Bladewater observed Jonathan over the rim of her glass. She had let the man tell his story without interrupting.

  “And you just let the kids run away?” the woman asked.

  “What else could I have done? The matrix effect will fade, and the boy will recuperate, if he survives that long.” Jonathan didn’t want to say aloud that the North was keenly interested in incidents involving blood and matrices. If someone there heard about the released memories, it would mean Patrik or someone far worse than him would come to gather the ring, and Aldermei and Jonathan, if his participation became evident. A memory of strategej Astaria’s cold eyes played in Jonathan’s head. Anhava’s fanatical cousin was a nightmare he didn’t want to unleash. He took a long sip of beer.

  “That sounds cruel. A death can be an easy escape, but the kid is likely to end up as a study subject or in a curiosity show,” Bladewater said, staring at her drink.

  “Street kids die daily from all kinds of incidents.”

  “You just said you have kids of your own.”

  “So what? They have nothing to do with this.” Jonathan’s answer was too quick and too sharp.

  The Navigator said nothing, studying the young man who was only some years older than her oldest grandchild.

  At last, Jonathan let his gaze slip from the tattooed woman to the table. “I couldn’t think of anything that would have helped. And I had promised to meet you.”

  “Is there anything to do, except to keep the boy safe and wait for it to pass?”

  Jonathan drank his beer, thinking about what to say. There was no reason why he wouldn’t tell Bladewater at least a shard of the truth. “In theory, the false memories could be sucked back into the matrix.” Jonathan picked the ring from his pocket to study it. The carving was faultless, and the green jewel itself was of a type he had never seen before.

  “Do you fill that thing using a living person’s blood?” Bladewater sounded curious.

  “These should not exist. Or at least one should not use them. Not on this scale. I believe this is an ancient one, probably someone brought it with them from the old world,” Jonathan answered softly, his eyes following the fine details of the matrix, deciphering its logic. The Navigator had never seen the restless Bird so deep in concentration. “It was an ancient habit to gather a few memories before someone died,” Jonathan carried on, without mentioning that the mere possibility had led to abusing the technique, and its implications had been one of the reasons for a rebellion inside the Ainadu.

  ”So the memories of a long-dead Ainadu took hold of this Aldermei?” Bladewater said.

  “I guess. I am not an expert, but it looked like that.”

  “Like a blood ghost from the horror stories?”

  “In a way, yes,” Jonathan said evasively. The subject was heading too deep into the symbiosis between the Ainadu and the dragons. Still, he was unwilling to lie to Bladewater. “The blood sometimes carries whispers of memories, but this was a more concentrated phenomenon.”

  “Finding Aldermei can’t be too difficult for the Bird,” Bladewater stated.

  Jonathan shrugged. He could put a word forward because someone somewhere would have heard about the boy. He was thinking about Aldermei, his brother, and their parent, who had cut the boy's hair with some style and mended his clothes with neat stitches. Jonathan thought about his children growing up almost without their father, although under the wings of their mother’s parents.

  Probably, Alder hadn’t known he was of the Ainadu bloodline. The people had mixed and lived among each other during the four or five generations that Ainadu had been at Watergate. Still, the Ainadu inheritance was rarer than it should have been if one traced the mixing lineages, and often the bloodline skipped a generation or two before manifesting.

  “I could try to find them,” Jonathan said. Bladewater nodded and reassuringly patted his arm. The silence spread around them.

  “I try to act as a father,” Jonathan whispered, “Enidtha never asked me to stay, I guess all is easier when I am not messing up her things.”

  “How does it make anything easier?” Bladewater asked calmly. She had lived her life traveling the seas, but Jonathan’s pained looks told a lot about his internal turmoil. “Let me take a guess, my pretty Bird. Living with the family feels too binding? You love them, but the demands feel like a cage.”

  “Yeah, that. And there are expectations from my relatives.”

  “So you are looking for freedom by serving Viper?”

  The man exhaled. “I could leave him any moment,” he lied.

  ***

  The message was delivered the next afternoon when Jonathan enjoyed an iced coffee on Bladewater’s terrace. He had spent the night in her guest room, as often happened when the woman was in Haven. Jonathan had a place of his own, a few rooms provided by Viper, but he generally avoided them.

  The Navigator was always pleased to see Jonathan ‘eating a proper breakfast after a good night’s sleep,’ as the woman put it. Jonathan was unsure if Bladewater had become a friend, an occasional employer, or an adopted grandmother. This morning she felt like the latter.

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  A slender woman, one of Viper’s messengers, took an offered glass of water and gulped it down. “The Bird, one of the kids you asked for, has been found. The older brother is still missing. They are Aldermei and Stephanem Veringe, the grandkids of the deceased skycaptain Veringe. The family fell into financial trouble with the passing of their patriarch and…”

  “Spare the lecture,” Jonathan interrupted. He didn’t want the details and didn’t want to feed any more ballast to his already heavy conscience. Bad luck from meddling with the northern business seemed to follow the Veringe family.

  “As you wish. Stephanem has not returned home. They live in the meat cutters’ district, downhill from the carriage turning point, in the backyard of a place called Honhau.” As usual, the woman provided exact information. “A kid fitting Aldermei’s description was taken to the Old Mariula Memorial Home last evening.”

  Jonathan nodded. Haven inhabitants believed Old Mariula to fight against the ash demons, and her followers had taken fighting against the illnesses of the mind as their sole purpose. “Was there something more?”

  “No, the Bird.”’

  “Thanks. What was your name? You have never said it?”

  The woman smiled, the expression moving the rash covering the side of her chin. “The Bird does not need my name. I am just a messenger, and we serve the same master.” The woman nodded and left.

  “I heard the Veringe house was sold,” Bladewater commented. “Do you want me to accompany you?”

  “I don’t need your authority to manage a few self-promoted saviors. I prefer to deal with this by myself.” Jonathan didn’t mention his suspicion that Aldermei was beyond help, but the Navigator was a realist and probably knew it. Jonathan drank his coffee and prepared to visit the Old Mariula Memorial Home.

  “Whatever happens, you will come back this evening and tell me about it.” Bladewater’s words were a command, and Jonathan could sense the underlying message: Don’t disappear to drown this into a drunken stupor.

  “I will,” Jonathan promised, intending to keep his word.

  ***

  Sometime later, the Bird followed a gray-haired woman along the brightly illuminated, disinfectant-smelling corridor in the Old Mariula Memorial Home. The woman was dressed in a uniform-like dress with the hem showing her tightly laced shoes. Her apron was clean but had chemical stains that no wash could remove. The woman’s fingertips were colored blue, and they testified to the hours spent preparing and processing the treatments given in this house.

  The followers of Old Mariula said that the end of the world madness moved into people’s heads when the machines turned quiet, and the ash rained from the skies to land into their souls. They searched for the treatments for the mind as fervently as they talked about the sins of the past world.

  The corridor was eerily quiet. They passed closed doors that led to patients’ rooms.

  “Is it always so silent here?” the Bird asked.

  “Serenity is the third step on the way to confronting the madness,” the woman replied in severe tones. “The operations known to cause distress take place in the basement.” The words made the Bird almost shiver when the woman led him to a wooden door at the end of the corridor. She knocked and stepped in without waiting for an answer.

  The man had expected an office, but there was a room unlike anything he had ever seen. Smooth material covered the floor, sucking all the sounds. The walls were plastered, and there were fake windows on three sides. The windows showed skillfully painted scenes of high buildings reaching towards a sky where machines flew. The furniture was light and curved, and the walls displayed equipment saved from the end of the world or built to resemble such. It was a comfortable room with a magnificent -if painted- view, but it belonged to the world that had turned into ruins and ash over three hundred years ago.

  Another woman was lounging in a chair with a piece of technology the Bird first assumed to be a functional control panel. Soon, he understood the woman was using it to support her papers. The woman wore an unusual set of tight black trousers and a shapeless short-sleeved shirt decorated with colorful abstract shapes. Her hair was gathered behind a band supporting a nearly transparent, bluish sign hovering above her head. It made no sense to Jonathan.

  “Heelooou!” the woman on the chair said, dragging the vowels far too long. The one leading the Bird waved her hand in a greeting. She sat on the sofa. The man was astonished by the change in his guide's behavior.

  “This dude is Jonathan Byrd. He is asking after the boy from yesterday. The one who heard a voice,” the woman who had guided him said.

  “Okay, Jonny, then.” The woman on the chair fixed her bright eyes on the Bird. “Sit down, man. You are in the Memorial Home. We heal the end-of-the-world nightmares by guiding the mind to confront them. This room is used to contact certain types of memories, but there are also other rooms.”

  The Bird believed not all the rooms were this bright. He sat down on the sofa covered with some slippery material. “I’d like to meet that boy.”

  “Too late, Jonny,” the woman wearing trousers said: “His arrival caused some commotion, and he already has a sponsor.”

  The Bird was not surprised. The Memorial Home operated in the grey area to finance its operations as most successful businesses did, at least from the Bird’s viewpoint. “That was quick. You know he has a family?”

  “Yeah, the big bro signed the papers.” Neither did this one surprise the Bird. Maybe the boys could read, but they surely did not understand what they had signed. “In that case, you’ll have to tell me where he was taken.” The man relaxed on the sofa but stared at the woman opposite him with pale eyes.

  “Take Jonny out,” the woman said, and the woman who had led him in stood up.

  “No,” the Bird said, and the woman immediately took a black piece of equipment from her apron pocket. It resembled a pepper grinder.

  “Stand up and follow me,” the woman said, returning to her earlier authoritative tone. The Bird smiled and stood. He used the moment to spring onto the woman in the chair and drag her to the floor. The Bird locked the woman in his hold, wrapping his hand effortlessly around her neck.

  “Let her go!” The other woman commanded. She pointed her tool at the man, a piece of copper-colored metal shining on its end.

  The Bird laughed. The woman struggled in his hold. The man held her index finger very close to her eye, ready to push it into the wet, white matter. “Give me the location.”

  “Put it away, Essie! What Tarasten’s demon are you? DON’T! I’ll tell.” The woman screamed when the Bird forced the lacquered nail to touch her eye.

  Essie put down her weapon, and the Bird let the finger pull further from the eye. He didn’t release his cruel hold.

  “Eshmahner Jeerhooven.” The woman said.

  “And?”

  “…a long-term customer. A jeweler from the inner city.”

  The Bird released his hold and pushed the woman away. “See, all nice and sophisticated.” The man grinned; this was the easy role to play. But a tiny voice in his mind pointed out that this discussion could have been carried out using gentler methods. The same voice continued that one day he would need tools besides the Bird’s impulsive violence, and maybe, just maybe, making the Old Mariula his enemy had not been a wise move.