Page 6 of Add To Hoard

The report is brief, because the facts are brief: a single vessel, human-built, small, consistent with a coastal fishing brig. First detected at the outer fog boundary approximately three hours prior. The barrier currents had been applied. Standard deterrent weather generated. The vessel had not turned back.

Had not turned back, and had not sunk, and had, as of the scout’s last observation before returning to report, continued driving deeper into the Varak Fog on what appeared to be a heading that suggested either extraordinary luck or an almost complete indifference to the consequences of the course being sailed.

The rider’s written account used the phrase ‘stubborn vessel refuses to sink’ in a tone that suggested the scout was not entirely sure whether admiration was appropriate.

I read it twice.

A human vessel. One. Small. No escort, no fleet, no indication of coordinated approach. The kind of ship that a merchant uses for short coastal runs and a fisherman uses for everything else. The barrier currents that turned back larger, sturdier ships with experienced crews had apparently failed to dissuade whoever was at the wheel of this particular brig from continuing in a direction that every instinct, every piece of maritime knowledge, and the increasingly hostile behaviour of the sea itself were presumably communicating was a poor idea.

I set the report down on the table.

The logical interpretation is that whoever is sailing that vessel has no idea what they are sailing toward. This does not comfort me, because it raises the question of how they found the approach corridor at all. The Varak Fog does not simply appear on charts. The entrance to the corridor that leads, eventually, to waters close enough to Bloodstorm Peak to matter is not luck. It requires either very specific information or a navigational accident of a probability so remote it approaches the territory of the inexplicable.

The second interpretation, that they know exactly what they are sailing toward — is worse, and I set it aside to examine more carefully once I have more information.

I should dismiss it. That is the rational response. One small human vessel, almost certainly already foundering in the inner fog where the barrier weather is considerably less polite than the outer deterrents. The crossing has swallowed ships that dwarfed this one. It will resolve itself, as it always does, without intervention.

I pick up the report again.

Stubborn vessel refuses to sink.

The phrasing is catching on something underneath my other thoughts that I cannot immediately account for and do not particularly want to examine.

I cross to the narrow window that faces west, the direction of the open Blaecwater, the direction of the Varak Fog, the direction of the mainland that I have not seen in two hundred years, and stand there in the dark with the volcanic heat of the Spire at my back and the cold island air on my face.

Whatever is on that ship, it should not have made it this far.

The fact that it has is either an irrelevance that will correct itself before dawn or a problem I will need to understand before the council does. I have learned, over a very long time, that the difference between those two categories is rarely obvious in the moment and almost always obvious in retrospect. Too late.

“Send two scouts back to the inner corridor,” I tell the rider, who has been waiting with commendable stillness near the door. “I want eyes on that vessel until it either turns, sinks, or—” I pause, “—doesn’t. Report directly to me. Not to the council. To me.”

The rider leaves.

I stay at the window.

The dark outside is absolute and the sea is invisible beneath it and somewhere out in the Varak Fog a small, stubborn ship is doing what ships do not do, and I cannot explain why that fact has lodged itself in my chest like a coal that has not yet decided whether it intends to go cold or catch.

I tell myself it is simply the tactical instinct of something that has survived long enough to know that the things you dismiss without looking at directly are the things that find you later.

I almost believe it.

3

NERINA

The fog comes in behind me like a door being closed.

I watch it happen over my shoulder, the gray wall thickening, compressing, swallowing the open water I have just crossed until there is nothing behind the ‘Tenacious’ but white opacity and the sound of the sea deepening past what it was an hour ago. Blackwake is gone. The Blaecwater is gone. The world behind me has been reduced to nothing, and what lies ahead is still invisible, and for exactly three seconds I allow myself to feel the full weight of what I have done.

Then I turn back to the wheel and keep sailing.

The fog is not passive. That is the thing I notice first, before the cold deepens and before the wind begins to find its purpose, the fog is not simply weather. It presses. It has a quality of intention to it — a crowd with direction, and you are either moving with it or being moved. I am aware of it at the edges of my thinking, a low directional pressure that I keep trying to attribute to wind or current and keep failing to, because the wind is coming from the northwest and the current beneath the hull is running west and the pressure I feel is nudging me southeast, toward whatever the fog is hiding, and nothing meteorological accounts for it.

I tell myself it is the current. I am not entirely convinced.

The temperature has been dropping since I cleared the harbor mouth. By mid-morning it is cold enough that my breath is visible and the wrapped hand, the fish-gut cut, already half-forgotten in the category of minor occupational damage — has stiffened around the knuckles and aches when I grip the wheel. I pull my coat tighter with one hand and keep the other on the wheel and watch the fog move around me with the focused attention of someone trying to work out whether they are being followed or simply being observed.

The distinction, I am increasingly aware, may not matter.