The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

A Chase Beyond the Storms ^{An excerpt from The Veiled Throne, The Dandelion Dynasty, book three}

Ten ships from Dara bobbed gently on calm waves, surrounded by the floating hulks of crubens like whale calves in the middle of a pod. Men and women danced on the decks, whooping and laughing, still unable to believe that they had passed under the legendary Wall of Storms unscathed.

To the south, the meteorological wonder loomed like a mountain range sculpted out of cyclones, typhoons, sheets of rain so dense that they might as well be solid water, and roiling clouds lit up from within by bolts of lightning, each the size of Fithowéo’s spear. From time to time, small cyclones—each capable of devastating an island in isolation, but here, next to the sky-scraping storm columns, as insignificant as a rock formation in a scholar’s garden would be next to Mount Kiji—departed from the wall to wander over the open ocean, gradually dissipating as their peregrinations took them too far from the fabled marvel that was the Wall.

Sailors detached thick towing cables from the tails of the crubens. The majestic scaled whales sprayed mist from their blowholes in unison and covered the Dara fleet in rainbows, a good omen. They bellowed their farewell, the resulting deep rumble through the water making the ships’ tightly fitted hull planks tremble and squeak against each other. Slapping their massive flukes against the water, the crubens turned to the north in unison, their long horns swaying steadily like the compass needles of the gods, and soon vanished beneath the waves.

Aboard Dissolver of Sorrows, flagship of the modest fleet, two figures stood on the elevated stern deck above the aftercastle.

“Thank you, Sovereign of the Sea,” whispered the woman who had once been known as Empress Üna and was now again called Princess Théra. She bowed in jiri to the wakes left by the crubens.

“I wish we could mandate and command these creatures,” said Takval Aragoz, would-be pékyu of the Agon and Théra’s fiancé. “They would greatly comfort and aid our cause.”

The princess suppressed a smile at the prince’s not-quite-right attempt at formal Dara speech. After months of living in Dara, Takval’s speech was fluent—except when he tried to sound impressive. “The Fluxists say that there are four powerful forces whose aid can only be petitioned for but not commanded: the strength of a cruben, the favor of the gods, the trust of the people—” She paused.

“And what is the fourth thing?” asked Takval.

“The heart of a lover,” said Théra.

The two smiled at each other tentatively, uncertainly, hesitantly.

Thinking of Zomi Kidosu, the brilliant, beautiful woman who had been her first love, Théra’s heart ached. But she hardened her resolve and put Zomi’s smile out of her mind. She had to focus on the present, on the future.

“A ship!” cried a lookout in the crow’s nest above the main mast, breaking the awkward silence. He pointed toward the horizon in the east, and his voice quivered as he continued. “A city-ship.”

As lookouts on the other ships confirmed the sighting, the celebration on the decks soon turned to consternation. How could there be another city-ship when the Lyucu fleet had just been overwhelmed by the Wall of Storms?

Théra and Takval ran to the mizzenmast and climbed up the rigging. Halfway up, they could already see the massive ship on the horizon, from this distance a mere sliver darkening the boundary between sea and sky, with multiple masts sticking up out of the horizontal hull like the long hairs poking up from the back of a caterpillar.

“Incoming garinafin! Incoming garinafin!” cried the lookout.

It was true. A familiar winged shape could be seen hovering above the distant ship like a childish scrawl against the smooth empyrean. From so far away, it was hard to tell if the figure was indeed heading for them, but then where else could it be going?

“Did you see how the garinafin took off?” asked Takval of the two lookouts on the main mast. “How keen—prickly—no, sharp was the rising angle?”

Instead of answering, the pair of lookouts continued their conversation with each other, shading their eyes and pointing at the distant garinafin excitedly.

“Report on the garinafin’s angle of ascent on takeoff, if you saw it,” said Théra, her voice not any louder than Takval’s had been.

“Rén—Your Highness!” Both lookouts stopped talking and instantly turned to her. “We didn’t see. By the time we noticed the ship, the garinafin was already in the air.”

Théra could see that Takval seethed with resentment and frustration. Other than Princess Théra, he had no friends among the thousand-plus members of this expedition. Although he was nominally a coequal leader of the fleet with Princess Théra, the Dara crew either pretended that he didn’t exist or expressed contempt for his presence in a thousand small ways. This didn’t bode well for the Dara-Agon alliance.

“The angle of ascent could have told us the condition of the garinafin,” Takval whispered to her sullenly. “It’s like how a cow with soupy shit can’t run very fast.”

Théra put a hand on his shoulder to reassure him. She had already told the captains and commanders that they were to treat orders from Takval as though they had come from her, and she tried to consult Takval on every decision. But prejudices against the people of the scrublands ran deep after the Lyucu invasion, and though the Agon were the enemies of the Lyucu, the crew distrusted Takval. She could not manufacture respect out of thin air. This was a problem that Takval had to solve himself.

“Why didn’t that ship attempt to sail through the Wall with the rest of the fleet?” asked Théra, trying to stay focused on the problems of the moment.

“I think it must have been kept behind by the Lyucu fleet commander, Garinafin-Thane Pétan Tava, out of care and caution,” said Takval. “I learned about him on the way here, before I escaped from the city-ships. He had a reputation for holding back a reserve in every battle, instead of committing everything to the initial assault.”

Théra’s heart pounded so hard that her chest hurt. The memory of their nearly fatal encounter with the lone garinafin that had survived the destruction of the Lyucu fleet earlier, during the passage through the Wall of Storms, was still fresh in her mind. Now that they were without the protection of the crubens, the chances of surviving another garinafin assault seemed remote.

“Maybe we should go underwater again?” asked Takval. “When caught in the open by garinafins with no garinafins of our own, the Agon way is to hide.”

“That’s not going to work,” said Théra. “Once we dive, we won’t be able to move except drifting with the current, and the city-ship, under full sail, will be able to catch us shortly. We can’t stay under forever, either. When we’re forced to resurface, we’ll be sitting ducks.”

“Then we’ll have to leave two ships behind to fight,” said Takval. “They die so that the other ships can live.”

Théra looked at him. “This is our first encounter with the Lyucu, and you’re proposing we sacrifice a fifth of our fleet?”

“This is what Agon warriors must do to save the tribe, and I would be happy to lead those willing to stay behind to forge a wall with our bones that will rival this Wall of Storms in future bonfire recountings.” Takval took off the leather cord around his neck. “This pendant, made from the stones found in a garinafin’s liver-pisspot, will let my people—”

“Wait, wait. A ‘liver-pisspot’… Do you mean the pouch-shaped organ under the liver, a gallbladder?”

“Yes, that’s the word: ‘gallbladder.’ The gallbladder stones will let my people know that you’ve been invested and divested with my authority. It won’t be perfect, but when you get to Gondé—”

“Oh, stop it!” chided Théra. She wasn’t sure whether to scream or cry or laugh at some of Takval’s ideas—it didn’t help that Takval’s Dara, originally acquired from both nobles and peasants in Mapidéré’s fleet, was peppered with incongruous locutions. “Where does this obsession with living on in song and story instead of thriving in this world come from? The world right here, right now, between the Veil of Incarnation and the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats, is where we can make the most difference. Every single person on this expedition is irreplaceable, with unique experiences and skills. We’re not going to jump to sacrifice as the first solution to every problem. That’s the easy way out. I intend to get every ship and every member of our crew to Gondé, you included.”

Takval was taken aback—this was definitely not how an Agon leader would have reacted. “How do you intend… to live through the garinafin assault then?”

“By doing the most interesting thing, of course,” said Théra, a look of determination and defiance on her face. “We’ve got about an hour, so tell me everything you know about what happens to garinafins on long journeys.”

Throughout a thirty-year career as a fighting man, first under the wily Pékyu Tenryo and then under the exacting Pékyu-taasa Cudyu, Toof had piloted a dozen garinafins and fought in hundreds of engagements. By rights, he should have been able to face any threat with complete equanimity.

But on this scouting mission, he felt as scared as on his very first mission as a fifteen-year-old boy, when he had been told to take care of an ambush of tusked tigers all by his lonesome self.

Toof’s mount, a ten-year-old female named Tana, trembled beneath his saddle as she flexed and stretched her long-unused wings, as if sharing his unease. His crew, reduced to only four to conserve garinafin lift gas after so much inactivity at sea, clung to the webbing draped over Tana’s torso quietly, not engaging in their habitual banter or singing heart-lifting battle songs.

Who could blame them for being afraid? Never in the history of the peoples of the scrublands had there been a garinafin flight like this.

To his left loomed the Wall of Storms, an impenetrable, shimmering mountain of water and lightning that had just swallowed thousands of his comrades like an insatiable monster. Beneath him was the endless ocean, over which the Lyucu fleet had sailed for months without sight of land. He felt as though he was flying through a scene ripped from the ancient myths or a shaman’s tolyusa-fueled nightmare, a primordial time when the gods of the Lyucu had still not taken human form, but endlessly transformed themselves and their surroundings, sculpting the world like so much tallow.

As Toof approached his targets—ten small ships huddled on the sea like a pod of sunning dolphins—his nervousness only increased as he guided Tana to fly lower. He swallowed hard to moisten his parched throat as he began to plot a course that would take Tana directly over the Dara fleet, giving her a chance to strafe the crew and rigging with fire breath.

Truth be told, Toof’s trepidation was partly the result of his uncertainty that the ships from Dara were even crewed by humans at all. How else could these tiny ships, bobbing over the ocean like arucuro tocua toy boats, have survived a passage through the Wall of Storms? Either these ships were crewed by ghosts and spirits, or they had unimaginable powers that mere mortals could not hope to withstand. Who knew if a garinafin’s fire breath would even be effective at all?

As if in answer to his fervid imagination, giant shapes lifted off from the decks of the ships and rose into the air to meet Tana and her riders. Were these the fabled airships of Dara that Pékyu Tenryo had warned them about? Or were they some new kind of engine of war that the Dara barbarians had invented to bring ruin to the Lyucu? Nothing was impossible after what he had just witnessed a few hours ago.

Tana moaned and veered sharply to the right, away from the flying objects, her nostrils flared in alarm. Instead of swooping over the fleet, she was using up her precious lift gas to fly in a wide circle around the fleet, too far for her to have any opportunity of attacking it.

“Ah… ah…” The port slingshot scout, Radia, who was in the best position to observe the targets from her perch on the webbing over Tana’s left shoulder, seemed at a loss for words.

“Ttt… tusss…” Toof wasn’t doing any better.

“What in the world are you two babbling about?” asked the starboard slingshot scout, Voki. Having heard no further clarification, he and Oflyu, the spearman as well as tail lookout, climbed up the webbing over Tana’s right shoulder and back to get a better look.

“Ttt… tusss…” “Fffff… ffflyyy…” “Ah… ah…” “Bu… bu…”

Tana sneezed and flapped her wings vigorously to get farther away. She was even more frightened and shocked than her human crew by the spectacle above the Dara fleet: ten brightly colored tusked tigers, each almost twenty-five feet long and twelve feet tall at the shoulders, leaping and swooping through the air.

Tusked tigers were among the few predators of the scrublands that could strike fear into the heart of a garinafin. These tawny-colored giant cats, typically the size of several long-haired cattle, sported a pair of curved tusks that could puncture tough garinafin hide. While male tusked tigers tended to wander far over the scrublands and hunt alone, females lived in large groups called ambushes with their cubs, hunting cooperatively. With their sharp claws, keen tusks, and muscular bodies, tusked tigers posed a great threat to young garinafins who hadn’t the endurance for long flights, and even adult garinafins could be overcome by large ambushes. Although the tusks didn’t inject any venom, wounds inflicted by these foul-breathed creatures festered. Some ambushes of tusked tigers were known to deliberately injure a garinafin’s leathery wings during an initial attack before tracking the creature for multiple days and nights, across hundreds of miles through the trailless scrublands, until, weakened by the infection from that initial bite, the garinafin, no longer able to take off, finally succumbed.

Worst of all, tusked tigers had the terrifying ability to shock their prey with silent roars. Experienced elders spoke of witnessing tusked tigers chasing after herds of wild aurochs and opening their maws when close. Although no sound emerged from those fetid throats, the straggling members of the herd fell down as though paralyzed by some unseen force. The tusked tigers’ magic was not well understood, and hunting parties generally avoided them unless a fight was absolutely necessary.

Thus, an ambush of larger-than-life tusked tigers who could fly was without a doubt the most frightening thing that a garinafin could imagine.

By now, Tana’s crew had spent enough time marveling at these nightmarish creatures to realize that they weren’t real. In fact, they appeared to be constructed from some kind of translucent material—possibly silk, which they were familiar with from the spoils of Admiral Krita’s expedition—stretched over a rigid frame, tethered to the ships below by long, thin cords, which the Dara crew appeared to use to guide them so that they could dive and roll through the air.

But no matter how hard Toof kicked at the base of her neck with his bone spurs, Tana refused to fly any closer to the false tusked tigers. She even twisted her head around on her long, sinuous neck and gazed at her pilot reproachfully, baring her long, sharp upper canines as she lowed.

Toof was confounded and had no idea what to do. For a well-trained and experienced war garinafin to show such defiance was almost unheard of. Even during bloody battles where the stench of singed flesh filled the air and garinafins tumbled out of the sky like flaming meteors, he could not remember any of his mounts reacting this way.

“She’s in the same state as the rest of us,” said Radia, who was almost as experienced with garinafins as Toof himself. “Dizzy, confused, exhausted. Even harmless silk tusked tigers at this point are too much.”

Toof looked at Radia and realized that the slingshot scout was right. A year’s journey over the trackless ocean, fed only on rations of hard pemmican and stale water that never seemed to be enough, meant the crew was always hungry and tired. Every single person on the city-ship looked like skin wrapped around bones, and he was already feeling out of breath even with the minimal exertion of this short flight.

Tana was in even worse shape. To conserve feed, the few adult garinafins carried by the fleet were kept on rations of thornbush and blood-palm grass hay as strict as the regimen applied to the human crew. Such a diet not only made the garinafins emaciated, but also left them with very little lift gas to sustain flight. Indeed, of the three adult war garinafins on their city-ship, the other two could not fly at all, and Tana’s takeoff had been so shallow and flat that Toof’s crew were certain at first that the garinafin was going to fall into the sea.

Besides a few on-deck airings during the journey, the garinafins had been mostly kept belowdecks. This flight was thus practically the first time in a year that she had been able to really spread her wings. Shaken by the destruction of the Lyucu fleet and surrounded by strange, impossible sights, the garinafin was likely on the verge of a total mental breakdown. No wonder she was spooked by these decoy tigers.

“Let’s head back.” Toof had made up his mind. “Tana can’t take this anymore.”

“Nacu isn’t going to like that excuse.”

“At least we can inform Nacu that these barbarian ships don’t seem to be very fast, and he can catch them on the open sea without relying on garinafins.”

The garinafin circled the fleet once from afar before heading back toward the distant city-ship. As it receded into the distance, crews on the Dara fleet once again broke into cheers.

A celebration was held on Dissolver of Sorrows that evening. Officers from the entire fleet congregated on the deck of the flagship, sharing a feast of freshly caught fish and crabs as well as warm rice beer and sea-chilled plum wine. A few sheep had been slaughtered, and Prince Takval oversaw their roasting after the manner of the people of the scrublands, where the only flavoring used was sea salt (of which they had an abundance) and a dash of tolyusa juice (of which they had none).

Although a few of the officers, still suspicious of Takval, stood awkwardly at the edge of the crowd, most of the attendees came by the roaring bonfire in the bronze firebowl to accept a cut of roast mutton from the Agon prince. Takval taught them to eat with their hands, tearing off pieces of juicy meat, rather than relying on eating sticks. After a while, everyone grinned as their greasy lips and fingers glistened in the firelight.

“You know what would go well with this?” mumbled Tipo Tho, commander of the marines on Dissolver of Sorrows. She swallowed the mouthful of succulent meat before continuing. “A compote of wild monkeyberries and ice melon. My home village in Wolf’s Paw is famous for it.”

“That sounds like a very sweet dish,” said Takval. “And wouldn’t it be mushy?” Before this, the marine commander had probably spoken all of two words to him.

“That’s why it will taste good. You want a good mix and contrast of flavors so that the sweetness isn’t cloying and the salty savoriness doesn’t parch the tongue.” She tore off another strip of meat with her teeth and chewed, closing her eyes in satisfaction.

“I’m sure we’ll have a chance to mix more of Agon and Dara cooking,” said Takval, smiling. “We’ll create flavor mixtures undreamed of by the gods or men.”

Food had a way of bringing people together like nothing else.

Elsewhere, the talk was more formal. “Modifying our signaling kites to resemble tusked tigers was pure genius, Your Highness,” said Çami Phithadapu. She had been one of the Golden Carp scholars elevated by Emperor Ragin, and Princess Théra had recommended her to the secret laboratory in Haan, where she had played a role in the dissection of garinafin carcasses that had revealed their secrets. Grateful for the princess’s recognition of her talent, she had volunteered to come on this journey to Gondé.

“The real credit should go to the pékyu-taasa,” said Théra. She was trying to learn as much of the Agon language in as short a time as possible, and tried to use some Agon words in her daily speech to set an example for the rest of the crew. Takval had explained to her that although the Agon and the Lyucu tribes all spoke local topolects that were largely mutually intelligible, there were differences that clearly marked one people from another—mainly because the topolects spoken by the Roatan clan and the Aragoz clan had become the prestige topolects of the Lyucu and the Agon, respectively. Fluency in the language of their allies as well as enemies was critical to the ultimate success of their mission.

She paused to bow in jiri to Takval and waited for the others to emulate her gesture of respect before continuing. Takval, standing next to the firebowl, grilling spit and fork in hand, smiled awkwardly and wiped the sweat from his brow.

A grin flashed across the princess’s face before she turned serious again. “Without Takval’s knowledge concerning the debilitating effects of transporting garinafins across the ocean and their natural fear of tusked tigers, we wouldn’t have been able to scare the attackers away. Now that the creature has exhausted what little lift gas it had kept in reserve, it won’t be available for another flight for some time.”

Çami nodded and raised her cup to the Agon prince. Setting down the grilling implements, Takval lifted his cup in return and drained it in one gulp. Turning to the rest of the crowd, he said, “Théra and I might have come up with the idea, but we couldn’t have succeeded if the kite-crafters hadn’t been able to modify the signal kites so quickly. Let me raise a cup to everyone who helped bend a bamboo hoop, tie a silk strip, or paint a tusked tiger stripe today.”

The crew raised their cups in return, murmuring words of thanks to the prince.

Théra was pleased. Takval might be young and inexperienced as a leader, but he clearly had the right political instincts. She had deliberately emphasized his contribution to today’s events, and he had immediately understood it to be an opportunity for sharing credit more widely. This was a small step toward making the Agon and the Dara expedition feel like members of a single family, a unified tribe.

“But we aren’t out of danger yet,” said Théra, injecting a somber note into the feast. “Under full sail, the city-ship is faster than we are. If we keep on running, they’ll eventually catch us—and we can’t hope to scare away rested garinafins with silk-and-bamboo tigers again. Our small ships don’t have the armaments to take on a city-ship head-on. For now, we remain the prey and they remain the hunter. Let’s all put our minds to finding a way to reverse the situation.”

Nacu Kitansli, Thane of the Tribe of the Second Toe, commander of Boundless Pastures, the sole Lyucu city-ship to survive the ill-fated attempt to penetrate the Wall of Storms, was having trouble sleeping.

His crew was on the verge of mutiny.

Initially, the Lyucu warriors had been grateful that they had survived while the rest of the fleet foundered, thinking it a sign of favor from the gods of both Ukyu and Dara—or whoever was in charge in these waters. But news that the sole garinafin capable of flight after the arduous voyage across the ocean had been turned back by some decoy tusked tigers had plunged morale to the nadir.

He needed some way to rally the troops, but there weren’t a lot of good choices.

Increasing rations for the skittish garinafins so that they could attempt another assault shortly with a belly full of lift gas and confidence was out of the question—as known by everyone from the scrublands, where starvation was just one bad winter storm away, humans and beasts needed time to recover fully after a long period of hunger. After the yearlong voyage across the ocean, there wasn’t even enough food left on Boundless Pastures to feed the crew for the one additional year needed to sail back to Ukyu, let alone to indulge the garinafins.

That, ultimately, was Nacu’s biggest problem. It was impossible to see how the meager provisions could last even if the crew was put on a starvation diet of one-sixteenth rations. The expedition had been provisioned with the expectation of reaching a welcoming base in Dara established by Pékyu Tenryo, not to wander fruitlessly around the ocean for two years. The prospect of cannibalism and worse loomed in the not-too-distant future.

Already, Nacu had had to have some crew members whipped and dunked in the sea after they were caught trying to break into the ship’s supply of tolyusa and pemmican. “A feast! A final feast before we join the cloud-garinafins!” the leader of the troublemakers had hollered. “Let us die at least with bellies full of meat and heads full of visions.”

The Dara fleet was the only ray of hope left to the tiger-thane. The Dara ships that had sailed outside the Wall of Storms could have had only one destination in mind: the Lyucu homeland. If Nacu and his crew could seize the rich stores aboard the Dara ships, they would then have a chance to make it back home. The Dara fleet was a flock of plump sheep, and the Lyucu city-ship a hungry wolf that needed to eat before the coming of winter.

Nacu Kitansli ordered all the spare battens and sails brought out and rigged. The forest of masts on Boundless Pastures sprouted new branches and leaves to catch every scrap of breeze. A whole panoply of skysails, moonrakers, cloudcombs, butterfly sails, even “autumn cocoons”—giant, balloon-like sails that had no battens and rigged only on stays, suitable solely for off-wind or downwind sailing in calm seas—eked out every last bit of speed to aid the city-ship’s pursuit of the Dara fleet on their westward course. Using such a top-heavy sail plan so close to the Wall of Storms made even old-time sailors, who had learned the craft of managing these man-made isles directly from Emperor Mapidéré’s original crew, sweat in their palms, but at least with every passing day, Boundless Pastures drew closer to its prey.

As the city-ship loomed larger behind them with each dawn, Théra and Takval anxiously debated possible courses of action.

“We have to fight them,” said Takval.

“How?” asked Théra. “Even the largest stone-throwers we have on board won’t make a dent against those thick planks.”

It was true. The city-ship was so much bigger and taller that a naval engagement between it and the Dara fleet would resemble assaulting a walled city with a few horse wagons.

Théra summoned the most experienced marine officers and ship captains to the flagship for a council of war.

“Can we do anything with the kites?” Takval tossed out the first idea. He had a bit of a fixation on battle kites after the ploy with the decoy tusked tigers.

The consensus was that the numerous flapping sails that had turned the city-ship into a moving aspen stand presented tempting targets for archers strapped to kites and armed with fire arrows.

“But if we’re in range to deploy fire arrows, they’ll also be in range to send out coracles and skiffs to board us.” The speaker was Admiral Mitu Roso, the commander in chief of the fleet’s armed forces, second in military authority only to Princess Théra (and in theory, Prince Takval). “Not to mention they’ll be able to deploy any stone-throwers onboard—I’m sure the Lyucu have learned to make use of the weapons on the captured city-ships. They’ll have the range advantage due to height.” He looked at Takval with contempt. “This is the kind of idea that shows little understanding—”

“As the Ano sages would say,” interrupted Théra, “ ‘Sometimes a paving stone is essential on the path to mine pure jade.’ Even an impractical idea may spark a better plan down the road.”

Mitu Roso grumbled but said nothing more.

Encouraged by Takval’s first try, the captains and marine officers brainstormed other suggestions. Théra purposely kept herself largely out of the discussions so that the officers would feel freer to debate.

But none of the suggestions could pass muster when examined and debated in more detail.

Takval tried again. “Let me quote an ancient Agon proverb: A trapped wolf may bite off his paw—”

“No.” Théra cut him off. “I know what you’re going to suggest: divide the fleet in half and dispatch one-half of the ships to use fire kites to disable or slow down the city-ship while the other half escape. I need a plan that will save everyone.”

“If we can’t outrun them and we aren’t allowed to fight them, that doesn’t leave us many choices,” Takval complained.

“I didn’t say we can’t fight,” said Théra, “but it can’t be a head-to-head naval battle—even if we win, the cost is too high.”

“I have an idea,” said a new voice. “I’ve been observing the whales swimming near us in the belt current.”

The war council turned as one and saw that the speaker was Çami Phithadapu.

The Phithadapu clan were prominent whalers from Rui. As a little girl, Çami had sailed all around the waters of Rui and beyond with her uncle, a whaling captain, as they pursued the dome-headed whale and the combing whale for profit. Close observation of the majestic, intelligent creatures had eventually made Çami more interested in studying their habits than killing them. For her essay at the Imperial examinations, in order to avoid retreading the same few topics favored by most examinees, she had discussed evidence of midwifery being practiced among the cetaceans. Once she had placed among the firoa—the top one hundred scorers at the Grand Examination in Pan—she had advocated an Imperial policy of encouraging whalers throughout Dara to adopt a new style of whaling invented in Gan, in which harpooners tired out dome-headed whales to get them to vomit up the valuable living amber without killing them.

The barnacle-encrusted whales that greeted the fleet in these uncharted waters were indistinguishable from those seen inside the Wall of Storms. The boundary that had played such an important role in the fate of Dara appeared not to affect the whales at all. No one had thus paid much attention to the whales—except Çami.

It took Çami some time to explain what she had in mind. She even had to illustrate her plan with a bulky writing wax block and some slender ink brushes, serving as models of the ships.

The captains and marine officers sat in stunned silence, trying to digest Çami’s plan.

“It’s a completely untested tactic,” said Captain Nméji Gon, commanding officer of Dissolver of Sorrows. “I don’t even know if this ship could handle what you’d be asking of her.”

“Just about any tactic taking advantage of the unique features of these ships will be untested,” countered Çami. “This is actually the most orthodox of the plans I’ve devised. If you want to hear some really innovative—”

“Maybe later, Çami,” said Théra. “Let’s talk through this one first.”

“Even if the idea works in principle, there won’t be enough time to practice and drill the marines and sailors in such a novel method of war,” objected Admiral Mitu Roso.

“Marshal Gin Mazoti always said that there’s never enough time to prepare and drill the soldiers adequately. You always go to war with the army you have, not one you wish you could have created,” said Théra. “The benefit of unorthodoxy is that the Lyucu won’t be expecting anything like it either, despite their deep study of Dara tactics from the prisoners from Krita’s expedition. I notice that you didn’t object to the plan as fundamentally flawed.”

“To be honest, I’m both awed by it and a little terrified,” admitted Mitu Roso. “It has potential, but there are a lot of unknowns.”

“And that makes it interesting,” said Takval. He and Théra exchanged a quick smile. “In fact, the more I think about this plan, the more I like it!”

“Easy for you to say,” said Captain Nméji Gon. He had once commanded one of the mechanical crubens that had played such a crucial role in Kuni Garu’s rise from the tiny island of Dasu. “You won’t be the one who has to make this ship do what she was never meant to do.”

“I agree with the prince. On an expedition like this, we all have to do what we thought we weren’t meant to do,” said Tipo Tho, commander of the marines. Before volunteering to come with Princess Théra, she had been an experienced airship captain. As there was no airship corps in the fleet—maintaining a few expensive airships for a voyage to a faraway land with no known source of lift gas was deemed impractical—she, like the other air force veterans on the expedition, had been reorganized into the marines. “Don’t tell me that your ship won’t be up to the challenge.”

“Oh, the ship will be up to the challenge,” said Captain Gon through gritted teeth. Insulting his ship got his hackles up far faster than insulting him. “I’m just worried that a thin-boned swallow like you, used to the luxurious accommodations and stately pace of an Imperial airship, won’t be able to take really rough sailing. You’ll be throwing up instead of attacking—”

“If you think sitting in a waterlogged wooden tub that can dip a few yards below the surface is even one-tenth as rough as flying—”

“Please!” interrupted Théra. “If you want to carry on the ridiculous rivalry between aviators and submariners, play a game of zamaki after this mission. I just want to know if you can do what Çami is asking of you.”

“Absolutely.”

“Count on it.”

“I’ll have the ship sailing so smoothly you’ll think you’re on Lake Tututika—”

“Even without my airship, I’ll lead our troops on an assault so fast and clean—”

“Instead of all this strutting and posturing,” pleaded Théra, rubbing her temples with a pained expression, “why don’t you each try to poke holes in the part of the plan the other is supposed to carry out, and let’s see if Çami’s idea really is workable?”

Captain Nméji Gon and Commander Tipo Tho worked through Çami’s plan step by step, arranging and rearranging the wax block and ink brushes through different configurations on the floor. Each tried to outdo the other by coming up with new ways that every step could fail, and both furrowed their brows as they refined the plan in response.

Admiral Mitu Roso edged up to Princess Théra. “I served under Emperor Ragin in the campaigns against the Hegemon, Duke Théca Kimo’s rebellion in Arulugi, and the Lyucu,” he whispered. “Your father was always skilled at using rivalries among his lieutenants to perfect a plan. Seeing shadows of your father’s style in you makes my heart leap in joy.”

Théra nodded to acknowledge the compliment, but her heart roiled at being reminded of her dead father. It is a ruler’s job to find a way to balance, Kuni Garu had taught her. She hoped she could find a way to balance competing factions, jealousies, mutual distrust, all the forces that threatened to spill out of control in this alliance, and convert all that energy into forward motion. She prayed that her dead father would watch over her and help her find the wisdom needed to succeed.

Nméji and Tipo were slowing down, as each pondered the other’s challenges for minutes at a time to come up with the perfect response. They were like two cüpa or zamaki players locked in the final stages of a hard-fought game, where every move had the potential to alter the outcome. Other officers and captains, like onlookers to an exciting match, offered a cacophony of advice.

“Shouldn’t you be the one devising and revising the plan?” whispered Takval in Théra’s ear. “Your followers will lose faith in you if you don’t take charge.”

Théra shook her head almost imperceptibly. “I’m no warlord nor tactician,” she whispered. “It would be the height of foolish arrogance for me to lead where I’m blind. Knowing when to take counsel and when to be resolute in my own will is the most important thing my father taught me.”

Takval was taken aback. It was not the way among the Agon or the Lyucu for a leader not to be an expert at war—or at least to pretend to be one. Not for the first time, he was seized by a bout of doubt as to whether he had done the right thing to place the future of his people in the hands of a Dara princess who saw no shame in admitting that she was not skilled in the art of war.

But wasn’t the fact that the Dara were not of the scrublands why he had sought their help? Their ways were not the ways of the Agon and the Lyucu, and it was that very foreignness that offered the promise of change. Théra was interesting.

In any event, his fate was entwined with hers now, and he could only wait and watch.

Finally, Nméji and Tipo concluded their game. They set down the wax block and ink brushes and stared at each other solemnly.

The other officers held their breaths, waiting for them to announce the outcome.

“Er…” Admiral Mitu Roso could no longer tolerate the suspense. “Who won? Who broke the plan?”

Smiles cracked the faces of both Nméji Gon and Tipo Tho as they gripped each other by the arms and laughed heartily.

“We both lost,” said Tipo.

“And so we both won,” said Nméji.

“Bring in the rice beer!” Tipo called out. “I’ll drink with this salty bastard. It’s the only way to deal with that fish-gut breath—”

“Let’s see if you drink as well as you plan a city-ship assault,” said Nméji. “Given that sticklike frame, I have my doubts—”

“Um… does this mean,” asked Théra hesitantly, “that you think the plan will work? You trust each other to carry it out?”

Nméji and Tipo turned to her, as if insulted by her question.

“Oh, I’d sail with this man to the palace of Tazu at the bottom of his whirlpool—”

“I’d follow this woman in an assault on the castle of Mata Zyndu—”

“If he had only a boat made out of paper, I’d wager on him—”

“If she had only a hairpin for a weapon, I’d pity her foes—”

“I think the point has been amply made,” said a smiling Théra, gesturing for them to stop.

Relief and joy were visible on everyone’s face. Flasks full of warm rice beer were brought out and cups filled and drained.

“Don’t be too cocky,” said Théra. “Making a plan is only the first step; executing the plan will be ten times harder.”

The council worked until the stars had spun their nightly course. At dawn, skiffs brought the officers and captains back to their own ships, but none of them went to bed. There was a lot that needed to be done.