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Chapters (65)
  1. Prologue
  2. Part One: Channels
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Interlude I: Elsewhere
  9. Interlude II: Bellis Coldwine
  10. Part Two: Salt
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Interlude III: Elsewhere
  21. Part Three: The Compass Factory
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Interlude IV: Elsewhere
  29. Part Four: Blood
  30. Chapter Twenty-One
  31. Chapter Twenty-Two
  32. Chapter Twenty-Three
  33. Chapter Twenty-Four
  34. Chapter Twenty-Five
  35. Chapter Twenty-Six
  36. Interlude V: Tanner Sack
  37. Interlude VI: Elsewhere
  38. Part Five: Storms
  39. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  40. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  41. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  42. Chapter Thirty
  43. Chapter Thirty-One
  44. Chapter Thirty-Two
  45. Interlude VII: Basilisk Channel
  46. Interlude VIII: Elsewhere
  47. Part Six: Morning Walker
  48. Chapter Thirty-Three
  49. Chapter Thirty-Four
  50. Chapter Thirty-Five
  51. Chapter Thirty-Six
  52. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  53. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  54. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  55. Chapter Forty
  56. Interlude IX: The Brucolac
  57. Part Seven: The Lookout
  58. Chapter Forty-One
  59. Chapter Forty-Two
  60. Chapter Forty-Three
  61. Chapter Forty-Four
  62. Chapter Forty-Five
  63. Chapter Forty-Six
  64. Chapter Forty-Seven
  65. Coda: Tanner Sack

Tanner is thinking of all the things he has still to see. All the things he has been told are out there in the water. The ghost ships, the melted ships, the basalt islands. The plains of ossified waves where the water is grey and solid, where the sea has died. Places where the water is boiling. The gessin homelands. Steam-storms. The Scar. He is thinking about the ring below him, hidden in the weeds.

It’s all still there,he thinks.

There is no redemption in the sea.

Interlude VI: Elsewhere

Interlude VI: Elsewhere

The whales are dead. Without these vast, stupid guides, the going is harder.

Brother, have we lost the trail?

There are many possibilities.

Once again they are just a cabal of dark bodies above the base of the sea. They slide through blood-warm water.

Around them, the salinae are anxious. Miles off, thousands of feet below the waves, something is shaking the crust of the world.

Can you taste it?

Amid the millions of mineral particles that eddy in the sea are some in unusual strengths: splintered flint (shards and dust), little gobs of oil, and the intense, unearthly residue of rockmilk.

What are they doing?

What are they doing?

The taste of the sea here is reminiscent. This is drool that the hunters can taste; this is the world’s spittle. It dribbles (they remember) from ragged mouths cut by the platforms that suck up what they find, where beside concrete plinths men in inefficient swaddlings of leather and glass gaze wide, and are easily stolen and questioned and killed.

The floating city is drilling.

The currents here are labyrinthine, a morass of competing flows that dissipate the impurities in convoluted chains, taste-trails that make little sense, little pockets of different dirts.

They are hard to follow.

The whales are dead.

And what of others? Dolphins (willful) or manatee (slow and too stupid) or?

There are none suitable; we are alone.

There are others, of course, who might be called from the deep sea, but they are not trackers. Their work is very different.

Alone, but still the hunters can hunt. With a patience that is implacable (that does not sit well with this hot, quick place), they continue searching, teasing through the skeins of flavor and pollution and rumor, finding the path and taking it.

They are much closer to their quarry than they were before.

Even so, this warm water is hard, and sticky and prickling, and disorienting. The hunters circle, chasing ghost spoor and lies and illusions. They cannot quite, cannot quite find the trail.

Part Five: Storms

Part Five: Storms

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Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Dockday 9th Soluary 1780/Ninth Markindi Hawkbill Quarto 6/317. Trident

He speaks to me again.

Uther Doul has decided that we will be-what? Friends? Companions? Discussants?