They set off in a ship fittingly named Hope’s Sojourn: two women, a theront, a demigod, and one pissed off cat. It seemed they had finally found Urgal’s weakness: boats. Water, he could handle. But confinement aboard a small vessel? That was hell on earth for the huge felidae. His only consolation was an ample supply of fish.

  They had paid their way aboard with labour, and the labour was hard. Ylia had thought sleep would be difficult, that she would toss and turn at night, unfamiliar with the ship, and worried about what was to come when they had completed their crossing. But the arduous task of pulling topgallant sails, of scrubbing and cleaning, of fishing, of keeping up with the clamorous activity of the ship, always sent her careening off the precipice of wakefulness into the depths of sleep without resistance.

  Telos was another matter. She thought at first it was simply that his godlike energies could not be so easily exhausted, but soon she came to realise that something was bothering him. He was absent, staring off into the vague distances of mist-wreathed sea, as if he could already see the shoreline of Memory. In truth, she knew he gazed upon an inner landscape.

  On the fourth day, she came up to him at the stern. She had completed her scrubbing for the day and her arms felt like they were going to fall off. She rested them on the ship’s gunwale.

  “You seem… melancholy. It’s not like you,” Ylia said.

  “The name of this boat brings back memories,” Telos said.

  “What kind of memories?”

  “When I was in the cell, in Ob-koron, I found a way out. A way to escape. The place where they housed me was built of shoddy stone. I tunnelled into the walls. It’s stupid, but I always imagined the escape tunnel was a boat in a storm, and the boat was called Hope. But… well…”

  “Hope is a treacherous mistress?”

  He looked at her as though she were the first person he had met in all his life who spoke his language.

  “Yes. I… I didn’t ever expect anyone else to understand.”

  “I know the feeling all too well,” she said, not without bitterness. “You spend your life saving up, hoping against hope it will be enough, and then some handsome rogue comes and steals it all…” She winked to show she was half-joking.

  “Ouch,” Telos said, but he was grinning. “For the record, I did not steal it all. I stole a goodly portion, and The Warden burned down the rest.”

  Ylia sighed. “Some lucky bastard is going to discover rivers of gold slag beneath the ruins of my House.”

  Telos laughed.

  “I find that strangely comforting. Like, all my evil might yet do someone good.”

  She looked at him seriously.

  “You’re not evil, Telos. I could never call you evil. A little cursed, maybe. A bit of a bastard, possibly. But never evil.”

  “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  “And I only just said you were handsome.”

  Telos actually blushed and looked out to sea again.

  “So you did.”

  “You know, I am beginning to think you are one of those men who fears power.”

  Telos frowned.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You fled from wealth and privilege. You fled from Beltanus and responsibility. And now, even gifted with superhuman strength and speed, and with other powers, you still doubt yourself. Not all those who wield power do so for evil, Telos.” She placed her hand on his. “It is the duty of those who do wield power to do it for good.”

  “You should be a stateswoman.”

  Ylia laughed.

  “I would make a poor stateswoman. I hate giving speeches and I hate responsibility, too. The great thing about running an alehouse is that once the bell chimes, you can kick all the drunkards out, and it’s up to them to get home safely. I’d hate to have the Fate of millions in my hands like Qala. No, I’m just passing on to you what I’ve learned from watching people for a long time.”

  “People who want to escape,” Telos said, quietly.

  She nodded sadly.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think you may have a point…. Annoyingly…”

  “I won’t tell the others you said that.”

  Telos grinned.

  “I appreciate that. I will be telling them you said I was handsome.”

  “Ah, but would they ever believe you?”

  “Fair point. We shall have to see.”

  ***

  Time trickled. It moved with agonising slowness—and Ylia was grateful for every second. For the first time since her House had been burned down, she knew again the joys of hard work, the relief of routine, and the pleasure of lying down in bed after a hard day and being taken by the spell of sleep. But even better, she knew friendship. Yes, she’d had many acquaintances in the town of Yestermere—Darryl the Cook and Ellen the Barmaid—but no friends. Save Urgal. And Urgal, while a wondrous companion, infinitely frustrated her at times. For one, there was nowhere for him to go to the toilet aboard the boat, so he habitually shat in her bed, until she finally scolded him out of it. Then, he shat on the floor beside her bed, so that every morning she awoke to the fetid stink of his fishy stools. He was always yowling, pacing, and yet whenever she tried to play games with him, he sauntered off in a huff. He had even grown tired of Telos, it seemed.

  But the strain on her relationship with Urgal was more than compensated for by the nights of Qala, Telos, and Jubal—nights spent playing cards and dice and talking about grand adventures and histories and myths and futures yet to be. She had not realised just how lacking her life had been. She had dwelt at the centre of a House, a place where friendships were forged, but just as she had never partaken of the drink, so too had she never partaken of the friendship. She’d had many opportunities, but always she had turned away, or chosen to see the worst.

  It took the end of the world for you to change, she thought, with a smile.

  ***

  One night, when she was out on the prow, looking up at the stars, a mysterious bird called high in the sky. The cry was rending, mournful. The cry of a thing that could not find its way home. A cry of the emptiness of longing.

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  She couldn’t explain why, but the sound reminded her of her father.

  ***

  On the Fifth Day of the Ninth Moon, they sighted land. Ylia was almost sorry their journey was coming to an end, although her forearms and elbows would thank her. She vowed never to scrub another wooden surface again so long as she lived. Even if she one day owned another House, she would pay someone else to do the scrubbing. She was done.

  Jubal joined her at the gunwale and looked out at the vast sprawl of Memory. The cloistered darkness of the trees was so thick it was like night still cleaved to that sliver of land. She could almost sense the humidity from here.

  The weather had grown hotter the farther west they sailed. At first, she’d not noticed, assuming that she felt the kiss of the sun more for being out on deck, working. But as her skin blushed copper, and the air at night thickened to a sweet smog, dense in the lungs like the aftermath of goldleaf, she knew that the weather was changing. The skies held no clouds, out here. Instead, clouds roved over the surface of the sea and the land-mass ahead of them in the form of mist. They came and went swiftly, like ghosts. One moment, they were surrounded with fog so thick she could not see the ship prow to stern. The next moment, they were once more in blistering air, unshielded from the merciless sunlight.

  “When I was a young man, I imagined myself in a thousand places, but never here,” Jubal said. “Memory was the one place I never dreamed of setting foot.”

  “I dreamed of nothing but coming here,” she replied.

  He looked at her strangely.

  “Truly?”

  She nodded.

  “Because of your father?”

  Again, she nodded.

  “It took a lot to persuade him to tell his stories,” she said. “But when he did, they were enthralling. Growing up on a farm, in a country so concerned with machines, the tales of the wild jungle seemed out of this world. He might as well have been describing the Godshome!”

  Jubal smiled.

  “If what Telos said is true, then it seems all of Erethia once resembled Memory. It is the gods who tamed it.”

  “Yes,” Ylia said. “I am sure we shall find out why.”

  By the end of the day, Hope’s Sojourn had found the dingy port of Wayfarer’s Rest. It was nothing more than a waypoint, consisting of only a handful of permanent dwellings and one colossal House that rivalled even The Drunken Dragon for size. The House was oddly silent, though parties were going to and fro from it continuously, like ants from a hive. Those who were setting off into the jungle looked hopeful, lean, and bore with them numerous instruments and tools for measuring distance and time and uncovered artefacts in the loamy soil. The ones returning were a different story.

  The crudely constructed wharves were crowded by many ships. One, The Dagger, seemed about to depart. Ylia marked the men and women aboard it. They were gaunt to a man, and had the sunken faces of those who had seen too much—who had dared all for naught. They were returning to Aurelia defeated. But that will not be out Fate. We are not here for profit, but salvation.

  The darkness bordering the small settlement, however, looked like it offered anything but.

  Hope’s Sojourn docked, and the gangplank was lowered. Each of them thanked the captain and disembarked. They gathered before the colossal House and took stock. Ylia was having to take deep breaths, not just because of nerves, but because the air here seemed unnaturally thick, treacle in her lungs.

  “We made it,” Telos said. “But now the hard part begins.”

  “I suggest we provision at the House, and perhaps seek a guide,” Qala said.

  “It’s a good idea, although we will have to be careful. There are many dark stories of guides who mislead their parties in order to land them in danger and then loot the corpses.”

  Ylia put a hand to her mouth.

  “That’s horrific.”

  “It is human nature,” Telos said, simply. “If there is no profit to be found in the ground, people will find it somewhere else.”

  “Well, we have Urgal—who is a good deterrent,” Ylia said. She made to stroke the cat’s head, but he had taken off, rejoicing in the fact that he could stretched his legs. He was currently harrying a merchant selling cuts of raw meat. Urgal was not being aggressive, but his sheer size and power meant even his playful movements seemed frightening.

  “But best not let our guards down, all the same,” Qala said, nodding to Telos.

  “I feel I can be of some use to you in there,” Jubal remarked. “I do not know the way. I suppose none of us do. But I know how to track animals, how to mark traps…”

  Telos put a hand on Jubal’s shoulder.

  “You will be invaluable, Jubal. You do not need to prove your worth, however.”

  Jubal had worked harder than any of them aboard Hope’s Sojourn. He had been afraid, at first, that the captain would be unwilling to harbour a theront, but this proved false. The captain was an open-minded man, just old enough to dimly remember the presence of theronts in his youth, and to be suspicious of the cleansing that’d occurred. He had transported all kinds of folk, even one or two Sumyrians he claimed, throughout his career, and he judged people on their character not their shape.

  Still, Jubal worked tirelessly, his incredible strength proving a boon to the deckhands when repairs were needed.

  Now, he carried the hammer of Beltanus in a leather sling-pouch sewed for him by the crew as a thank you. It was not merely for convenience, but to conceal the exact nature of the weapon from prying eyes. They were conspicuous enough as it was without godsteel being brought into the equation.

  “What is our plan?” Ylia asked. “In terms of directions?”

  “That is what we need a guide for,” Telos said. “Danyil once mentioned to me something about the Hideous Towers, and then a Shadow Market. He only mentioned it briefly, and I regret now not asking him for further clarity…”

  Ylia put a comforting hand on Telos. “You could not have known.”

  Telos hung his head. “To think gods could die…” He shook himself. “Anyway, these places seem to the best places to start, far though they may be.”

  All were in agreement, and so they turned and headed for the House, which bore the same name as the settlement: The Wayfarer’s Rest. It had three stories, and many, many windows, all glimmering with the flare and ebb of candlelight. Faint music issued from within. This was not the overbearing fiddling Ylia was used to, but rather, a gentle, sonorous song. A woman’s voice, perhaps? It was lovely in the saddest of ways.

  Telos tensed suddenly as they reached the door.

  “What’s the matter?” Ylia whispered. “Danger?”

  “No,” he said. “I…” He frowned, as though trying to banish a painful thought with pure effort of will. Something had perturbed him, something about the song, perhaps, but clearly he was not willing to say.

  He pushed through, and she saw that he was actually trembling. That set her on edge more than anything and she touched the loose fabric of her blouse to feel the weight of the thing she had looted from Albron beneath, a comforting steel…

  The tavern seemed larger, even, on the inside than out. It was surprisingly packed. But whereas usually Houses were filled with raucous conversation, everyone trying to be heard above the hubbub, here there were only whispered conversations, huddles of people planning dismal roots into the darkness of the unknown. The music was not to entertain, but merely to provide some form of backdrop, otherwise the quietude of the place might have deafened.

  Several barmaids and serving men went to and fro between tables, but Ylia observed there was little ale being consumed. Instead, korlash seemed to be the most popular beverage, closely followed by Respiratory Remedies—she knew the smell from Qala’s brew.

  Dragonlings crowded the rafters, shitting on tables, clutching tiny rolled up messages—probably from every continent in the world.

  She took all this in at a first glance—used to surveying Houses and all their idiosyncrasies. But the thing that held her attention was both Telos—who had turned white—and what Telos was looking at.

  At a table near the door, a band of explorers sat. There were perhaps seven, all men save for a lone woman.

  She had been a beauty in her youth, and was still a beauty now—what must have been sixty years of age. Her thick hair, ringletted and grey, was tied back in an efficient ponytail—yet adorned with an elegant broach in the shape of a glinting dagger that belied such practicality. She wore the britches, boots, and shoulder pads of someone not afraid to trek through marshes and swamps. Yet, on one hand was an aquamarine ring of exquisite workmanship and worth. Her features were nobleborn, yet her flesh had endured the pangs of rough weather more than once. She was altogether a chimera, neither solely of one world or the other.

  It was this woman Telos was staring at. The woman was talking quietly with her comrades, her voice bearing the flute-like accents of Yarulian nobility she had come to learn from Telos. At their entrance, she turned and her gaze met Telos’s.

  Instantly, she was on her feet. Ylia started, reached for the bow slung across her back. Jubal went for the pouch. The men next to the woman were also rising, hands on the hilts of daggers, faces stern. Clearly more than one of them had combat experience from the way they bent their knees and positioned their bodies.

  But Telos was heedless of all this—and so was the woman. She had not jumped up in anger, Ylia realised, but astonishment. Her face was a look of almost comical shock. And there were tears in her eyes.

  More amazing still: Telos was also crying. Ylia could tell he was fighting it, but this was one battle his supernatural strength could not win. The tears flowed, and burned, and his lips trembled as he staggered forward, as though drawn by some dark sirensong towards this woman.

  The word that left Telos’s mouth, Ylia could never in a thousand years have guessed. Yet as soon as he said it, she knew it was the crazy, impossible truth.

  “M-Mother?”