remained of the boat. Its skull sent the timbers flying in reckless flocks. Lenk watched in horror, unable to act as a shattered plank struck him against the temple. Instinct, fear, hate … all gave way to darkness as his body went numb. His arms stopped thrashing, legs stopped kicking.
Unblinking as he slipped under the water, he stared up at the corpse of the ship, illuminated by the flicker of lightning, as it sank to its grave with him. Soon, that faded as his eyes forgot how to focus and his lungs forgot their need for air. He reached out, half-hearted, for the sword that descended alongside him.
When he grasped only water, he knew he was going to die.
‘No,’ the voice spoke, more threatening than comforting. ‘No, you won’t.’
The seawater flooded into his mouth and he found not the will to push it out. The world changed from blue to black as he drifted into darkness on a haunting echo.
‘I won’t let you.’
Three
ONE THOUSAND PAPER WINGS
Poets, she had often suspected, were supposed to have beautiful dreams: silhouettes of women behind silk, visions of gold that blinded their closed eyes, images of fires so bright they should take the poet’s breath away before she could put them to paper.
Anacha dreamt of cattle.
She dreamt of shovelling stalls and milking cows. She dreamt of wheat and of rice in shallow pools, dirty feet firmly planted in mud, ugly cotton breeches hiked up to knobby knees as grubby hands rooted around in filth. She dreamt of a time when she still wore such ugly clothing instead of the silks she wore now, when she covered herself in mud instead of perfume.
Those were the good dreams.
The nightmares had men clad in the rich robes of money-lenders, their brown faces red as they yelled at her father and waved debtor’s claims. They had her father helpless to resist as he signed his name on the scrolls and the men, with their soft and uncallused hands, helped her into a crate with silk walls. She would dream of her tears mingling with the bathwater as women, too old to be of any desire for clients, scrubbed the mud from her rough flesh and the calluses from her feet.
She used to have nightmares every night. She used to cry every night.
That was before Bralston.
Now she dreamed of him often, the night she met him, the first poem she ever read. It was painted upon her breasts and belly as she was ordered into her room to meet a new client, her tears threatening to make the dye run.
‘Do not cry,’ the older women had hissed, ‘this is a member of the Venarium. A wizard. Do what you do, do it well. Wizards are as generous with their gold as they are with their fire and lightning.’
She couldn’t help but cry the moment the door closed behind her and she faced him: broad-shouldered, slender of waist, with not a curl of hair upon his head. He had smiled at her, even as she cried, had taken her to the cushion they would sit upon for many years and had read the poetry on her skin. He would read for many days before he finally claimed what he paid for.
By then, he needn’t take it.
She began to yearn for him in her sleep, rolling over to find his warm brown flesh in her silk sheets. To find an empty space where he should be wasn’t something she was unused to; a strict schedule was required to keep his magic flowing correctly, as he often said. To find her fingers wrapping about a scrap of paper, however, was new.
Fearing that he had finally left her the farewell note she lived in perpetual terror of, she opened her eyes and unwrapped her trembling fingers from the parchment. Fear turned to surprise as she saw the slightly wrinkled form of a paper crane sitting in her palm, its crimson painted eyes glaring up at her, offended at her fingers wrinkling its paper wings. Without an apology for it, she looked around her room, and surprise turned to outright befuddlement.
In silent flocks, the cranes had perched everywhere: on her bookshelf, her nightstand, her washbasin, her mirror, all over her floors. They stared down at her with wary, blood-red eyes, their beaks folded up sharply in silent judgement.
So dense they were, she might never have found him amongst the flocks if not for the sound of his fingers diligently folding another. He straightened up from