A nation of a million with no ruler and no army, living on the backs of the herd and carrying everything the world moves.
The Flotilla are the largest of the four peoples, because at the Fall the most crews jumped over the herd. They have never fielded an army. They have never needed one: everything that moves in the world moves on their gods, and they hold the map.
Fine-woven sailcloth in deep teal, indigo and cream, wrapped and draped in clean layers. Navigators carry their charts on their clothes: route-lines stitched into the outer wrap, and on the Elder's robe a lifetime of them, collar to hem. Boots of shed whale-hide, taken off at every threshold, and one old object of value each: a compass, a whistle, a horn.
"The fire in the Hole has never warmed anyone."
Sixty metres of ink on the outer wall of a Horn-Temple: the Fall, the whales, the Hole and the roads, with fifteen centuries of navigators adding to it. Once a dimming the Elder reads it aloud at the Telling. Their word for a port is their word for still air.
The Flotilla also keep the oldest law in the world, the fire-law, in five parts. Read the fire-law.
The most senior navigator of the Flotilla and the Elder: the voice of the Telling, and the one who presides when children take the horn. His robe is a lifetime of sky-roads stitched collar to hem. Quiet, tired, certain. The voice that tells the world its own story.
"We have never known a season that did not end."
Bright and quick, the first line of ink on her wrist, learning the horn under the best teacher alive.
"What is rain like?"
The best horn alive, and Tam's teacher. When a god will not answer anyone else, they send for Maelis.