“So, we’re looking for the capital of the old empire?” Jace guessed.
“No,” Katryn said. “Probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble to find it… it was sacked dozens of times in its history before the Falling. All the richest families abandoned it like rats leaving a sinking ship… that happened other times, too, but usually they all ended up moving to the same, newly fashionable and secure city that ended up being the new seat of power. But the empire was fracturing, and so all that wealth ended up scattered to the winds.”
“What, then?” Jace asked.
“In the last days of the civil war, one of the three major players, Targus, overplayed his hand against another, Kar Thalos. In doing so, he gave uncontested control of the Western Strait to the fleets loyal to Thalos. This was enough of a shift in the balance to give him something none of the rivals had ever managed to get before: a decisive advantage over the others. Targus desperately reached out to his other enemy, Dematian, and offered to form an alliance… he hoped to forge a power-sharing agreement, but at that point he would have been wise to settle for having a grateful Dematian on the throne instead of a vengeful Kar Thalos. But he’d been fighting tooth and nail with Dematian for years, and Targus had a reputation for double-dealing. Dematian agreed to accept his alliance only on the condition that they combined their treasuries, and put the whole thing under his control.”
“And those books tell you where the treasury is?” Jace guessed.
“No,” Katryn said. “The treasury was looted when Dematian was defeated, and defeated he was, because he was depending on Targus’s resources to help him turn the tide. You see, Targus agreed to Dematian’s condition, and he even loaded up all the gold and silver and jewels he had hoarded in his own coffers scattered throughout the lands and sent them to Dematian’s stronghold in the west. He probably figured that once they’d wiped out Kar Thalos and established their rule, he could take out Dematian and then use the combined treasury for himself. But his money never even got there.”
“So you’re looking…”
“Yes, I’m looking for the fleet,” Katryn said. “Dematian believed that Targus simply double-crossed him, but Targus was truly and sincerely wiped out after that. He went from being the wealthiest of the three claimants to being absolutely skint, practically overnight. The stories say that the treasure fleet of Targus was lost in a storm, which would put all that glittering gold… supposedly the largest sum ever assembled… completely beyond reach… but I found the account, years ago, given by a sailor who survived the disaster. The fleet had been sheltering in a harbor, hoping to ride out the storm.”
“If there were survivors, why didn’t they take it?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Katryn said. “Maybe they were few enough in number and it was too large an undertaking for them. Maybe those scattered survivors dove down and filled their pockets with what they could. Maybe they planned on coming back but the tides of war overtook them. I’m pretty confident that the bulk of the treasure was never recovered, though.”
“Why?”
“Because if anybody had, they’d be ruling the world right now,” Katryn said. “I don’t know if you can even begin to understand how far the world has fallen since the time of the Great Empire, Jace… how much less there is that sparkles and glitters within it. So much of value was lost, dispersed, or destroyed in the Falling, but this was the greatest single stroke of it. Some of Targus’s treasure might have been swept out to sea by the fury of the storm and the actions of intervening ages, but even if only one piece out of a hundred remains, Jace… well, that’s still a treasure worth finding.”
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