Interlude · The Drowned Lighthouse

and enough rope to tie one ship to another. Mara Dels's brother commanded the second sailing ship. The night before, he had told her he had never seen such an expensive purchase made by someone who did not plan to sell anything.

“I plan to bring something back,” she answered.

Two divers went down in the first window of calm. One was Merin, whom everyone called Stalk because he was long and bent and never broke. The other was called Coll. Arel tied their ropes herself, a lifeline at the waist and another for air, and repeated the rule: three tugs, up; two, more rope; one, wait.

From the boat the whole lighthouse could be seen beneath the surface, leaning like a tree the wind had left half fallen. A silver shoal circled the lantern in a perfect ring, never touching it. The walls were covered in corals that lit up when the beam swept them and went dark afterwards, so that the tower seemed to breathe.

The divers found

the service door halfway up. Inside was a dry chamber, held by a bubble of air that no one had put there and that did not escape either. Coll told it afterwards in shouts, shivering: on the walls were reliefs of ancient custodians, figures with jug-shaped hands and closed eyes, and in the centre, on a pedestal, a stone with its edge carved like a wave. Behind it, a staircase kept descending towards halls where the light was so strong it could not be looked at.

Merin wanted to see where it led. Coll would not let him. They carried the stone between them.

On the way out, Merin's lifeline caught on a rusted beam of the sunken pier. Arel felt the tug from the boat: just one, long. Wait. Then nothing.

She had the air line in her hands. If she pulled, she might tear Merin free of the beam or cut his air against the edge. If she did not, the pump would keep giving him air while

someone went down to free him, and there was no other helmet. The current was already pushing the boat towards the reef.

Arel decided. She ordered them to pull.

The rope came up cut. Coll surfaced alone, the stone clutched to his chest the way a castaway clutches a plank. A sailor dived in on a single breath to look for Merin and did not come back.

That same afternoon the tide turned sooner than the notebooks said. A current drove the support boat against the pier beams and split it. Four men were left in the water. The mist closed again while they searched for them with lanterns. At nightfall, the Lighthouse pulsed once more, forty-one breaths, and Arel counted six names. She got the order wrong and had to start again.

One of the young sailors wanted to go down the staircase to the shining halls. His brother had disappeared in those waters a year earlier, and he was sure the light was him. Arel forbade him to

go near the rail. He pushed her. They tied him to the mainmast, and he kept shouting his brother's name until the island fell behind and the light could no longer be seen.

Arel did not untie him until they reached open sea. She brought him water herself. He would not take it.

At the stopover port on the cape, where the northern road meets the sea, a salt merchant was waiting for them with a box on her knees and an unfriendly face. She had come down from the ice islands, had lost a cargo and a route, and did not intend to lose her patience as well.

“You're the one who collects strange stones,” she told Arel. “I have one. I want to be paid for it.”

Arel opened the box. The piece had its edge carved like frost.

She sat on the quay between the two stones and, for the first time in weeks, allowed herself to do nothing for as long as it takes a sail

to fill. Then she ordered the mizzenmast replaced with whatever could be found and the sails patched with sacking.

Bridgebasin was nine days away. If the water kept rising, perhaps they would arrive in time for something.