Isles of the Forsaken Read Free

just the men.”
    “Yes, but you can be stubborn in spectacular, self-destructive ways Mother and I can’t.”
    They were interrupted by a loud explosion from the harbour, the first volley of fireworks. The echo bounced off the tall buildings, redoubling the sound. They both knelt on the bed and peered out the window to see if they could catch sight of the rockets.
    Watching the next shell arc into the sky and detonate, consuming itself in an ecstasy of fire, it felt to Nathaway like a moment of pending transformation. He didn’t aspire to fireworks to mark his deeds. He wanted something more intangible: to explore himself, and find out who he was apart from his family. He didn’t want to conquer other nations like his brother; he wanted to conquer his own self.
    The thought of wilderness filled him with a peace and space he had never known in crowded, artificial Fluminos. There would be elemental powers of sea and sky to test him, the true judge and jury of mankind. He would surrender himself to them—to scour him clean of civilization’s taint and refine his being into essences. Only then would he be pure enough to give away his life to serve others. The thought of a life devoted to sacrifice filled him with an exaltation whose white-hot light burned all ambition to cinders.
    *
    The snow was just beginning to fall when Harg Ismol, soon to be former captain of the Native Navy, peered out the window of Holly’s Hole, a waterfront tavern favoured by islanders. Behind him, the smoky room was packed with loudly celebrating men, newly paid off and released from the service. In one corner, several of them were holding a competition to see who could drink a pitcher of beer in one breath; but their shouts were almost drowned out by the roaring of another group watching two men pantomime what looked like an act of sexual congress with a cannon.
    Harg was the only one in the room still in uniform, since his appointment to pick up his pay and papers was still an hour away. He had come to the window ostensibly to check the weather, but really to check his watch. It was a mark of his strange position that he couldn’t make a simple gesture like taking out his watch without subterfuge. Among the men down here, the fact that he could afford a watch would make it seem like he was putting on airs; the fact that he needed one would not excuse him, only set him apart. Time belonged to the Inning world; men who simply took orders didn’t need to worry about it.
    Pocketing the incriminating instrument, he glanced up the wooden stairs at his left. He knew the chamber above was a sea of grey and blue uniforms like his own, since that was where the officers were celebrating. But it wasn’t just rank that separated the men below and the men above; it was race as well, the omnipresent factor among islanders. Above, they were all Torna; here, the crowd, like himself, was Adaina. He had already been upstairs for a while, and knew they had no problem with him—the rank and reputation he had earned outweighed old prejudices. But he had drifted downstairs to find more relaxing company, only to discover that his fellow Adainas rather bored him. Only two things had kept him downstairs: the sweet knowledge that it looked, for the first time in his life, like he was snubbing the Tornas; and the delirious pride of his fellow Adainas that he would do so.
    There was time for a last carouse before he had to leave for his parting interview. But where should he go—back to his table with the boatswains, pilots, and gunners, or upstairs to mend fences with the officers? The men with whom he had joined the navy, or the men with whom he left it? He felt like he was walking along a wharf with one foot on the dock and the other on the deck of a shifting, unmoored boat. One of these days he was going to tip into the drink.
    And so he took the third alternative: he slipped out the door into the snow without a goodbye to either group. Let them try and interpret