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“We’ll be at the edge of the Infinite Waters soon,” Blaise observes. “Perhaps it is time we take a rest, lest the coast scavengers come and slash our throats.”
Out there, in the depths of what once held the deepest ocean of them all, the sun is sharper than a blade, serrating and blistering uncovered skin. Once the water left, nothing remained to temper its scorch, to absorb its light.
“You’re probably right,” Draco speaks from behind a veil. “There is a carcass not one mile from here. It would make for good cover tonight,” he adds, a gloved hand sitting against his forehead.
In the salt deserts, the only true shelter is that of Leviathan carcasses laying waste amongst dunes of salt. The legends say they were once the greatest foe mankind had come to face; monstrous bodies of scales and flesh torpedoed a growing fishing industry, broke every underwater pipe and communication canal, and undermined every effort man made to conquer the seas.
Mankind retaliated, and the seas punished. Some say the water’s disappearance was always announced, known to the squinting men and their tools of scientific study; others say the Leviathans were gods who should never have been defied.
None did predict their bodies would one day become a refuge for the salt dwellers.
“How much water do you have left?” Draco’s camel sways beneath, heavy hooves crunching on salt as it walks.
“Enough to last us the night and another day’s journey.” Blaise does not check—he doesn’t need to, having earned his knowledge from the last remaining water druid in a long line inhabiting the decades. Once, those women were believed to be witches; now, the world would give anything to see them rise from the stakes at which they were burned. Though Blaise, by nature of his sex, cannot wield his mother’s powers, he has harnessed every scattered bit of her craft he could find and made it his currency. No one will kill the only man with any hope of finding the last rumored ocean.
“We’ll have to think about gathering more once we make it past the bounds of Bogarasi.” This is the rhythm of all their journeys: the quest for water. “Then, we should head further out West and travel to the Infernal Bay.”
“The Infernal Bay? What are you hoping to find there? Not even the coast scavengers roam it anymore. They say even all the salt is gone.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m not sure I understand.” The bridle holding Blaise’s camel is looped around his hand multiple times, which gives him enough command over the animal to make it catch up to Draco and meet his veiled gaze. “I did not agree to work for you just for you to drag us down to the bowels of Hell.”
“You’ve been paid more than handsomely to join me on this journey.” If the language spoken by generations of Zabinis is one of immaterial knowledge, the Malfoys only speak in gold. Vaults overflowing with it, gathered with less than scrupulous means and an abundance of plundering desperation, generations ago, when the first ocean left the soil. Draco has never known anything else; he’s grown in the embrace of a green orchard, learned to run on a well-watered lawn, never going to bed with anything less than a bursting belly and a wet mouth. That is, of course, until… “Besides, I have reason to believe this would not be a pointless journey,” he adds with a crack in his voice, as if caught up by regret. He does try to treat Blaise like an equal—can he be blamed for never having been taught?
“And yet you do not trust me enough to tell me.”
“I trust you. I do not trust that you would keep it safe if we’re ambushed and tortured,” he admits. “You’ve always followed water. The salt deserts are not an obstacle you’ve been prepared for.”
All around them, the salt crystals absorb the sunlight and project shattered rainbows around them; the pillars that time and men have formed around them seem almost as gems. There is beauty to the salt deserts, but it’s a treacherous one. The quickest way to meet one’s death is to be so enthralled by the pillars that one remains in awe, bowing to them, until they die of thirst. The dispersed bones of previous men are a reminder Draco tries to keep in mind as he stares at the coloured light bleeding on the ground.
They reach the carcass a few minutes later; like all those they’ve come across, it’s gigantic, an arch of bone so high above the sky turns dark the moment they step past the mouth and into its throat. If Leviathans make such good shelters, it’s because of the skin—tougher than the strongest of leather, it has been blanched and strengthened by the sun, leaving a pleasant roof over whoever enters one. Some of the larger cadavres now house entire towns of salt dwellers—or, at least, so the rumour says. Draco has yet to come across one.
“I’ll take first guard,” states Blaise as he steps down from his camel, still visibly bristled by Draco’s comment. “I’ll make sure to wake you should we be ambushed and I let my whore mouth run,” he adds, so venomously Draco almost feels a pang of guilt. Almost.
Because he’s crossed paths with the scavengers.
Because he’s seen what they can do. What they will do.
“Fine. Take my dagger.” It’s a family heirloom—silver-and-emerald, engraved, passed down from father to son and hidden in a cane. A tool taken straight from the assassin’s arsenal.
They set up camp in complete silence, stretching out bamboo mats over salt flooring and snacking on strips of dry venison until Draco’s head hits the floor and slumber sneaks into his mind. It’s the same dream every time—really, not so much a dream as a memory, a fleeting flurry of visions and sensations. The night his mother died and set him on this endless journey for the last mythical ocean: the burgundy of her blood as she lost the daughter she so desperately wanted; the despair in her wails bouncing against the walls; the loud echo of his father’s absence; the pained look as Death walked around the room, refusing to provide her with final relief—a look of request, of finding eternal peace by tasting her son’s blade; his eyes looking into hers, as one should always do when they kill, as he sliced her throat open with one hand and held her with the other; and, finally, the healer’s words etched in blood and loss. “Only the last drops of ocean water can bring her back.”
He tosses and turns in his sleep as the memories keep flooding in—the only downpour of water he’s known in his life. The sensation of suffocating, of drowning, of losing breath. And no quenching of his scorch-dry throat.
Is this what the ocean is really like?
When he wakes to take second guard, Blaise is sitting cross-legged by their linen bags, an eye to the mouth of the Leviathan. The night is cold, and Draco is trapped by the feeling of thirst overwhelming him all at once. “You should sleep,” he croaks to his companion.
Blaise barely turns back to look at him. He hums in the dead silence of the carcass before pushing his body back to a standing position and walking over to his bamboo mat. “You still cry in your sleep,” he says as he tosses Draco his dagger. “We may have been heard.”
Draco purses his lips and nods. For a time, he relied on a combination of potent elixirs to kill the dreams and let him sleep in emptiness, but he found that his energy was lowered by half during the daytime, which was, ultimately, a worse liability to be saddled with.
When Blaise sleeps, Draco often wonders about home. He left behind an ailing father—no regrets there—as well as two aunts, some cousins, and (perhaps most importantly, loathe as he is to admit it) the one man he’s always wished to suffocate to death for the pleasure of it. Harry Potter. Once a scrawny kid, now a bitter rival. He put an end to seven of the Malfoy assassination plots, swearing he wouldn’t die until their line was extinct and their blood money returned to the people of Wildefair, thousands of miles from here.
If Draco hadn’t seen his mother bleed to death in her own bed, he would have thought Potter was behind it—it is perhaps the only reason he’s agreed to leave. Because it was his choice, and not Potter’s doing. It’s also the only reason he yearns to return—to finally enact revenge on the man who has attempted to bleed his family dry and kill their traditions.
The sky is dotted with an orange cloud of stars when he’s dragged away from his thoughts by a clanking nearby. Dagger dotted by white knuckles, eyes and ears on high alert, Draco stands and carefully walks towards the sound. It’s coming from the stomach, that much he’s certain of—it was a risk Blaise and he were willing to take when they entered, preferring to remain in the shallow depths of the throat so they could make a quick exit if needed.
The clanking is not unfamiliar to his ear—he’s heard the same noise in the forges of Wildefair, in the nomadic camps of salt dwellers, in the hallowed halls of the Shanjing marketplace: it’s the sound of a man sharpening metal dulled by salt.
One man is no threat to someone like Draco Malfoy: he killed his first when he was seven with an arrow to the chest. His foot is so light the salt forgets to crunch beneath his boot; his breath stalls and waits, stored in his lungs for safekeeping; his clothes turn to air, neither flapping nor bristling as he approaches the dark head of hair he’s about to cut off clean.
His movements are quick like one-two-three: he seizes the man by the hair, tears his head back, and places his blade against his neck. “Any last words?” In the darkness, he can almost make out his traits. Almost. The only thing he really notices are two emerald green lights staring up at him.
“Potter?” His grip falters for a second.
“Malfoy,” Potter smiles. Even on the verge of death, he finds ways to be arrogant. “I would give you some last words, but they’d be wasted on you. Unless you’re still seeking the last ocean, that is.”
His grip falters. Completely, this time. His wrist goes slack and his hand falls, dropping the blade that has killed a thousand men before and was meant to kill a thousand more. “How do you know what I’m looking for?” He’s told no one—only Blaise, who has no one to tell.
Potter rises to his feet and turns to face him, an eerie spark burning in his stare. “Because I know where it is.”