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+1.
“I had the misfortune to be seated by the Loquacious Ambassador at the reception. Talked my ear off about the pre-Wilderness days, as if I wasn’t at court in the Neath myself. Truly makes one miss the more distinguished personages of the diplomatic corps. The Voracious Diplomat, for one.”
“Whatever did become of them, do you know?”
“No one does. They disappeared shortly before the Exodus. I myself would guess they tried to commit a bit of game-and-candle with that staid old rival of theirs, so to say, and both found themselves on a slow boat in a silent river.”
1.
“Are any of your free agents at Wolfstack right now?” the Diplomat asks him, collected and polite as if their ruffians did not just drag the Admiral off a street.
The Admiral’s protest dies on his lips as the Diplomat crowds close to him and lifts their eyepatch. There are strands of gold twining through the iris of their ruined eye.
“I find myself desirous of a zee-trip. Would any of your rustics have a free berth? Or two?”
“I cannot leave my –”
The Diplomat’s nonchalance frays, but their eye is sympathetic. “You have already lost your post, Admiral.”
3.
“Did you come alone, then?” the Enigmatic Gentleman asks when both dinner and the requisite strategic updates are over.
“No –” the Admiral says and dashes his sleeve across his eyes. The mists of the Sea of Autumn do get in the eyes and the heart. The Gentleman hands him a handkerchief to replace the one lost to the swamps. “I had a companion, but they were… lost on the way.”
“It must have been a frightful journey.”
“Yes,” the Admiral says and tries not to think of dark hair disappearing into dark water like so much seaweed. “It was.”
2.
When you read this, Admiral, I am dead. The Dawn Machine’s touch is impossible to uproot from a living mind, and I am not inclined to become its thrall.
You will find several heirlooms under the false bottom of my zee-chest. Sell them if you wish; I believe they will suffice to set up in any corner of the zee. And here, a truth that burned when I first learned it and will no doubt burn again: █
I trust you will do the right thing. But more than that, Admiral, I trust your discernment to know what it is.
4.
The Admiral holds his breath as he watches the Diplomat emerge from behind the Fathomking’s throne. Around him the Fathomking’s servants are carrying away diamonds, scintillack, a fiery mystery. All those are immaterial next to the slight figure walking between two guards in thorned exoskeletons. Their wrists are chained with bronze, their face calm and still.
“I have made adjustments,” the Fathomking declares. “The zee is impregnable to light, and the Dawn Machine’s is not an exception. They are not as they once were. But you will not be troubled by any other difference.”
The Diplomat looks up and smiles.
5.
“Rumour has it that London will take the Dawn Machine through the Horizon next week,” the Diplomat remarks in their cramped room in Khan’s Shadow, carefully nonchalant. “We could go back West afterwards.”
The Admiral sighs and combs his fingers through their hair. London’s Navy will be no poorer without the golden-eyed fanatics than it was in his time. It might even be richer without the expenses of the Dawn Machine strangling it.
“No,” he says. “Let them believe you dead.”
The Diplomat’s eye is zee-dark and as cold, but the kiss they press on the Admiral’s palm is hot.