Six weeks had passed since their battle with the Daimon, yet there was no sign of another. Mysterious, Lucan thought. Although he was not a great believer in Fate, having defied it so many times, he equally did not really hold to the idea of random chance. What appeared chance was usually orchestrated. Only those without the intellectual resources to follow the chain of cause and effect failed to perceive order in chaos.

  So, why had the Daimon attacked? And when it had failed, why had others not come? Or was it truly the case that only a lone Daimon survived, hunting the deep, and that it was drawn to them for reasons unknown?

  On the latter point, he had a strange suspicion about Benjamyn Hart. He had been to Memory—more than that—he had been to the Shadow Market, learned the unknowable secrets of the place where all things could be traded, and all things acquired.

  Was the Daimon drawn to Hart? Did it wish to erase what he knew?

  These thoughts swirled in Lucan’s wild imaginings. He hardly slept aboard the Black Heart. The ship listed too wildly, light as it was. The boards were always groaning, the crew always bellowing. He could never be comfortable, not after the extravagant silence of his manse in Wylhome, after the perfumed coverlets and feather-light pillows. He was not afraid of discomfort, but he was out of his element, and thus, his mind found rest impossible.

  The confinement, too, was playing tricks on him. His imaginings seemed realer, more distilled. When he eventually did succumb to sleep, normally after two or three days of wakefulness, he dropped into chasmal dreams so vivid that they seemed realer than his sea voyage by far. He saw the imperial bedchamber. The throne-room, too. He saw Darius and Oryon bowing to him. He held the sceptre, wore the robe, smelled the bloom of lilacs in the doorway. Oh sweet smell of eternal glory!

  When he woke it was always with a pang on his heart, as if a lover had been torn from him.

  Speaking of which, he had made use of more than one of the crew. He was not a creature of lust, but again, the confinement had wreaked havoc upon his nervous system, and he found the only way to calm himself was to… expend energy. The two young men he had taken to his bed were more than willing. Entire lives spent at sea had made them used to Lucan’s proclivities. And his defeat of the Daimon had made him desirable indeed. They swore a blood oath to me, he thought. What is the exchange of other fluids against that?

  His mind was in turmoil again. The ship rocked side to side as though an angry child were shaking it. They had recently emerged from the narrow strait of the River of Lords, at last coming to the western side of Northern Aurelia. They had managed to evade notice from countless patrols, cut through locks, and avoid any boarding or enquiry. A lesser man would be tempted to cite it as a miracle, but Lucan suspected that rather it was a case of timing: other concerns were drawing the attention of the military away from them. Clearly, all was not well in the south. From the snippets he had gleaned when they paused at a small river-town, there was even more trouble brewing in the South. My home is under threat, he thought. But he knew the best way for him to save Virgoda and Tezada was not to sit idle, but to seize the power he had been so long promised. He would return a conquering hero, bearing infinite gifts. He would return the Emperor Aurelia needed.

  They were on the home-strait now, figuratively speaking. Two more weeks, and they would be across to Memory—or at least, in sight of it. But the endless turbulence worsened his cabin fever. When it got too much, he paid the prisoner a visit.

  He rose from his bed and walked out into the narrow corridor that ran line a spinal column through the ship. Using the walls for support, he navigated down the hallways, until he came to a door made of steel, barred with a triple lock. Captain Pi’dan had given him the keys. One by one, Lucan undid the locks and stepped within, sealing the door behind him.

  Benjamyn Hart, or what was left of him, hung suspended from the ceiling. In a strange way, he had been spared the violence of the ship’s motion, for as it dipped and listed, Benjamyn simply swayed, the chains holding him aloft.

  His mouth had been stopped with a huge cylinder of wood tightly bound in place by cords that cut into the back of his head. They bit so harshly that his hair was starting to fall out where the rope endlessly rubbed. Hart bit down on his gag like a feral dog on a bone, worrying the wood, but there was no chance he could ever bite through it.

  “Ah, Benjamyn,” Lucan said. The sigh was genuine. He was tired, so very tired. Some of the crew believed him to be a god, but it was quite a lot of work to keep up such a performance. Ironically, he could be himself with the prisoner. “We’re almost there. Memory is just a few weeks away. Think, Benjamyn, you can at last voice your dreadful secret, free yourself from its weight. Will that not be a wonderful thing?”

  Benjamyn stared at him with cold, dead eyes. The eyes of hatred. They had promised him his daughter, and they had lied. He was not a stupid man. Stupidly stubborn, perhaps, but not without great intelligence. He must know, now, that they would never find Ylia Hart, and he would never be re-united with her. The danger, now, was that he commit suicide before they could extract the truth from him.

  And Lucan had lost his grand torturer.

  It was strange to admit such a thing, but Lucan missed Xarl. He was a horrifying creature, a monster, really. But his continual presence, solid as a mountain, had provided a sort of comfort. When Dreyne had fallen, he had come to rely on Xarl even more. But now, the theront was gone, pulled under by the Daimon… Lucan shuddered. He had shown bravery, during the attack, but without the madness of adrenaline, without the death-terror of survival compelling his limbs, the memory brought only fear.

  Without Xarl’s unique talents, Lucan had resorted to other means to try and extract the truth from Benjamyn Hart. But the psychological approach was likewise being met with great resistance.

  I have met boots more forthcoming than Benjamyn Hart, he thought morosely. But still, the attempt had to be made. So much depended on it. The Fate of nations, even.

  “You are angry because I broke a promise,” Lucan said. There was a chair by the wall in which Lucan was accustomed to sit during these conversations. He took a seat now, clasping his hands before him in the posture of one talking to a room full of eager students. If a gaze could turn to stone, then Benjamyn would have petrified Lucan long ago. It was most delicious. “It is understandable,” Lucan went on. “Highly understandable. But misplaced. For you see: I have saved you.”

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  Surprise crinkled Benjamyn’s face. As soon as it came, it was gone. The prisoner worked hard to conceal any and all emotions other than hatred, but Lucan was relentless in his pressure, and his words had a way of tapping just the exposed nerve. It was exhausting work for the Governor, much harder than simply sawing off his limbs, but there was no alternative. Especially given that Hart had already lost a foot and arm.

  “You look surprised. Let me explain…” Lucan said. “You see, do you really think your daughter would want to see you like this? I’m not speaking of your deformities, although they are many. No, I’m speaking rather of the diminishment of who you are. You were a great explorer once. I can only imagine what a great figure you must have been in your daughter’s mind. A giant! A god, even.” Lucan pulled a face of patronising, commiserating sadness. “But now look at you. Helpless. Hobbled. You have nothing left to offer the world, much less discover. You are less than a shadow of your former self. What has it been? Twenty years since you saw her? The memories she holds of you will only make the reality of meeting again more painful.” Lucan smiled sympathetically as tears began to roll down Benjamyn’s cheeks. “Yes, yes, it is a great tragedy. I will admit I cannot truly imagine it, not knowing my own father or mother. They sent me over the sea when I was but a boy. It would mean nothing, were I to meet them now. But your daughter, I would mean everything to see you. And it would destroy her. You must see that now…”

  Benjamyn screamed into his gag. Lucan suspected he was crying out for the Governor to stop talking; as good a sign as any that he should keep up the pressure.

  “But of course, there is one way that you could redeem yourself, become great again in your daughter’s eyes… Yes, you know already what I am going to say. Be the explorer again. Be the Benjamyn Hart of old. You discovered something, something vast, something great. And you kept it a secret. Out of fear! It is the fear that has done this to you, Benjamyn. Fear hobbles and maims the spirit just as effectively as a knife wounds the flesh. So, renounce your fear. Redeem your honour. Become the explorer once more and tell us where you found it!”

  Benjamyn let out a wracking sob—muffled by the gag in his mouth. Then suddenly he fell limp. A few times he had passed out from the stress, but Lucan saw his eyes were still open. He was thinking. A vein throbbed in his temple. We’re close now. Lucan could sense it. His mouth practically watered. Just a few more moments, a few more turns of the blade…

  And then there was a cry above deck. Screams, in fact. Both he and the prisoner started and looked upward.

  “LIONS! SEA LIONS! ALL HANDS! ALL HANDS!” This was interspersed with rapid Qi’shathian. Lucan cursed.

  He stood.

  “Think on my words!” he barked to Benjamyn. The prisoner, for once, looked pleadingly, as though terrified by the idea of Lucan leaving. The Governor ignored him, slamming the door behind and working with fumbling fingers across the triple lock. When it was done, he raced down the hallway. The ship listed hard and he slammed his head on the wall. Cursing, he straightened. Dizziness made the ship seem even more unstable, but he found equilibrium again and continued.

  Up a narrow set of stairs, he gained the open air, his lungs scoured by sea-air, the cold wind striking his face with the force of an unforgiving hand. He felt the weight of the sky-spear in the inner lining of his robe, his secret weapon, on his person at all times—he knew it was the true talisman of his power.

  His first shock was the absence of land. It had only been two days ago they left the strait of the River of Lords, but already they were at open sea, with no sign of Aurelia. A sea mist had crept in. Thick, undulating fog pressed close about their ship. It reeked to the point of making him gag.

  “What the—?”

  Then he saw them. In the waters either side of their ship were gangs of glistening form. Their heads were lion heads, though their huge manes were formed from seaweed and slime. Their bodies were those of seals, moon-grey and silky, undulating as they propelled the hideous beasts through the water. They had two fore-limbs that stroked the water, crowned with claws long enough to gut a man.

  Sea lions! He had read of these horrors, but never thought to encounter them.

  And he remembered something else from his reading: their breath was poisonous.

  This wasn’t mist, it was gas.

  Two men lay gargling on foam on the decks, eyes rolled into the back of their heads. Pi’dan, masking his face with cloth, was in the centre of it all, running to and fro, barking orders. A trio of sailors had armed with harpoons and were firing shots at the Sea Lions, but they were freakishly fast.

  Lucan pulled his robe across his face with one hand and freed the sky-spear with the other. He looked about at where he could be of most use.

  A sea lion suddenly leapt upon the side of the ship, swinging at a sailor. Thankfully, the listing of the ship saved the young man’s life, for he tumbled backwards, just avoiding the sweep of bone-white claws. He scrambled away. The sea lion opened its mouth and grey wisps of mist escaped with a hissing noise. Thickly, it gathered. A thunderhead with lethal potential. Its eyes were citrines blazing through the smog of ruin.

  Lucan gritted his teeth. Up close, they were so much bigger than they seemed in the water. The lion head alone was as large as his torso. Its weight caused the ship to dangerously lean. It dug one claw into the decking and began to peel up boards. It was trying to pull their ship apart, scatter them into the water.

  He unfurled the spear and charged through the mist. It roared at him, spewing more death from its corrupted lungs, but he thrust and silver vanquished the fog of confusion. He saw the god-steel flicker and bite. It pierced the thick, blubbery hide as though he were pushing the weapon through rice-paper. The sea lion howled. Blood geysered from the rend in its jaws. Lucan withdrew the spear and thrust again. It leapt from the deck back into the water.

  As the ship righted, he staggered, nearly losing the grip of his weapon. But then the Black Heart was level again. He heard cheering. The sailors were pumping their fists into the air.

  The god had acted again for them.

  Lucan smiled. Then, he coughed. He could taste something in the back of his throat. A burning. He coughed again. There was something there, but he could not dislodge it. Terror came over him, then. The poison breath. How quickly did it act? How much did he have to inhale before it became toxic?

  He staggered back to the doorway leading belowdecks. The cough had become a hacking fit. He tasted blood and scum. He spat and a mixture of white and red glistened fatly on the deck. He wiped his mouth and cursed.

  I will be well in a moment, he thought. I inhaled a little, but soon I will recover.

  A dark hand—perhaps the hand of Eresh herself—squeezed his lungs.

  He hacked again, and poisonous white foam erupted from his froth-corrupted lungs.