"There it is," Jin said. "Yamatai."
The road had been climbing for most of the morning, and when it finally leveled out at the top of the headland, the sea appeared.
It was the first time Noah saw the southern sea. It stretched out from the foot of the cliffs and kept going until it blended into the sky, and there was nothing on it except a scatter of fishing boats near the coast. After days of road dust coming down from Serica, the cold wind coming off the water felt like a blessing.
Below them, Yamatai descended the cliffside in wide terraces, streets stacked over streets, all of it leaning down toward the harbor. Stilt piers reached out over the shallows, and long racks of silver fish stood drying in rows along the sea wall. Over the docks, tall wooden cranes swung cargo from the ships to the shore.
"Look at the cranes," Jin said, his eyes shining.
Jin was the tallest of the four of them and the thinnest, and he carried the heaviest pack anyway, because most of it was tools and he wouldn't let anyone else touch them. He had spent half the road talking about his crazy ideas and how he thinks he can implement them.
Izumi had crouched at the edge of the road as she pressed two fingers into the dirt. She was small, a full head shorter than Jin, with her black hair tied up in a high ponytail, and she had walked most of the road half a step behind Noah. "Not much has come down this road lately."
"Also, the whole city smells like fish," Xiangli said. He was built broad, with a round, friendly face that had sunburned and peeled twice since they left the capital.
"You'll get used to it," Izumi said.
"I really don't think I will."
Noah looked at the three of them for a moment. Four of us. If something goes wrong down there, that's all we have.
"Let's go," he said.
Serica, one week earlier.
The hall was new. Everything in that quarter of the city was new, and the sound of hammers came through the walls without pause.
Gerrick Tor stood at the window with his arms crossed. Out of his golden armor, he was simply a very large man in plain clothes.
"Krul came with a letter and a smile," he said. "This one came with engineers."
On the table sat a spider the size of a dog, woven from silk. Its legs were uneven where the thread had bunched, and it had no face. When it spoke, it spoke with Selena's voice.
"His name is Mikhail," the spider said. "The second general Utopia has sent us."
"They broke ground the very day they landed," Gerrick continued. "A base. On our soil. An hour's ride from this window, and nobody asked us for permission."
"Krul at least negotiated," Feng Jian said quietly, from the pillar near the door.
"Can’t we just kick them out?" Gerrick asked.
"It would be unwise to make them our enemy," Selena said.
"A fortress we can't look into, an hour from the Cocoon." Gerrick shook his head slowly. "If I rode out there right now…"
"You would give Mikhail exactly what a man who builds walls first is waiting for," Selena said.
The hammers went on behind the words.
"It will be dealt with," Selena said. "It is not why I called you here." The spider's legs shifted, one after another. "People are vanishing along the southern coast. Villages first. Now the edge of a city."
"How many?" Jian asked.
"I don't know exactly, but it’s in the dozens by now."
"The timing is terrible," Jian said. "People start disappearing in the south the same season a Utopian fleet lands in the north. If I wanted Mother's two strongest guards looking one way while I worked in the other, this is how I would do it."
"I thought of that," Selena said. "But this is not Utopia’s way, it would be very low if they resorted to such methods, they should also know that my royal guards won’t leave me for such a matter."
"Then what is it?"
"I don't know that either."
"Neither of us can go find out," Gerrick said. "Not with a Utopian fortress rising an hour from her walls."
The hammers filled the silence that followed.
"Send me," Noah said.
Gerrick turned from the window. "You've carried that curse for less than a year."
"And everyone in this room who's stronger than me can't leave it."
"He's not wrong," Jian said.
He looked at Noah for a long moment. Then he turned back to the window and said nothing.
"Take Jin," Selena said. "His eyes find what soldiers miss. And take Izumi, from my northern garrison. Her heart is a weaver ant, Silver Tier. An ant follows a trail by scent long after rain has washed it away from any dog. If something walked, she will tell you where it walked, and when."
"And if it didn't walk?" Jian said.
"Then that is also worth knowing. Xiangli will keep the dark off you." The spider's legs gathered under it. "And Noah. I am counting on you."
Present.
The gate guards waved them through behind a wool cart, and the city swallowed them.
Paper lanterns were going up all along the harbor road. A festival was coming, the sea-lantern festival, according to the gate guards. Under the lanterns, the market ran at full voice.
Nobody here looks afraid, Noah thought.
They stopped at a fish stall further in. The woman behind the boards was quick with the fire, and she talked while she turned the skewers.
"Travelers?"
"From the capital," Noah said.
"Long way. Well, you picked a good week for it, the festival is in three days." She handed the first skewers across, took Jin's coins, and then her eyes moved over the four of them. The travel dust. The gear. "You're soldiers, right?"
"Something like that," Noah said. "Why?"
She glanced down the row of stalls, then leaned in and lowered her voice. "You'll think I'm a foolish woman."
"I won't," Noah said.
"My neighbor's boy. Aiko. He walked down to check his father's night-lines, three weeks ago. He never came home." She wiped her hands on her apron, slowly, as if it gave her something to do. "The magistrate posted silver for anyone with word of him. The silver is still sitting there. Nobody has come for it."
"How old is he?"
"Sixteen." Her voice hardened a little. "And before you say it, he didn't run off. The guards keep telling his mother he ran off to Serica. That boy checked those lines every single night so his father wouldn't have to. Boys who run off don't do that."
"Did he go alone that night?"
"Alone. At dusk, like always." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Why do you ask that?"
Noah held her gaze for a moment. "Because we came here about the disappearances. I won't lie to you; I don't know if we can find Aiko. But we're going to find out what's been taking people, and we're going to put a stop to it."
The woman looked at him for a long moment. Then she picked four more skewers off the fire and pushed them into Jin's hands, and she would not take his coins.
"For the road," she said.
They passed the ferry landing on their way south. A fresh plank sign hung from the mooring post: NO CROSSINGS AFTER DARK.
The customs house sat at the southern edge of the city, right against the sea wall.
Before they reached the door, it swung open. A young man stood in it, short and messy-haired, already grinning.
"They're here!" he called back over his shoulder. "Ling! They're here!" He came out to meet them and took Noah's hand in both of his. His hands were burn-scarred all the way to the wrists. "Xiao. We got word from the capital a few days ago, and I swear Ling hasn't looked away from that map since. Come in, come in, you must be dead on your feet."
Inside, a woman sat at the long table with a map of the coast spread out in front of her, a halberd leaning against the wall behind her chair, within reach of her arm. She was older than Xiao by ten years at least, lean and weathered, her dark hair tied back with the first grey coming in at the temples. She studied them for a moment, then rose.
"Ling," she said. "Forgive the state of the place. We've been short on sleep." She nodded toward the corner, where a girl at a small desk stood up halfway and bowed, a thick ledger in front of her. "Midori keeps our records."
By the door stood another girl who gave them a small smile and a nod, and said nothing at all.
"That's Hana," Xiao said. "She doesn't talk much. Don't take it personally."
"Noah," Noah said. "This is Jin, if something is broken, he can fix it, and if it isn't broken, he'll take it apart anyway. Izumi, the best tracker the capital could spare us. And Xiangli."
"I also glow," Xiangli said.
"He also glows."
Xiao laughed and waved them toward the table. "Sit, sit. Midori, is there tea left?" There was. It came out in mismatched cups, and it was hot, and after days on the road nobody complained.
"How was the road?" Xiao asked, dropping onto the bench across from them. "And the capital, is it true, what they say about the battle? We heard the sky burned for a whole night."
Noah wrapped his hands around the cup. "Most of what you heard is probably true."
Xiao whistled softly.
"Is it true about the silk?" he pressed, leaning in. "They say Mother put a shield over the whole city. A roof of thread nobody could even see."
"I was under it," Jin said. "It held."
"It held," Xiao repeated, and sat back, shaking his head.
"What I want to know," Xiangli said, "is how you all live with the smell."
"What smell?"
"See, that's what worries me."
Ling almost smiled.
Hana came around with the pot and refilled the cups without being asked, and she had already worked out who took it strong.
"You'll be here for the festival, then," Xiao said. "Good week to arrive. The whole city goes down to the wall at dusk and sets lanterns on the water, a thousand of them, more, and the tide carries them out. From up on the terraces it looks like the stars are floating out to sea." He pointed at Noah with his cup. "And the morning after, everyone fishes off the wall. First catch of the season. I'll teach you. Capital people hold a rod like it insulted them."
"We came here to work," Noah said, but he was smiling.
"You can work and fish. Ling does both. Mostly at the same time."
"Once," Ling said.
Jin, meanwhile, had stopped listening entirely. He was leaning half off the bench, looking at the door. "Your bolt," he said. "It threw itself back when you opened it. There's a counterweight in the frame."
Xiao lit up. "You saw that?"
"Sand? In a bamboo section?"
"Lead shot. I made it last winter. Come in with both hands full of crates, kick the post, the door opens itself—"
"It has jammed four times," Midori said from her corner, without looking up.
"Three."
"Four. I keep records."
Xiao spread his hands at Noah, as if to say: you see what I live with. Jin was already off the bench with his eye against the doorframe, and Xiao went over to show him, talking with his hands.
For a little while the room was just that. Tea, and the door bolt, and Xiangli asking Hana with great seriousness whether the fish smell got worse in summer, and Hana answering with a small tilt of her hand, a little. Noah let it run.
Then Ling set her cup down.
"You can trade stories later," she said, though not unkindly. She pulled the map closer. "They came a long way for this. How much were you told?"
"That people are vanishing along the coast," Noah said.
Ling looked at him across the map for a moment.
"Then I'll give you the rest," she said.