Chapter 22 Cero #3
“I need the lands beyond the sea.” Cero handed the map back. “The far west.”
“No one’s explored beyond this.” Kade looked at Cero like he’d just requested a map of the ten hells hand-drawn by a lemur. “Not enough to make a map, anyway.”
“You must have something,” Cero said. “Can you at least look?”
Kade glanced at his bookshelves. “I know every item in my library,” he said. “It’s the largest collection of rare maps in the known world. Even the Great Library of Adisa doesn’t have—”
“Yes, we understand.” Karinna tapped her foot in irritation. “You’re very special.”
“No,” Kade said testily. “You don’t understand. Look.”
He pulled a scroll off a shelf, unrolling the parchment to show a beautifully colored rendering of a city in a valley, abutting an ocean.
“A map of the Jaduna capital city, Kotama,” he said, “written in Jadne, their language. This detail is unmatched. This map is worth more than your lives.” He rolled it back up lovingly.
“If I don’t have a map, it likely doesn’t exist.”
Cero cursed internally. He couldn’t fly a Sail out into the ocean without some sense of whether he’d find a place to land.
“Why do you need it?” Kade asked. “The map.”
“That’s our business,” Karinna said, but Cero didn’t sense any negative intent from Kade. Only curiosity. A desire to help if he could. He was a changed man from the terrified, obsequious creature he’d been when Cero last saw him.
“I’m trying to figure out if Old Kegar still exists,” Cero said. “What about that book of Kegari essays? Could there be any drawings in there?”
Kade disappeared to dig around one of his other rooms. When he returned, he held a small blue-bound volume. “You tell me.” He offered it to Cero. “I don’t read Kegari.”
As Cero perused the pages, the food arrived, and after giving it a sniff, Karinna began to tuck in. Her postprandial mood was markedly less hostile. Keep her fed, Cero thought. Noted.
Cero flipped through the book, which wasn’t particularly long, and mostly appeared to be Mother Div musing about the Nine Sacred Tales. But there was one passage that made him pause:
What is it to be betrayed by your own, by those you called family? I would not dwell on it, for it does no good. I only hope one day for vengeance. Div, they call me, and Div I have become.
A chill crawled along his skin. He thought of the apparition he’d met in the tunnels, so long ago.
I saw you coming, child. I knew that you alone would learn the truth. But not yet. The stars spoke of the Wayfinder. They said: The oldest betrayal is that which is between blood. Cast him into the dark, so that he might see.
Cero shook the image away and focused on the book. It wasn’t clear what betrayal Div spoke of. Power had transitioned peaceably to her children, as far as Cero knew. The line about her name also gave him pause. Div, they call me. That implied it wasn’t her true name.
Sighing, Cero handed the essays back to Kade. “Do you have anything that maps the area west of the Cloud Forest?” Cero said. “Something that shows the sea?”
Kade pulled out a map of a group of islands called the Walibar. “This is as far west as any of the maps go,” he said. “Beyond that—storms, typhoons, sea beasts. The Mariners have tried to sail those seas hundreds of times. Anyone who’s survived has said the only guarantee out there is death.”
“There must be something,” Karinna said. “Something you’ve heard. Look at this bleeding place.” She glanced around the room with grudging admiration. “You have a copy of the Tribal Mysteries. My sister’s studying to be a Fakira and—”
“Is she?” Kade said with interest. “Do you think she’d talk to me about—”
“The point,” Karinna said, “is that the Tribes don’t write those stories down. It’s supposed to be oral tradition only. Not to mention that you knew who I was without ever having met me. As annoying as you are, you have good sources of information. You must know where we might find a map.”
At his silence, she drew her dagger. “Maybe this will jog your memory.”
Kade reached for his own knife, but Cero got between them.
“You’re not helping,” he said to Karinna through gritted teeth before turning to Kade. “Do you truly have nothing with even the smallest mention of those lands?”
“If I had something,” Kade said, “I’d give it to you. I owe you, Cero. You kept your soldiers away after Quil and Sirsha escaped. Kept my part in that quiet.”
Indeed, Cero had. Kade couldn’t offer any useful information. Cero hadn’t seen the point in tormenting him.
Kade lowered his voice. “There is something,” he said.
“But you didn’t hear it from me. Years ago, one of the Jaduna came looking for a similar map.
She—she didn’t expect me to have it. She said if I ever found anything that showed the Southern Ocean, I was to send for her immediately.
She said not to sell it. Not to tell anyone about it, or she’d have my head.
I heard later that she found something in Ankana. Paid a fortune for it.”
“Name?” Karinna brandished her blade again, but Cero pushed it down until she rolled her eyes and sheathed it.
“She didn’t tell you why she wanted the map, I assume,” Cero said, and Kade shook his head. Cero watched Kade carefully for any indication he might be lying but saw none.
“Why do you think she came for that map?” Cero asked.
“I don’t bleeding know.”
“You have a suspicion,” Cero said. Years in Dafra had taught him to read a face. Kade’s face was open and blandly handsome. A face you would probably discount as having little behind it. But he’d built a bustling trade. He’d survived in Jibaut, a city of pirates. He was no fool.
“I think—I think the Jaduna have some connection to your people,” Kade finally said. “When I get something from the Kegari, it’s always through the Ankanese. But when I sell something from the Kegari, it’s never to anyone who is Kegari. It’s to a Jaduna. Always.”
“How did you manage to keep the essays?”
“Hid them. They seemed special,” Kade said.
He stared at the packed bookshelves of his home, his gaze sober.
“I’ve collected rare knowledge for years now.
Made quite a profit off it. People go to great lengths to obtain anything that might give them power.
But what the Jaduna woman did—it wasn’t just that she wanted to empower herself.
She was doing it by erasing the Kegari. Your people’s words, your maps, your stories. She doesn’t want you to exist.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know why. But I suspect that if you want more information, the only place you’ll find it is among the Jaduna.”