I hurried back to my cabin, braced myself in the lowest corner with my sinewy arm across my knees and looked at the inside of my elbow. I was in great shape and didn’t have to tie up, my veins were hard like cables under the skin.

I felt guilty, then rebelled. Why feel remorse? If any other man aboard knew, the skylarks would be long gone. On the street in Hacilith we kids skillfully used guilt to hold each other back. Like little Eszai, we tried for any opportunity with all we had. But those few who succeeded were brought down by guilt, because they knew their friends were still in the gutter. I’m doing this because I can. Who would say no to such intense pleasure?

The timbers creaked and I jumped. Every time a wave gulped under the hull I was sure it was about to split and spill us all into raging water. Mist told me that the boards are meant to yield slightly to make the ship flexible. In my mind’s eye the planks buckled, leaks sprayed between them. Frothing water races from the bilges into the hold, erupts through the hatchways; the ship tilts and sinks dreamily intact down to the seabed.

My mouth was dry with anticipation and I concentrated so hard on measuring the dose that nothing else existed-no ship, no other immortals, none of the sailors in the rigging feeling the breeze through their open wings. I know what I’m doing is wrong. But just once, to get it over with, and that will be the last injection I ever take.

When I’m hooked, which I’m not, I try to keep a little scolopendium in my body all the time. Drinking it is fine, to keep the level constant, but if it runs out and I dip below the basic amount, then I’m more likely to panic and…do this:

I pushed the tip of the bright needle into my skin, which separated as the point sank in delicately; deeper. Dark red blood shot up into the barrel and started to diffuse. I want that back, I thought, and pressed the plunger down as quickly as I dared. I lay back with the needle in my arm. My hands spasmed. A wave of contortion passed over me-the ecstasy was almost unbearable.

We traveled on. The days became indistinguishable. The days smeared into each other. And the sun rose over and over again.

I woke up horrified to find myself still on the ship, and another whore of a day stretching out in front of me exactly like the last. I reached under the pillow for another vial and with the help of scolopendium managed to stall its inevitable onslaught for a few more hours.

April. Needle scars were making a calendar on my arm. I kept my long-sleeved T-shirt on to cover them. An occasional shower refreshed us and filled the barrels, but overall the heat was oppressive and all the deckhands worked barefoot and stripped to the waist. Our clothes were faded by the sun and mine were patched. I was slightly more shadowy around the eyes, but not so anyone would notice. It suited me, anyway, and cat kept my weight down. The first thing any drug abuse removes is the part of your mind that gives a damn about your health. And there’s an advantage to addiction-cat was a protection. All my anxiety was concentrated on one problem so I dealt with the rest of the world without concern.

I went to lounge on the foredeck, seeing the ocean plunge away in all directions the same. Wrenn and I watched Stormy Petrel sailing as close to the wind as possible, canted with all canvas out, three hundred meters ahead of us on the right side. Lightning climbed up to her aft castle and waved to us from the rail. He was tanned, and the sunlight had bleached his fair hair.

He strung a gold-banded compound bow and flexed it, loosing an arrow that looped high into the air. Wrenn ducked and shouted, “Look out!”

The arrow plummeted straight at me and appeared sticking out of the deck plank not ten centimeters away from my left hand. I sprang up. “Saker! What do you think you’re doing?”

He couldn’t hear me. He waved cheerfully and pointed at us, then at the horizon.

“What is that flash bastard on about?” The arrow had a letter tied to it. I broke the thread and unspooled the paper that Lightning had wrapped tightly around its shaft.

Comet

By Mist’s calculations you should be able to see the Island of Tris now, if you fly to a height four times the mainmast and stay close to the ships. Look due east. Come and tell us if you see anything.

LSM

While I read it, Lightning, who now had Wrenn’s attention, proceeded to show off. He shot an arrow skyward and Wrenn watched it describe a high parabola while Lightning rapidly took another arrow and sent it after the first, shooting straight out in a flat trajectory. As his first arrow came down the second one hit it, spinning it head over flights. A second later we faintly heard the crack they had made as they collided. Lightning did this again to prove the first time wasn’t a fluke.

“He can hit an arrow in the air!” Wrenn said.

“Yeah.” Lightning had been passing the last couple of weeks by sitting on the crosstrees and shooting at albatrosses. He halved their feathers to make more arrows. Only the dwindling numbers of seabirds slowed him down. “You should see his trick with an arrow in a cork and a wine bottle.”

I gave Wrenn the letter, spread my wings and arced up from the stern. I climbed steeply, forcing my fifty-eight kilos into the air. I sensed every ripple in the breeze Melowne distorted with her massive cream sails.

The ships diminished quickly. I was terrified of losing sight of them in such a vast expanse. I tried to stay above the mainmast of the Petrel, although there was no lift at all. I could easily outpace them, and then I would be crossing and recrossing the same area of ocean, trying in vain to find them, until I fell from exhaustion and drowned.

I searched ahead, and saw nothing but more water, so I flew higher until the ornate Petrel was the length of my index finger, trailing rainbows in her bow wave. The ships’ wakes were two Vs around their prows and white veils stretching behind them for hundreds of meters. I glided into a shallow spiral to rest. Either Mist’s calculations are incorrect, or the island does not exist at all.

I chandelled up, higher still, and looked out east. On the horizon, raised on haze, a dark green patch seemed to float. A mountain! A mountain in the sea! I kept climbing, aware that I was the second immortal ever to set eyes on Tris. The island emerged, summit first. I felt a firm companionship with it, as if it had been set there especially for me. Fluffy white clouds hung over it, and I could just see their shadows on the smooth mountainside. The crest was pale gray with distance.

There were some crags around the shoreline. Maybe they were cliffs, I couldn’t tell. I stared until my eyes watered. The haze began to dissipate, the perspective suddenly clicked, and I realized I was looking at a town. The white buildings resembled a slope of scree, tumbling from the mountainside down to the coast and perching on what must be lower buttresses of the peak. It was incredibly beautiful, so wonderful I found myself laughing. I whooped, somersaulted in the air and dived down to Stormy Petrel.

“Oh, my god. Oh god, Mist, you’re completely right! You’re a genius, Mist. I take back all I’ve ever slandered. It’s there, where you said it’d be, and it’s magnificent. Magnificent! I mean, even Awia never had anything like this-”

“Can you see it?” asked Lightning.

“He can see it,” said Mist, hanging on the wheel.

I aligned myself in the wind flow, beside the railings, facing toward her. “I’ve never seen anything like it! It’s so pretty it’s just not true. Like…” Like a piece of the Shift in the Fourlands. I paused, and described it more calmly. A scout is useless unless he gives sensible reports. At sea level, the heat was stronger; it annoyingly slowed my thinking. “I can see the town, though at the moment it’s just a speck. I can see the island’s whole west face-actually Tris is a huge mountain growing up out of the sea!”