your place, your ancestors, your mana.”

That final term was one I had encountered a few times already—enough to have a tenuous grasp of what it meant—but I lacked the first notion of how to evaluate it in terms she might find useful. Her first two questions I could answer, though, at least in part. “You might call my father a retainer to a chief. My late husband was the younger son of a very minor chief.” (These were the best comparisons I could find for “knight” and “second son of a baronet,” respectively.) “For my own part, I am not a sailor on the Basilisk—I am not a servant of the captain, though of course we respect his authority when on board his ship. My companions and I voyage with him to carry out our work, which is to study and understand many things in the world.”

“Your companions,” Heali’i said, after a moment’s thought. “Who leads you? The red man, or the other?”

In Mouleen Tom’s nickname had been Epou, which means “red.” The lesser heat of the Broken Sea had not flushed him as badly, but it was still enough for the epithet to return. “The other,” then, would be Suhail, whose warm brown skin was much less worthy of remark among the Keongans. “It is not that simple,” I said. “I work together with Tom—the red one. He and I are…” I used my hands to indicate equal status. (As usual, I am representing our conversations as rather more fluent than they were in reality, eliding most circumlocutions and gaps in my vocabulary—not to mention abject failures of grammar.) “Suhail has recently joined us, but he is pursuing his own goals.”

My statement regarding Tom caused her tattooed mouth to purse. I had clearly posed her something of a conundrum, without intending to. Nor were we any closer to answering the question with which we had begun: to wit, how I should address her. We had conversed quite a bit for two individuals between whom such a basic question of etiquette had not yet been settled.

Jake had been listening. I am both embarrassed and proud to admit that his grasp of the language was likely better than mine; children’s minds often absorb such things with more ease, and his father had always been better than I with Vystrani. But there were other things of which he had less comprehension, and so he said, “What’s mana?”

Heali’i regarded him rather as I might regard a child who said, “What’s a dragon?” I opened my mouth to explain it to him, but was stopped by a variety of obstacles. I scarcely knew how to describe it myself, having only a partial grasp of the concept, and certainly could not do so in Keongan; yet to explain it in Scirling struck me as deeply rude to our present company (although it would allow any errors on my part to go unremarked for the time being). Furthermore, Jake had addressed his question to Heali’i, who could certainly explain it better than I.

She did not precisely explain. Instead she looked at me and said, “Tell me of your deeds.”

I wrote a moment ago that I had at least a preliminary grasp of the concept. I cannot fully explain mana to you, though, for I do not fully understand it myself. Heinrich von Kleist has written extensively on the subject, but I have not read the bulk of his work, as I have not had occasion to return to Keonga or any other part of the Puian islands since my time aboard the Basilisk.

What I came to understand in Keonga is that it combines aspects of rank, lineage, age, esteem, and spiritual power to create a hierarchy among that people, which must be respected lest one not only give offense but do supernatural harm to another. A direct lineage from the gods bestows a steady flow of mana, which raises kings above commoners; elder birth within a family does much the same. But mana is no static thing. It may be lost through carelessness and bad behaviour, or the malicious action of others (this being why tapu restricts certain aspects of life). It may also be earned—or perhaps it would be better to say demonstrated—through great deeds. A second son who is a mighty war-leader shows greater mana than his elder brother who lazes about doing nothing of note.

This, then, was the reason for the entire conversation up until this point: Heali’i did not know where to fit me into that scheme. As a non-Puian, my default position is to be entirely lacking in mana, for I am even less connected to the Puian gods than the most degenerate commoner of their people. But they do not write foreigners out of their system entirely: Aekinitos, for example, was assumed to possess a degree of mana, by virtue of being the captain of his ship, and his officers followed in lesser degree.

Had I named myself as the leader of our expedition, Heali’i would have written a small amount of mana for me into her mental ledger. But I could not do that to Tom; I knew too well the struggles he had endured as a man of plebeian birth. After our years of partnership, I was resolved never to claim any sort of authority over him, and certainly not on account of my more prestigious ancestry.

Deeds, however… those, I could claim.

“Ah,” I said. “I have travelled the world to study dragons.”

I meant that only to be my opening volley, the first line of the saga of my life. (Insofar as my limited command of Keongan would permit me anything like a saga.) But upon my words, Heali’i straightened, her tattoo-lined eyes going wide. “It’s true, then,” she said. “You are ke’anaka’i.”

I repeated the word silently, my lips shaping the syllables. Naka’i was the word I had known as nataki elsewhere in the Puian islands. It referred to different creatures depending on where I was, ranging from the sea-serpents to mere lizards, but in my head I had glossed its core meaning as “dragon.” As for the rest… “Dragon-spirited?” I murmured in Scirling.

Heali’i could not understand me, but she came forward anyway, three quick steps that brought her close enough to lay one hand over my heart. I only barely controlled the urge to shy back. “In here,” she said. “I did not think one could be born in a foreigner.”

My first instinct had been to assume that “dragon-spirited” was her way of saying that I had a strong interest in the creatures. This, however, sounded rather more literal. “Do you think I am,” I began, and then foundered on my lack of vocabulary. I could not think of a way to say “possessed.”

Heali’i nodded, grinning from ear to ear. Because I had not finished my sentence, however, what she was agreeing to was not what I had meant. She took my head in her hands and brought us together so that our foreheads and noses touched, then inhaled deeply, as if taking in my scent. “I felt it in you,” she said, still with her head against mine. “I, too, am not human.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said, recoiling at last.

The island woman was not bothered by my reaction. “I have heard that foreigners do not know the true stories. Your spirit comes from Rahuahane. That is why you are fascinated by the fire-lizards and the sea-serpents.”

Jake was staring at us both, eyes wide. I looked at my son as if he could somehow explain the strange turn this conversation had taken, but he shook his head. I said, “What, or who, is Rahuahane?”

Heali’i did not answer me immediately. “I am a bad host,” she said. “Come and sit in the shade. I will bring cocoanuts to drink and eat.”

I was less than entirely minded to accept her hospitality until I knew whether she was a madwoman. I could not quite bring myself to walk back down the mountain, though, not without unraveling the rest of this mystery, and so I sat down where she indicated, with Jake close by my side.

Her answer took quite a while to work through, owing to my imperfect grasp of the language. Often she would get only half a dozen words into her sentence before I had to ask for a word to be explained; the explanation would contain another word I did not know; and by the time we had arrived at a phrase I could understand in its entirety, we had quite lost track of the original sentence. Jake assisted where he could, and often saw Heali’i’s meaning before I did, but I could not risk miscommunication on a topic of such apparent import, and so had to confirm his assumptions with her before we could continue. But this, in much more efficient form, is what I learned.

I said before that there are eleven inhabited islands in the Keongan archipelago. That is not the same as eleven habitable islands. There is a twelfth, of acceptable size and well capable of supporting life; but a Keongan will throw himself to the mercies of the sea-serpents and the sharks rather than set foot upon it. This twelfth island is Rahuahane.

Heali’i’s explanation began with the recounting of a myth. In the early days of the world, Wali, god of the sea, and Apoa, goddess of the land, lay together, and from them were born human beings. Keongans trace their lineages back to these two gods; indeed their entire society, from the lowliest farm laborer up to the king himself, is divided into two great clans (which ethnologists call moieties), one considering itself the heirs to Wali, the other to Apoa. Although Heali’i did not say this at the time, I later learned that each moiety is required to marry out; a man of the sea may not marry a woman of the sea, or land to land. Children, upon reaching the age of majority, choose the moiety to which they will thereafter belong, allying themselves with either their father’s people or their mother’s.

But human beings were not the only children this divine pair bore. One night Apoa lay atop Wali instead, and what she gave birth to after that were naka’i. Again I mentally translated this as dragon, but by Heali’i’s account monster might be the more appropriate word. The naka’i were not kindly creatures. They lived on Rahuahane, terrorizing the men and women of the other islands, until a great hero named Lo’alama’oiri went there and turned them to stone. Ever since then, Rahuahane has been seen as cursed: an island of death.

“I was born on an island,” I said, “but it lies many days’ sail from here—more days than I can count. I do not know this Rahuahane of yours.”

“You are ke’anaka’i,” Heali’i insisted. “Even though you are foreign. Everything about you proclaims it. I have asked questions. You dress like a man of your people; you do a man’s work. You stand between land and sea. Just as I do.”

This time I understood all her words; her point, however, escaped me. “I thought it was my interest in fire-lizards and sea-serpents that made me ke’anaka’i, not my habits of dress. And you claim to be the same sort of person—yet you do not dress or act like a man.”

“Of course not,” Heali’i said, staring at me as if I were the slowest child in the village. “I dress and act like a woman.”

I do not know how long I sat there with my mouth hanging ajar. The tall, strong body. The facial tattoos, exaggerating eyes and mouth like cosmetics. The clothing—bulky by Keongan standards—padding out the bosom, augmenting the hips.

Jake blurted, “You’re a man!”

“No,” Heali’i said. “I am ke’anaka’i.”

Had the Keongan language been different, I might have seen it sooner. But in all the Puian tongues, they make no distinction between the masculine and feminine pronouns—only between animate things of the third person, such as people and animals, and inanimate ones such as cocoanuts. Like all those from the Basilisk, I had been calling Heali’i “she”… simply on the basis of assumption.

It had seemed a perfectly safe assumption. Heali’i had a husband, after all, and Mokoane was unquestionably male. (Keongans swim without clothing.) I knew from one of the participants in the Flying University that the ancient Nichaeans and various other societies valorized the love and intimacy of men, but I had never yet heard of one where they married each other.

But of course, as Heali’i said, she—I shall go on using the Scirling pronoun, for lack of a better—was not a man. Not as Keongans reckoned such things. Despite what lay beneath her barkcloth skirt, she was something else: a third gender, standing between male and female, between the moiety of the land and the moiety of the sea.

They are not common, the ke’anaka’i. Keongans identify them in their youth, sometimes by physical appearance (as there are infants born with genitalia that do not quite conform to the expected standards of male or female), but more often by their behaviour, which refuses to fit the patterned rituals and tapu of Keongan life. Such people are believed to be spirits from dead Rahuahane, born into human flesh… and they are dangerous.

“You’re scaring people,” Heali’i said. “You aren’t married. It’s necessary, to bind you into human society.” She laughed, a hearty sound that carried through the trees. “A foreign ke’anaka’i, running around with nothing to restrain her—who would believe it? No wonder your ship wrecked. A Keongan would have thrown you over the side when the storm began, to appease the gods.”

She might find it funny, but I did not agree. “I used to be married,” I said, and gestured to Jake as proof. “My husband died.”

“Husband?” Heali’i repeated, appalled. She recoiled from me, staring at Jake. “Tell me he is not your son.” Then she waved this away, before I could even comply. “No. No, he cannot be your son. The others have not heard this, or they would have called for the priests. You must say he is someone else’s son. The red man, or the woman from the ship.”

Jake gave me a frightened look. We both read the same meaning into Heali’i’s reference to the priests: their visit would not be a friendly one. Ke’anaka’i, it seemed, were not allowed to bear children. “Miss Abby,” Jake said, and I nodded. She was already his governess, and therefore spent a great deal of time looking after him; it would be easy to let the islanders believe he was her son. (Half the sailors tended to forget he was not.)

Heali’i sighed in relief. “Good. You already behave as you should, for the most part. You dress and act as a man. Even your hair is short, like a man’s.” I put one hand self-consciously to my cropped head, which had been revealed when I laid my hat aside in the shade of Heali’i’s house. “There is only one thing lacking,” she said. “You need a wife.”

Jake laughed uproariously at this. Perhaps it was the release of the previous tension; perhaps it was merely the thought of his mother playing gruff husband to some blushing bride that made him so mirthful. The blush, however, was on my cheeks. “Don’t be absurd.”

All amusement faded from Heali’i. “You must be married,” she said. “And not to a man. If you are not… I don’t know what they’ll do.”

The Keongans. They believed I was a reborn spirit from Rahuahane—a reborn monster. I had defused their concerns by coming to Heali’i, but that did not mean the concerns had gone away entirely. Fear made my skin prickle, even in the tropical warmth. “Heali’i, I cannot. I am not of your people! I do not follow your gods, know your ways—do you expect me to live here for the rest of my life? Or take some poor girl with me when I leave?”

She dismissed this with a snort. “I have heard what your home is like; it sounds much too cold. No Keongan girl would be foolish enough to sail there with you. No, you will divorce her before you go. If the gods take offense, that will be your leader’s problem, not ours.”

“What a charmingly pragmatic attitude,” I muttered in Scirling, not at all charmed. Forcing my half-stunned brain back into Keongan, I said, “It is still impossible. My interest is in men, Heali’i. I cannot be a husband to a woman, not in—in the physical sense. I would not even know how.” Many people over the years have accused me of having no shame, but had they been on the slopes of Homa’apia that day, they would know it to be false. There were some things I could not bring myself to do, not even for dragons.

Heali’i began laughing once more. For a moment I hoped this had all been some great joke—but no. “Do you think I lie with my husband? Of course not.”

I stopped my tongue before it could point out that there were societies where such things were common. We were not here to debate the sexual mores and behaviours of all peoples; only of hers and my own. “But this would not be fair to the girl. Whoever she might be. To marry her in some kind of sham, and then cast her off when I leave… I cannot imagine anyone agreeing to it.”

“That,” Heali’i said, “is because you have not met her yet.”

Messages can travel quite quickly in the islands, so long as there is someone willing to hop in a canoe and paddle over to the recipient’s village. My prospective wife arrived at our camp the following afternoon.

I had said nothing of the situation to my companions, and had forbidden Jake to breathe so much as a word of it. Every time I tried to envision explaining this to Tom, my imagination failed me utterly. I kept expecting it to be some kind of grand jest, which I could forget as soon as the joke ended. But when Heali’i showed up with two people in tow, I knew she was serious.

They were both young: a boy and a girl, likely no more than sixteen. Heali’i introduced them as Kapo’ono and Liluakame, both from the neighbouring island of Lahana; I greeted them in my awkward Keongan, wondering if he was her brother, or perhaps a cousin. I saw little resemblance between them, if so.

When the formalities were done, Heali’i said, “Liluakame is perfect for you. She will be your wife until you leave.”

I was too flummoxed by the entire situation to be polite. With the sort of bluntness one can only muster in a foreign language one speaks very poorly, I said to the girl, “Do you have any idea what is going on here?”

Liluakame glanced shyly at Kapo’ono. Not quite meeting my eye, she said, “You would be doing us a favour. I want to marry Kapo’ono, you see.”

She had to repeat this twice before I was certain I had heard her right the first time. “How on earth could me marrying you help you marry him?”

“I’m not worthy of her yet,” Kapo’ono said. It came out stiffly, and I realized he was at least as embarrassed as I was. “My uncle is going to take me on a trading expedition to Toahanae, and I will make my fortune there. But until then, Liluakame’s family will not let me marry her.”

“And while he’s gone, I fear they’ll make me wed someone else,” Liluakame added. “There is a man on ‘Opawai—he wouldn’t be a shark, but I do not want to marry him. I want Kapo’ono.”

A shark, I presumed, was a term of opprobrium for a bad husband. “But if you were married to me… then you would be safe until Kapo’ono returns.”

She nodded. I resisted the urge to bury my face in my hands. “You know that Heali’i believes me to be ke’anaka’i, yes?”

“That’s what you are,” Liluakame said, as if confirming that the sky was blue. “Everyone knows it.”

I was in no mood to argue about the concept; only about its implications. “Which means my spirit is some kind of inhuman creature from Rahuahane. And you want to be married to that?”

“I’m not afraid,” she said stoutly. And Kapo’ono, when I looked to him, assured us both—Liluakame more than me—that he did not mind marrying someone who had previously been the wife of a dragon-spirited person. All the while, Heali’i beamed from ear to ear, as if she had just performed a miracle. Now I understood her eagerness: she had found someone who appeared to suit my needs as perfectly as possible.

That was not, however, the same thing as being a perfect match. “What of your parents?” I asked. “We are guests here on Keonga. I cannot afford to risk angering anyone, even if it would help both of us.”

You may notice a shift in my speech. Previously I had been pointing out all the factors that made Heali’i’s notion impossible… but somewhere in the course of things I had instead begun pointing out all the obstacles between us and success. It was my deranged practicality coming to the fore: it might be absurd for me to temporarily contract a marriage with another woman, but if I was going to do such a thing, I would do it right.

“I can talk them around,” Liluakame said, which did not reassure me.

Between the three of them, however, they persuaded me to at least meet with her parents. I received a flurry of etiquette instruction, so that I might not give offense; I accordingly met them outside the enclosure where our party had originally been greeted, with a bottle of Tom’s brandy as a gift and the proper words of respectful greeting on my tongue. This was successful enough that Liluakame’s parents regarded me with bemused hilarity—rather the way I might have regarded a spaniel who arrived on my doorstep wearing a top hat and begging my pardon for the disturbance.

It transpired that their reason for marrying Liluakame to the fellow on ‘Opawai was that they did not want their daughter to bear the scandal of being a spinster—especially since Kapo’ono’s trading expedition was likely to be a lengthy one, which meant Liluakame would be waiting for quite a while. (She assured everyone most vehemently that she did not mind waiting in the slightest.)

“Will there not be any scandal if she marries me?” I asked—not quite believing that living in pseudo-wedlock with a half-human foreign transvestite was any improvement over spinsterhood.

The mother cast a dubious eye on Liluakame. “It is not what I would choose for her,” she said. “But she would earn great mana by taming you.”

I can only guess at the translation of that last verb; I did not recognize the word at the time, and did not remember it well enough later to confirm what she had said. The general sense of it, however, was clear enough. Ke’anaka’i were dangerous unless constrained by the civilizing institution of human marriage; the challenge of so constraining one was therefore a marker of great courage and strength.

It seemed that everyone was in favour, then—except for myself.

You may think the reason for my reticence was the sheer absurdity of what I was being asked to do. It goes very much against the grain to wed someone knowing it is merely an arrangement of convenience, to be discarded as soon as circumstances allow; that is not what marriage is supposed to be. Furthermore, for me to wed a woman was unthinkable in my own society, and scarcely more thinkable while I was temporarily resident in someone else’s. Both of these were solid grounds upon which to doubt the wisdom of this course.

Neither of them, however, weighed nearly so heavily in my mind as the personal element. I had envied the two tê lêng mating in the mountains of Yelang; I envied the two young Keongans standing before me now. My own husband was dead; I must disavow my son lest we be done in by the islanders; and now, for my own safety as well as that of my companions, I was being told I must undergo a sham reprise of my first marriage, to someone I hardly knew at all.

“I will need time to consider this,” I told them, and fled back to camp.

When I told Tom—after first taking the precaution of walking well away from camp with him—he buried his face in his hands.

I alternately watched him and looked away in embarrassment. His shoulders kept shaking with something I thought might be suppressed laughter, probably of a hysterical sort. Finally, when I could bear the silence no longer, I said, “I know it is strange.”

“Strange,” Tom said, still muffled by his hands, “is flinging yourself off a cliff for the sake of dragons. Strange is what you have done up until now. This… is something else.”

“Very well—I know it is absurd.”

“That comes closer to the mark.” He took his hands down, shaking his head. “I needled you in Eriga about attracting marital interest wherever you go, but I admit, I never expected this. Must you do it?”

The question dragged at me like the anchor of the Basilisk. “I think I must. Otherwise the islanders will think there is nothing binding me to human society.”

Tom nodded. A blind man could not have missed the way the Keongans were treating me. Since I climbed the mountain to visit Heali’i, the worst of it had subsided, but it had not gone away; they watched me as if I were a dancing spark that might set a whole village ablaze. I was ke’anaka’i; I was unbound by human custom. If I stayed quietly in my hut, they might let the matter pass with a mere shunning. But if I tried to pursue my research, I might frighten them into outright violence.

Laid against that, a sham marriage seemed a small price to pay.

Tom’s thoughts trended in a similar direction. “It seems much less hazardous to life and limb than some of the other things you’ve done.”

And less hazardous than remaining in my current state. “Please do not tell anyone,” I said, not without a piteous note.

He snorted. “Who would believe me?”

I weighed the matter in my mind: the fear of the islanders, my own fear of following so strange a course. The path before me was peculiar beyond my ability to even imagine, and would drag up any number of memories I was not eager to face… but dragons lay at the end of it.

“Then I will speak to Heali’i,” I said.

THIRTEEN

I have never attempted to hide that I have had two husbands in my life.

I have, however, neglected to mention that in between them, I had a wife.

Liluakame and I wed in a simple ceremony that hardly merited the name. I was grateful for its simplicity and foreignness, which helped to separate my current actions from those which had bound me to Jacob Camherst. My son was not present—not because he disapproved, but because we were pretending he was Abby’s son. Indeed, he found the entire thing more amusing than upsetting; it is remarkable what children will accept as normal, especially when their experiences have been sufficiently broad. Tom knew of it, as did the captain and Abby. (She, I suspect, mentally wrote me down as the sort of woman who enjoys the company of other women in more than merely social ways. While not true, it was an understandable conclusion to draw.)

My attempts to keep the entire thing secret from the crew of the Basilisk, however, failed to an astounding degree.

It was futile to even try. I could not keep them from knowing that I had temporarily disavowed Jake as my son, for we needed them to perpetuate that façade. Nor could I keep them from knowing that Liluakame was about, for it was her duty as my wife—however nominal that status—to keep house for me. Her father and brother built a more substantial hut for the two of us to reside in, along with Jake and Abby, which drew attention; before long, any number of rumours began to circulate about our precise arrangement. At first I tried to squelch these, but of course the harder I tried, the more I persuaded everyone that something was indeed going on. Jake’s approach was much more successful: he began to make up stories about me, each one wilder than the last, burying the truth under a mountain of flamboyant nonsense.

And that, dear reader, is why the tales of my life in Keonga are even more absurd than the normal run of story about me. Under no circumstances was I going to report the truth to the Winfield Courier, let alone to my family. In the end I chose to embrace Jake’s tactic, inventing outrageous variations when speaking of the matter in person, but glossing over it entirely in print. The result has been a breathtaking mélange of untruths, and as I have already decided that this shall be a volume in which I reveal one secret, I may as well reveal another. (After all, it has been so very long since there was any satisfying scandal about me. I find that respectability grows wearisome after a time, when one is accustomed to being a disgrace.)

The only part which troubled me, once I settled upon Jake’s method of dealing with the rumours, was Suhail’s reaction.

He had been busy in his own right, diving in the warm, shallow waters of the lagoons that lay between the shore and the surrounding reef. He was, of course, looking for any sign of submerged Draconean ruins. The hunt for these had taken him around the island, a journey of several days—these being the days in which I discovered Heali’i’s nature and found myself supplied with a wife. When he returned, he sank neck-deep in the morass of rumours that now filled our camp. Understandably, he came to me for explanation.

To him I told the truth, in as straightforward a fashion as I could. When I was done, he stared at me with an expression I could not read. “Do you think this is right?” he asked.

“It hurts no one that I can see,” I said. “Liluakame benefits, along with Kapo’ono. It allows me to conduct my research without offending the local customs. And it is not as if I am going to damage my own future marriage prospects, for I have none.” (I had received three proposals in the years following Jacob’s death, but none of a sort I would consider for even a moment. At the advanced age of thirty, with little money but a great deal of notoriety to my name, I had no expectation of receiving anything better.)

“But you do not believe in what they tell you,” he said.

“In ke’anaka’i?” I had given this a great deal of thought since speaking with Heali’i, and had reached some surprising conclusions. “If you mean, do I believe that I am the reincarnation of an inhuman dragon-creature from a Puian myth—then no, of course not. But taking the term in its simpler sense… then yes, perhaps I am dragon-spirited.”

Suhail’s eyebrows went up, and I elaborated. “I have been mad for dragons ever since I was a child, and this, they say, is a sign that marks one as ke’anaka’i. Such people also transgress against the norms of society, particularly those which constrain behaviour on the basis of sex; this, too, describes me quite well. And—” I hesitated. “This will sound peculiar, I know. But this love I have for dragons, my compulsion to understand them… I have thought of it before as if there were a dragon within me. A part of my spirit. I do not believe it is true in any mystical sense, of course; I am as human as you are. But in the metaphorical sense, yes. ‘Dragon-spirited’ is as good a term for me as any.”

He listened to this in silence, his expression settled into the grave lines it assumed when he was deep in thought. “Do you believe you are neither male nor female?”

I almost gave a malapert answer, but caught myself in time. We had an established habit of intellectual debate, and I valued it; I would not discard it now.

“So long as my society refuses to admit of a concept of femininity that allows for such things,” I said, “then one could indeed say that I stand between.”

It was not quite the same thing as the Keongan concept of a third gender. But Suhail nodded—less as if he agreed, more as if I had given him a great deal to think about—and there it rested for a time.

I fear I was not a terribly good husband to Liluakame.

In part this was because I found myself almost thinking of her as my servant. I was accustomed to shifting for myself in the field; living in something like a proper house, with someone else arranging my domestic life, tempted my mind into the habits of home. But I think it was more my own troubles than our circumstances that made me fall into such patterns of thought. It was easier to envision her as a servant than as a spouse, for the former did not require any intimacy of spirit from me.

Fortunately, neither did Liluakame. So long as I treated her with respect—which I did, quite scrupulously—she did not ask much more of me, and seemed content to hone her own skills in preparation for her impending marriage to Kapo’ono. She was, on the whole, a very good wife. Thanks to the efforts of her male kin, our ramshackle lean-to was soon replaced with a proper hut, its floor paved with rounded stones, its openings perfectly positioned to admit what cooling breezes were to be had. Had I intended to live there permanently, Liluakame would have started a garden; instead she worked in the garden of a cousin of Heali’i’s and brought home plantains, sweet potatoes, cocoanut, and breadfruit, as well as taro from the fields of the men.

The one task that did fall to me, at least in part, was cooking. I mentioned before that this is the purview of men in Keonga; women cook certain things, but men oversee the underground ovens which bake the more substantial dishes. To my chagrin, I found that this became my duty, now that I was a ke’anaka’i individual living as a man. Like Heali’i, I was not expected to perform all the duties of my apparent sex… but if I did not cook such things, my household went without. Jake was old enough that he should have left our side to live among the unmarried young men, but as he had not gone through the appropriate rite of passage, he still belonged to the world of women (which in practice meant the world of Abby).

My odd position did at least afford me one domestic benefit: as ke’anaka’i, I could dine with whomever I pleased, without violating tapu. I therefore was able to take meals with my son when I chose, or with Tom, or with Aekinitos (once repairs were underway and his mood improved)—the exception, of course, being when research drew me away.

I was eager for that research, not only because of natural inclination, but also because it gave me a reason to avoid the awkward components of my domestic situation. Together with Tom and Heali’i I formed a plan to hike up to the summit of Homa’apia. There, she promised, we could observe fire-lizards to our hearts’ content.

The prospect excited me greatly. Before I could pursue it, however, I had matters to attend to in the sea.

We all saw the new storm brewing. The tides were nearly right for Aekinitos and Mr. Dolin to free the Basilisk at last; but if she were to have any hope of floating free, the very large weight sitting in her belly had to be removed. “I should throw the damn thing over the side,” Aekinitos growled at Suhail. “That lump of steel was dragging us askew all through the storm.”

Suhail made a gesture of apology. “The diving bell will take no harm from being in water, if you would be kind enough not to throw it. We could perhaps lower it onto the reef with the boom, and retrieve it once the ship is repaired.”

Aekinitos did not look very enthused at the prospect of retrieving it. I intervened, saying, “It would be very beneficial to me to have the diving bell. We have a scheme in mind for using it to study the serpents.” To say nothing of its use to Suhail, of course—not that Aekinitos cared a fig for that.

“You will not be able to use it,” the captain said. “Even one of their double canoes cannot carry its weight.”

Disappointment dragged at me. I had been so very eager to view the sea-serpents. Then Suhail said, “There would not be any ruins on the fore reef, so it is of no use to me there. But Mrs. Camherst might be able to use it to view the serpents before the ship is moved.”

“Oh, might I?” For a moment I sounded as if I were seven again. Then a twinge of guilt stirred in me. “Though I do not feel right, using your device for my research, when you cannot use it for your own.”

Suhail dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “If it will do you good, then by all means. There are some islanders whose job is to keep a watch out for the serpents, so that the fishers do not go into danger. We can ask them.”

The islanders in question were a gaggle of boys old enough to take their meals with the men, but too young to undertake adult tasks. They told me with enthusiasm that yes, the serpents were often seen outside the reef, and showed me the drum they beat to warn others when the telltale coils broke the surface. “Are you going to ride one?” they asked Suhail, all eagerness.

“Ride one!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” one of them replied, with great enthusiasm. So great, in fact, that I could not follow at all what he said next; his words came out in such a torrent as to utterly defeat my imperfect grasp of his language.

Suhail translated for me, with a slowness I knew did not come from any linguistic difficulty. “He says it is a thing the warriors do. They wait until there is a warning of serpents, then paddle out past the reef and dive into the water. When a serpent comes near, they seize hold of the—” He stopped, gesturing above his eyes.

“The tendrils,” I said. “They must be quite sensitive; we believe those are part of how the serpents perceive disturbances in the water.”

“Interesting. Yes, the tendrils. He says this keeps the serpent from tossing its head to fling the rider off. Someone who does this displays great mana; the longer he remains aboard, the greater the acclaim.”

I had not forgotten the circumstances under which I first saw Suhail, back in Namiquitlan. “You want to try this for yourself.”

His answering grin split his face. “Can you imagine such a ride?”

“Not for myself,” I said firmly. I had begun to enjoy swimming; it was very pleasant to start my day with a paddle in a sheltered cove, away from the sailors’ eyes. (A clothed paddle, I should note. The locals might swim naked, but I did not. Even Suhail wore a loincloth in the water.) A few days of practice, however, did not make me a champion swimmer. For me to try such a thing would be foolhardy in the extreme.

A little voice in my mind whispered, As foolhardy as hurling yourself off a waterfall.

“I will not try it now,” Suhail assured me. “If I got myself eaten, you would have no one to manage the diving bell for you. And I would not want an angry serpent to damage the Basilisk further.”

I laughed. “No, indeed—Aekinitos would raise your ghost in order to vent his spleen upon it.”

We were fortunate. Between our conceiving of this notion and the removal of the Basilisk from her stony cradle, a serpent was indeed sighted just beyond the reef.

The moment we heard the drums pounding, we sprang into motion. One of the ship’s boats and two Keongan canoes pushed out from shore, carrying myself, Suhail, Tom, Heali’i, and an assortment of sailors and islanders. The latter kept watch at a distance while we climbed up onto the ship, where the diving bell had been made ready.

Suhail had made the first preparations before the storm ever drove us to Keonga, welding a metal plate onto the base of the bell, with a collar of oiled leather for a hatch. “It will not withstand any great pressure,” Suhail had told me. “Rubber would be better. But we will not be going deep.” There was a flattish bit of reef below the outcropping on which the Basilisk had grounded herself; it was less than ten meters down, where the pressure ought to be acceptable, and would provide (we hoped) a stable platform for the bell, which ordinarily would hang suspended in the water, allowing Suhail to swim out through the open bottom. Suspension, however, would mean that any swing from the bell—such as that caused by a serpent—might create trouble for the damaged Basilisk, shifting it on the reef. Even preparing to lower the bell into the water had been an exercise in physics, taking care we would not tip the vessel over.

I must admit I had second thoughts when I saw the bell awaiting us on deck. It lay on its side, with sacks about to keep it from rolling; the hatch in the base seemed very small indeed. (I have never been claustrophobic, but I defy most of my readers to face the prospect of sealing themselves in a small metal chamber and dropping that chamber into the ocean without at least a moment of apprehension.) I could not allow those thoughts to delay me, though; we did not know how long the serpent would remain.

Suhail was giving final reminders to Tom and the men who would be managing the air pump. Their work was vital; without that umbilical hose and the machine on the other end, Suhail and I would asphyxiate in short order. I looked to Heali’i for my own instructions. “Is there any tapu I should know about? Suhail is not dragon-spirited.”

“Just don’t make them angry,” Heali’i said; and with those comforting words, I had to enter the bell.

Suhail followed me a moment later and clamped the hatch shut. There was not much room for either of us to move; the bell was a bit taller than a man’s height, but had a bench around the edge, which divers sat upon when the device was used as intended. He and I braced ourselves against this as the men hauled on ropes to bring us upright. The bell thumped against the deck, which I prayed would not collapse beneath us; it did not. Small amounts of light entered through the two windows, but not enough.

He was watching me closely. “You do not have to do this,” he said.

I managed a small laugh. “That should be my epitaph when I die. She did not have to do it.” Then my words cut off, for with a great creaking of ropes and shouting from the men on deck, we rose into the air and swung out over the sea.

I expected the bell to sway as it entered the water, but its great weight was proof against the force of the surf. I heard the splash of water outside, and felt the bell chill beneath my hand; then the interior dimmed as we went under.

“Breathe,” Suhail said with a grin. I had, without realizing it, begun holding my air. I exhaled and gave him an answering smile. The result undoubtedly looked nervous; there is a fine line between excitement and fear.

I had been in the sea once before, when swimming with the dragon turtles. It was odd now to see that environment through glass: to be underwater, yet perfectly dry. The sunlight slanted down through the sea, beams dancing slightly as the waves shifted. No water came in through our hatch, not even the slightest leak, and Suhail made a satisfied murmur.

The bell settled against the seabed. Suhail rose from the bench and tramped a circle around the interior, making sure our position was secure. Then he nodded, and I went to the porthole to look out.

We had landed where Suhail intended, upon a sturdy shelf overlooking deeper waters. From one side I had a splendidly close view of the reef that had been the downfall of the Basilisk, the coloured corals put to shame by the bright fish flitting among them. I could have lingered for an hour simply watching those fish; they have never been of great interest to me before, but their beauty was entrancing.

My time here was limited, though, and so I moved to the other porthole, looking out into the ocean. The reef there rapidly gave way to a more muted landscape. My gaze flicked from place to place, familiarizing myself; I estimated sizes, distances, preparing myself to record what I could about the sea-serpents.

For those, I would not have to wait long. There was not just one serpent in the vicinity; there were several, slipping through the more distant reaches. The question was, would they come closer?

“The water here is beautifully clear,” Suhail marveled from behind my shoulder. “In most places you would not see them at such a distance—not as anything more than shadows in the murk.”

Glass against the tip of my nose told me I had leaned forward instinctively, trying to lessen the gap. “I wish they would come closer,” I said. Then I grumbled in annoyance, for my words had fogged the glass. I wiped it clean with my sleeve and returned to my study. The next time I spoke, I took care to turn my head first. “They are unquestionably smaller than the one I saw in the north—less than half the size, I should think. Not juveniles, though; they seem fully formed.”

Suhail said nothing, which pleased me. He had a knack for distinguishing between conversation and the audible workings of my brain, and knew not to interrupt the latter. One of the serpents drifted closer, tantalizing me, and I noted its characteristics out loud. “Full complement of facial tendrils—that could be a sign of youth, or of species difference. No evidence of posterior fins. I can almost see vanes on the anterior fins, four of them. Come, my dear; turn this way, so I may see your face.”

I do not know how long I stood there, talking to myself like a madwoman, half-conversing with a sea-serpent. When it swam away once more, I turned and found Suhail with one foot on the bench, a notebook braced against his knee. He had been scribbling in the dim light, and held the result up for me to see: a record of all my ramblings.

“Oh, thank you,” I said. “My memory is good, but—”

The bell went nearly dark. I whirled in time to see a long rush of scales going by the porthole; an instant later I was glued to the side of the bell, but I was too late. The serpent was already swimming off. I could have howled in frustration. “Another one! And this one is larger.” I craned my neck, trying to see above, where the serpent circled. “If only I could get a close look at the scales…”

The serpent seemed inclined to oblige me, for it bent back upon itself and dove once more. It shot by at speed, and then the bell rang like its namesake as the serpent’s tail slapped the side.

I put my hand against the wall, more out of shock than a need to catch myself. The bell weighed a great deal; a mere slap scarcely did more than shake it. But Suhail, off-balance with his foot up on the bench, almost staggered against me. He met my gaze and said quietly, “I think you should stop wishing for such things.”

The bell rang again. “Oh dear,” I said, my nerves returning. “It—cannot break the bell, can it? Or the porthole?”

“Those, no,” Suhail answered, looking up with sudden concern.

My heart began beating double-time. “What do you mean by, those, no? What else could it—” Then my gaze followed his, and I understood.

At the top of the bell, a small hole gave access to the umbilical which supplied our air. That hollow cable was a sturdy thing, and laced through the chain besides; surely that would be enough to protect it.

I returned my attention to the porthole, trying to see what was transpiring outside. I arrived just in time.

The serpent had circled and come about to face us. I saw its mouth open wide, its flanks ripple peculiarly. I had just enough time to say, “I think it is drawing water in—”

And then the serpent spat it back out.

This time the bell did more than simply ring. It rocked dangerously backward, shifting on the seabed. I caught myself against the far wall, the bench striking the backs of my knees. “Jet of water,” I said, and the part of my mind that takes refuge in science made a note to discuss abdominal musculature once more with Tom, who had dissected the serpent up in the arctic. “But this bell weighs a very great deal; we should—”

I cannot tell you what happened next, for I was no longer looking out the porthole, and it offered a limited view regardless. I do not know whether the first serpent returned to lend its aid, or whether that jet had been a mere test and now the second, larger serpent mustered its full strength. I know only that the floor of the bell tilted beneath my feet… and then the whole thing tipped and rolled, throwing me against the bench, against Suhail, and then there was water spraying all around us, and I was screaming.

He regained his feet before I did. By the time I determined which way was up, Suhail had stripped off his shirt and jammed it against the hole for the umbilical—the hole which had previously supplied us with air, and now, despite his best efforts, was admitting a steady flow of water.

The bell was on its side again; the cable had broken; we were in imminent danger of drowning.

I managed to stand, slipping a little in the accumulated water, and joined Suhail in pressing the fabric against the hole, trying to block the points at which it was leaking. We met each others’ gazes, and the panic in his eyes felt much like that in my own heart. “They’ll have seen that above,” I said. Tom and the others could not possibly have failed to notice the bell being torn from its chain.

“They cannot get to us in time,” Suhail said.

My mind had already performed the same calculation. If someone dove in immediately, perhaps—but what good would that do? They could not reconnect the chain, could not haul us from the sea before we drowned.

We turned as one to regard the hatch through which we had entered. Perversely, I blessed the serpent for not merely breaking the umbilical, but knocking us on our side; had it not done so, we would have had no escape, for our jury-rigged hatch was in the base of the bell, and had been pressed firmly against the sand. Now it offered a slender reed of hope.

Suhail’s voice was quiet with tension. “We would have to let the water in, then swim out once the force had subsided.”

“And hope we can make it to the surface in time,” I said.

A heartbeat passed, during which the water continued to leak in.

I did not think of Jake in that heartbeat. Those who claim their thoughts go to loved ones in such moments of crisis are either liars or made of different stuff than I. All my thoughts were bent to the calculus of survival. We were a little less than ten meters down; I was not a fast swimmer. The serpent was still out there, and might come for us once we were free of the bell.

But if we stayed here, we would certainly die.

“Exhale as you go up,” Suhail said, and by that I knew he had reached the same conclusion. “Otherwise the air in your lungs will expand and kill you.”

I had not thought of that, and nodded. Then he said, “Are you ready?”

Of course not, I wanted to say. But delay would accomplish nothing beneficial, and so I said, “Yes.”

Suhail let go of his shirt. The spray of water increased greatly, utterly drenching me. He waded through the growing depth to the hatch. Once there, he wasted no further time, but broke open the seal.

To my horror, the hatch did not open immediately. It had been designed to swing outward, so that the pressure of the sea would assist in keeping it closed; now that worked against us. Suhail kicked it, and that let in a gush of water; then the flood began.

I gulped in the greatest lungful of air I could hold. My body ached with the volume of it, and I remembered what he had said about pressure—but I would need as much oxygen as I could get.

The bell was almost full of water. Suhail had gotten the hatch fully open, and eeled out through it with the ease of a practiced swimmer. I pushed for it, swimming against the inrushing current, and found he had waited for me; he gripped my wrist and helped me out. Then, still holding me, he kicked off from the seabed, and we rose.

Ten meters had not seemed like so very great a depth as we went down, with the water so clear it made distances small. Now, fluttering like mad for the surface, ten meters seemed like ten kilometers. We ascended so slowly—so slowly. Only the growing pressure in my lungs told me we had gone anywhere. I exhaled in little spurts, trying to keep as much air as I could, for soon my body was clamouring for fresh oxygen. Suhail, a better swimmer by far, dragged me up and up and up.

I could not help looking about. The nearest serpent was up at the surface now, but not facing us; it was thrashing away in an unhappy fashion. I saw the underside of a canoe in the water, some distance from the great shadow that was the Basilisk’s hull, and knew the Keongans were doing something. But I could not spare any thought for what that might be. I had to swim for the surface.

My lungs were aching. I could no longer tell what was pressure and what was the thirst for air. The surface was still so far away. I tried to exhale again, but there was nothing left in my body. My diaphragm jerked, fighting to draw breath, only my clenched jaw preventing me from inhaling seawater. Suhail’s hand was like iron around my wrist, holding fast against my thrashing.

Then my mouth opened, against all my will, and I began to drown.

FOURTEEN

I came to my senses on the deck of the Basilisk, coughing out what seemed like half the Broken Sea across its boards. My lungs fought between the need to gasp in air, glorious life-giving air, and the need to expel the remaining water. The conflict between those two impulses racked me for an eternity, until at last my airway was clear and I could breathe.

I lay where I was for quite some time after that, curled on my side, listening distantly to the voices around me. One voice I recognized as Tom’s, murmuring an uncharacteristic prayer of thanksgiving. (There is nothing like the near death of a companion to bring religion out in a man.) Others belonged to the sailors and the islanders, barking orders and arguments I lacked the wit to follow just then.

One voice I did not hear: Suhail’s.

As that thought came to me, I rolled over and tried to sit up. I hit someone’s knees, and fell victim to another coughing fit. When it stilled at last, I found the knees belonged to Suhail, who was gazing down at me in wordless relief.

“Oh, thank God you’re alive,” I said.

He managed something like a laugh. “Those should be my words. You are the one who nearly drowned.”

I remembered his hand around my wrist, dragging me toward life. “I have you to thank for my survival, I think.”

Suhail’s colour suddenly improved. He had been as sickly as it is possible for a sun-browned Akhian to look; now he appeared much healthier, and I realized he was blushing. “I’m afraid I have to beg your forgiveness again,” he said, and edged back a few centimeters, so that I was no longer against his knees.

I noticed, for the first time, how close to me he knelt. Tom was crouching half a pace away, and although there were a few sailors looking on, they were all standing. And I had heard tell of how the victims of drowning were saved, though never seen it firsthand.

My own face must have flooded with colour. All at once I was aware of my state: soaking wet, lying full-length on the deck without so much as a blanket to cover me. Undoubtedly there had been no time for such things when Suhail set about reviving me. The water had plastered his curls to his head; they clung to his cheekbones in damp tendrils. He stared at me with the expression of a man who knows he should look away, but has misplaced the ability to do so.

I do my reputation no favours to admit this, but I stared at him in much the same way. We had just survived a harrowing experience; those among you who have done the same know that it often heightens the senses, giving one a vivid awareness of life and its fragility. I was not so very old yet, and Suhail was naked to the waist, and for a moment I had difficulty thinking of anything else.

Tom broke the stasis, for which I shall eternally be grateful to him. He moved from his crouch, and Suhail retreated, allowing him to help me to my feet. (It may give you some notion of how strongly my near drowning had affected me that I was almost as self-conscious of my wet clothing with Tom—Tom, who had seen me naked and covered in mud when I fell victim to yellow fever in Mouleen.)

As usual, I took refuge from embarrassment in my work. “What happened?” I asked, once I was something like steady and had recovered from a new fit of coughing. “Do we know why the serpent attacked?”

“I have an idea.” That came from Heali’i, who had been at the railing, calling down to the men in the canoes below. For once there was not the slightest hint of amusement in her expression. She beckoned me to her side, and when she could speak quietly in my ear, she said, “I think the serpent is amowali.”

I shook my head, not understanding the word. Heali’i sighed in annoyance, turned so that others could not see what she did, and shaped a curve in front of her belly with one hand.

Pregnant. This was enough to drive all thoughts of my recent experience and current state from my mind. I straightened up, looking to the water as if I might see the creature there, but it was gone. A chance—possibly my only chance—to examine a bearing sea-serpent, and I had wasted it.

“What did the others do?” I asked, remembering the movement above as Suhail and I broke for the surface.

“A rider,” she said, gesturing to where a naked man was hoisting himself into a canoe. I hastily averted my eyes. “He dove in and seized hold as the serpent broke the surface, then turned it away from you.”

I was unspeakably grateful to him for it, and told him so as soon as he was clothed once more. He did not seem to mind the risk he had taken on our behalf; his friends were all praising him for his courage and quick thinking, saying he had won great mana by that action. Although I do not attribute spiritual significance to the concept, as they do, I could not dispute the general point, which was that he was indeed a man worthy of respect.

Any further questions regarding the serpent itself had to wait until I was on land once more and could speak to Heali’i in greater privacy. Tom, Suhail, and I were loaded into a canoe along with her, while the sailors stayed to prepare the ship for its move to shore. The bell, of course, was left on the outward slope of the reef, to be retrieved when the Basilisk was seaworthy once more.

By the time I reached shore, I was shivering badly. The warmth of the islands, which ordinarily I found pleasant, was no longer enough, and I could not catch my breath. Liluakame was familiar with these symptoms (drowning being a hazard the Keongans face regularly), and bundled me into heavy barkcloth blankets to sit by a fire outside our hut. There, Heali’i and I could talk at last.

“Do sea-serpents regularly attack when bearing?” I asked. I did not want to leave the shelter of my blankets enough to take notes, and I was not certain what she would think of it if I did. Keongans distrusted writing in those days; they believed strongly in the power of words, and did not like the notion of those words, along with the knowledge they carried, being left sitting about where anybody could pick them up. But I was accustomed to holding on to such things for later recording.

Heali’i’s answering snort was pragmatic. “Wouldn’t you?”

I drew the blankets closer about me and forced my thoughts to focus. “Is their breeding seasonal? It must be a very great danger for your people if this could happen any time of year.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what they do when they aren’t here. Maybe they breed at other times. But we know that when the serpents are around, there’s a risk.”

Tired and worn as I was, it took some time for the implications of this to come clear for me. “You mean—they aren’t always here?”

“Of course not,” Heali’i said. “They follow the currents and the storms.”

Migration. I did not know the word in Keongan, and had to flounder my way through twenty or thirty words in its stead, but once Heali’i understood my meaning, she nodded. “Yes, like some of the birds. They come and go.”

“Do they go as far as the cold?” I asked—this being the only way I could think to refer to the arctic. It necessitated more explanation, this time less successful, for Heali’i had no experience of ice, let alone a region where the sea itself froze solid. (The peak of Aluko’o, which is the highest in the archipelago, sometimes has snow, but Heali’i had never seen it as more than a distant whiteness.) She expressed great doubt that the serpents went so far, but I could not read too much into that, given her lack of familiarity with the world outside her islands.

When I grew frustrated with that line of inquiry, I went back to the matter of breeding. “Where do they lay their eggs?” I asked.

Heali’i shook her head, hands rising as if to ward off the question. “On Rahuahane. That is all I know, and I do not want to know more. For you or I to go there would mean death.”

I had not forgotten the story she told about the hero Lo’alama’oiri, who turned all the naka’i to stone. Even ordinary Keongans shunned the place. If our spirits were supposed to be those of reborn naka’i, of course returning to the island would be very ill-advised.

I was, of course, deeply tempted. I doubt anyone reading this memoir imagines that I was not. Reproduction is a vital part of any species’ existence, and we knew precious little about it in most dragon breeds. But I had some experience with the reaction of locals when I trespassed upon a place said to be cursed, and while I did not expect to have a repetition of what happened in Vystrana, I did not want to tempt fate. The islanders might well decide that Liluakame’s influence was not enough to keep my dragon spirit safely in check.

Besides, there were other islands in the Broken Sea. All serpent reproduction could not happen on a single forbidden landmass—or more likely in the coastal waters of that landmass, as there was no evidence to suggest sea-serpents were amphibious, although they breathed air. Once the Basilisk was afloat once more, I could go in search of other hatching grounds.

But that did not mean my curiosity would lie still and trouble me no more. “Will you show me which island is Rahuahane?” I asked. “If it is not tapu for us to even look at it.”

Heali’i did not look pleased at the prospect, but she nodded. “We will climb Homa’apia tomorrow. From there you will see where your soul is from.”

Repairs had begun on the Basilisk almost as soon as she reached shore. With ropes pulling the ship over to starboard, I could see clearly the gash of cracked timbers where the reef had struck. It was a chilling sight; a little more force in the collision and we might have lost the vessel entirely. Some of us would have made it to shore, no doubt—the experienced swimmers, like Suhail—but not all, and those who did would have been stranded.

We would not be leaving anytime soon. Proper timber had to be obtained, and here tapu reared its head: the sailors could not cut trees on land belonging to the chief, nor could they take certain kinds of trees anywhere on the island during this season. It seemed to be a combination of land rights and husbandry, but whatever the cause, it drove Aekinitos half-mad with frustration. I was just as glad to be going elsewhere for a few days.

I invited Jake to go with us, but was unsurprised when he chose to stay close to shore. “Some of the other boys are going to teach me se’egalu,” he said, bouncing with excitement.

I could not help laughing at his enthusiasm. “And what is se’egalu, in Scirling?”

“There isn’t another word for it. Se’egalu is when you take a wooden board out into the water and stand up on it, and then ride the waves in to shore.”

We had seen this off the coast of Olo’ea, before the storm blew us to Keonga. I had not known that was the word for it. (Nowadays Scirlings call this “surf-riding.”) Nor did I learn until later that in Keonga it is considered a pastime for those of aristocratic lineages; the boys in question were a son and a nephew of the local chief. It was quite a mark of esteem that they invited my son to join them—especially as they believed him to be Abby’s son instead.

As for Suhail, he was very nearly as single-minded as Jake, and had no interest in things that lay beyond his purview. “If there are ruins, tell me,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s likely. They didn’t build on mountaintops in this part of the world—too much risk of earthquakes and eruptions.”

“Thank you for that reminder,” I said dryly. Homa’apia was not a terribly active volcano, not compared to its fellow peak on Aluko’o, which is believed to be the youngest of the Keongan Islands. It still had its share of activity, though, with steam vents and the occasional trickles of lava. We would have to exercise care on our journey.

So in the end only three of us went: myself, Heali’i, and Tom, whose strength was at last restored. “It’s glad I am to be getting out again,” he said. His Niddey accent had faded over the years, but came back strongly now, a testament to his heartfelt sincerity.

I hoped he truly was up to the trek. The summit lay a mere fifteen miles or so inland, but it towered over the shore, and the forest concealed in places a treacherously broken terrain. Heali’i said we would be gone for several days at least.

The first part of our journey was pleasant. Keonga is home to an astounding variety of birds, many of them bright with tropical plumage; I had already made arrangements with local bird-hunters to obtain specimens of several kinds, though the most splendid were reserved for chieftains and the king. Although there are insects aplenty, there are no mosquitos or other unpleasant biters, and poisonous snakes are unknown. Compared with the Green Hell of Mouleen, it truly did seem like the Garden of Paradise.

Soon the terrain grew steeper, though, and my breath came short in my lungs. My near drowning had left me feeling as if I were recovering from a head cold. I coughed frequently, earning me concerned looks from Tom. I was glad when Heali’i stopped and turned to face us.

“I should have asked before,” she said. “Do small, dark spaces bother you?”

She directed this question at Tom. (Heali’i had seen me crawl into a small steel bell and let Suhail lock the door behind me. She knew my answer already.) Tom shook his head, looking puzzled. Heali’i smiled broadly. “Good. Then follow me.”

Tom and I exchanged mystified looks, but obeyed. Heali’i led us off the path and through an open area that bore touches here and there of maintenance, as if someone wanted it to appear natural, but also to remain uncluttered by too much growth. This brought us to the mouth of what appeared to be a cave.

I mentioned lava tubes before, when speaking of how the chief took shelter from the storm. These volcanic formations are created during an eruption when the hardening lava roofs over its own channel. In the passage thus created, the molten rock retains its heat for longer, and so goes on flowing in a kind of underground river. Eventually this ends, but the hollow remains: a tube boring through the new rock, sometimes for miles at a stretch.

Keonga is honeycombed with these, some of which help account for the arduous terrain, as the collapse of their ceilings leaves the ground broken. This one, however, was almost wholly intact—the exception being where the islanders have deliberately opened vents to the world above, so as to allow the circulation of air.

This, Heali’i said, was our path. It would not take us all the way to the summit; the passage stopped short of that point, near the now-closed vent from which the lava originally issued forth. But it would allow us to bypass the worst of the slope. Quite apart from that practical consideration, this was the route used by the chief and the priests when they journeyed up Homa’apia to perform ceremonies at the top. As such, it was considered the proper way to go.

I felt as if I were journeying into another world—something out of an ancient myth. The tunnel stretched out in near-total darkness, except where a vent allowed in light and falls of flowering vines. Here and there the ceiling was festooned with narrow stalactites, which we all had to duck carefully beneath. Patient hands had carved the sides of the tunnels, mile upon mile of imagery, half of it visible only when you brought a torch close. “Suhail should see this,” I murmured to Tom, who nodded. It likely wasn’t Draconean, but it would appeal to his archaeological instincts.

Even travelling by that route, the journey was not easy. In places the tunnel became very steep, which made for difficult climbing when the stone beneath our feet was so smooth. The darkness and quiet were oppressive after the light and constant sound of the world above; I found myself missing the rise and fall of the waves, the ever-present wind. It was easy to believe we were making no progress at all, or that there was no end. We would be walking through the darkness forever, stopping occasionally to relight a torch, until we died of thirst—for there was no eating or drinking in the tunnel. “Tapu,” Heali’i said, and we had no choice but to comply.

There was, of course, an end. I am not writing this memoir from the confines of a Puian cave. Light grew ahead of us, and then we emerged into a different world entirely.

Gone was the lush forest that covered the lower slopes. Here we found ourselves amidst ferns and scrubby bushes, which are all that will grow so close to the volcano’s peak. I turned to look back the way we had come, and felt as if I were on top of the world: I could see the ocean stretching out to eternity and the other Keongan islands spreading to either side, with the great bulk of Aluko’o behind my left shoulder and the smaller isles stretching out to my right. From this height I could not see the canoes that plied the waters, except the tiny speck of a sail here and there. A dozen or so of them were passing between Keonga and its neighbour Lahana, in a loose, scattered line.

“Are fire-lizards only found around active peaks?” Tom asked, recalling me to my work.

Heali’i nodded. I took out my notebook and began to jot items down. “Which volcanoes in the archipelago have fire-lizards? And is there any chance of us visiting the others? There might be variation between populations.”

She laughed, beckoning for us to follow her. “You have not even seen the lizards here yet. One thing at a time.”

I closed my notebook and exchanged glances with Tom. That laugh rang false with me, and with him as well, I saw. Heali’i was trying to divert me. Why had the Keongans forbidden us to leave this island? It could not be tapu; they were not shy about telling us when a spiritual prohibition blocked our way. There was some other reason, and it worried me that they were not willing to share it.

Pressing now did not seem wise, though. Tom extinguished the torch, and then we climbed upward once more, toward the summit some distance above.

The caldera of Homa’apia was a broad crater, barren of all life. Around it stood a ring of enormous statues like none I had ever seen before: great monoliths several meters in height, most of their bulk devoted to the head, with only a small suggestion of a body below. They were abstract and imposing, their strong-featured faces staring with patient intensity across the width of the crater.

Suhail would wish to see these too, I thought. They were not at all Draconean; there was no suggestion of a dragon in those features, much less any of the characteristic elements of their aesthetic style. But something in their stony vigil reminded me of Draconean statues.

“They are the ancestor gods,” Heali’i said, in response to a question from Tom I had not attended to. “They keep watch to warn us if Homa’apia wakes fully.”

It was a chilling reminder that although the mountain on which we stood was not actively erupting, neither was it quite asleep. “Does the other peak also stir?” I asked, peering toward the other half of Keonga, where the mass of ‘Iosale rose.

“Not anymore. Do you know the story?” When we shook our heads, Heali’i recounted the tale.

Homa’apia and ‘Iosale were a pair of gods said to have created the whole archipelago—not as a harmonious effort, but as the result of their strife. The stones they hurled at one another broke the earth beneath the sea, raising island after island in fire and steam. “The chaos did not end until the other gods joined the two of them in marriage,” Heali’i said, gesturing at the valley of rich farmland where the two slopes met.

“But Homa’apia hasn’t entirely quieted down,” Tom said, amused.

Heali’i grinned at him. “Not all marriages are peaceful.”

We had brought offerings with us: wreaths of flowers, slightly wilted after being carried in our packs for the better part of the day. At Heali’i’s instruction, we flung these into the crater, where they made bright spots against the barren earth. She chanted as we did so, and for some time after, lest our activities disturb the volcano’s goddess.

It was late enough in the day that Tom and I could not do much research. We retreated from the peak to a spot that was more sheltered, more comfortable, and less hedged about with tapu, and there Tom began to lay out our blankets. Heali’i, however, beckoned for me to follow her. “Come. I will show you Rahuahane.”

She led me around the summit to the leeward side. At lower elevations this is the drier, less fertile side of the island; most of the rain falls to windward, leaving the other half wanting. This high on the mountain, it was a wasteland.

“Why does nothing grow here?” I asked Heali’i. My voice had sunk to a whisper, for there was something terribly chilling about that lifeless, rocky slope. I had seen rain fall upon the peak; this was no desert, so bereft of water that nothing could grow. And yet I could not see even the slightest hint of green.

Heali’i answered me quietly. “The rain here is poison. It kills the land where it falls. Look—there is your soul’s home.”

The long scar of dead ground stretched like an arrow toward a small island very near to Keonga’s leeward shore. With the tale of the naka’i in my mind and this blight before my eyes, I expected Rahuahane to be a blackened rock, advertising its curse to all the world. Instead I saw lush greenery, little different from that which marked the windward side of Keonga. It was perhaps less verdant, owing to its position in Keonga’s shadow, and little of its volcanic peak remained; around the central mass lay a belt of turquoise lagoons and the thick, broken ring of its coral reef, lifted up above the waves—a formation one sees at times on older islands. From above, I thought, it would look almost like an eye.

But it was merely an island, like a hundred others in the Broken Sea. I said, “Where are the naka’i? The ones that were turned to stone?”

Heali’i struck my shoulder in an open-handed slap. I staggered at the blow: she had all the bulk of a Puian man, and meant me to feel the weight of it. “Do not joke about these things. Be glad they are hidden; the sight of them might kill you, too.”

It occurred to me to wonder whether this legend pointed at a more prosaic truth. I had found dragon bones in the cavern near Drustanev; could it be that the naka’i were some kind of dragon—perhaps sea-serpents; perhaps some other breed now extinct—whose bones yet lingered? Though I was at a loss to explain how that could have happened, unless Keonga’s geology was able to replicate the natural chemical process which was a precursor to our more advanced one.

The notion seemed far-fetched, but it gained in strength the next day, when Tom and I began our work.

There were indeed fire-lizards on the heights. They made their nests among the ferns and scrub above the tree line and ranged all through the higher elevations, hunting insects, geckos, rats, and some of the smaller birds. They are unusual among draconic types in that they are highly gregarious; a typical flight will contain at least a dozen members, often more.

Nor do they have any particular fear. Their sole predator is the eagle, and he will only attack if the fire-lizards appear to threaten a nest. Because of this, the breed has many traits which would be detrimental in any other environment, from their ground-nesting habit to their fiercely coloured hide, which ranges from buttery yellow to ember-red.

I was particularly keen to observe them because their extraordinary breath is an electrical charge—a stronger cousin to the minute sparks that give sparklings their name. When Aluko’o erupted to a serious degree, Heali’i told me, the fire-lizards could be seen dancing in the ash plume, their sparks creating great bolts of lightning in the murk.

Alas, I did not witness that sight. (I hope I may be forgiven my “alas.” An eruption on that scale would have meant great destruction and hardship for the inhabitants of Aluko’o, which is not at all a thing to be desired in its own right.) But Heali’i snared a bird from the near edge of the tree line, and I used it as a decoy to entice the fire-lizards into displaying their offensive capabilities. Then she shot one with a poison-tipped dart. “Are they not tapu to kill?” I asked. So many things in the islands were hedged about with prohibitions, I found I had assumed, without ever asking, that to kill a fire-lizard would be a great crime.

But that was not the case, and so Tom set to work with his knife, dissecting the carcass for us to study. We discovered that the organ which produces the charge is very similar to that which I had previously discovered in sparklings; and so, once again, I found my taxonomical thoughts quite confounded.

I took a walk to consider this development, while Tom and Heali’i hunted for fire-lizard eggs, which they conceal in volcanic vents—thus explaining why they are only found on active peaks. We were quite close to the edge of the barren zone. Dismissing my sense of foreboding, I set out across the scree.

The air around me smelled unexpectedly sweet, if a little musky. There were signs that Homa’apia was an active volcano, if less so than Aluko’o; here and there the ground was cracked, as if from an earthquake, and I could see steam or stirrings of ash in the air. I stayed clear of these, casting occasional glances toward the distant Rahuahane, but otherwise keeping my gaze on the treacherous gravel beneath my feet.

Not all of the gravel was stone. Two years later, after I had returned to Scirland, I spoke to a geologist with a particular interest in volcanoes; he told me Heali’i was right about the rain in that spot being “poison.” The gas rising from the vents creates mild acids, insufficient to damage human skin, but more than strong enough to render the leeward terrain completely inhospitable to plant life. And, as in the great cavern near Drustanev, these acids serve an unexpected purpose.

I must have found the chips of bone amid the scree. My pockets were full of them later, and Heali’i confirmed that she had seen such things there before. They are the bones of fire-lizards, imperfectly preserved and broken quite small, but still identifiable as the epiphyses of long bones. No doubt there were other chips from elsewhere in the skeleton, but it seems I failed to pick them out from the surrounding rock.

I say all of this with speculative caution because I do not remember any of it.

Or rather, I remember something, as if through a great haze. I was pondering taxonomy, with occasional drifts toward the tale of Rahuahane. I remember thinking about Heali’i’s eagerness to divert our attention away from the other islands. What might the Keongans be concealing there? My thoughts were wandering badly, and I could not chivvy them back on course.

After that, nothing—until I woke up in our camp.

I can fill in some of what is lacking from the reports of my companions.

Tom had found eggs and gone looking for me, on the assumption that I would want to sketch them in situ before he disturbed anything. He could not find me, and began calling my name; Heali’i soon joined him and they quartered the ground, increasingly concerned that I had fallen and badly hurt myself.

Fallen I had—but not off a cliff. Tom saw me from a distance, convulsing against the rocky soil. He ran to my side and tried to rouse me from my fit, but was soon distracted by Heali’i, shouting in alarm for him to leave the dead ground. I thank heaven that his strength had indeed returned from his illness; he hoisted me to his shoulder and carried me away, not stopping until he reached camp, where Heali’i pronounced us safe at last.

Many gases can rise from volcanic terrain; some are more insidious in their threat than others. I had avoided the obvious ones, but walked into one I could not see. Heali’i, upon hearing that I had noticed a sweet odor, chastised me for not walking away at once. The name she gave it means something like “the air of poisoned sleep”; it has strange effects on the mind, and could have killed me if Tom had not carried me clear.

“You did not tell me there was any such danger!” I said to her—it may have been more of a shout.

She apologized for this lapse, though with an expression that suggested I should have had the brains to realize that the dead ground was not safe. I was not mollified; the experience had frightened me badly, less for the brush with death than for the blank gap in my memory. It was not like sleep. I had been walking; then I was in camp, and my pockets were full of bones I did not remember collecting. It was as if something else had taken over my body for a time, leaving me none the wiser.

You, my readers, are well aware that I am not a superstitious or even very religious woman. Yet I must admit that for a time, I found myself wondering uneasily if there was truth to the Keongan belief that I was dragon-spirited, in a more literal sense than I had heretofore accepted. Had Heali’i told me this was a common occurrence for ke’anaka’i, I would have believed her, and possibly even doubted my own rationality. It was in some ways a relief—and in other ways, decidedly not—that she brushed off the question when I asked her. “No, it does not happen to ke’anaka’i,” she said. “Only to fools.”

I had a number of scrapes and bruises to go with my collection of bone fragments, the latter of which I discovered in my pocket soon after. This led to a discussion in Scirling with Tom wherein I related the tale of Rahuahane, and we speculated as to the possibility of fossilized bones there. “You are certain they would not let you go search?” he asked.

“To them, it would look like suicide,” I said. “But I imagine the real difficulty would come when I returned, quite visibly not dead. Do you recall how they behaved when they decided I was ke’anaka’i?”

“Pitchforks and torches. I remember.” Tom sighed. “Well, we might try it when we’re ready to leave; then you can sail off and never face their reaction.”

On most days it would have been sorely tempting. But I had just experienced in quick succession not one but two near misses with mortality, and was in no mood to contemplate another risk so soon. I would have set out for the lowlands right then if I could have reached the shore before dark. Nightfall would catch me in the lava tube, though, and so I rallied myself enough to go and sketch the fire-lizard nest instead—taking comfort, as I so often do, in my work.

FIFTEEN

We made several more excursions to the top of the volcano during the weeks that followed, while Aekinitos and his men labored to repair the Basilisk. I did not mean to neglect the sea-serpents, who were of greater interest to me than the fire-lizards (owing to their possible position in the family tree), but it was difficult to study them from our current position. I disliked the notion of attempting to chase them in one of the ship’s fragile longboats—quite apart from the fact that any move to take one of those out to sea would likely draw the ire of the chieftain, Pa’oarakiki. Nor were the Keongans willing to hunt them, for which I cannot blame them. The serpents here might be smaller, but their blasts of water were perfectly capable of destroying a canoe. The islanders did supply me with scales and teeth, which I studied with great enthusiasm, and on some days I perched myself in a high spot to observe the serpents out in the water. In the meanwhile, I was confined to land, and therefore confined myself to studying those creatures which could be found there.

The fire-lizards reminded me somewhat of the drakeflies I had seen in the Green Hell of Mouleen. They are both small breeds, and lack forelimbs (though drakeflies make up for the absence by having two pairs of wings). Where some individuals have succeeded in caging drakeflies like birds, however, fire-lizards have proven stubbornly intractable in that regard, either pining to death in captivity, or else burning or melting their way free of the cages with a persistent application of sparks.

I did not attempt to capture one, being content to examine their nests and spy upon their feeding habits. (I took care, of course, not to be ensnared by the volcanic vapors again, having no wish to repeat my previous experience.) Their communication proved to be especially intriguing: they make a variety of clacking noises to one another, which seem to be a method of coordinating their hunts and warning of danger. If anyone reading this memoir has an interest in dragons and a tolerance for carrying finicky equipment around the world and up a volcano, the field of dragon naturalism awaits sound recordings of their calls, which would permit a much more detailed study.

Even shipwrecked on a tropical island, we could not neglect our other obligations. Fortunately, Keonga’s isolation provided it with a number of bird species unknown to the Ornithological Society, which Tom undertook to collect for Miriam Farnswood. Most of these he stuffed (dead birds being vastly easier to transport than their energetic cousins), but one afternoon he went to negotiate with a bird hunter for live specimens. I did not even notice him returning, despite the fact that the two honeycreepers tied to his stick were whistling madly. When I finally realized he was there, I jumped on my log seat. “What is it?”

“I am trying to identify the expression on your face,” he said.

How long had I been sitting there, notebook ignored on the makeshift table before me, pen drying in my hand? I did not know. “It is the expression of a woman who knows there is an idea creeping up on her, but hopes that if she is very assiduous in ignoring it, the idea will go away.”

Tom dug a hole and planted his stick in it, leaving the birds to settle down, then came to join me. He almost leaned on my table before remembering; he had done that several times, and the table had not borne his weight any of them. Now it was distinctly lopsided. He leaned against a tree instead. “You are not normally the sort to hope an idea will go away. If it is right, why ignore it? And if it is wrong… those, you generally beat to death with a stick.”

His description turned my sigh into a half laugh. “Why ignore it, indeed. I want to do so because I suspect you were right, Tom. I should not have sent that article to the Journal of Maritime Studies.”

He frowned. “If it were only a matter of expanding on your previous ideas, you wouldn’t look so troubled.”

“Just so. The trouble is that I think—no, I am increasingly certain—that my previous ideas were wrong.” I showed him my notebook, open to my diagrams of sea-serpent scales. “All the islanders assure me they migrate. Heali’i says they lay their eggs on Rahuahane, though of course I have not observed that with my own eyes. The nesting grounds of arctic serpents have never been found. The general assumption has been that they lay their eggs in waters too deep for us to find them… but what if they lay them here, instead?”

“It’s a long way to migrate,” Tom said. “And how do you account for—oh. I see. The difference in size is also a difference in age. We would need a larger sample of scales to confirm that, though.”

I nodded. “All of this needs more observation before we can be sure of anything. But here is a new theory for you: sea-serpents hatch here in the tropics. They migrate, but not all the way to the arctic; the young are too small to survive such cold. As they age, however, the center of their movement shifts northward.”

Tom was sketching it in the sandy ground, a looping spiral moving steadily toward the pole. “As they get larger, the tropical waters would be less comfortable for them—they would overheat here. Presumably at some point they become too old to reproduce, or else their home waters are simply too cold for the eggs to be viable.”

“Which might be why they lose the tendrils. And they cease to expel water as a weapon, again because of the cold. The shock of drawing it in might kill them.”

He brushed the dirt from his fingers. “It’s possible. But certainly not confirmed.”

“I have to share it, though,” I said wretchedly. “No one can test the idea if they are not aware of it. And I cannot bring myself to sit on my hands, waiting for someone else to think of it and then test it.”

“But that will mean retracting your previous theory.” Tom fell silent. He knew as well as I did where that would lead.

A scientist should never be afraid to theorize, publish, receive criticism, re-examine, and revise her thoughts accordingly. For one such as me, however, there was indeed reason to fear. My scientific credibility was tenuous to begin with, and to recant my original ideas would make me a laughing-stock: not because of my theory, but because of who I was. A misstep that would be brushed away from a great eminence in the field was seen as a fatal error on my part.

Even now, the memory of my foolish haste stings. A part of me wishes dearly that I had taken my time, as Tom advised. Another part, however, treasures the heady excitement with which I penned that first draft, talked it over with Tom, edited my words into a more polished state, and sent it off for consideration. The day when I held a copy of the Journal of Maritime Studies and saw my own piece in it ranks as one of the proudest moments of my life… when I can see through the haze of shame that hangs over it.

The consequences did not come until later, of course. I relate them here because these volumes focus on key expeditions in my career, and so this one will conclude before the aftereffects of that article become fully apparent. But it is common for people to gloss over my errors, as I have become one of those great eminences, and I wish readers to know that not all of my scientific ideas have been sound.

Conscience would not permit me to save face, though. Tom raised a questioning eyebrow at me, and I shook my head. “No. What matters is the advancement of our knowledge, not the advancement of my reputation. And if my original theory was wrong, it will come out sooner or later. At least this way I might be credited with the correction as well as the error.” I managed a rueful laugh, holding my hands up to forestall what he might have said. “But I have learned my lesson. I shan’t send a retraction right away—not that I could, of course. I will wait until I have more data.” The only thing worse than proving myself wrong would be doing so twice in quick succession.

Gathering more data, though, would have to wait until we were off Keonga. There was only so much I could do with the local population of serpents, especially without a dead specimen to dissect.

I grew restless, wishing I were not trapped on a single island. Jake did likewise, which surprised me; a boy of his inclinations ought to have been in paradise. The sea was right there, its waves cool and inviting in the tropical sun. He could collect coral and shells, practice se’egalu and fishing with a spear, and generally shrivel himself into a very brown raisin with long days in the water. And indeed, he did all these things—but occasional outbursts of temper said that all was not right with him. Abby dealt with these as best she could, in her masquerade as his mother, but one evening I discreetly drew my son aside and inquired what was wrong.

He dug one toe into the sand, hands locked behind his back, not meeting my eyes. His shrug was both noncommittal and unconvincing. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Have the other boys been troubling you?” I asked. This seemed the most likely source of trouble.

But Jake shook his head. “No. It’s just—I’m tired of Miss Abby being my mother.”

My first thought was that he chafed at his governess telling him what to do. It had happened before; like all children, he had his rebellious periods. Tension thrummed in his body, though: as if he wanted to step forward, to come under my arm as he had not done in weeks.

I sank to one knee, putting myself below his head. Once, when he was very young and I was both grieving and conflicted, I had kept my distance from him. Here in Keonga, with so many issues to occupy my mind, I had not felt the gap between us returning—until now.

“I miss you, too,” I whispered, and it was true.

Jake’s will broke. He had been very good about our masquerade, but now he darted forward and flung his arms about my neck. I clasped him briefly to me, heedless of the risk that the Keongans might see us. “The ship will be repaired soon,” I promised him, hoping it was true. “Then we shall go back to normal.”

We did not stay like that for long. Caution and youthful dignity both took Jake from my side soon after; but there was a spring in his step now that had been missing before. Although he never said this outright, I believe he remembered my absence when I went to Eriga, and feared I wished to be free of him again. Reassured otherwise, he could go about his days with a light and joyful heart.

I took care after that to show my affection in small ways that would not be remarked by the Keongans, and to involve Jake in my daily affairs where his own patience and interest would permit. This was not so often as it might have been, for I passed my time studying fire-lizards, having endless debates about taxonomy with Tom, and drawing up chart after chart, trying to shuffle the sprawling assortment of draconic types into something like a coherent order. It was not enough merely to point at similarities and declare the job done: there had to be a logic behind it. How did lower forms give rise to higher? Which ones were the lower forms, if the family included everything from sparklings to swamp-wyrms, fire-lizards to wolf-drakes? And if it did not include all those things, then where did the boundary belong?

There must, I believed, be some key—some concept I had not yet thought of—that would sort it all into a sensible shape. But no matter how I grasped for it, the resolution kept slipping through my fingers.

Heali’i found me scowling over these charts one afternoon, after we had been stranded in Keonga for nearly two months. “What is this?” she asked. “You spend so much time on it.”

She could not read, much less read Scirling, so of course the charts meant nothing to her. I had long since told her the purpose of our voyage in broad terms: I wanted to study dragons. I had not gone into the scientific detail of it, though.

A thought came to me, and I put my pen down. “Heali’i… you said you identified me as ke’anaka’i because I showed interest in the fire-lizards and the sea-serpents. Yes?” She nodded, and I asked, “Why? That is—it suggests you see fire-lizards and sea-serpents as belonging in a category together.”

“They do,” she said.

“Indeed, I agree. But I know why I think that: I have seen creatures all over the world that share characteristics with those two. You have never left these islands. Fire-lizards are small and gregarious; they live at the tops of volcanic peaks, eat animals of the islands, and spit lightning at things that trouble them. Sea-serpents are large and solitary; they live in the ocean, eat vast quantities of fish, and spit water at the things that trouble them. They both have scales and a slight similarity in the shape of their heads, and that is where the obvious resemblance ends. But many things have scales, fish included—and you would not say they are in the same category, would you?”

Heali’i shook her head. “There is a poem—the O’etaiwa—you have never heard it, of course. It tells how the world came into existence, one kind of creature at a time. The fire-lizards and the sea-serpents are together in that poem.”

This intrigued me even more, and I jotted down a note to find someone who could recite the poem for me, with Suhail translating. (I did not think to allocate four hours for it, which is the length of time the recitation ultimately took.) “But why?” I asked. “Does the poem say why they belong together?”

“Because they used to be one creature, in the early days of the world,” Heali’i said. “Before the naka’i changed them.”

It was highly unlikely that fire-lizards and sea-serpents shared an immediate common ancestor, no matter which of my charts I favored at any given moment. But allowing for poetic license, the evolutionary point might well be true. “Fascinating,” I murmured.

Heali’i studied me with a curious eye. “Why do you care? Even ke’anaka’i do not go this far—at least, I have never heard of one that has.”

Once again, it was the fundamental question of my life. In one sense, my answer has changed again and again, from year to year and person to person; in another sense, it has not changed at all. Only my fumbling attempts to put it into words have altered.

This time I said, “It is a mystery. And I suppose I cannot look at a mystery without wanting to solve it.”

It was a dangerous answer to give, in a land where tapu rendered certain things entirely off-limits. Heali’i’s expression sharpened. “Take care you do not offend the gods. Some things are intended to be mysteries.”

“I will do my best,” I said—which was not the same as saying I would stop.

We were returning from another stint at the top of Homa’apia, emerging from the lava tube and blinking in the sudden brightness, when I saw something new to me: a fleet of canoes approaching from the southeast. These were not the usual small craft of the fishermen, but long canoes rowed by a dozen men or more, and a large double-hulled vessel in their midst. “It seems you have visitors,” I said to Heali’i.

She made no reply, but stared intently at the ships as if she could divine their nature from this distance. Perhaps she could: the largest canoe had a distinctive sign painted on its sail that I thought might be an abstract representation of a shark. “Do you recognize it?” I asked. Her expression told me she did, but I hoped to draw her into conversation.

Heali’i shook her head, a smile appearing on her face as if conjured there. “Foreigners,” she said—using the word that means islanders from elsewhere in the Broken Sea, rather than non-Puians. She spoke dismissively, and suited action to tone by heading back toward the main path without so much as another glance toward the canoes. I did give them another glance, long enough to fix the image from the sail in my memory; and when I did so, I saw something else. An indistinct shape, much further out to sea, that looked like neither the square rigging of an Anthiopean ship nor the unusual crab-claw sail of the Raengaui island cluster. I could not judge its size, not without any landmark against which to measure it or its distance from shore, but it was a rounded blur in the haze above the water, and it certainly had not been there before.

I could not stay there staring at it, though. It was plain enough that the approaching fleet had Heali’i concerned, and furthermore that she did not wish me to pay any attention to them. I had already lingered for longer than I should. I hastened to catch up, and spoke of fire-lizards all the way back to camp.

No one there said anything about the visitors, who must have come to shore out of sight on the far side of the promontory. I greeted my son, but did not attend to his excited tales of se’egalu as closely as I might have, occupied as I was in looking for Aekinitos.

I found him overseeing the men who were replacing planks in the side of the Basilisk. “Can you spare a moment?” I asked him.

He waved for me to speak on, but I shook my head. “This is perhaps not something we should speak of in public.”

That gained me his full attention. Aekinitos picked up his crutch and followed me across the sand to a rock upon which he could rest, safely distant from anyone who might overhear.

Once there, I told him of the fleet I had seen coming in, the odd shape in the distance, and my growing sense that something was amiss around us—something the Keongans were hiding. “Though I cannot imagine what it might be,” I finished. “My knowledge is of dragons and the natural world, not people and their politics. Am I seeing trouble where none lies?”

I wanted him to say “yes.” Had the Basilisk been intact, I could have faced the prospect of local danger with much more confidence, knowing that if necessary we could flee to safer waters. But until our ship was repaired, we were trapped in the Keongan Islands, with whatever secrets might lurk nearby.

Aekinitos did not oblige me.

“I’ve had my men asking questions for weeks now,” he said, digging the point of his crutch into the sand and overturning a broken piece of conch shell. “Nothing obvious—well, some of them have been more obvious than others. Men say stupid things in the arms of a woman. But the islanders are on a war footing.”

“War!” I exclaimed. “Against whom?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. The Yelangese, most likely. The king’s wife is the cousin of Waikango, after all. The islanders of Raengaui paint their sails as you described; I would wager my spare anchor that was one of their chiefs paying the Keongans a visit.” He scowled. “If I had not lost my anchor in the storm.”

“The Keongans would be mad to invade Yelang, though,” I said. “They cannot hope to retrieve their war-leader. Outside their own waters, against Yelangese ships—every advantage that protects them here would be lost.”

“I know. And they know it, too. More likely they’re preparing to defend themselves. This emperor hasn’t conquered anything yet; he has to prove himself somehow.”

Yelangese history was not my strong suit in those days (nor is it much stronger now), but I could follow Aekinitos’ point. The Yelangese Empire was and is a large polity; it reached that size courtesy of the emperors of the Taisên Dynasty, who energetically expanded their territory through the conquest of places like Va Hing. Indeed, it had become de rigueur for an emperor to annex new lands and their inhabitant peoples, if he wished to maintain his status in the eyes of his own subjects.

But Yelang had reached the point where further expansion had become difficult. Their neighbours on the Dajin continent—Vidwatha, Tsholar, Hakkoto—were not small states, easily overrun by the Yelangese army; conquering them would be difficult and costly, and by no means assured to succeed. The emperor might well cast a speculative eye toward the Broken Sea instead, for all that his people were not the best sailors. The Raengaui island cluster would be a trivial territory in comparison with the size of the empire itself, but at least it was a conquest, and one he could achieve with relative ease—now that Waikango was his captive.

We were on the far side of the cluster from Yelang, though. “I can’t imagine this is a useful place to prepare for war,” I said. “Not as isolated as it is. Unless the rest of the Raengaui region has been overrun already?”

Aekinitos sighed and slapped the rock upon which he sat—a rare gesture of frustration. “From here, we can do nothing more than guess. The fleet you saw might be refugees, or emissaries come to beg for aid. Or there might be an entire war fleet beached on the far side of Lahana.”

I hoped not. Or if there was, I hoped they would wait to launch until after the Basilisk was repaired and we were clear of the whole region. “How long will it be before the ship is ready?” I asked.

“Too long,” he said grimly.

You might think my two recent brushes with death—three, if you count the dengue fever—would be enough to dissuade me from foolish action for a time. Then again, if you have been reading this series from the first volume, you might not.

In my defense, my next piece of recklessness did not originate with me. The thought had crossed my mind some time before, but I had dismissed it; Suhail was the one who returned to the idea, investigated it, fixed his will upon it… and then persuaded me to join him.

He had scoured the waters of Keonga’s encircling lagoons in search of archaeological remnants, but had found very little. “If I could use the bell, I might find more,” he told me at one point. “If there is anything here, it is likely buried in the silt of the lagoons; I would need to pump the water away to see. But without the bell…” He shrugged. The unavailability of the bell was no one’s fault. Even if my excursion to view sea-serpents had not left it sunk on the fore reef, it would have done him no good until the Basilisk was afloat once more. And possibly not even then, I thought: if the remains were all within the lagoons, our ship could not reach them regardless.

With little to do archaeologically, Suhail had lent his hand where he could in the repairs, but he was neither carpenter nor sailor. And so he had taken to ranging restlessly about the island, going everywhere that was not forbidden to him and taking up every physical challenge he could find.

It was no surprise that this included the sport of se’egalu. Suhail loved the water nearly as much as my son did, and surf-riding appealed very well to a spirit that craved adventure. He grasped the principles of it fairly quickly, though his finesse could not match that of the more experienced Keongans, and he was forever trying to coax me into trying it myself.

I always demurred. Our stay on Keonga had greatly improved my swimming skills, but not the point of attempting to conquer the waves. And I did not see the point of teaching myself the practice of se’egalu when there was work that could better occupy my time.

The same could not be said for another, more hazardous maritime sport.

I knew something was afoot, because Suhail grew even more restless than usual. He prowled about our camp like a cat trapped inside on a rainy day, unable even to concentrate on his efforts with the Draconean script. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, knowing that he was sidling his way toward a decision, and that I would hear of it when he was done.

Indeed, I saw the moment it occurred. I happened to be taking a break from my sketching of the fire-lizard bone fragments, standing up to ease my back. Suhail had been sitting on the beach, legs drawn up before him and bare feet buried in the sand, arms propped on his knees with a stick of wood in his hands. This he had theoretically been whittling into some kind of useful or aesthetically pleasing shape, but that purpose had faded from his mind, for the knife had for several minutes just been carving strips off the wood, without any apparent direction from above. Then he stopped—stabbed the knife down into the sand—and stood, hurling the stick into the breakers with an easy, side-armed swing.

He turned and saw me watching him. The grin that spread across his face filled me with both excitement and foreboding. “Mrs. Camherst,” he said. “Have you ever wanted to ride a dragon?”

My thoughts were full of fire-lizards, who are much too small to ride. I sputtered something less than entirely coherent, not seeing his true meaning.

“The Keongans do it,” he said, when it was clear I did not understand. “They have been telling me about it. The sea-serpents, Mrs. Camherst.”

Now I recalled. One of the islanders had leapt aboard a serpent to steer it away from us when Suhail and I escaped the diving bell. According to the boys who kept watch for the beasts, it was a thing the younger and, I thought, more brainless island fellows often did.

Unfortunately Suhail asked this question in front of my son, who was quite young and in certain respects entirely brainless. (I do not say this as condemnation. All of us are in certain respects brainless when we are children: witness some of the things I did as a young girl.) Jake had been amusing himself with his collection of marine objects, which had grown to truly stupendous proportions since our arrival on Keonga. Now he leapt to his feet with a whoop. “Oh please! Can we?”

“You most certainly cannot,” I said. Suhail’s eyes had popped at the mere notion; no Keongan who is less than fully grown would ever dream of trying to undertake such a challenge.

My refusal, of course, set off an argument. By the time I was done convincing Jake that he had no business anywhere near sea-serpents, we had gathered Abby and Tom as an audience… and Jake had found a new goal to pursue.

“You have to, Mama,” he said. “It’s research! Right? You can’t pass it up when it’s a dragon! It’ll be just like when I rode the dragon turtle, but better.”

There was much more, all in the same vein; if I did not know it for a physical impossibility, I would have said he did not pause for breath anywhere in the next five minutes. Suhail soon gave up on waiting for Jake to wind down and just spoke over him. “You cannot be certain when the serpents will migrate onward. The opportunity to try this may be passing fast.”

“The opportunity to get myself killed, you mean,” I said, my voice tart. “I seem to find those often enough on my own.”

Suhail laughed. “But always in pursuit of your work, yes? Your talkative son is right about one thing; it is research.”

“What could I possibly learn about a sea-serpent while dangling from one of its tendrils that I could not learn by watching it from a more sensible vantage point?”

“What it is to be one,” he said. “The sensation of racing through the water, the movement of its muscles beneath you. Could you understand a horse merely by watching it run?”

I silently damned him for the comparison. In all our wide-ranging conversations, I had said nothing of my girlhood love of horses, which had for a time been my substitute obsession when dragons were forbidden to me. He had lighted upon it by chance. Suhail was right; although I had learned a great deal by observing horses, drawing them, talking to those who knew them, and so forth, there were insights that only came from close contact.

And fundamentally, the answer to his question was yes: I wanted to ride a dragon.

Tom shook his head the instant I looked at him. He did not enjoy being in the water, no matter how enthusiastically Jake expounded upon its pleasures. I liked it well enough, but— “I am not that strong of a swimmer,” I reminded Suhail.

I was weakening, and he knew it. Had I truly dismissed the notion, I would not have raised so pragmatic an objection. Suhail’s grin grew wider. “Your son says you are much better. And I will help you—they tell me it’s safer when two go together.”

“Help me!” I said. “I seem to recall prohibitions against contact between us.”

The wry twist of Suhail’s mouth said he had been considering that very question, and had found a questionable way to answer it. “I am told you are neither male or female, but ke’anaka’i. I know of no prohibitions against contact with such.”

It was a semantic game… but one for which I had no good rejoinder. To deny my status as ke’anaka’i would be unwise; and I could hardly claim to be a man, or a close relative of his by blood or marriage.

Suhail waited until I met his gaze, then said quietly, “I will not let you drown.”

My breath caught in my throat. It was only with effort that I managed to say, “When it comes to being eaten by a sea-serpent, however—then, I suppose, I am on my own.”

Let it never be said that I court my own death without proper planning.

The young Keongan men who ride sea-serpents are the kind who take great masculine pride in displaying their courage, strength, and endurance. They go into the water naked, as if for an evening swim, and do not complain about the cuts they suffer from the jagged edges of the serpents’ scales.

I felt no need to display anything about myself, and so I advised Suhail to wear more clothing than he was accustomed to when swimming. “It may weigh our limbs down,” I said, “but we will reap the benefit in keeping our skin something closer to intact. Sharks may not come near the serpents, but I do not want to test that by shedding any more blood than I have to.” We discussed the possibility of gloves as well, but ultimately discarded it: too much would depend upon the security of our grips, which would be compromised by the wet leather.

The greatest amount of serpent activity had been seen on the leeward side of the island, some distance from ill-omened Rahuahane. (This was not surprising. Presuming that Heali’i was correct, I expected that bearing females had gone there to lay their eggs.) A Keongan wishing to ride one of the beasts will go out with several canoes, whereupon the men in them will commence one of their chants, calling a serpent to the surface.

“It’s possible that actually works,” Tom said, upon hearing of it. “They place a drum on the bottom of the canoe and beat a rhythm; that would carry through the water. Perhaps the serpents have been trained to respond to it.”

“Trained how?” I said doubtfully. “They derive no earthly benefit from cooperating; by all accounts, the serpents do not much like being ridden. And I have not heard it said that the Keongans punish them for failing to appear when summoned.”

Tom shrugged, granting the point. “Then it is just tradition.”

Once a serpent appears—if one does—then the would-be rider waits at the side of his canoe for it to come near. The Keongans assured us the serpents “rarely” attacked canoes, unless provoked; the vessels are too familiar a sight, and moreover stay on the surface of the water, which is a zone the beasts take little interest in. (Most of their prey is to be found at least a meter or two beneath the surface.) As soon as the serpent draws close, the rider dives in and swims like mad toward the creature, aiming to catch hold of two tendrils.

“It is very important to catch two,” Suhail told me. “If you hold only one, you will be thrown from side to side as the serpent moves, and have no control. With two, you can keep yourself steady—more or less.”

I suspected it would be less rather than more, at least in my case, but it was still good advice. The skilled riders, we were told, could even use the tendrils to steer the serpent where they wished it to go—at least in general terms. “Could we not have someone skilled to go with us?” I asked.

Our guide in these matters was a brawny fellow more than two meters tall. He towered over me as he chuckled. “Every man must prove himself first.”

“I am not a man,” I said, but this made no impression on him. No one was allowed to take the easy road; Suhail and I must face this on our own.

We were not a subtle calvacade, making ready for the endeavour. Nearly every man from the Basilisk was there, along with my son and Abby, Heali’i and Liluakame, and a great crowd of Keongans aside. They were eager to see the foreigners test themselves against the serpents of the deep. I thought at first, when I heard the drums and saw the procession wending toward us in the early light of morning, that the chief had come for the same reason.

But his mien was too forbidding for that. Pa’oarakiki stopped some distance away and said—I paraphrase enormously, Keongan oratory being a long-winded thing—”You may not do this.”

In suitably polite language, Suhail asked, “Why not?”

“Because you are foreigners,” the chief said.

He went on at greater length; it was something to do with lack of respect for the gods, though we had followed all the instructions given to us beforehand, including prayers and a sacrifice of flowers to the sea. Perhaps he knew my heart was not in the ritual. Suhail was questioning him with a barrister’s patient logic, attempting to elicit an explanation of why exactly it was impermissible for us to ride the sea-serpents; but I could soon tell there was no explanation, save that this man did not want us to.

Or perhaps there was more to it than that, after all. He kept glaring at the men who had been teaching Suhail the art of sea-serpent riding, with a look that promised retribution later. Was it because they were taking us from Keonga’s shores? We would not visit any other islands, but perhaps going onto the water was transgression enough. Only… I had the distinct impression that his prohibition had been issued to prevent us from learning anything of the other islands and what might be on them. Why were sea-serpents now included in his ban?

I could not follow the conversation well enough to guess; it was flowing too rapidly for me to comprehend. Instead I watched those around us. Liluakame had assumed a deferential posture, out of respect for the chief, but she was frowning at the sand as if she did not understand his objection. Heali’i, on the other hand, was giving me a significant look. Unfortunately, I did not understand what its significance was.

She widened her eyes at me, eyebrows raised, as if waiting for something. Then she sighed, clearly asking the gods to give her patience. In a crass and unsubtle gesture, she dug one hand into her skirts and took hold of her own groin.

I had settled into the habit of thinking of Heali’i as a woman, for that was the designation I had first given her, and Scirling is not well-equipped to speak of people who are neither male nor female. With that gesture, she reminded me that she was ke’anaka’i… and that such people occupied a particular role in Keongan society.

“Pardon me,” I said, stopping the conversation short. The chief looked at me as if his least favourite oar had suddenly spoken up.

There was no way I could manage the flowery politeness of formal Keongan. I had to make do with what sentences I could cobble together on the spot. “The sea-serpents are the creations of the naka’i,” I said, “and I am ke’anaka’i. It may be so, that it is not allowed for foreigners to try and ride them. But ke’anaka’i do many things that are not allowed: for them, it is meant to be.”

Had I been the chief’s least favourite oar, he would have broken me across the gunwale or flung me into the sea. But I was a person, and for him to argue with me would create a new host of problems for him. Would he deny the intended purpose of ke’anaka’i? Heali’i stood only a few paces away, ready to challenge him if he did. Would he deny my status as such? Liluakame stood even closer, married to me under Keongan custom, proof that I was not a woman in their eyes. The elite of their society are hedged about with many restrictions; he could not afford to say anything that might show a lack of respect for the ways of his own people.

Instead he pointed his palm-frond fan at me and spoke in a booming voice. “The gods judge ke’anaka’i as well as men and women. They will pass judgment on you.”

Which goes to show, I suppose, that the gods have a perverse sense of humour.

Our oarsmen paddled us out of that bay and around the shore of Keonga, heading to leeward. The fresh water spilling out of a stream by the village left an opening in the reef; we pushed our way through the rougher surf there and passed into waters whose deep hue spoke of the rapid descent of the ground below us. I scanned the waves, but saw no hint of serpents.

The islanders were unperturbed. The canoe in which Suhail and I rode went to what they judged to be a suitable spot, accompanied by two others; the rest had stayed within the reef, their passengers watching us from the lagoon. If I squinted, I could just make out Tom and Abby and Jake, Liluakame and Heali’i. My son gave me a double thumbs-up for encouragement, and despite my nerves, I could not help but smile.

My smile faltered when the drumming began. Keongan drums are relatively small, and they did not resonate well against the base of the canoes, but that did not prevent the beat from seeming as portentous as the ticking of a clock. Despite the warm air, I shivered. Suhail’s grin was as bright as ever, but for the first time I wondered if that expression was as much shield against fear as evidence of its absence.

I fortified myself, as always, with my work. I had brought no notebook with me (as it would only be ruined in the water) and had no surety that I would live to set down any observations I might make today, but that was no reason to give up thinking like a naturalist. I kept watch across the waves, thinking about the environment below us, and was therefore the first to see the slick curve of a coil break the surface.

“There,” I said, and if it came out low with tension, that was preferable to an undignified squeak.

The drumming changed its beat. Suhail rose from his bench, balancing easily against the canoe’s slight rocking. “Yes, I see it. Now if it will just oblige us by coming nearer…”

I rose as well, for we would have to move quickly when our moment came. The beast was properly visible now, a sinuous shadow against the blue of the water. Its seemingly aimless wanderings were reassuring to me; I had seen for myself how an angry sea-serpent moves, and knew this one was curious rather than hostile. That, however, would soon change.

It broached the surface just beyond one of our accompanying canoes, its head appearing briefly before diving below again. I saw the tendrils we must grasp. “Be ready,” Suhail said—quite unnecessarily, but the exhortation was as much for himself as for me.

The serpent dove, circled away, came back. I found I was holding my breath: a foolish impulse. The other two canoes had moved apart, their drummers falling silent. We were the only ones remaining. And as it drew close—

“Now!” Suhail and I cried as one, and dove in.

It was a mad dash through the water. In some ways, this is the hardest part of riding a sea-serpent; you must anticipate when its head will rise high enough for you to seize hold, and then launch yourself for it early enough to intercept. Suhail was soon far ahead of me, but I thundered on, arms windmilling through the waves. I saw the serpent’s head—a giant eye, staring at me with what I fancy was utter bafflement—and then it was going past, a quick slide of scales, and there was nothing for me to grab—

There! The very end of a tendril brushed across my fingers. I seized it with both hands, then found myself dragged briefly under the surface as the serpent towed me along. I needed a second hold, but there was none nearby. I began to haul myself up the tendril as if climbing a rope. I had drawn heads like this one; I knew the spacing of those extremities, and would have a better chance of seizing a second one closer to the root.

The serpent broke the surface again as I neared my goal; the fresh air came as a relief. My unwilling mount did not like the tug that resulted when my body dragged through the water, and preferred the lesser resistance of air. I slipped against the scales, rolling to the side; then I had another tendril in my left hand, and could plant my knees against the serpent’s body and take stock at last of my situation.

I was alone on the serpent’s back. The canoes had drawn off; a splashing to one side was Suhail. He had missed his hold, but was gamely trying for another pass.

The tendrils in my hands were fat and slick, and I could not forget that they were parts of a living creature’s body, but apart from that, they were not much different from reins. The serpent was not trained as a horse was to respond to the simple laying of the reins along his neck, but I could steer him as an inexperienced rider might: by pulling very hard on one side.

This was not quite as effective as I might have hoped. I felt like a child again, astride a horse much too large for me, who took little notice of my weak efforts. But it was not wholly useless, either. Little by little, the serpent turned toward Suhail.

He got hold of one tendril as we passed. The rest, however, were beneath him in the water. Suhail began a grab for one of these, but aborted it; I found out later that he had made the same calculation as I, which was that for him to take hold that far from my own position would encourage the serpent to roll, toppling me from my perch.

At this point I made a gamble. I dropped my left rein, transferring that hand to the other tendril, and then reached my right hand out to Suhail.

It very nearly landed us both back in the sea. I am not exceptionally strong, and I lacked good traction against the serpent’s hide; its scales cut the knees of my trousers to ribbons, and some of my skin beneath. Suhail’s weight almost dragged me down. But the serpent inadvertently assisted us, rolling to its left, which brought Suhail upward; and when our scrambling about was done, we held three tendrils between us, sharing the one in the middle.

Whereupon I realized that we were, indeed, riding a dragon.

I cannot honestly recommend the practice to my readers. Apart from the number of Keongans who have been killed attempting this very feat, it is not very comfortable. The ragged cuts on my knees and elbows stung unmercifully. Every time the serpent dove, I was buffeted by the water until it realized the error of its ways and surfaced once more. Again and again it drew in water and expelled it in a blast, for that was its defense against what troubled it, and the beast’s mind could not encompass the fact that this annoyance could not be disposed of in such fashion; but it came near to working regardless, for the shuddering of the serpent’s body whenever this happened threatened to dislodge us. There was no moment of the entire experience that was not a precarious struggle to stay aboard.

And yet for all of that, it was one of the grandest experiences of my life. I lost all awareness of time and distance; I had no idea how long it had been since I dove into the sea, nor where we had gone in the interim. There was only the sun and the water, the serpent beneath my knees and the wind in my face, islands appearing at unpredictable bearings and then vanishing when we turned, and Suhail at my side. He laughed like a madman any moment we were not submerged, and if I did not do likewise, it is only because I was too breathless for laughter. I was riding a dragon. In that moment, I felt invincible.

Then the serpent dove once more. I saw a shadow in the water up ahead, a dark and irregular oval. I had just enough time to think, Oh, it is a cave—

And then the serpent dragged us inside.