Chapter 008

The world is ever changing, ever shifting. Nothing remains the same. Don’t cry, sweet boy. It’s a happy thing.
Who would wish the Seas to be stagnant?

Harker floated upon gentle waves. He was warm with the taste of salt in his mouth and a silvered darkness pressed upon his face. The deep sound of rolling waters filled his ears, submerged beneath the surface as he rode the soft swell. Above, distant clouds scudded across a dark vault of stars. They shone, crystal clear in their multitude, an arterial spray across the horizon, their light catching on the edge of waves that extended all around him.

Is this…the Infinite Sea?

His calm faded swiftly.

A tickling cold brushed against his back, like fingers in the dark. The warmth remained, but it no longer comforted. His body bobbed and the Sea’s surface rolled, displaced by eddying currents—and the passage of something vast.

Harker’s buoyant limbs dragged downward, tangling with the thick, cold waters. He spat, his head and shoulders just barely cresting the waves.

Something moved.

Though the depths were murky, the starlight glinted off of a sinuous shape. Scales rippled, gills flexed, and a single, vast eye blinked.

Harker shouted, choking on saltwater.

Teeth flashed, and hot breath soaked his feet—but they rebounded in a swell of gold. Harker’s head snapped back, eyes filled with brilliant afterimages as the Sea and his dark visitor were cast away. What remained was golden.

Tendrils of liquid metal radiated through the black water, lacing beneath the foam and just under his heels. They tightened, loops of gold now latching onto Harker like tiny hands, dragging knee and hip.

He tried to swim, but the gold held him fast. His breath squeezed shut as the gilded Sea ran roughshod over tongue and teeth, eyes and ears. His flesh ran red…and blazed like a setting sun.

The Sea boiled, a cataract of furious foam and jagged wave, until all Harker knew was its roar.

Pressure lifted him from the dark.

Chest swollen, buoyant to the point of eruption, he gasped out a ragged cry into a lightless room. Harker blinked, eyes rolling without seeing, as the pressure built to an unbearable crescendo—and burst.

Muscles clenched, he heaved himself sideways and vomited a stream of blue-green radiance. It flooded through him like a thousand raging rivers, pouring from not just his mouth but his nose, eyes, ears, and sprang like sweat from every single pore at once. Liquid light spread from him, illuminating the chamber as it curled through the air and lapped against the floorboards. Yet just as quickly, it evaporated, leaving nothing behind but the faintest glimmering sheen of salt.

Harker fell back, his insides as unsettled as his mind. He tangled his fingers in the bedcloths, anchoring himself to the real as his scattered thoughts swam in frenzied circles.

The Sea is gone. The Aberrant is gone. It wasn’t real—his mouth was too dry. Salty. It couldn’t be real.

By slow measures, he brought his breath under control, quieting his pulse with every steadied exhale. Only then did he take in the room he’d found himself in. He was laid out on a suspiciously comfortable bed, the mattress well-stuffed and clean blankets tangled around his knees. He was dressed, at least, though it was with a thin linen shirt and pants. His boots were on the floorboards beside the thin, patterned rug that covered it. It was woven and dyed, bought elsewhere, perhaps from Haver Hill. A window was on either side of the room, large and glass-paned, and a door sat opposite the bed. There was little else in the room, save a chest of drawers and an empty chamberpot.

Whose house is this? He’d rarely been inside the houses of the Vale, but this was someone of means. That rug’s expensive, thin as it is, and that glass doesn’t have a single bubble.

Gathering his strength, Harker propped himself up against the pillows. Outside the window by his feet he could see the faint whitish hue on the horizon. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but false dawn was well underway, and the storm was over.

He frowned. Just how much time had passed? He recalled the storm and the woods, running from the—he shuddered—the Stitcher. He remembered falling.

Harker put a hand to his abdomen and rolled his ankles, yet there wasn’t even a twinge of pain. That’s impossible…

The smell of salt cut through his thoughts, spiraling him back through time. He remembered the cavern. The call of the Sea.

The golden wave.

Memory tangled, pieces of what happened in the cavern mixing with the dream he only half remembered.

He prodded at his forehead, running his fingers through his hair and down past his ears, but if there was any trace of that strange golden metal, he couldn’t feel it. He remembered all too well what had happened to the Illwrought.

Why did he live when the beast hadn’t?

Harker checked over the rest of himself with a deftess born of long habit and laborious training. He stretched and prodded, testing his joints and range of motion. There was no lingering pain or damage that he could find—save for his left side. His arm wasn’t shredded any longer, but it bore a network of interweaving scars from deltoid to wrist, as if an artist had flayed him open and healed him all at once. Even what had been an open wound in his side was no more than a pocked ripple in his skin.

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“That…that shouldn’t be possible.” Wounds like this would take months to heal, even with Sea-touched herbals. Worse, he’d been attacked by that Illwrought. Through the haze of his injuries, Harker could still recognize the sickly scent of its bite. It was the same rot that had infected Mari. Harker should have been inflicted with a spiritual rot, tearing him up from the inside, and yet he felt fine.

Something was deeply wrong.

And how did I get here? He took a breath. Calm yourself. Law 3A. Remember.

Harker needed a way out. No matter how he had moved from the Drop to this room, none of it mattered if he couldn’t escape.

His eyes returned to the room. He took in the quick dimensions once more, but this time the glaze of sleep had worn away. Now he spied his torn satchel there atop the chest of drawers. Most of its contents had been laid out on the table, organized into discrete piles. Someone had gone through it.