The mournful wail of a horn rang throughout the mountain just as Talasyn plunged into a thicket of longleaf pine and bramble. It was the signal to retreat, and she changed course, heading not for the city proper but the docks. With a bruised and blood-streaked face and cuts on her arms, a padded coat soaked through with sweat, and ears ringing from echoes of adrenaline and injury, she broke past the treeline.
The evening sky was tinted arterial red by the smoldering inferno of Frostplum’s remains. The great wooden carracks of the Sardovian Allfold unfurled their sails in the smoke-ridden breeze before her, their bilges already several feet above the ground while long rope ladders spilled from the sides of the decks. Fleeing soldiers and cityfolk were swarming up them like ants. Talasyn quickened her pace in the direction of the largest of the carracks, the Summerwind, and she clambered up the first rope ladder that she came to, engulfed by a mixture of relief and foreboding.
Her comrades hadn’t left her behind yet, but they were leaving, effectively ceding more ground to the Night Empire. Ground that they couldn’t afford to lose.
Talasyn landed on the deck on her hands and knees. It was chaos. People were rushing about; healers were tending to grisly wounds. Talasyn could only tell the soldiers from everyone else by patches of uniform amid the soot, grime, and blood.
The rope ladders were retracted as the carrack set sail over the snow-laden Highlands on emerald clouds of wind magic. Talasyn gazed upon Frostplum, its burning rooftops and broken walls growing ever smaller with distance. She turned, unable to keep looking at what was left of the place where they’d found a moment of peace and happiness, and she stopped dead as her gaze fell on a couple several feet away. And what was left of her world was pulled out from under her.
Huddled against the bulkhead, Khaede held Sol’s limp form in her arms, his head pillowed on her lap. Both their clothes were spattered with his blood, pouring out of a gaping hole in his chest. A crimson-drenched crossbow bolt lay across the wooden planks.
Talasyn knew, even before she walked over on unsteady legs, that Sol was gone. His blue-black eyes stared up at the heavens, unblinking. Tears streamed down Khaede’s cheeks as she stroked his dark hair, the wedding band that he’d slipped onto her finger only a few hours ago gleaming in a tangle of moonbeams and lamplight.
“He almost made it,” Khaede whispered once she realized that Talasyn had sat beside her. “Our wasps crash-landed and we fought our way to the docks. We went up the ladder—he made me go first—and when I turned around to help him climb over onto the deck, there was that”—she nodded jerkily at the crossbow bolt—“that thing sticking out of his chest. It happened so fast. I didn’t even see it actually happen. I . . .”
Khaede took a deep, shuddering breath. She fell silent, not so much as sniffling, although her tears continued to flow. Her hand dropped over Sol’s heart and stayed there, beside where the Kesathese bowman had hit true, her fingers running all the redder from his fatal wound.
Talasyn was at a loss what to do. She knew Khaede was the type of person who despised what she considered pity, who would brutally rebuff any attempt at comfort. Talasyn couldn’t even cry for Sol because her early years on the Great Steppe had dulled the part of her that wept, long before the Hurricane Wars. She had considered this a good thing in its own way—if she cried for everyone who fell in battle, she’d never be stopping—but now, looking at Sol’s lifeless body, remembering the kind smiles and good-natured jokes, remembering how happy he’d made her friend, her numbness sickened her. Surely he deserved the tears that she was too exhausted to give?
Her gaze strayed to Khaede’s midsection, and bile surged up her throat. “You have to tell Vela that you’re pregnant. So she can pull you off active duty.”
“I’m fighting until I can’t,” Khaede interrupted in a low growl. “Don’t you dare tell her, either. I’m the best helmsman in the Allfold. You need me.” The hand that wasn’t on Sol’s unmoving chest touched her stomach. “The baby will be all right.” Her bottom lip quivered before she pressed her mouth into a taut, resolute line. “They’re strong like their father.”
The mixture of sorrow and defiance on the other woman’s face made Talasyn decide to let it go. Now wasn’t the time. Instead, she looked around the busy decks for any sign of the cleric who had officiated at the wedding—only to see pale yellow robes peeking out from a makeshift shroud draped over a still, supine form.
She would have to do it, then. As she’d done for others on battlefields all across the Continent, when they’d been too far from god-shrines and healing houses.
Talasyn leaned over Sol and gently closed his sightless eyes, his skin devoid of life’s warmth beneath her fingertips. “May your soul find shelter in the willows,” she murmured, “until all lands sink beneath the Eversea and we meet again.”
Beside her, Khaede drew another harsh breath, one that was almost a sob. The carrack flew on, over the mountains and the valleys, on the oars of winter and of starlight.
“Why didn’t Kesath bring in a stormship?”
Talasyn’s question broke the tense silence that had settled over the Amirante’s office after her debriefing. She’d helped wrap Sol in a shroud and gotten Khaede settled in a spare berth half an hour ago. Now she was seated across from Vela, her damp and singed outerwear traded for a blanket draped over her cotton-clad shoulders.
“Given the terrain and the existing conditions, adding more weather would have been disastrous for all parties involved. Avalanches tend to put quite the damper on morale.” Vela spoke with calm authority from behind her desk. “Not to mention that, with Frostplum’s small size relative to cities on the plains or the coasts, the rate of civilian and allied casualties would have been too high.”
“That’s why we didn’t bring in a stormship,” Talasyn pointed out.
“Quite so.” A hint of a sardonic smile darted across the Amirante’s weathered bronze features. One of the Legion had gouged out her left eye the year before, and in its place was an intricately carved patch of copper and steel that only added to the redoubtable figure she cut among her troops. “In Kesath’s case, I suspect that they believed they didn’t need one to win. I also suspect that they were content to merely run us off instead of giving chase because they’d gotten what they came for.”
“They did,” Coxswain Darius said shortly. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, a haggard imitation of the good-humored officer that Talasyn had spoken to at the longhouse. “Now that he has Frostplum, Gaheris is in prime position to conquer the rest of the Highlands. It won’t be long before he brings the King on the Mountain to heel.” Vela made no response and Darius sighed, fixing her with a morose gaze. “Ideth, the Sardovian Allfold’s holdings shrink with each year that passes. Soon there will be nowhere left for us to run.”
“What would you have us do, then?” countered Vela. “Surrender is not an option. You and I both knew that when we left Kesath. Gaheris made it plain: anyone who stands in the way of his empire’s destiny will meet a terrible end.”
It was Darius’s turn to say nothing, although he kept his eyes fixed on the Amirante while she returned his stare. Not for the first time, Talasyn felt like an intruder witnessing a conversation that she couldn’t hear. Vela and Darius had their own silent language; they had known each other since Vela was a new recruit to the Kesathese fleet, and ten years ago they had defected together with several other officers and some loyal soldiers, taking eight stormships with them over the border to Sardovia.
Vela and Darius were resolute in their determination to prevent the Night Emperor’s cruel reign from encompassing the whole Continent. But the Hurricane Wars had dragged on and Sardovia was down to five stormships, and Talasyn was starting to see the cracks in her superiors’ facades.
Darius rubbed a weary hand over his face. “If only Bieshimma had been successful,” he muttered. “If only the Nenavar Dominion had agreed to help.”
“It was a long shot in the first place,” said Vela. “They’d already turned away our previous envoy. I’m sure that the Nenavarene are still smarting from the last time they sent aid to a Sardovian state.”
There it was again, the quickening of Talasyn’s pulse that accompanied anything and everything to do with the Dominion. “So it’s true, then?” she blurted out. “Nenavar sent airships to help the Lightweavers of Sunstead during the Cataclysm?” She’d heard the old stories; they were whispered in taverns and marketplaces, bandied about in the barracks.
“Yes,” Vela confirmed. “I was a quartermaster in the Kesathese fleet at the time. I saw the Nenavarene flotilla from a distance, but they never reached our shores. Emperor Gaheris sent the stormship prototype out to meet them.”
“It was his father’s pet project,” Darius added, lip curling in distaste. “Ozalus had just been slain in battle. Gaheris was newly crowned, and angry and desperate. He ordered the first stormship to be deployed. It hadn’t been tested yet, but it worked. The Nenavarene flotilla never stood a chance.”
Talasyn pictured it—bursts of straight-line winds, torrents of heavy rain, waves of destructive lightning, unfurling over the dark blue Eversea and crushing the Dominion’s airships as though they were matchsticks. After Kesath annexed Sunstead and became the Night Empire, they had kept on building more of these dread weapons. Huge armor-plated vessels, nearly impossible to bring down and wreaking untold devastation on the land.
Each stormship required hundreds of aether hearts to be fully operational, but Kesath’s mines were on the brink of depletion, and so Gaheris had looked to his neighbors. The remaining states of the Sardovian Allfold had refused. Deciding to take Sardovia’s supply of aether hearts by force, Gaheris began conquering one Allfold city after another, his Night Empire growing with each victory. Vela and Darius and their men had rebelled and brought stormship technology to the Sardovian forces and now, a decade later, here they all were. Fighting a war without end.
“Speaking of Gaheris,” said Vela, her remaining eye flickering to Talasyn, “and fathers and sons—”
“That’s right.” Darius grew even more solemn. “So. Alaric Ossinast knows you’re a Lightweaver.”
Talasyn nodded.
“He will have informed Gaheris by now,” said Vela. “They will stop at nothing to neutralize you. Not only can your magic cancel out theirs, but it’s personal for them. Gaheris watched Sunstead Lightweavers kill his father, and he has instilled that same desire for vengeance in his son. You have a target on your back.”
“I’m sorry,” Talasyn mumbled, shame heating her cheeks. Sardovia had needed helmsmen and she’d shown an aptitude for the wasp coracles, but she’d been warned over and over again to hide the fact that she had the ability to channel aether magic, that she could tread the line between dimensions and make one in particular do her bidding.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” Darius conceded. “But this does mean that it’s time for you to start training in earnest.”
“Training won’t suffice,” Vela said grimly. “Not for long. Fortunately, we may have found a way around that.”
Before Talasyn could ask what she meant, the Amirante spoke to Darius. “Check if Bieshimma’s at the door yet.”
He was. It was only when Darius stepped aside to let Bieshimma into the office that Talasyn remembered they had wanted to meet with her back at the longhouse in Frostplum. Although thinking about the wedding made her heart ache, a shard of her former curiosity managed to shine through, along with a healthy dose of wariness.
The officer with the black horseshoe mustache acknowledged Talasyn’s salute with only the barest of noncommittal grunts. She didn’t take it personally; Bieshimma looked as though he was deep in thought as he unrolled what appeared to be a map over Vela’s desk.
The Amirante beckoned Talasyn nearer and she complied, standing beside Darius. Up close, she saw that the old, fading map was that of Sardovia’s southeastern coastline and of the Nenavar Dominion, the grid of the Eversea stretched between them. In stark contrast to the intricate details of the Sardovian portion of the map, Nenavar was rendered as a scattering of islands, roughly sketched and mostly unlabeled, as if the cartographer hadn’t had time to study the terrain.
Which made sense, Talasyn supposed. The map had to have been drawn up from onboard an airship, and none but the foolhardiest of crews would loiter in skies rumored to be guarded by fire-breathing dragons when their vessel was made mostly of wood.
Still, there were freshly inked markings on the rust-tinged paper. Place names, landmarks, and notes. Most conspicuous of all was the black X over a frieze of mountains that was halfway between Port Samout, where Bieshimma’s airship had docked, and the Dominion’s capital city, Eskaya, which the general had apparently stormed all by himself, according to that lance corporal.
“As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted by Kesathese scum,” Bieshimma rumbled, “I think it’s doable.” He dipped a stylus into a nearby inkwell and traced a route in a series of dashes. “A lone wasp is certainly less conspicuous than a carrack, so she needn’t go the roundabout way like we did. If she leaves central Sardovia via the Shipsbane and hugs forest all the way to the coast, she’ll be able to make a clean exit. The Night Empire will never know as long as she steers clear of their outposts in the Salt Cays.”
Talasyn raised an eyebrow. “Why do I get the feeling—sir,” she quickly added when Bieshimma shot her a pointed look, “that this she we’re talking about is, in fact, me?”
“Because it is.” Vela’s tone was so stern that Talasyn immediately desisted from mouthing off any further. The Amirante was fearsome when she wanted to be; a former Kesathese defector could not ascend to leadership of the Sardovian Allfold’s army by being the sort of person who suffered fools.
“By now, those damnable chatterboxes that I was saddled with for escorts have most assuredly spread the news that I made a break for the Dominion’s capital,” Bieshimma said to Talasyn.
Put on the spot like that, she couldn’t do anything else but shrug, which was as good a confirmation as any.
“I thought that perhaps the Nenavarene Zahiya-lachis wouldn’t be able to refuse an audience if I showed up on her doorstep.” Bieshimma’s expression soured. “Unfortunately, the palace guards nearly ran me through with their spears. Nearly ran my horse through, too. I fled on the poor beast without catching even a glimpse of Queen Urduja. But there was something that I did see.” He pointed at the X on the map. “On the way back to Port Samout, the sky to my left flashed as brilliantly as though the sun had come crashing down. A pillar of light shot out from a mountaintop, illuminating the heavens for miles upon miles around. I couldn’t investigate further as I needed to get back to the airship as soon as possible. After the scene I made in front of her palace, I feared that Urduja would call for my head and the heads of all my crew. However, I know what I saw.”
The general straightened up and steadily met Talasyn’s questioning gaze. “It was a Light Sever,” he stated. “Such a one as has not existed on the Continent since Gaheris invaded Sunstead and destroyed all instances of the Lightweave here.”
Talasyn’s eyes widened. A Light Sever. A tear that the aether had ripped into the material world, where the Lightweave existed without having to be summoned. A nexus point that she could tap into to amplify and refine her magic, in the same way that the Night Empire’s Legion grew in strength and skill because of the numerous Shadow Severs that dotted Kesath. Hope and excitement lanced through her.
Then she remembered precisely where this Light Sever was located, and her soaring emotions shifted into something that was close to dread.
She looked at Vela. “You want me to go to Nenavar. By myself.”
“I’m sorry to ask this of you,” said the Amirante, “but General Bieshimma is correct in his assumption that one wasp is less likely to be noticed. The way that things have gone with the Dominion, I doubt they’ll grant you free passage through their territory no matter how many envoys we send—and we don’t have the time to send any more. The Night Empire is closing in.”
Talasyn swallowed. “So, I need to infiltrate.”
“Get in, commune with the Light Sever, get out,” said Vela. “And don’t let anyone catch you.”
“Easier said than done,” Talasyn grumbled before remembering that she was supposed to abstain from wisecracks.
Vela frowned. “I’m serious, helmsman. We cannot risk angering the Nenavarene more than a certain someone already has with his little stunt.” She glanced at Bieshimma as if gauging his reaction, but his features barely rippled.
“I deserved that,” he said.
Vela’s lips twitched. However, when she spoke again, it was addressed to Talasyn. “Believe me, if I thought that requesting the Dominion’s assistance in this one matter would do any good—”
“No, you’re right, Amirante,” Talasyn interrupted, shaking her head. “We don’t have time.”
After a decade of conflict, Sardovia had been whittled down to half of its former land area. Less than half, now that the Highlands were all but lost. There was no other option. This was their last hope.
“The girl can’t just sail into Dominion territory with no preparation.” Darius spoke up for the first time since Bieshimma joined them. “If she gets caught, if she can’t fight her way out—”
“Good point.” Vela mulled it over for a while, her gaze fixed on the map, on the miles that needed to be traversed before reaching the Light Sever. “In a fortnight, then. Talasyn, starting tomorrow, you will be training more intensively with me and with Blademaster Kasdar. We’ll send you off to Nenavar fully equipped to defend yourself.”
“That also gives me enough time to sketch out the overland route to the Light Sever in as much detail as possible,” said Bieshimma. “I’ll cross-reference with what few historical documents and intelligence reports we have as well. I’ll do my best.”
Rolling up the map, he tucked it under one arm and saluted Vela before leaving the office. Alone with Vela and Darius once more, Talasyn sensed that the Amirante seemed worried—an odd emotion in such a stoic, unflappable woman.
“A fortnight isn’t nearly enough time, but it’s all that we can afford to spare,” Vela muttered. “Alaric won’t forget that you bested him in combat, Talasyn. He was a haughty, tenacious boy who grew up to become a prideful, unforgiving young man. I don’t even dare imagine what he’ll do when you encounter each other again.”
“Perhaps I killed him,” Talasyn offered with a shred of optimism. “Y’know, when I stabbed him in the shoulder.”
Darius let out a mirthless chuckle. “That would solve so many of our problems, wouldn’t it?”
“It will take more than a light-woven dagger to the shoulder to kill Alaric,” Vela said. “He is the most powerful Shadowforged to exist in centuries. There’s a reason he became Master of the Legion back when he was barely eighteen. The next time you face him, Talasyn, you need to be ready.”
Her heart in her throat, Talasyn thought about the dark prince she’d met out on the drifting ice. The lethal dance that he’d drawn her into. She thought about the way his gray eyes had shone silver beneath the seven moons, regarding her as if she were his prey.
She shivered.
