Chapter 16

  General Missive, delivered at 1154 Nazkhar time.

  AC: When I last met Emmius, I installed a status check system in his comm band.

  AC: This was 23 days ago.

  AC: This morning I received an alert notifying me that Emmius had been badly wounded.

  AC: The notification arrived at 0723 Nazkhar time.

  AC: I went at once by slider.

  AC: I departed at 0732.

  AC: I also notified and located Fiora, establishing contact with her at 0785.

  AC: I arrived on site at 0924 (Nazkhar time).

  AC: It is in Prax.

  AC: See attached coordinates for location.

  AC: Emmius had received a deep stab wound to the abdomen, in addition to several comparatively minor scrapes and bruises.

  AC: The wound narrowly missed his vitals.

  AC: He had lost most of his blood and was unconscious by the time of my arrival.

  AC: He will survive.

  AC: Fiora arrived by vesta and healed Emmius at 1085.

  AC: As of now, Emmius remains unconscious.

  AC: However, examination of Emmius’s wounds and the surrounding area makes the chain of events obvious.

  AC: At approximately 0700 Emmius, asleep, was approached by Rosma, who emerged from the waters of the Florenzi Strait nearby.

  AC: They spoke briefly.

  AC: An altercation ensued in which Rosma was the aggressor.

  AC: She overpowered and wounded Emmius.

  AC: She had no intention of killing him.

  AC: I have been unable to contact Rosma.

  AC: For now, we must wait until Emmius awakens to understand the cause of this event.

  AC: I repeat: Emmius will be fine.

  AC: That is all.

  Acarnus sent the message without reviewing it. He checked the weather patterns for the next few days. Images flickered across his vision, overlaying the view of Emmius snoring in the shade. Heat tomorrow, and more heat afterward. Not a cloud for days, most likely. Sporadic salt snow, possibly blown into flurries of saline blizzard by hot winds. The scent of the salt was almost overpowering. He could barely discern the sweet, sagey aroma of the coral forest around him. He’d hardly be able to smell a creature creeping up on him. Then again, he could also hardly smell Emmius. A mixed blessing.

  He checked satellite imagery and record logs for any notable activity in the area. None. No fanatical Ephathic Remnant. No ex-Shogunate militarized mining corporations. Nothing. A wasteland. Understandable. Prax was not hospitable these days.

  Prax was the name of both the region and the ruined city in which shade Acarnus sat. This scorching desert land had once been hidden beneath the vaporous waves of the Prismatic Sea. The dry coral forests thrived when the sea receded, prompting some adventurous souls two centuries ago to construct a city among the shells and salt, seeking to mine the rich natural resources. It was not the dangerous and often aerial fauna of Prax that put an end to this city decades ago, but a sudden resurgence of the Prismatic Sea in a cataclysmic tsunami.

  Acarnus scanned the pale sky. It was bright even seen from the shade, for the salt snow glittered against the blue. His goggles adjusted. No dangerous local fauna in view. A soft snort drew his attention back to Emmius, who twitched in his sleep, mumbling, perhaps listening to the secrets of the earth in his dreams. He had once told Acarnus that he dreamed mainly of tectonic plates shifting, slow and inexorable. A snort of a different origin made Acarnus turn his gaze to the vesta, which dozed in another patch of shade not far away across the sand. The vesta’s presence shielded them, in theory, from the Praxian wildlife.

  A battered guitar and scratched dragon mask decorated the sand near Emmius. The falling salt formed patterns in Emmius’s immediate vicinity, falling as if by chance in concentrated lines. The lines made strange symbols similar to the draconic markings on his brown skin. Farther out, in the open sunny space between their shade and the vesta’s, an array of Fiora-sized salt angels had been rubbed into the ground, the powdery salt swept away to reveal the turquoise sand below. The warm breeze and the light saltfall had already blurred some of the shapes.

  A number of coins lay scattered in the salt at Acarnus’s feet. He had spent some time experimenting with Emmius’s probability distortion field. At the moment, coins flipped near Emmius came to rest on-edge roughly four out of five times, even when flipped onto a hard, flat surface. However, previous experiments had produced different results. For example, one time over two hundred coin-flips in a row had come up kings. The probability distortion field had no definite size or shape that Acarnus could tell, and its effect varied widely, and Acarnus had never been able to link the differing effects to any kind of cause such as elevation, temperature, the phase of the moon, tectonic movement, local geology, an alteration in Emmius’s mental or physical state, or any other factor. It was, simply put, a mystery. It made him tingle with excitement. No matter how mystic and abstract the probability distortion field might be, it had rules. It must. Sufficient data would render it predictable, and thus, manipulable. In time, if he had the time, Acarnus would master this obscurity.

  He plucked one coin from the salt and flipped it. He let it fall naturally, without using his powers to alter its course. It landed directly atop another coin standing on-edge in the salt. The falling coin bounced, spun, and came to a standstill exactly on top of the other. Two coins, roughly .07 inches thick, stacked on-edge, balancing perfectly. It lasted until a slight gust of warm salty breeze nudged the top coin into compliance with gravity. Acarnus frowned. If he didn’t know better, which he did, he would think something was mocking him.

  He turned his attention back to his surroundings. The surrounding coral grew into fantastic shapes both large and small. Most of the coral was brittle and hard, not innately colorful but painted over by vibrant lichen that fed on the salt and sun. The city that had existed here was almost invisible. Most of the nearby structures had been carved into the huge mounds and squat tree-like formations of dry coral, but Emmius rested in the shadow of a radio transceiver station that broke this rule. Badly aged and corroded by the wind and the salt snow, it nevertheless still functioned as a broadcasting point. Acarnus could see, with a few clicks of his goggles, the radio waves quavering out from it. Emmius had been living there and operating the radio tower, broadcasting his guitar improvisations to no one. There was probably food inside, but Fiora had been off, bounding over the bright salt-dusted coral, before he could mention this. Acarnus didn’t mind waiting. In the shade, Prax was strangely comfortable. Dry, quiet, warm. A fine location for meditation.

  Time passed, in which Acarnus sat as still as the coral, dark goggles reflecting the bright snowy heat of the coral forests.

  A strange voice interrupted his meditation, speaking a language he did not know. He became alert at once. Two small throwing stars slipped down his bracers into his fingers as he swiveled to his feet in search of the source of the voice. He saw only the vesta standing in the sun, facing a bubbly blue agglomeration of coral that had not been there before. It was a squat, lumpy mound roughly as large as the vesta. A broad track scraped through the salt showed that it had been dragged to its present location; the turquoise sand of Prax trailed behind it like a snail’s slime. Acarnus caught its scent: musky and sweet, like an old rotting tree.

  The vesta made a noise in reply. “Identify,” Acarnus muttered. Images shuttered through the lower part of his vision. In two seconds, he had it. The blue bubbly coral was a cnidavox, a sentient creature. Talking coral. He relaxed.

  The coral spoke again, its voice a soft, low warble. “Translate,” Acarnus said. His headset processed for a few seconds before producing the following: ‘not require take final train. Warn snow big for the snow. Mother stone weather.’ Seventy percent margin of error.

  He replaced the stars and sat back down as the vesta responded.

  Acarnus resumed his meditation, but something struck him from behind the moment he closed his eyes.

  He rolled across the salt and came upright with stars in his hands. He nearly flung one before identifying the threat as Fiora. She giggled at him. “Do not be so nervous, Acarnus! Catch is here! Hi, Catch!” She waved at the vesta. It nodded at her before resuming its conversation with the cnidavox.

  Fiora had an armful of colorful bulbous objects. She bounced in excitement. “Look, Acarnus! Look what I found!”

  “Identify.”

  She turned to shield her find with an exaggerated hurt look. “Stop analyzing my food! Do you not trust me?”

  “I am sorry.” But the analysis came through. Seed sacks from a certain unusual species of coral tree. Edible. Low nutritional value.

  “I am joking, Acarnus!” She turned around. “You do not actually have to apologize.”

  “I am sorry,” he said.

  “You did it again!”

  “I am…” He frowned. He preferred to communicate via text.

  Fiora laughed. Something dark and round swooped up through the air behind her and came to a gliding halt over Fiora. It settled onto her head like a hat. Only the fact that she was looking up at it and grinning prevented Acarnus from putting a blade through it. Perhaps he should have more faith in Fiora’s ability to keep herself safe from wildlife, but on the other hand, Prax was no place to be complacent.

  The baby manta ray, black speckled with blue, seemed content to rest atop Fiora. Acarnus also noticed the spiny arm of some kind of sea star reaching over Fiora’s shoulder to hold itself in place on her back.

  Fiora skipped over to Emmius, unseating the baby manta, and dropped the seed sacks near him. “How is he?” she asked.

  “Stable.”

  Fiora sniffed the unconscious Emmius. “He needs a bath.” Acarnus agreed wholeheartedly. The scent of earth which constantly hung about Emmius could not mask his sour body odor. The manta ray tried to settle again on Fiora’s head, but she stood too fast. She gasped, “Catch found a friend!” She bounded past Acarnus over to the vesta and the cnidavox. The manta followed.

  Acarnus replaced the blades and turned to the food she had brought. He was becoming hungry. He checked to make sure the seed sacks were safe to eat raw, then picked one up. It looked like a leathery red pouch full to bursting with marbles. He brushed the salt off its waxy exterior and took a bite. Still salty. Also dry, starchy, slightly sour. Hard little pellets of seed rolled around in his mouth. They released a bitter flavor when crunched between his sharp canines.

  “No, no, no!” cried Fiora behind him. She came from behind and skidded to a halt, crouched protectively over the fallen seed sacks. “We will cook them, Acarnus! We will! What are you, a barbarian?”

  “They are safe to eat raw.”

  “Yeah, but they are not good raw.”

  Acarnus looked down at the reddish object in puzzlement. “Does that…matter?”

  Fiora rolled her eyes and sighed. “Honestly, Acarnus. Anthea is going to have her work cut out for her!”

  Anthea? How did she come into this conversation? “Is she here?” he asked. He scanned his surroundings.

  Fiora scooped up the seed sacks and giggled. “No, Acarnus. I am just saying that you should learn to appreciate good food.” The baby manta ray, undaunted, tried again to perch itself atop her head.

  “That is unnecessary,” he said. “Taste has no bearing upon the value of food.”

  “Anthea will disagree,” said Fiora with a grin. “She likes good food. She does. You should learn to cook!”

  Emmius stirred in his sleep, groaned, began sitting up. Fiora was there in an instant, food forgotten, her would-be hat left hanging in the air like a scene from some slapstick.

  “Like…whoa,” said Emmius. He put a hand to his forehead, took the hand away and looked at it as though surprised to see it, then turned it back and forth as if noticing the dark tattoos for the first time. His eyes widened as he noticed Acarnus and Fiora, and then he grinned, displaying a mouthful of sharp, crooked teeth. “Hey guys,” he said.

  “Emmius!” Fiora hugged him.

  “Like, uh, okay,” he said. He hugged her back.

  Fiora released him, sprang back, seized a blue seed sack off the ground. “Here,” she said. “Eat this. And drink this.” She handed him a canteen of water. “You must recover your strength. We will cook the rest later.” She winked at Acarnus.

  Emmius drained the entire canteen, then looked skeptically at the seed sack. “Okay but like there’s some actual food over in—”

  “Eat it, Emmius,” said Acarnus.

  Emmius shrugged and took a huge bite out of the blue object. He devoured it in seconds; his sharp teeth sliced easily through the tough skin.

  “Like thanks guys but uh, like, what happened?”

  “We will be asking that question to you,” said Acarnus. “You were wounded. Rosma. Remember?”

  Emmius’s eyes widened. “Oh yeah. That.” He patted his stomach where he had been speared and was surprised to find the wound absent. “Uh, thanks Fiora.” She grinned at him.

  “Um. Okay. So like I’ve been coming to this radio tower,” he gestured up at the station, “‘cause like it still works and stuff and I can just like chill in there and play music and stuff.” He searched around for something, then shrugged and continued. “And there’s like food and water and stuff in there plus a bunch of old music like equipment. And the mother stone. It’s pretty cool. Hey! You guys should like come and see it! Plus if you go all the way up which I don’t usually because it’s like pretty high you know but then you can see a long ways and it’s pretty cool. Like you can even—”

  “Rosma, Emmius,” said Acarnus. “Tell us about Rosma.”

  Emmius frowned, trying to remember. Fiora giggled.

  “What is amusing?” Acarnus asked her.

  “It is like you’re Miriam Fivemind!” she whispered at him. “Asking questions! Solving the case! Too smart for the bad guys! Hee hee! Oh!” She hopped several feet directly up into the air, leaving her hat to drift back down on its own. “We can play a game! You should pretend to be Fivemind! She had those goggles, right? Oh, you have already got them. And those things on her arms! Oh, you have got those too. And that belt with… waaaait a minute…”

  Acarnus twitched aside his traveling cloak to hide the utility belt. “Can we resume our business?”

  Fiora struck a pose and pointed up at him with her entire hand. “You are already pretending to be the Fivemind! You never stop!” She laughed as she jumped up and down, again disturbing the persistent manta ray. Acarnus waited. “That is great!” said Fiora. “I never noticed. You are just like her, Acarnus! You are really smart, and cool, and you never laugh or understand when people are—”

  “Fiora, please,” he said. “May we return to the task at hand?”

  She pointed at him again. “That is just what the Fivemind would say!”

  Despite his embarrassment, Acarnus felt a warm glow. That is just what the Fivemind would say. Brother Chain had said that very thing to him on several occasions. The Fivemind was a hunter of truth, and she always secured her quarry.

  “Okay!” said Fiora. “You be Fivemind, and I will…I will be Rosma. Okay, Emmius, tell us what happened.”

  Emmius looked troubled. He patted his tattered clothes, searching for something.

  “I threw it away,” said Acarnus. “You don’t need it.”

  Emmius phased through surprise, sorrow, resignation. “Okay,” he said. “So it was like I was just sleeping, okay. Then all of a sudden Rosma’s there.”

  “I’m here!” Fiora jumped in next to Emmius. She stood with her chin up and glared down at Emmius in what was actually a decent imitation of Rosma. She somehow managed that fierce, judgmental gaze.

  “And she was all like pink.”

  “Pink?” asked Acarnus.

  “Yeah like bright pink. But she like didn’t want to talk about it or whatever.”

  “Hmm.” Acarnus had not missed the tiny pink flecks adhering to the edges of Emmius’s wound. He had suspected local wildlife, what with their bright colors. But apparently Rosma’s spearhead had been colored pink. He had taken a sample, but analysis would have to wait until he returned to the monastery. “Go on.”

  “And then so she says like that I was hurting her seahorses or something.”

  Fiora gasped, her eyes wide. Then she resumed her Rosma persona. “I shall slay thee for that, vile wastrel!” she shouted at Emmius, startling him.

  “Fiora, stop that,” said Acarnus. “Emmius. Did you hurt her seahorses?”

  A troubled look clouded Emmius’s face. “Like I don’t think so man but you know how it is like sometimes I don’t remember stuff…”

  “Have you been near the Chelonate Sea?” asked Acarnus.

  Emmius was dumfounded. “What’s that?”

  “Did she say when you had supposedly done this?” asked Acarnus.

  “Like recently I think?”

  “Data,” said Acarnus to his goggles, “show me Emmius’s path over the last 23 days.” It flashed before him. Here in Prax was the closest Emmius had come to Rosma’s waters in the past few weeks. Most recently he had been to Anthea’s mountain, whence he had returned here.

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  “Emmius,” said Acarnus, “did you ever remove your comm band since I installed the status protocol?”

  “Uh. No?”

  “It says you never went near Rosma’s seahorses.”

  “Like that’s what I told her but you know I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.”

  “And besides,” Fiora interjected, “You would not do that! Why would you hurt seahorses?”

  Emmius nodded vigorously. “Like yeah that’s what I was trying to figure out.”

  “She figured it out as well,” said Acarnus. “She avoided killing you.”

  “Oh, good. I was a little worried but you know I figured it’s like either she would kill me or she wouldn’t so it was like a fifty-fifty chance you know?”

  “That is not what…never mind. Have you done anything that you remember to make Rosma mad at you?”

  He thought about it, then shook his head.

  Most likely, the seahorses in question really had been killed. If Rosma wanted to harm Emmius, she would not bother to fabricate a reason. It was far more likely that she had somehow been mistaken or misled into believing Emmius responsible.

  “Did she say why she thought it had been you, Emmius? Hurting the seahorses.”

  “Uh yeah like she said Akkama told her.”

  Akkama?

  “Um…Acarnus?” said Fiora. She looked pained, anxious. “I was talking to Akkama not too long ago, and…she said…that Emmius had made her mad.”

  Emmius’s eyes widened at this.

  “Emmius, did you do something to Akkama?” asked Acarnus.

  He hung his head. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So,” said Acarnus. “You angered Akkama, and she took revenge by killing Rosma’s seahorses and blaming you.”

  Fiora growled and stamped the ground. “That is so messed up! Why bring the seahorses into it? They did not do anything!” She bit her wrist in frustration.

  “What did you do to Akkama?” asked Acarnus. He was genuinely curious what Emmius—harmless, incompetent Emmius—could have done to earn the ire of Akkama. She couldn’t possibly view him as a threat.

  “Well…it’s like…we ended up talking because I was just dropping by to say hi and like she told me to go away and like she asked why I was always coming by so often and so I was thinking like well she’s asking so I’d better tell her…”

  Acarnus and Fiora looked at each other, then at Emmius.

  “…and?” Fiora prompted.

  “Well so I told her that I thought she was like really beautiful and cool and stuff and also that her Song was pretty and that it would be like cool if we uh maybe hung out or something because…well yeah that’s about it.”

  Fiora surprised them both by squealing in excitement. She jumped up and down, then ran in place, hands pressed to her mouth, holding in a broad smile.

  Acarnus turned back to Emmius. “So just to be clear…do you think Akkama tried to have Rosma kill you…because you expressed a romantic interest in her?”

  Emmius blushed, the first time Acarnus had ever seen that. His face became a darker brown. “I guess that’s probably about how it is, yeah.”

  Acarnus considered this for a moment. “I don’t understand people,” he concluded. He had reached this conclusion often enough before that it had ceased to bother him.

  “Tell me!” said Fiora. She crouched beside Emmius, her face radiant and her arda chiming with excitement. “Tell me tell me tell me!”

  “Um…tell you what?”

  “How it happened! What caused you to start feeling this way? When did you first notice? What was it about her? Was it something she did? Do you like the color red?” She leaned in close to his face.

  Emmius looked at her, confused and a little afraid. “Uh…”

  “Desist, Fiora,” said Acarnus. “You are embarrassing him. And he does not even know the answers to your questions.” Fiora glowered at him, but backed off. “And regardless, it is a moot point,” Acarnus continued, “since the feelings are clearly not reciprocated.”

  “Maybe it is just the beginning of a dramatic and turbulent courtship!”

  “I find it doubtful.” He paused. “Though I also find myself doubting my ability to predict her behavior.”

  “Her Song is beautiful, though!”

  Acarnus would not know; he had never heard Akkama’s Song.

  “Um, guys?” said Emmius. “Would it be okay if you like maybe could not go and tell everyone about this? Um. It’s not really that I’m embarrassed but man I guess it could just cause more trouble you know with…her.”

  “I promise!” said Fiora at once.

  “I cannot,” said Acarnus. “It may prove necessary to disclose such information at a later date.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  A shadow passed over them. In a cloudless sky. Thoughts of Ephathic cruisers alarmed Acarnus before he could identify the object blocking the sun. It was a living creature, one he recognized: sky dreamer. It resembled a broad, flat jellyfish grown to enormous proportions. This one looked a few hundred yards across. Its underside was blue, blending into the sky behind it. Acarnus increased magnification to inspect the drooping tendrils that hung from the creature’s belly. The deserts near Prax were scored by patches of deep parallel grooves several feet across, as though a monstrous clawed beast had pawed at the land. They made land travel arduous and roads damn near impossible. It was the work of sky dreamers seeking subterranean food to supplement their diet of solar energy. They would eat daimon if they could catch them, absorbing the arda somehow and adding it to the crystalline reefs on their upper surfaces. Yet they were simple creatures, though intelligent, and easily discouraged.

  Fiora clapped in delight at the creature as its shadow moved on. Emmius joined in, a little confused about why he was clapping. The nearby vesta craned its neck to gaze up at the great aerial beast. The cnidavox had begun scooting away through the salt at a turtle’s pace.

  Fiora sidestepped toward Acarnus and whispered up at him. “This is so exciting!”

  “Well. Sky dreamers are rather common in this weather.”

  “I am not talking about the wildlife! Come on, Acarnus!”

  “I know what you are talking about, Fiora.”

  “Hee hee!” She hopped up and down. The baby manta ray appeared to at last give up on its attempts to perch on Fiora’s head. It drifted toward Acarnus, perhaps perceiving that his own head provided a much more reliable perch. Acarnus waved it away as it approached.

  “Oh!” said Fiora. “Acarnus! Tell us about Anthea!”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How are things going with her? Did you get her a hairbrush like I said? What caused you to start liking—”

  “These questions are neither relevant nor profitable.” He shooed the manta ray away from him again.

  Fiora looked slyly at a bewildered Emmius, then back at Acarnus. “Aw, that’s too bad. Because I was talking to her just the other day, and she had some things to say about you…” She shrugged her shoulders way up in an elaborate gesture of regret. “But I guess we are not talking about that…”

  She did not even try to hide the fact that she was goading him. It still nearly worked. Acarnus found himself seized with a powerful desire to know what Anthea had to say about him, especially to Fiora. But he clenched his jaw, seized control of himself, and said, “If I wish to know what Anthea has to say about me, or any other subject, I will ask her myself.”

  Fiora growled in frustration.

  “Huh,” said Emmius, clearly struggling to keep up. “I was up on her mountain a few days back. I saw a dragon. Two dragons! Yeah but she got mad at me.”

  “Dragons do not like you, Emmius,” said Fiora. “She was probably trying to keep you safe. That is what she does. Did you know she introduced me to Catch? So that he could protect me!”

  “Oh yeah like that’s pretty much how it was for me also when she found me. I was like totally stuck in this place and it was all scary and stuff. And then she like showed up and I was all like, ‘oh that’s good.’”

  “Wow!” said Fiora.

  “The real issue,” Acarnus said in an attempt to keep Emmius and Fiora on track, “is that Rosma has figured out Akkama’s game. We all know what she’s going to do next.”

  Emmius looked at him with a blank expression. “We…uh, like, we do?”

  “She is going to pick a fight with Akkama!” Fiora gasped in realization. She bit her wrist again in frustration.

  And soon, Acarnus guessed. Both Rosma and Akkama would want to fight. They would be looking forward to it. They would waste no time. And such a conflict was almost certain to end with one of them dead. According to Anthea, this could not be allowed. They all had to be alive in six months when the King’s Comet came. Yet it might be too late already. How to stop it?

  Akkama recognized no authority, but Rosma remained duty-bound to the service of Ys. She might acquiesce to a direct order from the Speaker of Ma’Turin. If Acarnus could get a message there in time, a fatal conflict might still be prevented.

  “Look,” Fiora whispered to Emmius, “he is being the Fivemind again!”

  “Huh,” said Emmius. “What’s that?”

  Acarnus ignored them. “Data,” he said, “can I transmit to Ys from here?” The answer flickered into the lower portion of his vision: negative.

  He turned his gaze to the transceiver tower in the shade of which they stood. “Identify,” he said. The data came quickly. Yes. He could relay from there, if it still functioned properly as Emmius claimed.

  “Emmius,” he said, “would you show us the tower?”

  This got Emmius excited. He stood shakily to his feet and fell over backwards before Acarnus or Fiora could stop him. He was fine; the salt and sand gave way for him as though he had fallen onto soft snow. He eventually succeeded in getting his legs back under him. Fiora handed him his guitar and mask, the only possessions of his in sight, and he led the way to the base of the tower.

  The vesta joined them as they traveled. Fiora hopped up onto Catch and pestered him about what the coral had said. The response, if there was one, passed Acarnus by. He made a note to ask her about it later.

  Emmius took them into the transceiver station. It was old tech, but mostly still functional. The dryness had preserved the wiring and circuitry, although salt had gotten into most of the exterior fuseboxes. Acarnus was more surprised that the tower had not been further vandalized by the wildlife. A large sky dreamer could tear this tower down with only a bit of effort, and those were far from the only creatures capable of disabling it. That Emmius had come across one so intact was an occurrence that could be described as ‘lucky.’

  Emmius had also managed to figure out how to run the most basic radio broadcasting functions of the tower, despite having no idea whatsoever what he was doing. He had probably flipped a few random switches, pressed a few buttons, and then found himself facing a powered and functional broadcasting booth.

  He led them to the top by means of a creaky elevator. The uppermost platform of the tower was a dozen paces of flat salt-dusted polycarbonate with short rusted railings and a spire of antennae thrusting up from the center. Acarnus took a moment to survey the view. It was, as Emmius had said, extraordinary—the more so because a lull in the salt snow raised visibility. Thankfully, the ubiquitous saline scent was much dispersed here. The hot afternoon air of Prax moved around them in a slow drift. Standing now in direct sunlight, Acarnus was forced to shed his traveling cloak.

  The ruined city of Prax lay hundreds of feet below, though from here it hardly looked a city at all. The salt-dusted reefs and groves of the dry coral forest spread out in crumpled sheets and low ridges, a tortured maze of color and salt. From here he saw several more sky dreamers in the distance, living clouds that cast their slow shadows over the reefs. One flew low enough that the crystal reefs on its back glittered in the angled sunlight.

  To the west, the vast cerulean wasteland of Prax stretched to mountains made hazy by sheets of distant saltfall. Light glinted on shrouded fields of satellite arrays, now abandoned and defunct. In the other direction, a dozen miles away, the Prismatic Sea boiled and churned. Its many colors of dense vaporous cloud writhed together as though at war, yet never mingled. Two Iterators stood out there like dark square mountains on stilts above the gaseous sea. One of them caught the light of the low sun and reflected it dully.

  Emmius had been giving Fiora a visual tour around the top. They came near Acarnus. “…and that’s where we were.” Emmius pointed down below. “And that’s the mother stone. She’s not very nice, but she has like some crazy stories man.” He pointed at something only a bit further on from where they had found him. Acarnus zoomed in where Emmius pointed and saw a shiny dark rock. It reminded him of something. He turned and scanned the horizon just to the left of the Prismatic Sea. A dark mountain loomed there, wedged between the Scorched Plains and the Prismatic Sea. Part of the mountain, facing away from the sea, looked oddly angular.

  “I thought so,” he said. He reduced magnification and glanced at Emmius and Fiora. “You can see Jeronimy’s Iterator from here.”

  Emmius made a noise of interest, but Fiora’s eyes widened and she turned aside. She shuffled her feet, raised her hand as though about to bite her wrist, stopped herself. She saw him watching and blushed. Another one for the books; Acarnus had never seen Fiora blush before either. Acarnus turned away to point the mountain out to Emmius as though he had noticed nothing.

  So. It was like that. Fiora and Jeronimy? Further reinforcement, if any were necessary, that he did not understand people. He would not judge. He understood himself and Anthea least of all.

  The sound of galloping hoof-falls and a brief rush of hot air announced the vesta, who apparently had run vertically up the side of the tower. Surrounded by swirls of salt motes glittering in the sun, it stood by the edge of the platform as though it had been there all along. Its scent came with it, that peculiar aroma which contained emotional content more than sensory data: peace, courage, compassion.

  Fiora smiled at Catch, but made no comment on his sudden presence atop the tower. She continued to marvel at the view, especially what she could see of the sky dreamers and creatures below. She asked to borrow his goggles; he refused.

  Emmius decided that here, in the bright heat atop the tower, was a fine place for an impromptu concert. He unstrapped his guitar, which required some disentanglement of the guitar straps from his hair, and began to play a lively dance. It was not terrible. He had been improving.

  Fiora jumped right in, of course. Any excuse to dance. Acarnus watched them, the guitarist and the dancer, as they marched and spun and in Emmius’s case sometimes fell around the top of the tower. Their arda began to ring, glowing green and brown, chiming out music in accordance with the beat. Even the baby manta ray swooped and leapt in the air.

  Acarnus felt no impulse to join, but he could not keep a small smile off his face as he watched. You’re changing, Acarnus, Anthea had told him.

  The vesta stepped up beside him. They watched the other two playing, getting sweaty and salty in the heat. Fiora would later laugh and say Acarnus and Catch were like a mother and father watching their young.

  Acarnus left them there after a short while. He had a message to send. It took him the better part of an hour to locate all the necessary equipment and get it functioning properly. Given the age of this station, one hour was swift progress. He sent a message to Ys, to be transmitted to the Speaker. He explained the situation in brief, without mentioning any name but Rosma’s and his own. The Speaker ought to find a monk of Nazkhar a trustworthy source, even if the monastery effectively no longer existed.

  He and Fiora decided to spend the night at the station with Emmius. Fiora at last cooked the seed pods by boiling them. In a small dining area at the base of the transceiver station, while he waited for the food, Anthea messaged him.

  AN: I’m coming

  AC: To Prax? Why?

  AN: To look at the coral.

  AC: I was not aware of such interest on your part.

  AC: I could collect samples for you.

  AN: Come on Acarnus! It’s because YOU are there

  AN: My apologies.

  AC: My apologies.

  AN: I cannot read contextual clues through text

  AC: I am unable to discern sarcasm through text

  AN: Must you?

  AC: Must you?

  AN: Am I that predictable?

  AC: The atomic number of tungsten is 74.

  AN: damn

  AN: You got me!

  AC: So you are coming to see me?

  AN: I’ve never been to Prax. You can show me around

  AC: And you wish to check on Emmius. He will be fine.

  AN: Fiora told me everything. I assume you have already sent a transmission to Ys

  AC: Yes.

  AN: Good. But this problem with Emmius and Akkama isn’t going to just go away

  AN: Even he should know better than to threaten Akkama like that

  AC: Threaten?

  AN: With affection, Acarnus

  AC: So Fiora told you that as well.

  AN: It was...

  AN: surprising

  AC: She promised.

  AN: What?

  AC: Fiora promised Emmius not to tell.

  AC: I did not, but she did.

  AC: Is she so untrustworthy?

  AN: Cut her some slack

  AN: You know how she is with matters of love

  AN: Speaking of which, I’ll be there around morning

  AC: Very well.

  AC: I look forward to it.

  AN: As do I.

  The emotions tumbled around inside of him as Fiora came at last with the food. The emotions bothered him, for they were exceedingly difficult to predict, to control, to understand. But he loved them anyway.

  And he had to admit, when he ate the thick soup that Fiora the promise-breaker had created out of the seed pods, that it was good indeed. A much more pleasing experience than eating them raw. And perhaps that was not such a bad thing. He thought about this, and about Anthea coming to see him, and he smiled.