«And it was all for your sake,» Vincent said angrily. «I wanted to help, but it hasnt worked out yet. Do you know what that fuddy-duddy wrote back? That he didnt want anything to do with beggars. Then I wrote to him again, in the same way, but no longer with requests, but with threats. Only sternness has an effect on scoundrels. I was immediately given a polite answer, with even more meticulous apologies than mine, but he did not dare to reveal his secrets, as if he did not know what he was talking about, saying that he had no secrets from society, and he asked me humbly not to write further, as he had no money for a secretary, and he could no longer be away from work just to write some letters.»
«Has he sent you your letters back?»
«Yes, he must have thought that every piece of paper was precious to me, or maybe he thought it was bad luck to keep the things of someone who was about to be caught in the clutches of Monseigneur dragon. Just dont think I gave him our address in Lara. I found letters every time in the hollow of an elm tree. The crows would bring them. I would put mine under my pillow, wish before I went to sleep the name of the addressee, and in the morning it would disappear, already in his hands.»
«Its funny,» I agreed. «Its news to me, too, that youre in such dire straits.»
«Well» Vincent blushed. «It would be a plight, though, if I took my scribbles closer to the printing press.»
«Who would agree to that?» I laughed. «Remember the sad experience of Camille, who only managed to get a play into an unpopular theater by threatening the director?»
«My case is quite different,» said Vincent confidently. In addition, you are able to buy for us all the bookstores in Lara and not one printing press, and not a dozen pairs of workers. Gold or threats, it doesnt matter to you what you pay with.»
«I may soon find myself in the claws of your venerable former employer, and you want to make a book hero out of me.
«For if the prince gets you back on your old path, you might find your biography with a delicate velvet bookmark on your bedside table, and you wouldnt have to seduce anyone, theyd already be in love with you.»
«And if its not about the girls? What about the agitated superstitious peasantry, the suspicious laymen, the soldiers, the youths, the merchants, the proprietors? Do you think they will all love the one whose fiery breath could at any moment collapse on the roofs of their houses and turn a peaceful night to a burning hell. No one, from ministers to long-suffering students, wishes for such an end.
«Stop, Edwin. People are mostly mistrustful. They will consider all my work to be mere authorial fiction.»
«And that outlaw I spared? He told anyone who wanted to know about me. What if there was a survivor who managed to leave the burning city and noticed me. They wouldnt believe them either.»
«Of course they wouldnt. Sometimes in books, theres a line where the fictional character becomes flesh. Hes already living on his own and can be too affecting for the impressionable. Ask Rose. Shell confirm.»
Rose, who was at this moment looking for a way to coax the curled-up gremlin out of her new dresses, looked at Vincent dubiously and shrugged her shoulders.
«Francesca would have confirmed it,» he sighed. «You were a legend to her above all else.»
Rose gave up trying to wriggle new dresses out of her boyfriends clutches and came around to us.
«Edwin!» She rustled a cloud of silk skirts toward me. «Its been hours and hours and the parcel is still on our table. You see, I cannot bear to have a dead rival near me.»
«It will be a long journey, with no map, compass, or guiding star to guide us.»
«But your magic will save us.»
«I hope so,» I said modestly. Rose was confident in my abilities, while I myself had my doubts.
It didnt take long to pack. I didnt need much to take with me, just a few scrolls, which I stuffed in my pocket as a precaution, a flask of wine, and some food in case Rose got hungry. I had no need for a telescope or compass. Superhuman eyesight substituted for the former, and intuition and the ability to orient myself in any unfamiliar space for the latter. I took my weapon with me not for self-defense, but out of habit. I liked to have a sword on my side and a musket in its holster, so that I looked like a simple man who could not grow dragon claws on his bare arm in a moment of danger. I carried the bloody bundle under my arm, and covered it with the hem of my cloak.
Rose was sure we would have to walk for God knows how long to our destination, so she spent a long time choosing shoes with sturdy soles, trying on boots, lace-up boots, and even some of my pairs of boots before she found something she liked, but despite her calculations we got there in a matter of minutes. The ocean was behind us, and before us was the desert mainland.
«Could this parched soil ever have been cultivated and sown?» Rose looked critically at the thick smears of ash on her leather boots. «Oh, Edwin, I find it hard to believe that even the smallest settlement, let alone an entire country, could once have stood here.»
«But it was here, there, on the coast, was the castle where I lived. Not alone, of course, but among an anthill of courtiers, advisors, consuls, servants, and many idlers who did who knows what they did and did what they did, just to stay near the shadow of the royal throne. There was the port,» I waved toward the sandy shore. The sand was now mixed with ash and had long since lost its usual yellow color. «There had been a flourishing city near the port, trade, merchant ships came here from the farthest shores, and then the watchmen on the ships could even see the light on the lighthouse, but they could no longer dock ashore. Back then, the world still remembered that my fathers country existed, but no one could reach it anymore, an invisible barrier prevented it, and gradually the whole state disappeared from the world map. You wouldnt believe, of course, that once this desert had blossomed and borne fruit. Now, even if someone settled here, the withered earth would never grow again.»
I glanced toward the waves licking the scorched shores. Only the foamy swells remained unchanged. The fires of hell had flared up, devoured the country, and faded away, but the ocean remained.
«How I would have liked to put the prince on that very galleon, denying him both crew and anchor and shelter, off any shore, so that he could wander around all latitudes, no longer daring to harm anyone. Then he would finally understand the meridian of life that opened before me as I left the flaming homeland.
Ahead lay only a bare plain under the night sky, but suddenly somewhere in the distance I could make out a light, the smoke of a fire, the smell of burning. At first I had a crazy idea that that terrible night had returned, that everything would be reenacted, like in a shadow theater, but I would no longer be a participant in the performance, but just a spectator. But there could be no shadow performance where there was no memory of the past, no lodges, no stones, not even just descendants, nothing that could infuse the energy of disembodied beings who like to appear to someone, not to an empty space. So the mainland is not as desolate as I thought after all.
«Come on, lets go see who got here,» I grabbed Roses hand. «Maybe someone was shipwrecked or thrown overboard from a pirate ship. Fishing boats could have gone off course in a storm, too.»
Rose hid her hair under a smart beret and looked like a boy.
«I didnt see a boat by the shore,» she protested. «I didnt even see a raft that would have helped rescue the passengers from the sinking ship. Theres only one way to get here: by flying, or with the help of a guide like you.