The Al-Orizin sailed through the sea of icebergs for two more days, barely managing to stay out of sight of Iyomelka’s ship.
Ystya followed Saan whenever he went out on deck. “If I can sense my mother, then she must know I am here as well. She will never give up.”
Saan looked into her eyes and gave her a reassuring smile. “And I promise I won’t give up either.”
He climbed up to sit with Yal Dolicar, who was taking his turn in the lookout nest. Both men wrapped themselves in blankets and stared out at the waters. Dolicar’s teeth chattered. “I’ve traveled throughout Uraba and Tierra, and once I went all the way to miserable Iboria Reach, but I have never been as cold as this.” When Saan reached out to take the spyglass with his cloth-wrapped hand, Dolicar warned, “Take care, Captain. It’s so cold the metal will freeze to your eyelid. I doubt you want a spyglass attached permanently to your face.”
Saan cautiously peered through the eyepiece, sweeping the sea around them. Large sections of ice calved off from the nearest berg and splashed into the water. Spray drenched the shivering crew on deck, who shouted in dismay.
Dolicar rubbed his hands together under the white steam of his exhalation. “I have a proposal for you, Captain—if you finish my shift for me, I’ll pay you one of the coins I took from the ice-locked ship.”
Saan’s lips quirked in a smile. “I never said you could keep those coins in the first place.”
Yal Dolicar shrugged. “Then I’ll split them with you. You’re the captain.”
Saan laughed. “Yes, I’m the captain. I have other duties besides chatting.” He took his leave and climbed down from the lookout nest.
By the time he got back to his cabin, his fingers were numb. When he closed the door behind him, relieved to feel the warmth, he was happy to find Sen Sherufa and Ystya huddled there, studying charts.
Over the past two days, the Saedran woman had carefully thawed the ice that covered the chart table salvaged from the ancient ship. Slowly and gently, she removed the frozen layer until she could peel away the chart underneath. After flattening and drying it, she spread the chart beside the ancient Map of Urec that Saan had brought along.
Ystya stood up, excited. “We’ve figured out something important—the maps match up.”
Sen Sherufa was not one to speculate, but she also seemed convinced. “I can’t decipher the frozen captain’s language after all, but his drawings are careful and detailed.” She pointed at the rough chart. “Look here, a sea of floating ice mountains. And they’re on Urec’s Map, too.”
Saan bent closer to look. On the fringe of Urec’s Map next to stylized drawings of curved waves, illustrations depicted white mountains floating in the sea. From studying this relic before, Saan had always thought those drawings were a chain of islands, assuming that either the ink color had faded or that they represented snowcapped peaks. Now that Sherufa compared them with the frozen captain’s charts, he realized that the white mountains were indeed the icebergs in this frozen sea. “That’s the connection we’ve been waiting for! Now we can mark our ship’s position on Urec’s Map and follow it all the way to Terravitae.”
“Oh, we are close,” Ystya said. “We will be in open water again soon, and then we can chart a straight course to Terravitae.”
He hugged Ystya, wrapped himself in a blanket, and wrapped his hands in warm cloths. “You two continue your work and keep my cabin warm. We have a course to set.”
That afternoon, they sailed between two large icebergs and discovered open waters beyond—the end of the frozen sea, and Saan meant to get a good head start on Iyomelka. At last they could proceed as fast as the wind and sail could take them.
Somewhere far behind, Iyomelka’s ship remained lost in the ice. “This is a race,” Saan said, “and I plan to reach Terravitae before she catches us.”