Chapter 14: The Third Kingdom — Windmouth

Windmouth turned out to be nothing like loud, colorful Keraven — a narrow, elongated bay squeezed between two rocky headlands, where the town clung to the hillsides in neat rows of whitewashed houses, and the wind that gave the place its name never seemed to still for a moment, chasing dry leaves and the smell of sea salt through the narrow streets.

"What we're looking for is kept here," Hasso said, once the crew had gone ashore, leaving only a minimal watch aboard. "At least, that's what Veyra said. The archive of the third kingdom — the oldest repository of documents on the whole coast. If any records of the Inquisition from half a century ago survive anywhere, it's here."

As the crew made their way through the narrow streets from the pier toward the hill, Mira kept catching herself glancing back — not so much from fear of any specific threat, but from that same relentless sense of being watched that had followed her since her very first encounter with Renhart at sea. Windmouth, unlike bustling Keraven, felt like a town where any stranger stood out plainly, and that unsettled her nearly more than the anonymity of a big port ever had.

"Don't keep looking back," Hasso advised her quietly. "It betrays nerves faster than anything else. Walk like you've got nothing to hide — it's the only reliable way not to draw attention."

Mira tried to follow the advice, though every rustle of wind through the narrow alleys between the whitewashed houses set her heart racing all over again.

The archive turned out to be a grand but crumbling building at the very top of the hill — once, evidently, the palace of some local ruler, now converted into a repository of dusty scrolls and half-decayed books, watched over by a single archivist, a lean man of indeterminate age named Orrin, whose spectacles looked thicker than most of the volumes he kept.

"Singers?" Orrin repeated, upon hearing Hasso's question, and for a moment his face took on the same wary look Mira had come to recognize all too well from her time in Keraven. But then, to her surprise, the archivist sighed and gestured for them to follow him deeper among the shelves. "Few ask about it so directly. Most prefer euphemisms — 'the events of the Clarification,' 'the lost tradition.' Bluntness is refreshing, though it does startle."

He led them to a far, little-visited corner of the archive, to a shelf crowded with scrolls so old that some would have crumbled to dust at careless handling.

"Half a century ago," Orrin began, carefully unrolling one of the less fragile documents, "the Royal Inquisition, still a very young order then, came into possession of an artifact created for a single purpose: to silence the voice of the sea where ordinary weapons proved useless. They called it the Anchor." He pointed to a crude drawing in the corner of the scroll: a heavy metal object covered in the same symbols Mira had seen in the glowing water on that first night. "According to these records, the Anchor was forged from ore mined at the very heart of this bay, and charged…" Orrin hesitated, choosing his words, "charged with the blood of the last singers who refused to renounce the gift willingly."

Mira felt bile rise in her throat.

"They killed singers to build a weapon against the sea — using the singers themselves?"

"Cruel logic, I agree," Orrin said quietly. "But, alas, not uncommon for that era. According to these records, the Anchor was used once, here, in the waters of Windmouth, to suppress something the documents refer to simply as 'the Voice' — capitalized, as if they were afraid to name it more precisely. After that use, the sea in these waters, by contemporary accounts, remained unnaturally still for nearly ten years."

"Where is this Anchor now?" asked Captain Darnveil.

Orrin hesitated longer than the simple question warranted.

"Officially, it's kept in the Crown's treasury, under heavy guard, as a symbol of victory over heresy. Unofficially…" He lowered his voice, though there wasn't another soul in the archive besides them. "Unofficially, there are rumors that several years ago the Inquisition took it back 'for further study' and never returned it. Where exactly — I don't know. But if the Inquisition has grown interested in singers again, enough to patrol the coast hunting for 'anomalies,' as you put it — it would be reasonable to assume the Anchor isn't simply gathering dust on some shelf."

The archivist's words hung in the air with heavy, ominous weight, and Mira couldn't help but remember the voice from her dream: "Find what is hidden there." She looked at the crude drawing of the artifact on the scroll — a metal construction covered in symbols, one that had once taken the lives of people like her — and felt rising inside her not only fear, but something resembling anger, old, inherited from generations she'd known nothing about a mere week ago.

"So we're not just looking for a museum piece," she said quietly. "We're looking for a weapon someone may already be bringing here specifically to use against me."

Captain Darnveil looked at her, and his gaze held the same understanding, heavy and inescapable.

"I'm afraid so," he said. "And given how stubbornly Renhart has been tracking us this whole time, I wouldn't be surprised to learn he's already here — or will be very soon."

Orrin, who'd been listening to this exchange with growing unease, adjusted his spectacles nervously.

"If you'll permit the advice of an outsider," he said, "be extremely careful with your inquiries in this town. Windmouth is small, and rumors travel faster here than anywhere else on the coast. If the inquisitor truly has an interest in the Anchor and your young companion both, he's almost certainly already got the archive under some manner of watch. Perhaps it's already time for you to leave."

His words proved prophetic far sooner than any of them realized.