Marie Brennan: Voyage of the Basilisk

My Scirling companions were waiting outside the temple when I emerged. Jake flung his arms around my middle hard enough to squeeze all the breath from me; Abby did much the same. Tom, looking more haggard than usual, tried to offer me his hand; I flung my arms around him instead, and damned what the gossips might say if they heard. The last few days had been distressing enough that I could not be content with a mere handshake.

Fortunately, dealing with two errant birds was not particularly high on the Keongan agenda, not with the aftermath of the battle to address. Four of the Yelangese ships had fled, but that still left the islanders with a great many prisoners to sort out, agreements to settle, and other matters to arrange. All of us from the Basilisk were told to remain in the area of our cove, where the sailors alternately worked on repairs or stood around and gossiped about recent events, depending on how closely Aekinitos was watching them. I fear I may have doomed them to a lot of profane shouting, for I was not free to tell the captain where I had been and what I had done, and the lack made him as grumpy as he had been when he broke his leg.

There I remained for three days, until Heali’i came to us once more.

“You are lucky,” she said. “Because you made sacrifices at the temple”—sacrifices of flowers, I should say; I do not want anyone thinking I cut a pig’s throat—“you are only to be sent away.”

“Sent away?” I repeated, as if I had not understood her. I had spent those three days planning another excursion to the peak of Homa’apia, so as to give the sea-serpents time to calm themselves. My research had scarcely begun. How could I leave?

Heali’i gave me a look which said I should be grateful for my good fortune. “Yes. You earned great mana with your deeds, but you also violated tapu . Even ke’anaka’i can only go so far, and this one does not have that protection.” She nodded at Suhail. “You must leave, and not return.”

I had been exiled from Bayembe, but by my own government; I had been deported from Yelang, but as a result of political machinations I deplored in any case. This was the first time I had been sent away by the people whose goodwill I had hoped to earn, and it stung me deeply. Telling myself that I had earned their goodwill—that was why I was not being threatened with execution—did little to assuage the hurt.

But I could not argue, for Admiral Longstead had no intention of leaving me on Keonga in any case. The diplomatic arrangements the princess had made were delicate things; he could not risk me trampling all over them. And trample I would, even if I did not mean to, simply by the nature of my involvement with preceding events. I had stolen a caeliger from the Yelangese navy; I had violated tapu in Keonga; I knew far more than was good for anybody about what had really transpired with Her Highness. He wanted me well away from this place before I made anything worse.

The Basilisk, unfortunately, was not yet seaworthy, though supplies from the little Scirling fleet meant she was close to it. So it was that we found ourselves bundled onto the Boyne, the smallest of the admiral’s three ships, and bound for the port of Phetayong: myself and Suhail, of course, for we had been exiled, but also Tom, Jake, and Abby, for they would not be separated from us.

It was a bitter leave-taking. I divorced Liluakame before I went, breaking the promise of marriage in order to fulfill my promise of freedom. She thanked me with a brilliant smile, no doubt already dreaming of her sweetheart. I would not have wanted to take her to Scirland regardless, nor would she have wanted to go; and yet it was peculiar to bid farewell to someone who, for however short a time and under whatever strange pretenses, had been my wife. But I was lucky even to have that farewell: I had no opportunity to speak with the other islanders we had come to know, such as the men who took us to ride the sea-serpent. Furthermore, I could not stop thinking of the work I was leaving undone. I had hoped to make a stealthy visit to Rahuahane when the Basilisk departed; that was now barred to me. I could not return to the peak of Homa’apia and continue observing the fire-lizards there. I could not question Heali’i about the stories her people told of the creatures that had dwelt on the cursed island, to see what nuggets of truth might have survived the intervening centuries of narrative embroidery. I had only my notes, my memories, and the petrified egg, which I had retrieved from the admiral’s flagship.

Heali’i’s final words to me before I departed were, “Do not be so sad. You are dragon-spirited. Your soul will return here when you die.” I suppose she meant it to be comforting.

In Phetayong we sorted out our affairs and waited for the Basilisk to rejoin us. The admiral had at least been kind enough to send us with a letter of credit, so we could afford a respectable hotel; if that was the princess’ idea (and I think it may have been), then I am grateful to her for it.

I struggled with the question of what to report to the Winfield Courier . I had been out of contact since before the Basilisk was wrecked; how could I resume the thread of my narrative now? I must account for more than two months of silence and explain what had transpired during my absence, but the full story could not possibly fit into a single missive. Furthermore, some parts of it must be omitted—Rahuahane, the caeliger, Her Royal Highness—but I could not pretend nothing had occurred, for stories would soon be reaching home by other routes, and what I said must not look like a falsehood.

You may see the result in Around the World in Search of Dragons, and entertain yourself by comparing that text with this one to find the points of divergence. It is a brief account, which sufficed for the moment, if not very well; by the time I returned to Scirland, word of the battle had reached audiences there, and I was pressed into telling a much more detailed story. But by then I was prepared to do so.

The Basilisk rejoined us a little over a week later, bearing in its hold the diving bell we had abandoned on the reef of Keonga. It was a gesture of friendship from Aekinitos to Suhail, and did much to make us feel as if the proper order of our expedition had been restored. We made energetic plans to sail to Ala’ase’ama, where (as many of you know) I resumed my study of fire-lizards.

Before we could depart, however, our arrangements underwent a sudden and unexpected change.

A packet of mail found us in Phetayong, having in some cases chased us from port to port for months. It was like receiving letters from another lifetime, so far had the world of my correspondents faded from my thoughts. I learned that the Journal of Maritime Studies would be publishing my article with its incorrect theory of sea-serpent evolution, and dashed off a note begging them to withhold it until I could write a new version; this, alas, did not arrive in time. I read and answered a great many other letters… and, in so doing, discovered at last what rumours had grown from my supposedly innocuous reports.

My first instinct was to burn the letters and pretend I had never read them. After all, the rumours merited no better treatment. But it was not fair to hide something that involved another person, and so, after much pacing (and more cursing than I should admit to), I went in search of Suhail.

I found him on the shore near the docks, slumped against the algae-covered stump of a post, a letter fluttering in his hands. It was covered in flowing lines of Akhian script; that much I saw before he noticed me and put it away, though he knew I could not have read it regardless. “Is everything all right?” I asked him. Surely, I thought, rumours from Scirland had not reached his own people—not so quickly, at least.