I’m reading from The Last Mapmaker and in this scene the main character Sai is just learning that there is this expedition that’s being planned. So Sai is an apprentice to a map maker and he’s been acting funny. Everyone in the town has been acting funny, they’re whispering about things. She can’t figure out what it’s about. So she’s gotten her hand on a newspaper and she finds a proclamation, a royal proclamation printed in the newspaper and it says her Royal Majesty Queen Siripatra announces the expedition prize adventure to extend the boundaries and glory of the kingdom of Mangkon. The queen has commissioned her Royal Navy’s finest ships for the expeditions captained by the heroes of the longest war. These ships shall sail for all corners of the globe to claim new lands in her name. Her Royal Majesty has directed four of her best captains to set their sights for the deepest sea in the north, the lands east of the hinder range west past Rotan.
And to break the 50th parallel in the South, each captain who returns with a map of their discoveries shall be awarded a purse of 100,000 leks. So leks is their currency. 100,000 leks. My head swam at the number. Mangkon must have done better in the war than I thought. I knew the names of those destinations from the maps hanging in our shop. Master Paiyoon had charted those places, but only barely. It was if the queen were sending her ships out to the very borders of his maps and ordering them to peak past the edges of the paper. There was no mention in the newspaper of the Sandlands, despite what the people in the street were saying. And why would there be that place was a myth. I combed through my memory for the few scraps of stories I had heard about it. It was a continent floating on the back of a giant whale in the deep southern seas. Or was it a group of islands rooted to the ocean floor like a manor tree. It was covered in icy mountains or was it smothered by steamy jungle, home to spirits, home to dragons. So these are all the things she’s thinking about and she’s doesn’t know it yet. But here’s a spoiler, she’s going to end up on one of those expeditions.
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