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“Like me?”

“And your parents. I can reunite you, Innocence.”

“If I wanted that, I wouldn’t be here.”

“It does not sound as if you want to be here. And you have just informed a whole crowd of migrant fishermen what you are.”

He looked over his shoulder. A couple of drinkers looked back at him through the haze.

He returned his gaze to the priestess, uncertain what to make of her. “What am I, then . . . Eshe, is it? My mother spoke of a priestess named Eshe, though I don’t remember much.”

“I remember your parents. Looking at you, I knew you at once for their son. You have your mother’s intellect, your father’s contrariness. But any gifts from them are dwarfed by the gift of Qiangguo’s Heavenwalls. You are power, Innocence. The kind of power that wizards and warlords will want to claim.”

“And you want to claim me instead?”

She raised a hand. “Hardly. I might want to employ you someday. But most of all I want you and your parents somewhere safe. Where you won’t become the trigger for a war.”

Innocence laughed. “You think very highly of me.”

“I know the eye of a storm when I see it.”

“I am my own man, priestess. Let me be.”

“All right. For now. I will stay with the village priest and argue about the liturgical calendar to keep myself warm. But I will be back.”

“Do what you want. You have no hold on me.” He hesitated. “My parents . . . they are both alive?”

Eshe studied him as she rose. She nodded. “So my sources tell me.”

“Are they looking for me?”

“I suspect so. They are heading west, haphazardly, aboard a frequently crashing flying craft. It may be many months before they reach you.”

“That is as it will be.” He spoke as a Kantening might, but as he rose, he bowed in the manner of Qiangguo, remembering how Walking Stick had taught him to respect his elders. Eshe surprised him by bowing likewise, with no self-consciousness, here in a room of the Outer World.

As she exited the Rat, Eshe glanced at the sky and back into the room. “I think this may be a break in the weather,” she told them all.

A number of men took her advice and returned to their homes or shacks. Before long the Rat was sufficiently emptied that Nan and Freidar made noises about closing up, and their ward was too occupied with plates and bowls, mugs and knives, to worry about Eshe of the Fallen Swan. Below the surface of his thoughts, however, memories shifted like horses that had fallen asleep beneath the snow.

At some point Nan steered him to his straw-covered shelf by the stove. She covered him in a blanket. He tumbled into the deep sleep of cold nights.

He dreamed he hovered over the jagged contours of Fiskegard, the island and the snowfall patchily illuminated by a cloud-veiled moon. He floated far above the sea, yet the sound of surf beat in his ears like slow thunder. Looking around he saw translucent waves glowing silver all around him, as though a second ghost-ocean had manifested far above the first. He could still see the ordinary world, but this spectral sea stretched wide all around. Its waves slammed into some unseen headland, scattering into starry droplets.

“Aiya,” he swore. “What is this place?”

He did not expect anyone to answer, but someone did.

“You drift within the Straits of Tid.”

He saw a ghostly beast like a dolphin with a horn such as unicorns were said to possess. The horn resembled an icicle and the body a patch of star-speckled darkness. Upon it rode a young woman in battle gear. She bore a spear and roundshield and wore a byrnie of gleaming steel. Her helmet was a round cap with a spectacle guard masking much of her face, though he saw her braided red hair and the icy blue of her eyes. She looked older than him, sixteen perhaps, though her voice had a hint of childish laughter in it that made him wonder.

Dreaming—if such he was—made him bold. “That’s not very informative,” he said. “And if I ask you your name, will you say you are the Rider of Zot or the Guardian of Zed or the Slayer of Zeep?”

“Tid means ‘time,’” she said. “You drift upon the edge of the Straits of Time, where its waters wash the rocks of the present. And I have taken the name Beinahruga, though you can call me Cairn.”

“Charmed.”

“And you?”

“You may call me Askelad. Nan has told me of the Choosers of the Slain, who swoop down from divine Vindheim and carry off the spirits of the valiant dead. Though I thought that was just a story. Are you one of them?” He looked this way and that, as an uneasy thought came to him. “Am I dead?”

Cairn laughed. The sound seemed to reverberate off the unseen headlands of present time. “Do you think yourself valiant, Askelad?”

He laughed too. “The Sage Emperor has said that a superior man should avoid violence and heedlessness, that he be sincere, and that he be polite. Would a Chooser of the Slain pick such a one?”

“You never know.”

“So you are a Chooser?”

“The All-Father has said that a rash tongue sings mischief, O Askelad, if that’s what you want to call yourself. I would like to keep my nature to myself for now. What you should know is that I have been waiting for you. You have the power to explore the Straits of Tid. There are certain sites in Kantenjord where the energies of the sleeping dragons distort space and time. Fractures in the fabric of reality, rent in the days when the arkendrakes fought one another. In those places it’s possible to send one’s dream-form into other realms. Or, with sufficient power, to go there bodily. The Pickled Rat is built upon one such site.”

“Do Freidar and Nan know of this?”

“They suspect. They know many things they haven’t told you of.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Learn—and beware!”

She gestured with her spear, and it was as though a gale rose up. He was washed upon the waves through clouds and snow, then rain and sun, speeding across the seas.

They seemed now to float above rugged day-lit straits, where two jutting headlands lofted above a small, barren island. A titanic metal chain wrapped around each promontory, linking them to the island in the straits’ midst, itself enmeshed in the links. Runes the size of horses glowed upon the links.

“What is it?” Innocence asked.

“Behold the Great Chain of Unbeing. Forged by the Vindir, great lords now thought of as gods, it drains the energies of the arkendrakes, keeping them docile, unable to resume their ancient conflict. A third length of the Chain plunges into unseen depths, sending excess power deep into the Earthe. The Chain has an intelligence of its own, and from time to time it claims a champion. This time it has chosen your friend, A-Girl-Is-A-Joy. She bears the mark of the Chain upon her hand.”

Innocence looked across the seas, past an archipelago of thousands of craggy islands and skerries, out to the East.

“You are thinking of another mighty construct,” said Cairn. “The Heavenwalls of Qiangguo. They too draw power from dragons. They too chose a champion—you.”

“I have never understood why. I’m no son of Qiangguo. By accident I was raised as one, but the blood of that land doesn’t flow in my veins. I’m much closer to the folk of Kantenjord! And why did this Chain choose Joy? She is a daughter of Qiangguo! It makes no sense.”

“You are right to wonder, Innocence. Humans have wrought these mighty works to empower themselves. But they did not anticipate that those tools would conspire with each other.”

“Conspire? How? Why?”

Cairn laughed and raised her spear.

The sun vanished again, and reappeared, many times, throwing the ocean into light and casting it into darkness. And now land—green coast, misty forest, looming mountains, and forest again, and pale-green grass stretching forever.

Below him lay an astonishing sight. At the southern edge of a great influx of the sea, upon the snow-covered grasses of the steppe, there stood thousands of tents and tens of thousands of men, nearly that number in horses, a hundred ships on wheels, and scores of balloons ready for flight.

He drifted down toward the horde, and suddenly a falcon crossed his vision, the same that had stalked him weeks earlier. Somehow it picked out a single individual on the ground and dove toward her. He fell too, drawn along in the bird’s wake.

He seemed to hover above the ground in the midst of armored nomads, as the bird alighted upon the wrist of a woman. She was a noble of the remote East, dark hair proudly worn high and shiny with a coating of animal fat; yet she was no ornamental figurehead. He took note of her muscular figure, even hidden as it was by a thickly draped, sky-blue robe. More than that, he took note of an imperiously eager look to her gaze.

“Meat!” she called, and the language was none he knew, yet somehow within this dreamscape he understood her. “Meat for my falcon! And summon the khatun. Tell her I have interesting news.”

Soon the bird was snapping down chunks of flesh, and out of the crowd came a similarly dressed woman, a little younger than the first, though her hair was piled and coiled more elaborately, and yellow makeup emphasized her brow. Her smile worried the unseen boy. “I am here, elder sister. I hope you are ready to define ‘interesting.’”

“Qurca has returned. He’s found the one I sought.”

The younger sister’s eyes narrowed. “You are sure?”

“I’ve seen the image in my bird’s mind.”

“Where is he?”

I’m right here, he thought, but tried not to think it too loudly.

“In the Bladed Isles,” the elder sister said.

The younger sister nodded. “What the locals call Kantenjord. ‘The Edge-lands.’ I know it. I have allies and spies there. This is auspicious. The Great Khan’s council is even now debating how to apply a pincer campaign against the Eldshore. The northern route is clear. The southern prospects are murky. But thanks to you, sister, there is another way.” The younger sister gestured at the fleet of balloons. “Your inventions can carry a force across the waters. We can subdue the primitive island-dwellers and have a base for harrying the Eldshore from the west.”

“Not my inventions. They are the work of Haytham ibn Zakwan—”

“It is charming how you wish to credit outlanders. Yes, ibn Zakwan’s craft can carry a force to a new stronghold, and over the months of winter we can build up an army. The Westerners fear a winter campaign, as we do not. Yes. We can conquer the Bladed Isles by spring and assault the Eldshore in summer.”

The elder smiled a trace. “You may be overconfident. And how does finding Innocence Gaunt suddenly make the Bladed Isles a good target?”

“As I said, I have allies there.” The younger gestured toward two soldiers, who led forward her horse. “Not all of them human. One of them will know how to use the boy’s power to our advantage. And I have you. You have yet to regain the khan’s full confidence.”

The elder sister’s smile vanished, and her face darkened with anger as her falcon rose and shrieked. Meanwhile the younger sister’s horse sniffed, whinnied, and bucked. The invisible wanderer did not understand the animals’ behavior, but it worried him. The elder sister said, “Our mother sided with me in our dispute over Xembala.”

“And her word carried great weight,” said the younger sister, grabbing the reins. “Nevertheless, my husband is the Grand Khan. He agreed you were justified in your actions, arranging trade with the Xembalans rather than conquest. But nonetheless you undercut me.”

“It was you who subverted my mission.”

“Calm, calm, Aughatai,” said the younger sister to the horse, but Innocence thought the words were equally meant for the elder. “Hunt down this Innocence Gaunt for me, Steelfox. I know you mean to inform his parents, whom you lent your inventor ibn Zakwan and your shaman Northwing. I do not wish you to break your word. Tell them. But surely a Karvak princess will be a more formidable huntress than a pair of lunatics from the world’s edge. Join my invasion of Kantenjord. And bring Innocence to me, that I might honor the chosen of the Heavenwalls.”

“Control him, you mean.”

“And if that is the price of peace between us? One boy’s future in exchange for your rightful, unblemished place in our father’s empire?”

The elder sister, Steelfox, did not reply.

Jewelwolf’s horse was snorting and shaking now. It lurched toward the spot where the unseen wanderer felt himself to be. He began to shiver.

“Aughatai, what has gotten into you!” cried Jewelwolf. “What do you see?”

The horse got loose and charged the invisible boy. Soldiers shouted.

Cairn!
he tried to shout.
Help—

So you see, “Askelad,”
came the voice of the Chooser,
you can’t escape the burden of your name, nor your power. I leave you with a riddle. It may have practical value one day. If you should meet your future self, what is the most important question you can ask?

And in his straw bed in the Bladed Isles, Innocence Gaunt woke with a start.

CHAPTER 1

MECHANISMS

“Imago Bone! You’ve gone too far this time!”

“You speak to one, Persimmon Gaunt, who’s stolen a bath from a pond beside the Forbidden City! Who’s claimed a treasure map from the mummies of the Desert of Hungry Shadows! Who has a book overdue from the Goblin Library! You speak to me of too far?”

“Fine! You disable the bronze automatons!”

“You are doing far better at that than I ever could. And meanwhile I have a most interesting ancient artifact to ponder—”

“Get up here, Bone!”

“Of course! You and the alchemical fire are most persuasive. . . .”

The thief Imago Bone nonetheless found it difficult to abandon the marvelous view. He dangled by a rope from Haytham ibn Zakwan’s balloon, seeing the snowy moonlit expanse of the city of Amberhorn in a way he never had before. Certainly not earlier this evening when he and the explorer Liron Flint had been skulking through its alleys and across its rooftops to reach the great domed Basilica of the Logos. Nor when they’d raced through the Aisle of Illuminations, with its enchanted icons with golden eyes ready to entrance, terrify, or burn unwelcome visitors. Least of all when they’d scrambled out the great bell tower of the basilica, with stolen treasures in Bone’s sack.