The Summerwind limped through the air above the Eversea, leaving the Continent behind. It had been so badly damaged that it leaned to one side, its wooden frame riddled with dents and cannonball holes and its once proud sails in tatters. Several of its Squallfast-infused hearts had imploded as well, with few empty crystals to spare, so that the airship could only crawl along in its journey south.
The other vessels accompanying it were in similar shape—and there weren’t a lot of them, either. There was only one other carrack in addition to the Summerwind, a heavy frigate, a dozen wasp coracles, and the Sardovian stormship Nautilus. The Nautilus plodded along behind the rest, a floundering leviathan, the glow of its aether hearts dim through the soot-stained metalglass layers of a battered hull.
Talasyn stood on the quarterdeck of the Summerwind, her arms folded over the railing, her eyes tracking the fluffy cotton-hued clouds without truly seeing them as they drifted past. A short distance away, white-cloaked Enchanters pored over the airship’s frantically whirring dashboard, scrambling identifiable aetherwave signatures and handling the transmissions that were being sent back and forth across encrypted channels as what was left of the Allfold tried to keep track of their comrades. The Summerwind and its convoy weren’t the only vessels that had made it out, but the evacuation had been hopelessly disorganized and, after several long days, the Sardovians were scattered throughout these reaches of the Eversea.
Every once in a while, an aetherwave signature would go dark, and Talasyn would determinedly suppress thoughts of what might have happened to the airship on the other end. That way lay madness. She had to focus on the present moment, on keeping everyone in her convoy alive.
But she was so worried about Khaede.
Khaede had been recalled from the front lines a sennight ago, when a particularly nasty bout of morning sickness finally forced her to reveal her condition. Talasyn had glimpsed her in the crowd shortly before the battle for Lasthaven started, manning an evacuation route for the cityfolk—and then never again.
In situations like this, the simplest explanation was often the correct one, but Talasyn refused to accept it. Any minute now, Khaede’s voice would crackle to life over the aetherwave, from an airship that she’d managed to escape Lasthaven on . . .
Bieshimma went over to Talasyn, resting the arm that wasn’t in a sling on the quarterdeck’s railing. He looked as though he’d aged a decade since the retreat.
He was in command while Vela recovered from her injuries, so Talasyn asked quietly, “What now, General?”
“Now?” Bieshimma peered at the shimmering ocean miles below their feet, as though searching for answers in its blue currents. “We need a place to hide. Somewhere to take stock of the situation and regroup with the others.”
“Where, though?” Talasyn asked, even though she already knew that Bieshimma didn’t have answers any more than she did. All of the Continent had been ripped out from under their feet, and the world was vast, but it was full of realms who had ignored Sardovia’s pleas for help for years, either disinterested or unwilling to risk the Night Empire’s wrath. There was nowhere left to run, but they couldn’t drift above the Eversea forever.
Her head spun with the weight of everything, the surreal cutting through the present like shards of glass. It felt as if it had only been hours ago when she was telling Khaede about the Nenavar mission, with the other woman torn between shock and amusement at the revelation of Talasyn’s heritage. And now Khaede was nowhere to be found and—
Talasyn went still as an idea began to take shape.
There was somewhere that they could go. It hadn’t been an option before, but things were different now.
Maybe—just maybe—it would work.
The convoy headed southeast. It was another two days of slow and arduous travel before they stopped, time that Talasyn spent helping tend to the injured and discussing the plan with General Bieshimma and a bedridden Vela, as well as monitoring the aetherwave for any sign of Khaede. Initially she didn’t have the stomach to assist with disposing of those who died from their wounds, but she eventually pitched in with that, too; the Summerwind was woefully shorthanded. She wrapped bodies in shrouds cobbled together from rags and spare scraps of canvas and she closed their sightless eyes before they were tossed overboard, disappearing into the Eversea in ripples of wave and foam.
So many died. If Kesath was giving chase, all the Night Empire would have to do was follow the trail of corpses in the water. The air was heavy with salt and grief.
The sun had just begun to set on the second day along their new course when Talasyn clambered up the mainmast of the Summerwind. It was 120 feet tall, which was nothing to her, nothing to someone who had grown up in Hornbill’s Head, where buildings sprouted on top of one another and everyone knew how to go higher. She had just helped wrap Mara Kasdar’s body in a makeshift shroud and drop it into the Eversea and she needed to be alone, away from the crowded cabins and the decks full of people wandering around in a shell-shocked haze.
The mast was as far as she could go. Talasyn squeezed into the barrel-shaped crow’s nest and just—stayed there, her heart heavy and her mind blank. Blademaster Kasdar had been an institution. She’d been there almost from the very beginning, and she had personally trained all of the recruits. Her death seemed symbolic of the demise of the Sardovian army itself. She was the one who had taught Talasyn how to fight with swords and spears and daggers and all kinds of other weapons that the latter initially hadn’t even known which end of to hold. Kasdar had been a demanding instructor and they rarely got along, but it was starting to sink in for Talasyn that she would never see the burly, stone-faced veteran ever again. That realization brought with it a dull ache that experience had shown her would soon scab over on top of layers upon layers of all the other old scars.
When will it end? Talasyn asked herself at this great height, her vision afire at the edges with the crimson sunset that gilded the empty horizon and the shifting waves. The Hurricane Wars took and took, but there was still so much left to lose.
She turned around, the wooden planks that made up the bottom of the crow’s nest creaking beneath her boots. Her gaze fell on the Nautilus. It lumbered after the two carracks, nearly seven times their size combined.
Khaede had lived in a fishing village before the hurricanes thundered through it and she fled to the arms of the Heartland. She had once told Talasyn that the stormships reminded her of the otherworldly creatures that sometimes got tangled in the nets along with the day’s catch. These were beings from the darkest depths of the Eversea—bottom-dwellers as Talasyn had been, in the lowermost slum levels of Hornbill’s Head—and they looked more like insects than like fish, their bodies segmented and oval, the softer parts protected by shells as hard as armor plates.
What protected the Nautilus and all its ilk, though, was an external steel frame binding together panels of extremely durable metalglass and iron ore. Because of its immense size, it took the work of entire flotillas to bring down even just one stormship—and, more often than not, the stormship had already caused massive amounts of damage by then. When Kesath’s first such vessel took to the skies, it had completely altered the nature of warfare. And now, nineteen years later, an entire fleet of them had helped Gaheris realize his ambition of total control over the Continent.
Talasyn hated the stormships. So many would still be alive if not for them. Even the ones that Vela had stolen when she defected hadn’t been of much use in the long run. The Sardovian army had rarely unleashed them on areas where there would have been high numbers of innocent casualties and, in any case, what were eight stormships compared to the Night Empire’s fifty?
Three now, she reminded herself with bitterness. Maybe even fewer.
It was a terrible situation. Talasyn’s plan gave what was left of the Sardovian Allfold only the barest glimmer of a fighting chance. The odds of it panning out were not in their favor.
Once the sun was a molten half-sphere jutting from the horizon and the pale silhouettes of the seven moons hung in the heavens, a flurry of activity swept through the decks, a cry spreading among the Summerwind’s passengers. Land, ho. Talasyn tore her gaze from the gargantuan form of the Nautilus and angled her body toward the bow of the carrack—and there they were, in the distance: the countless green isles of the Nenavar Dominion, rising up from a darkening ocean in towers of rainforest and earth. Something in her chest trembled at the sight before her. She had an unsettling sensation that she was about to pass the point of no return.
The convoy paused in its flight, hovering over the ocean, the wasp coracles sliding into their hangars on the Nautilus, and Talasyn climbed back down to the Summerwind’s quarterdeck. Enchanters had found several nearby frequencies on the aetherwave, but their attempts to patch through were being rebuffed, eliciting a deep scowl from Bieshimma.
“Bunch of airships clearly in distress show up on their doorstep and they won’t even deign to make contact,” the general muttered under his breath.
“The Nenavarene know about the war,” Talasyn pointed out. “Maybe they don’t want to invite trouble.”
“Let’s hope that changes when we tell them we have their long-lost princess.”
Talasyn bit down on her lower lip to stop herself from shushing a superior officer, but she cast a furtive glance at the crew milling about. As far as everyone else was concerned, they’d flown to Nenavar simply because it was the nearest realm and they were hoping to appeal to the Dragon Queen’s charity.
They eventually decided to send one of their few remaining pigeons to Port Samout. Bieshimma scribbled a message in Sailor’s Common and tied the roll of vellum to the cooing bird’s leg, then set it loose in the direction of the shining harbor.
“Do you think they’ll respond?” Bieshimma asked Talasyn as they watched the pigeon flutter away.
“I’ll honestly be surprised if they don’t just shoot it down,” Talasyn replied.
“Don’t even joke about that, helmsman,” he warned her. “This is the only chance we have.”
Khaede would have butted in with something to the effect of, That’s Your Worship to you, General, and once again Talasyn felt the pang of loss. Felt that familiar fear crawl its way up her throat.
Their little winged messenger soon returned, with neither the original message nor a response. They waited and they waited. Hours passed and night slowly descended in starry black velvet curtains over the Eversea. Talasyn could barely taste the boiled salt beef that she had for supper, so anxious was she that the Nenavarene really would ignore them, after all. Maybe they had concluded that she wasn’t Elagbi’s daughter, that she had no connection to them. Maybe what she’d done the last time she was here was too great an insult to let slide. Maybe they were preparing to attack the convoy with those fatally elegant winged coracles.
Granted, it wasn’t as though supper would have been laden with flavor even if she’d eaten it while in the best of moods, and there was far too little of it as well. Supplies had dwindled considerably after a sennight in the air. The Summerwind had simply not been equipped to take on this many passengers for a long haul. Food was being strictly rationed but, still, it wouldn’t be long before they ran out.
Perhaps a month. More likely less.
Talasyn slept out on the quarterdeck, not willing to risk missing a transmission from Nenavar—or from Khaede. As the night crew puttered around her, she fell asleep on the wooden floorboards, under a net of constellations. She dreamed of her city of gold.
A strong wind rustled across her face and she woke with a start, her mind screaming stormship attack. But it was a false alarm. The carrack’s moonlit decks were quiet and the gust of wind that fluttered the edges of its furled sails smelled of seagrass and dried fish, with the underlying tang of sweet fruit.
“Anything yet?” she called out to the white-cloaked figure stationed at the aetherwave transceiver.
The Enchanter shook her head drowsily, and Talasyn swallowed a lump in her throat. Still no word from Khaede or from Port Samout.
Going back to sleep was impossible with so much anxiety eating away at her. She cast her bleary gaze around the Summerwind and it landed on Ideth Vela, a solitary figure at the prow, shoulders squared as though she were holding up the sky.
A small team of healers had stitched up the Amirante’s wound, and her body’s innate shadow magic had fought off the worst effects of the legionnaire’s blade. However, blood loss and minor organ damage had taken their toll, and Vela’s remaining eye was clouded over with suppressed pain and her lips were pale when Talasyn went up to her.
“You should be resting, Amirante.”
“I’ve been laid up in my cabin all this sennight. Besides, fresh air does wonders,” Vela said with a trace of her usual dismissiveness. “So—it looks like you’ll be seeing your family again, after all.”
Talasyn blanched. “I didn’t want this.”
Vela’s features softened. “I know you didn’t. Just some dark humor on my part. But I do wonder what will be in store for you, should the Dominion respond.”
“What do you mean?”
Vela countered Talasyn’s question with her own. “You said that Prince Elagbi called you the heir to the throne. I take it that Urduja Silim has no daughters?”
“I don’t—” Talasyn broke off as a memory from that fateful night came back to her. “Elagbi mentioned that Rapat had called him away from the capital in the midst of the succession debate.”
“No man may rule the Nenavar Dominion,” said Vela. “Accounts have been sparse over the millennia, naturally, but it is generally accepted that the title of Lachis’ka always passes on to the eldest daughter. If the queen has only sons, the firstborn’s wife is expected to take the throne.”
“I guess that the Nenavarene are a bit confused about what to do, seeing as Hanan passed away, and if the other son . . .” Talasyn faltered as the connection lanced through her: her uncle, the uncle who had wanted her dead. “If the other son”—she tried again—“was married to someone who survived the civil war, she would be a traitor’s wife, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes,” Vela said thoughtfully. “A most untenable set of circumstances. Perhaps we are delivering the solution right into their hands. But I suppose we’ll deal with that storm when it makes landfall.”
“I suppose,” Talasyn echoed.
In truth, it was a relief that they were letting it go for now. She was exhausted; she felt defeated even while clinging tightly to that one last shred of hope that she had led Sardovia to sanctuary instead of doom.
Then Vela surprised her by asking, “We haven’t heard from Khaede yet, I take it?”
“No, Amirante.”
In the past, Vela had rarely, if ever, discussed personal matters with her troops, always focused on the next battlefield, the next tactical maneuver. Perhaps she wasn’t herself due to her injury, or perhaps there was time now that they were waiting for the Nenavarene response. Whatever the case, she sighed, sneaking a glance at Talasyn before transferring her gaze to the moonlit ocean.
“The last thing I said to her was that she couldn’t fly on account of her pregnancy. I ordered her to help get the cityfolk to safety instead. She put up less of a fight than I expected.”
“Which is how we know that she was really sick,” Talasyn muttered.
Vela cracked a wan smile. One that was quick to fade. “I never told her how sorry I was about Sol. There was never enough time for that. There was never a correct moment. I hope—” She paused abruptly, as though seizing a chance to regain composure. “I hope that she and the baby are all right.”
“They are,” Talasyn said, willing herself to believe it as well. “Khaede is fast and she’s smart and she’s strong. If anyone can survive this, it’s her.”
Vela gave a slight nod, and the conversation ebbed along with the tide, a heavy silence settling over the airship’s bow, which no one else occupied. It seemed to Talasyn that it was just her and the Amirante, alone together, at the end of the world.
A crewman shook Talasyn awake shortly before dawn. The bulb on the aetherwave transceiver was blinking yellow. She crowded around it with several crewmembers while a runner was dispatched to the officers’ berths.
The feminine voice on the other end of the line spoke in crisply accented Sailor’s Common. “You have been cleared for an audience with the Zahiya-lachis on her flagship,” it announced without preamble. “To get there, you may take only one carrack with no escort. The rest of your convoy will stay where they are, especially your stormship. Only a small party of unarmed individuals will be allowed to board the W’taida. Failure to comply with these instructions in the presence of the Zahiya-lachis will result in the Dominion opening fire on your ranks.”
The voice then reeled off a detailed slew of coordinates and the transmission came to an abrupt end, with no one on the Summerwind allowed to get a word in edgewise.
By now, Talasyn was no stranger to déjà vu where Nenavar was concerned. This time, however, she understood where the feeling came from. She had been here before—and not that long ago, in fact. Little more than a month had passed since the sun rose through the mists as she wove her way through the same numerous craggy islands that the carrack was coasting over now.
The elevated quarterdeck was serene compared to the other sections, where people jostled one another and the swell of the throng pressed against the railings as the war-weary and forlorn angled for a better view of mangroves and rainforests and white-sand beaches. The fog was thick and cool, swirling all around, encasing faces and exposed limbs in fine dew. The Summerwind laboriously plowed through it, the fire lamps that adorned the stern and the masts burning bright as Vela and the rest of the officers gradually made their way to the quarterdeck.
The coordinates they’d been given took them further south along Nenavar’s disjointed stretches of coastline than Talasyn had previously ventured. The outlying islands grew thinner and taller and steeper, until they were pillars of sheer rock scattered through with the occasional streak of greenery here and there. The sun had almost fully risen when the Summerwind arrived at its destination, carefully navigating around a tightly packed cluster of stony peaks.
An awed hush fell over the pitiful band of refugees.
A mile away, hovering in the mist-laced air above blue waves and endless islands, was what could be none other than the W’taida. It was unlike any airship that Talasyn had seen before. It actually took her a while to come to terms with the fact that she was looking at one.
Mounted on a roughly circular bed of glossy, midnight-black volcanic rock that was nearly as wide as a stormship, wreathed in the emerald veils of what must have been hundreds of aether hearts, was a massive assemblage of steel towers and ornate copper-sculpted battlements, speckled with a plethora of large metalglass windows tinted pink by the dawn’s rosy light, threaded through with huge, whirring clockwork gears, and capped with golden spires.
This, then, was the flagship of the Nenavarene queen, and it was—
“A castle,” General Bieshimma said blankly. “A floating castle.”
“These people certainly do well for themselves,” Talasyn groused.
A deafening roar shattered the early-morning stillness.
It was a sound that only some monstrous wild animal could make. It seemed to come from everywhere all at once, echoing off the steepled islands, surging forth from the Eversea.
Acting on instinct, Sardovian soldiers scrambled for their weapons and took defensive positions all along the decks. Talasyn splayed her fingers, ready to spin whatever she would need out of light and aether. But it wasn’t long before it became obvious that no crossbow or blade—perhaps not even the Lightweave—would do much good.
A winding shape unfurled in the mists to the north. It easily dwarfed the Summerwind, was longer even than the Nautilus. It was a serpentine creature covered in barnacle-encrusted sapphire-blue scales, with two forelimbs that bore wickedly curved claws the color of steel. The swift roll of its slithering caused its massive spine to form mountains that collapsed into themselves and took new shape in the next breath. Propelled on a pair of leathery wings that spread out to cast vast shadows over the world, it flew closer with alarming speed, and the sunrise washed over it as it sliced through the fog and circled overhead.
The beast’s head was crocodilian, its snout draped in slender whisker-like barbels that twitched as though trawling the wind currents. Narrowing its rust-colored and star-pocked eyes at the gawking Sardovians, it unhinged its great jaw wide, revealing two rows of sharp, sharp teeth, and it emitted another roar. Talasyn’s flesh broke out in a million goosebumps—and then a second such creature erupted from the surface of the Eversea.
This one had blood-red scales instead of blue, glistening wet and dripping with seaweed tendrils. It shot into the air, sending up an eruption of salt water so immense that it drenched the passengers closest to the Summerwind’s railings. It joined its fellow in sweeping wide arcs across the sky in a dance of lethal grace. The dawn air swelled with the scents of plankton and overturned seabed, of the rotten wood of shipwrecks and the soft things that lived and died in them, there in the black depths where sunlight couldn’t reach.
Bieshimma’s disbelieving tone cut through the stunned stillness suffusing the quarterdeck. “I guess that Nenavar does have dragons, after all.”
