The Last Mapmaker

At Avens Island, most of the ship’s officers disembark along with Paiyoon, for they are unwilling to take orders from Rian. A large portion of the crew leaves as well, deeming the voyage too risky now that they know a course has been set to cross the Harbinger Sea. Among those who remain are Dr. Pinching, Bo, and Grebe. From this point forward, Sai notices a distinct change in Rian. She is more formal and distant and no longer treats Sai like an equal or even a friend. Although she is not officially the captain, she has fully taken over the role of commander. One day, Sai asks to make a copy of Rian’s silk fishermen’s map, which Rian keeps in her jacket pocket so that she can consult it as needed. Rian refuses, claiming that anyone with a copy could sell it and make a fortune.

The Prosperity attempts to outrun an intense storm but gets caught in it. As Sai tries to get belowdecks, she is suddenly pulled into Captain Sangra’s cabin. The captain claims that Rian has put something in her vitamin drops to keep her weak and sedated. She stopped taking them and is finally starting to regain her strength. She realizes that Rian has charmed Sai just as she has charmed everyone else still onboard. When Sai tells the captain where they are and admits that Paiyoon has disembarked, Sangra declares that they are all truly lost. She reveals her awareness that Rian is her sister and says that Rian’s story about being denied the family’s advantages is false. Sai is tempted to ignore this revelation because Rian has been kind to her and ostensibly wants her to have a better life. Doubt gnaws at her, though, and she asks the captain what the real story is.

The captain says that her father doted on Rian was doted and gave her every advantage, but she also acknowledges that Rian was denied a lineal and the family name. In a sense, their father showered her with gifts while denying her worth. Anchalee and Rian were best friends in college, but things changed. Anchalee gave Rian a fortune to pay off her gambling debts, but Rian always needed more. Although Rian claimed that she worked her way up in through the Navy ranks, the reality was that their father made sure to put Rian under Anchalee’s command in order to protect her. Additionally, Rian never saved Anchalee’s life; the captain just reported it that way in hopes that Rian would finally be satisfied upon gaining her own lineal.

The captain then reveals more of her own story to Sai. She shows a picture featuring her and a man with whom she fell in love while stationed in Amnaj. Sai observes that the man has Bo’s eyes. The man wanted to marry Anchalee, but she refused because she was from a royal family and he was a commoner. They had a son together, and Anchalee left the child with his father and promised to return, but the war went on and on. For years, she sent money to her son’s aunt in Pitaya. She was desperate to get back to her son, but the war always kept her away. Eventually, she stopped getting letters from the boy’s aunt. Rian found out about the son and used the information to extort Anchalee to gain a place on the expedition. The captain tells Sai that she looked for her son when they docked in Pitaya, but she couldn’t find him. Her son’s name was Amanat, but they called him Bo. Right after she reveals this, Dr. Pinching bursts into the cabin, shouting about a fire in the galley.

While Sai goes belowdecks to look for Bo, Captain Sangra helps the sailors who are fighting to steer away from the worst of the storm, but something has damaged the rudder, and it won’t turn. Sai wakes Bo before he succumbs to the smoke from the fire. They return to the deck to find massive waves crashing over them. Bo wraps ropes around their arms to keep them both from being washed away. When they realize that they won’t survive another wave like the last, they rush to get belowdecks before the next one hits. They make it to the first open cabin, Rian’s, just in time.

Sai and Bo wait in Rian’s cabin for the worst of the storm to pass. That night, as soon as she is able, Sai goes on deck to look for Rian or Anchalee. When she looks over the side of the ship, she sees a massive, scaly beast coiled around the hull. Then she blinks, and it disappears. Suddenly, she can feel the ship moving more freely and realizes that the rudder is no longer jammed. Sai resumes her search and finds Rian and the captain fighting each other on the top-deck. The scene is only revealed during the intermittent lightning flashes, but she is nearly certain that she witnesses Rian throwing Captain Sangra overboard.

Without the captain’s protection, Sai senses that she and Bo are in great danger. They hide in the galley behind the cook’s counter, but Grebe finds them. He says that the captain’s disappearance will look like evidence of mutiny, and even if Rian finds a way out of it, the crew will be condemned. He says that the only way to escape punishment is for everyone to stick to the same story and make it look like an accident. Because Sai has pretended to be a high-born snob, the rest of the crew believes that she will not go along with this plan, so they mean to kill her.

Grebe demands the truth about Sai’s background. Sai admits that she is from the Fens, and that her real name is Sodsai Mudawan. Grebe says that he didn’t follow her that night in the Fens to rob her; instead, he was trying to find her father. They had both served time in jail together, and he owed Mud a favor for protecting him from an abusive guard. Grebe promises to pay back the favor now by helping Sai. He says he’ll tell the rest of the crew that he never found her or Bo. He then lowers Sai and Bo down onto a crate floating in the water. Using this as a raft of sorts, they will be able to float to a small island that is visible in the distance.