Honor and Blood

"I lived on the southern hemisphere, and I have never heard of that constellation," Dola

"Then you must have a different name for it," she told her. She rushed into the tent and brought out a piece of parchment and one of those curious Tellurian pens, then jotted a series of dots on the paper. "This constellation," she said, holding it up. It did vaguely resemble a crown, and after counting the dots, he realized that there were twenty of them.

"That one we call Diamades," Dola

"But it is this constellation!" Keritanima told her. "The Wikuni call it the Diamond Crown. Any Wikuni ship captain worth his salt would have recognized that description immediately! It's the only crown-shaped constellation, and it's made up of twenty stars!"

"Calm down, sister," Allia said evenly. "Your shouting is hurting my ears."

"Sorry, sister," she said contritely. "So, according to this, we travel towards the Diamond Crown, and we do it for forty days."

"Yes, those are directions, but from where do we begin, Keritanima?" Dola

Keritanima gave her a blank look, then blew out her breath. "Alright, so this isn't everything. But it's a big piece of it," she asserted. "These are the directions. We know that it's overseas, and this confirms that. We know which direction to go and how long to go that way. All we need to know is where to start from and what time of year to do it, and we have it."

"There's more here to it than just that," Miranda said, reading it. "One of these stanzas is about Tarrin, or I'm bald. And you have a crown, Kerri. Twenty beyond the first in blood. Well, that one doesn't make perfect sense, but since it mentions blood, I think it wouldn't be a stretch to assume it talks about Allia."

"Some of these don't make any sense," Dar complained. "Twenty of everything?"

"I think that is a tool for giving the poem a unifying feel," Dola

"Alright, so, we have hearts, souls, and golden crowns. That still doesn't make any sense."

"I don't think the lines are related like that, Dar," Miranda told him, reading it again. "Some of them are definitely related, but only the last two lines in each stanza. The first two lines stand alone."

"Alright, so, what does hearts and souls mean?"

"I have no idea," she shrugged. "I only understand about half of the lines."

"So. We now have directions," Dola

"It can't be from Suld. You can't even see the Diamond Crown from here. We'd at least have to be on the equator."

"Hold on," Allia said, getting up and rushing back into the tent. She returned a moment later with the book Dar had read, the book with the other information they'd found. Keritanima had marked the page with the passage, and she opened the book to that page and quickly read what was there. "It says in this book that they took the Firestaff beyond the Stormhavens, and then beyond the Dark Continent. If they passed over the Stormhavens, they have to have left from Suld."

"Very good, dear one," Dola

"From Vendaka," she replied. "It's on the equator. The constellation sits right on the horizon." Keritanima blinked. "Could that be the starting point?" she asked.

Miranda was studying the poem again. "Hold on. It mentions seas and stars twice. Twenty seas and twenty stars, then twenty stars over twenty seas. Those may sound the same, but they're different. That first stanza had the directions in it, so maybe the key of where to start or what time of year to start are tied up in that first line. Can anyone think of anything that may relate to a season or time of year in that?"

"I-no, wait a minute. Wait a minute," Keritanima said suddenly, her eyes brightening. "The time of year to start is in the second line! If you really do start from Vendaka, then the key is twenty stars over twenty seas!" She looked at all them excitedly. "The Diamond Crown sits right on the horizon from Vendaka, but not the entire constellation. A little piece of it is always under the horizon! But I remember reading or hearing from someone somewhere that the entire constellation comes over the horizon at the summer solstice!"

"Then, if we do start from Vendaka, we'd have to start in a month!" Miranda said in surprise.

"Only if that is the true starting point," Dola

"What do you want, Dola

"That would help," she said with a slight smile. "I just worry about if we are wrong, Keritanima. If we are wrong, then we will waste a tremendous amount of time, and someone else may very well discover its location while we are off chasing wild ducks."

"If this is right, then we'd have to literally race back to Wikuna in time to start," Miranda said absently. "The summer solstice is at the end of next month, and it'd take a month to get back to Wikuna."

"I don't think just any ship can do it," Dar said, looking at the poem. "It says here that twenty stone of coal and wood will let you reach behind the wind. I think the reach there means it's the only way to get to that place. Not literally getting behind it, because it says in this stanza here that it'll take the one among twenty to pass behind the wind. We need coal and wood to get out there to where this wind is, we need this twenty beyond the first to find the wind, then we need the one in twenty to get past the wind."

"What bloody good would coal and wood do in getting out there?" Keritanima said in a

"They must have some kind of special significance, or else they wouldn't show up in the poem," Miranda said.

"If you're tyring to get behind the wind, a Wikuni ship couldn't do it," Jesmind suddenly said, then she bowed her head when she realized she'd done so. "You'd need an Ungardt ship."

"Why do you say that, Mistress Jesmind?" Dola

"They have sails," she said. "It only seems obvious to me that if you're trying to sail a ship behind the wind, you'd need an Ungardt longship. They don't rely on sails. They row the boat."

"Ungardt ships weren't meant to travel so far out into open sea," Keritanima told her. "And we really couldn't do it here. A forty day trip in a Wikuni clipper would be a four month trip in an Ungardt longship. Longships don't have very much cargo room. It would take so many men to man the ship, you'd have to fill the boat so full of supplies to feed them, the ship would sink like a stone in a stiff breeze."

"So, we can't sail the ship, and we can't row the ship. So how are we going to get there?"

"We need twenty stone of coal and wood," Miranda said with a cheeky grin.

Dar glared at her, then actually stuck out his tongue, which made the cute mink Wikuni laugh.

They sat back as Dola