Jace took to his second sea voyage a good deal better than he had the first. Some of it was simply a matter of expectations… the first time he had expected to find great excitement, and the second time he did not.
While he still caught fresh fish, there was other food to supplement it, and his assumed position of ship’s cook allowed him to indulge his own tastes in mixing up stews and other concoctions. Prit’s tavern had not been a gourmet eatery, but he’s learned enough of the arts of seasoning, boiling, and roasting to come up with some interesting improvisations.
He also had a sense of purpose and a greater understanding of what it was that Kat and Sheiral were doing, and was receiving better treatment from Kat after bringing her the book.
He also knew what it was they were after now: the treasure of Targus. It had a very satisfactory ring in his head, or when he said it out loud… which he did, not infrequently.
Visions of an endless war and a vast, world-spanning empire and a fleet of ships laden with treasure going down in a storm and lying in wreckage at the bottom of a harbor filled his eyes with sights more interesting than the monotony of the waves.
Loki bothered him less often… the mysterious figure seemed sullen over Jace’s improved spirits, and spent the days withdrawn from the world in his peculiar fashion.
“Have you ever been to the edge of the world?” Kat asked him one night when it finally occurred to him to ask her exactly where they were headed.
“No,” Jace said. “Though, sometimes the men in the tavern said that Faresia was the edge.”
“No, they call it an edge island because it’s as close to the edge as anywhere that’s worth going is,” Kat said. “But there are specks of rock a good sight closer. The land actually slopes up, towards the edge.”
“Land?” Jace repeated. “I thought the Outer Sea went all the way out.”
“Oh, it does, but there’s solid ground under the water,” Kat said. “At least, in most places. And it slopes upwards, like a great bowl.”
“And that holds in the water at the edge?”
“Well, no,” Kat said. “The ‘bowl’ doesn’t quite come up that far. More like a saucer, I guess. The water at the utter edge is shallow enough for sounding. A ship could drop anchor there, though it would want to keep a nice, taut line or nothing would stop it from drifting up to the edge and tipping over.”
“So what keeps the water from spilling over?” Jace asked.
“The Terminus Equilibrium,” Kat said.
“What’s that?”
“The force that keeps the water from spilling over the edge,” Kat said.
“But what is it?” Jace asked.
“No one knows,” Kat said. “But clearly something does, and the philosophers call that something the Terminus Equilibrium.”
“So we’re going out to the edge?” Jace asked.
“Three quarters of a mile from it,” she said. “There’s a small island… four islands, really, called the Fingernails of the World. You could swim right up to the edge and look out if you wanted to. I don’t recommend it, though.”
“So, we’re going to be hiding again, then?”
“For a bit… it is remote, and a ship with sails doesn’t dare maneuver as close to the edge as we can, if we need to make an escape,” Kat said. “But your princess found us a starting point… a reference to the ‘Four Fingertips of the Divine Hand, where they grip the north of the world.’”
“The Fingernails?”
“Don’t know what else it could be,” Kat said. “And if we’re right, then it was the final resting place of a band of mutineers from the treasure fleet.”
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