Hanno yanks velvet curtains open and looks out over Askiul palace, his masterfully ornate prison, over the silver-trimmed reflecting pool, over the tall, marble walls which frame the courtyard, out through his mullioned, double-arched window, beyond the mass of green, rolling hills and surrounding villages, and imagines the ocean. He imagines the ocean yet again. He imagines the ocean in bright blue, imagines it at sunset the hue of deep wine, sees a sailing ship drift atop the courtyard’s reflecting pool, and craves a pen. He beckons a uniformed servant with an ever-shifting face, who seems to manifest from the dark corners of the room, and proffers a perfectly-weighted silver Yatagan saber, which, when the young prince reaches out, morphs violently, first into a wedding band, and finally to a fountain pen, which floats over the servant’s disembodied hands. Hanno takes the pen, and falls back onto the pillows and fine carpets.

The web-end of all rivers, only freer…

Hanno does not notice he is writing on his hand. Ink, perhaps blood, begins to pool in creases between his fingers, and drips down his arm.

Rocking below deck, upon sackcloth and pine, dizzied…

He turns over as the liquid drips onto his collar, down his shirt. He sees it stain the carpet dark.

Rain swirls down, through plank-cracks and worm-holes, and joins Hanno’s joyful tears…

The ink blots his eyes and splatters upon his face, and when Hanno wipes it from his brow, he wakes up to morning sun beaming through a hole in the wooden roof of the stable, hears someone laughing from across the room, and realizes a horse has been pissing beside his head.

Hanno splashes lake water on his face and spits, then spits again.

“Nasty, nast-ee! Hah!” The laughing man tosses Hanno a small towel. “Once you wash all’at piss off, we’re talkin’ over the next part in the house.”

“Thanks, Bara.” Hanno wipes his face and turns to him. “Appreciate it.”

“Ah, no prob’m, chum. Feels like the whole world’s pissin’ on us, huh? Why we’re here in the first place.” Bara prods Hanno with his index finger. “You just take it a little too serious.”

Hanno grins. “Of course. I’ll keep that in mind next time I sleep in a barn.”

Bara grins back, and his wide frame trots animatedly like a horse back to the house. He looks over his shoulder and laughs. Hanno splashes water in his direction.

He takes a look back at the house to make sure Bara has left, walks a minute or two down the lake’s coast to find a secluded spot, then unbuttons his brown puffed shirt and leaves it tucked and hanging down from his belt, tying the sleeves together at the back of his waist. Moving quickly, he takes the washcloth and runs it over his shoulders, along his chest, up and down the purple-red ridges that stretch out from the base of his sternum, and around the inert mass of scar tissue at his solar plexus, his rift. If it was seen by anyone else here, Hanno knew, there would be hell to pay; they could all already tell that he had a formal education from the way he spoke. If they knew I’d practiced arqala, Hanno pretends, they’d surely tie me up and leave me somewhere to starve, or worse. He shivers at the thought, buttons his shirt back up, and heads back to the house.

Inside, Hanno is greeted by the smell of coffee and toasted grain. He sees the few families he’s traveled with seated throughout the mudroom; through an arch, the living room and kitchen. In the kitchen, a line of tired people wraps around the dining table and back through the archway; the hosts’ eldest daughter, a handsome young woman of about twenty, serves the travelers from a large iron pot. Hanno walks through, glancing around to see where Bara went. For a moment, he thinks that she makes eye contact with him, but when he takes another look, she has turned back to the ladle and bowls.

“I can take that for you, sir.” Mrs. Yasin grabs the towel from Hanno’s shoulder, folds it over her arm, and smiles.

Hanno turns to her. “Thank you, ma’am. You’ve been a very gracious host.”

“It’s no problem at all, not at all.” Mrs. Yasin shakes her head vigorously, then readjusts her shawl. “It’s the least we can do, really.”

“The least you can do means quite a lot to me, ma’am.” Hanno takes her hand and kisses it.

Mrs. Yasin blushes. “My—please, well, please help yourself to a meal, or-or coffee, and let us know if there’s anything else you’ll need before leaving.”

A few minutes later, the woman at the stove ladles a half-portion into Hanno’s bowl. He looks down at it quizzically, then up at her. Her eyes are sharp and playful.

She puts the pot of millet gruel back on the stove. “Putting the moves on my mother, are we, stranger?”

“Just being polite. Nothing more.”

“What’s your name?” She wipes her hands on her apron. “I’m Jayavi.”

“Nice to meet you, Jayavi. Call me Hanno.”

“Well, Hanno, it was very decent of you to let up your space and take the stable last night. My parents thought well of you for it.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“And so did I, for the record.” She ladles the other half-serving into Hanno’s bowl.

“I’m honored.” He sets a spoon into the bowl of thick gruel, then pours some powdered coffee into a paper cup. “I slept great, anyway.”

She pours hot water from a copper kettle into the cup, and the coffee dust blooms, dying the water black.

“Is that so?” Jayavi smirks. “I heard you got well acquainted with Kruni.”

"Kruni?"

“Our draft horse. He doesn’t pee on just anyone, you know.”

Hanno blushes. Bara, you bastard… “Really, it was just nearby, a good few feet away, may as well have been outside, frankly—”

“If you’d like another half-serving,” she giggles, “you’re welcome to one. Just don’t let everyone catch on.”

Taking the gruel and coffee out through the archway, Hanno catches a small child in the corner of the room sitting with her back to an end table. She turns up to her mother with an empty bowl in hand.

“Love, we have to save some for the other families”—she gestures with the child’s bowl towards the rest of the room—“or there won’t be enough for everyone.”

"The girl pouts. “Mama, I’m still hungry.”

“Here, love, have some of mine—”

Hanno crouches down and holds his bowl out to her. “Eat up, little one.”

The girl offers a retreating look at the stranger before her. The mother looks at him with wide eyes. “Sir, it’s alright, really…”

Hanno places the bowl on the carpet in front of the child, and looks at the mother. “If you don’t eat well and keep your strength up, Mama will have to carry you the rest of the way. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?”

The girl sticks her tongue out at him. “No way! I’m gonna be big and strong like daddy and carry mama!”

The mother laughs. “Dida’s father is serving in Askiul, in the lord-regent’s army. She really, really looks up to him.” A jolt of pain shoots across Hanno’s chest. She turns to her child. “Say thank you to the nice man, Dida.”

She takes a big bite. “Fank you to the nice mamm!”

“It’s nothing.” Hanno feels his heart pump. He smiles back at the girl, and stands back up.

He finds Bara in the home’s study, sitting at a side table covered in coffee stains and scattered papers. Across the table sits a man with thick, dark stubble and a pair of reading glasses which sit precariously at the edge of his nose; Hanno recognizes the man as Mr. Yasin. Turning a dial back on a dresser-sized radio console beside the table, Mr. Yasin puts the wired receiver down, and starts walking to the common space. Bara gets up; Yasin nods at Hanno on his way out.

Hanno pulls Bara aside. “Any big news?”

Bara sighs. “Oh, nothin’, just more grim news. Mr. Yasin ‘bout to brief us on the go-plan.”

“Great. How are things in Askiul?”

“Mm—where your family is, yeah? Well…” Bara beckons Hanno out of the room, and shuts the door to the study behind him. “Not great, not good, even. Getting worse by the day. More crackdowns from the Exarch, ‘specially at the border, lotta violence in Aphayon territory to boot. You know how Old King Kgrakim came out with that whole ‘New Askira’ business, pledged her support for the revolutionaries—ah, sorry, did you keep up with the regional politics? Before leaving?”

I suppose you could say that, Hanno thinks, though now, perhaps regional politics are trying to keep up with me. “Not really,” he lies. “I left when I knew I’d have to fight for one side or another.”

Bara nods in understanding. “Didn’t mean to assume. Information’s as good as gold these days, and we only glean so much on the radio. After Adalumeneli kicked out the Kyratisians, buncha places started feeling the revolutionary burn, ‘specially your king. Longtime holding, real snuggled up with the heartland… as I’m sure you know well by now, Askiul territory’s the first ’n last to feel the pressure when any of the colonies act up, and, well, they have been.”

Hanno thinks of one of his mother’s political aphorisms. As a plate perched on the edge of a saber…

“Kgrakim probably knows somethin’ the rest of us don’t, because she’s risked her palace and people over this revolutionary business—”

…when the balance is shattered, the swiftest sword prevails.

“—and the big word goin’ round now is that her son prince Kgotsi is missing.”

“The prince is missing?” Hanno feigns ignorance.

Bara continues. “Nobody can figure the real account. The revolutionaries say he’s being held hostage by the Exarch, probably to try and get Kgrakim to stand down, and I wouldn’t be surprised if’t comes out that Kyratisia’s position says it’s a revolutionary ploy to make Kgrakim defect. All of it supposing he’s not dead by now.”

Hanno feels a brief surge of anger directed at his mother, which fades into a listless self-loathing. She probably had a hand in rumormongering on both sides of the conflict, and though Hanno knew his mother’s silver tongue well, he had not anticipated she would turn his escape into another expedient political tool. What a pathetic truth it is, he thinks, that in reality, that prince is running from all of it.

Some forty refugees cram into the common space, press against the walls and windows, and hold focused attention on Mr. Yasin, who begins to explain the route they will travel on their way out of the country.

“The first leg from here will be a two days’ trek across the Al Joura. We’ll leave today, set up camp in the evening, and then split our group in the morning. From there, Bara will guide you to a pass where you’ll board a freight train bound for Leilenes. Once you arrive, there should be plenty of shippers happy to negotiate passage to Hamzun or elsewhere in Mela in exchange for a couple days’ work.”

A thin man with tattoos on his neck speaks from the crowd. “Is Leilenes safe? Can we wait there for our families?”

Mr. Yasin takes off his glasses and wipes the lenses on his linen shirt. “In our experience, the Kyratisian presence there is light. We can only hope that the conflicts to the east will draw the Exarch’s attention away from the coast, but there’s no way to be certain.” He pauses for a moment with glasses in hand, and looks back at the tattooed man. “I recommend securing your own safety first. We’ll be happy to deliver any correspondence you’d like to leave for your family. Are there any other questions?”

Murmurs spread through the crowd.

“We’ll leave in half an hour. Gather your things and all that you’d like us to get to your families.”

“It’s beautiful,” Hanno remarks.

Jayavi nods. “Damn right.”

He looks out from atop the rocky mesa at the Al Joura’s rolling hills of red sand, the rocky archways and the slender, blue-blossom cactus on the horizon, and imagines again the ocean at sunset, each mark stretching above the sand dunes a buoy or mast.

“Did you travel much, before this?”

Hanno shrugs. “No. I read plenty, though.”

Jayavi brushes sand off of the rock and takes a seat beside him. “Novels?”

“Everything. Poetry, especially.”

“Do you write?”

“I used to write plenty.”

Jayavi stifles a grin. “That explains it.”

“Explains what, the way I talk? You know, I did think people were looking at me sideways when I talked.”

“No, no. It’s not obvious. You talk nice, which is more than I can say for every educated person we help travel. It’s…” Jayavi pauses and meets Hanno’s eyes. “I guess I don’t know, really. You have a different outlook than a lot of the people here. Less dread, I guess? Or determination. It’s like Bara, but he’s more hard-headed.”

Hanno laughs, breaks the eye contact, and looks back at the dunes. “Do you read a lot, Jayavi?”

“I used to read plenty. My dad used to be a professor, and he’s always had plenty of books, so I’ve been reading since I was young.”

“Professor of what?”

“History and economics, dabbled plenty in other fields, though.” Jayavi points out at a broken rock archway on the horizon. “Just about now, he should be passing through there on his way home.”

Bara shouts from a couple tents over. “Jayavi, you want dinner or tents?”

“Tents!” Jayavi shouts back. She gets up, then taps Hanno’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “Well, Hanno, if you’d like to share, I should enjoy reading something of yours sometime.”

Hanno feels a tentative joy creep over him. “I’ll think on it.”

In the morning, after packing the outpost’s tents and supplies down and stowing them beneath the sandstone slabs and cracks in the mesa’s surface, Hanno’s half of the group waits on an outcropping above a wide railway for a diesel freight train.

It approaches with a piercing whistle first, then curves around the corner of the rock wall. Just as Bara had explained, the train slows to a crawl some few feet away, revealing a series of freight boxcar made of steel and wood. From beneath, Bara first guides the older refugees up, then helps the children up the stepladder; from above, Jayavi’s group leaps across to the roof of the boxcar one by one. Hanno leaps first, then the man with the tattooed neck, and Jayavi last; climbing down below through the wooden hatch atop the box, the refugees trail into the car like ants.

Nestled among the crates of trade goods, caked with the smell of dirt and rust, the tired refugees are lulled to sleep by the slow rocking of the train car.

Jayavi shuts the hatch, and Bara maneuvers his way over the sleeping body of Dida, counting bodies as he goes.

“Good hustle, everyone.” Bara dusts his hands off and faces the group at the door between cars. “The engineer’s a friend, and nobody should bother you, so feel free to get to resting. It’ll be a couple of hours before we reach Leilenes. I’ll be back when we reach the station to help everyone out to the trainyard.”

When the adrenaline fades, leaning against the warm wood walls of the freight car, Hanno begins to drift to sleep, thinking of the poems he had once abandoned, of his arqala and how he had to disguise it; he drifts asleep thinking of the tepid disappointment his mother must feel towards him now, and he begins to dream of a life spent traveling.

The train grinds to a halt on the tracks. After a minute of awakening, the passengers of the crammed freight car let out a collective, cascading sigh; after another few minutes, with no news except the smell of brine and smoke leeching in through the ventilation holes at the roof, Hanno feels the silent buildup of shared anxiety between the car’s passengers. He sees Dida’s mother, her eyes locked onto the door, rocking Dida in her arms slightly faster every moment. Hanno glances at Jayavi.

The train car settles on the track with a click. Conversation on the platform becomes audible; Hanno counts at least three distinct voices, each with a prominent Kyratisian accent.

The door to the car slides open. Bara stands in the doorway, out of breath.

“Sorry, everyone, change of plans.” He lifts his head. “Kyratisians casin’ the whole train. Exarch’s soldiers. The mos’ important thing is that we don’t panic—”

The tattooed man responds in a whisper-shout. “Yasin said it’d be safe here! He said it’d be safe!” His voice wavers as the others in the car turn to him. “The hell is wrong? Why the police here now?”

“There are soldiers because that damn missing prince has ‘em scanning every damn port east of Hamzun.”

It’s all my fault.

Jayavi pipes up. “Bara, keep talking. Can we run?”

“If we try to run, they’ll shoot. It’s best to cooperate, for now—don’t say a damn word about how you got here except for through me.”

Bara intends to give himself up?

“And if we’ve got ties to Askiul?” Dida’s mother interjects. “They’ll detain and interrogate us, and who knows what else!”

“They might ask, but they won’t be expecting any revolutionary business this far west. They’ll be interested in who’s smuggling folks and for why, which we’ll say is me, and for cheap work—understood? The upshot to all this is that they aren’t looking for any of you, at least not here.”

“I wish that were true.” Hanno feels his hands shaking; he runs a hand over his shirt, across where his rift lies, and stands. “They’re looking for me.”

A metal door crashes shut two cars ahead. Caws erupt from a flock of seagulls.

The refugees turn to look at each other in sets, as though to ask what’s happening, and Hanno.

“You’re the prince?” Dida exclaims.

“That’s right, Dida.” Hanno cuffs his sleeves. “And I’m going to try and help.”

“Hang on, piss boy—Kgotsi?” Jayavi looks at Bara. “Did you know about this?”

Hanno cuts in. “No, he didn’t.”

“Euh, I really didn’t.” Bara steps towards Hanno, and shakes his head. “Chum, you been a stand up guy, but seeing as it’s all our skin on the line, you better have a real good plan.”

“I do.” Hanno unbuttons his shirt so that it hangs over his shoulders; he feels a rush of exhilaration. The rift on his chest reveals itself to the refugees. Gasps emerge from the crowded car. “If they’re looking for me, then I’ll show ‘em what they’re looking for isn’t here.”

Jayavi says something that Hanno can’t quite make out. She looks up at him, and he imagines a combination of pity and wistfulness dance across her sharp eyes. He tries to stop imagining their thoughts.

Up and out, then—he leaps atop a crate and unlatches the lacquer wood hatch on the ceiling—through plank-cracks and wormholes…

Brisk ocean air rushes into the train car. Hanno pulls himself up to the roof.

“Kgotsi!”

He looks down at Jayavi, expecting a scowl. Instead, he finds a smile.

“Good luck.”

“Aye, good luck, chum,” calls Bara. “Break some legs.”

Smiling back, he shuts the wooden hatch, and feels the manic vertigo of arqala. Hanno above the sackcloth and pine, he composes, ever dizzier.

In a second split by the twist of his ankle, Hanno breaks the space behind him with a sickening crack that shakes the freight car beneath him, hooks his thumb and forefinger on to the plain air in front of him, and shouts out to the uniformed guards at the platform.

“I am Kgotsi, prince of Askiul, and I am no captive!”

One of the soldiers raises a whistle. Hanno’s rift palpitates and his body rotates as he twists his ankle back; when he is confident he has their full attention, in a single, coordinated motion, with pressure as consistent as his discipline allows, he pulls back the space before him, and as a deep, inked line cutting through the very air, the space ruptures. The bark of a soldier to get down from the car, the bolt of another soldier’s rifle, and the rest of the station’s audible world fail to reach Hanno; he hears only the pounding of his own heart, and in the very moment he releases his fingers, he rockets through the air towards the dockyard of Leilenes.

For the first time in the twenty-three years of his life, at towering heights above the port town of Leilenes, Hanno sees the brilliant blue Qilakki Sea, the Basin of the World, from which, he could feel, all the practices of life emerged at one point or another, in their violent and beautiful possibilities, sees it again dreamless and pure, the web-end of civilization, the free-beating heart of life, deep pool of stars, and begins to free fall.