TThe Lantern Coast Wiki

Episode 3

What the Water Keeps

The Patience finds sunken Ilith, and Seren of Esk tells the Esk account of how its tidecallers drowned the city. Seren cannot remember writing the unsigned letter. Mira Osk dives into the drowned bell tower and recovers a second brass compass lying beside a pole bearing the Grey Wardens' silver hook; both compasses then point back toward Port Hallow, where Tobin Reed is to hang in six days.

Synopsis

On the third day at sea the water turned the colour of tea and the Brass compass needle began to tremble. Seren of Esk said they were over Ilith. Old Bettany dropped the sail and let the Patience drift over impossibly shallow water, through which Mira Osk could see roofs, green copper domes, a bell tower with its bell still hanging and streets laid out like the lines on a palm.

Seren told them the city sank in the Year 412, three hundred years ago by the Council's count. In the telling of Esk, the city drowned itself: the Ilithi were all tidecallers, and when a fleet came for them they called the sea in to drown it, called too hard, lost everything they remembered, and the sea never went back. Mira summed it up: a whole city forgot how to stop.

Mira showed Seren the unsigned letter with its backward-slanting hand. Seren went still: she remembered the alley and the wax, but not writing the letter. Touching the empty hole in her lip where her ring had been, she allowed that perhaps she had not written it, or perhaps the harbour call had taken the memory.

That night Mira dreamed of Varr Dane saying I knew your mother, and woke with the compass in her fist and its needle pointing straight down.

In the morning she dove. Through the arched window of the bell tower she found a room the sea had not touched in three hundred years: a writing desk, a chair, a shelf of books gone to pulp, and on the desk a brass compass identical to hers, its glass whole, its needle pointing up at her. Beside it lay a lantern-man's pole with the silver hook of the Grey Wardens worked into its handle.

Bettany hauled Mira back aboard with the second compass. When Mira said the Wardens had been in Ilith long ago, Bettany objected that the Wardens are two hundred years old, founded by the Council after the Drowning to keep the harbour. "Then everyone's wrong," said Seren.

Set side by side on the deck, the two compasses swung together and pointed north, back toward Port Hallow and the Gull Gate, where in six days the Wardens would hang Tobin Reed. Mira began taking in the anchor rope without being asked.

Timeline events

  • Year 412 (three hundred years ago, by the Council's count) — Ilith sinks; in the Esk telling, its tidecallers drown the city while calling the sea against an attacking fleet.
  • About two hundred years ago (common account) — The Harbour Council founds the Grey Wardens after the Drowning, according to Old Bettany.
  • Day 3 at sea — The Patience drifts over drowned Ilith.
  • Day 4, morning — Mira Osk dives to Ilith's bell tower and recovers the Second brass compass; both compasses point back north.
  • Six days after the dive — Scheduled hanging of Tobin Reed at the Gull Gate.

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