Four months later
The rope stretched taut as Talasyn scaled the Roof of Heaven’s tallest tower, the grappling hook’s steel barbs straining against the sides of the crenel a dozen meters above her head. It was late morning in the Nenavar Dominion and she squinted in the brilliant sunlight, the humid breeze fanning her sweat-dotted brow. Higher and higher she went, heart pumping and adrenaline rising as the capital city of Eskaya grew smaller and smaller, until the rooftops were nothing more than a carpet of multicolored jewels on a field of green. Clenching her teeth, she pushed up on her knees and straightened her spine so that she was practically walking along the side of the building’s alabaster facade, her body slanted against horizon and blue sky.
Over the months of making the climb a daily ritual, Talasyn had grown to treasure these moments when it was just her and the tower and gravity. It was a form of moving meditation that kept her reflexes sharp, kept the vertical ramshackle slums of Hornbill’s Head alive in her heart. It was good to remember where she’d come from. It ensured that the upgrade in her living situation didn’t turn her head.
She hauled herself up over the battlement and onto a balcony, her feet on flat, solid flooring once more. The royal palace was perched atop steep limestone cliffs that overlooked the sweeping city of gold that she had once seen in a vision. From this tower, she had an excellent view of lush gardens, gleaming waterways, and busy streets dotted with landing grids where constant streams of airships—coracles and freighters and pleasure yachts and consular barges alike—came to dock. The skyline was dominated by curvilinear buildings fashioned from stone and gold and metalglass, although none stood as tall as the Roof of Heaven itself, and tucked among them were pockets of residential areas, where houses atop wooden stilts sported brightly colored facades and ornate stucco pillars, capped by upturned eaves and multi-inclined roofs that were home to bronze weathervanes depicting roosters and pigs and dragons and goats, swiveling with each breath of wind.
Surrounding the urban sprawl—sprouting up immediately right along its borders, in fact—was a rainforest that went on for miles upon miles in every direction, interrupted only by patches of the odd small town here and there. The horizon was ringed with the blue-gray silhouettes of distant mountains.
Aside from the thousands of skerries, atolls, cays, sea stacks, and smaller inhabited clusters jutting out from their bed of turquoise waves, there were seven main islands in the Nenavar Dominion. One for each moon of Lir, as chroniclers enjoyed pointing out. Eskaya—and Port Samout, and the Belian range—were located on Sedek-We, largest of the seven and Nenavar’s hub of governance and commercial activity. Talasyn had spent most of her time here, under close watch, becoming more acquainted with her father and her grandmother when she wasn’t being taught Nenavar’s language, history, culture, and social graces by a never-ending slew of tutors. She had been formally presented only two months ago, but the Zahiya-lachis remained tireless in ensuring that her heir was up to snuff. It was a monumental task, getting the aristocracy and the masses to accept an outsider to someday rule over them. Talasyn needed to look, sound, and act as Nenavarene as possible. Always.
“Alunsina Ivralis.” She said the name out loud, testing the shape of the name on her tongue. The passage of time had done nothing to take away from its unwieldiness. She frowned to herself. “Bit of a mouthful.”
There was a melodious laugh from somewhere behind her. “You’ll get used to it, Your Grace.”
Talasyn turned around. Jie, her lady-in-waiting, was leaning a slim shoulder clad in shell beads and silk against the doorway leading out to the balcony, arms folded and ankles crossed in a jaunty pose.
This was another aspect of Talasyn’s strange new life that was taking some getting used to—the fact that she had a lady-in-waiting. Jie was from a noble house and would one day inherit a title of her own. Her family had sent her to court so that she could gain political experience and make promising alliances. She was the one who made Talasyn look presentable and accompanied her during meals and the stretches of idle hours between lessons.
“You and the guards don’t have to watch me all the time, you know,” Talasyn told Jie in Nenavarene, the words coming easily to her thanks to a combination of intensive study and some innate adeptness that she could only ascribe to her magic. Since being here and in the proximity of a Light Sever, the aether within her had responded like a seedling to sunshine. “The Roof of Heaven is a fortress. I hardly think that random kidnappers or assassins would be able to infiltrate so easily.”
“Most dangers come from inside the palace walls, Lachis’ka,” Jie replied. “But, as it is, Her Starlit Majesty has sent for you.”
Talasyn struggled not to groan. She had quickly learned that even the tiniest sign of disrespect for Urduja made most people uncomfortable, if not alienated them completely. “Lead the way, then.”
“Actually . . .” Jie giggled, tucking a windblown strand of wavy brown hair behind her ear, coffee-colored eyes flickering over Talasyn’s sweat-stained tunic and ratty breeches. “Let’s get you freshened up first, Your Grace. It’s a tea.”
The Dragon Queen’s salon was an airy complex in the eastern wing, decorated with frescoes and geometric carpets dyed bright shades of purple, orange, and red. Like most other rooms in the royal palace, it boasted white marble walls and accents of ivory and gold, shining in the sunlight that filtered in through stained-glass windows.
The gauze-woven hibiscus blossoms adorning the champagne skirt of Talasyn’s chiffon dress rustled as she crossed her legs—or, well, as she tried to cross her legs, anyway. If she shifted her thigh up any further, she’d rip a seam. There was no doubt in her mind that Khaede would be cackling her head off if she could see Talasyn right now.
Not like you would look any better, Talasyn imagined snapping at her absent friend.
Khaede was still missing. Talasyn had fallen into the habit of having pretend conversations with her as though she weren’t. It was childish, perhaps, but better than torturing herself with all the worst-case scenarios.
She placed one pointy-shoed foot back on the floor as Urduja observed her from across a rosewood table laden with delicate pastries and porcelain cups. The Zahiya-lachis had yet to apply the elaborate cosmetics that she donned for public appearances, but her bare face was every bit as intimidating with its granite-carved features and its penetrating stare.
“I want to ascertain that there is no bad blood between us after my last command,” Urduja said in a tone that implied Talasyn didn’t have much choice in the matter. “You must have come to your senses by now.”
“I have, Harlikaan,” Talasyn assured her, mustering a reasonable facsimile of a contrite expression as she addressed Urduja with the Nenavarene equivalent of Your Majesty and lied through her teeth. They’d had a screaming match a few days ago because Urduja had declared it too risky for Talasyn to continue frequenting the Sardovian hideout in the Storm God’s Eye. Talasyn had decided that no one was going to tell her where she could and could not go, but her grandmother didn’t need to know that. It would be all too easy to liberate a moth coracle from one of the many hangars in the dead of night and be back in Eskaya by dawn. For that plan to work, however, Urduja had to believe that Talasyn was compliant.
The Zahiya-lachis dropped the subject. She never discussed the Sardovians, if it could be helped. Her closest allies had been taken into her confidence but, generally, as far as the Dominion was concerned, no deal had been brokered and Ideth Vela’s fleet did not exist in any capacity within the boundaries of the archipelago.
Instead, Urduja moved on to the next point of contention that had featured in her and Talasyn’s blazing argument a few days prior. “I understand that you wish to know more about these abilities of yours, which is why you have incessantly lobbied to be granted access to the Belian Sever. However, such access was not part of the terms. You are my heir and it is high time that you focused on your royal duties and on learning how to rule. I am not long for this world and I would rather like to head to the next one secure in the knowledge that I have left my realm in capable hands.”
Talasyn bit back a multitude of retorts. Sneaking into the ruins of the Lightweaver temple would be difficult, given the soldiers that regularly patrolled the area, but she would just have to try. “I bow to your judgment as always, Harlikaan,” she placidly stated.
She’d laid it on a little too thick—Urduja shot her a glare of deepest suspicion. Talasyn blinked with as much innocence as she could manage. Overall, though, her demeanor toward the older woman was softened by no small measure of surprise. This was the first instance of Urduja mentioning her own mortality in her granddaughter’s presence and, while four months was scarcely enough time to establish any sort of familial love on Talasyn’s end, her stomach still flipped uneasily at the thought of this powerful, seemingly unassailable woman dying.
“Already my courtiers scramble to sink their claws into you,” Urduja warned. “You must become adept at discerning who is trustworthy and who is not. Most of them fall into the latter category, but play your cards right and none will dare question your reign. The Zahiya-lachis is She Who Hung the Earth Upon the Waters, as good as a goddess.”
From there the audience proceeded in a brisk, purposeful manner, with Urduja lecturing Talasyn on various topics pertaining to the Dominion as they nibbled on pastries and sipped tea. Every once in a while, Urduja would ask a question and Talasyn would answer as best as she could, building on previous lessons and her own personal observations. It was all routine, and yet these discussions had become more and more technical in nature as the months passed, and it was all in a language that she had begun learning only recently. By the time a servant entered the room to announce the arrival of Prince Elagbi, Talasyn was mentally exhausted and grateful for the reprieve.
She stood up to greet her father. She didn’t have to—officially, she outranked him—but he was the closest thing to a true ally that she had at court. Aside from Jie and the Lachis-dalo, who shadowed her every step, Elagbi was the one she spent the most time with, day in, day out, except for when his duties took him away from the capital. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling when he kissed her cheek: exactly the sort of thing she used to imagine her parents doing every morning or as they bade her goodnight.
“Had I known that you were joining us, I would have had the servants prepare the orange loose-leaf instead of the Etlingera green,” Urduja chided her son once he and Talasyn were seated.
“Orange loose-leaf was the only tea that I didn’t passionately abhor as a child,” Elagbi explained to Talasyn. “I never cared for the beverage in general.”
“The two of you have that in common,” Urduja remarked.
Damn, Talasyn swore to herself. She thought that she’d mastered the art of looking neutral while choking down what was essentially bitter leaf water, but she needed more practice, apparently.
Elagbi turned to address Urduja. “I apologize for dropping in like this, Harlikaan, but I have urgent news.” He paused, glancing hesitantly at Talasyn. The Zahiya-lachis gestured for him to continue, making good on her resolve that it was time for the Dominion’s heir to learn more about ruling and, consequently, to have access to the kind of confidential information that came along with it. “One of our fishing boats on the far edge of its northern route sent an aetherwave transmission to Port Samout a few hours ago. They’ve spotted a flotilla of at least thirty Kesathese warships heading our way, with a stormship bringing up the rear. The Grand Magindam is worried that an offensive might be imminent. Nenavar is the only realm in this direction for thousands of miles.”
“Ridiculous.” Talasyn set her teacup down with a clatter. “Not even that wretched boil on the World-Father’s behind is stupid enough to think that he can attack the Dominion with so small a force.”
The two other people in the salon blinked at her.
“That wretched boil on the World-Father’s behind?” Urduja queried in a witheringly dry tone.
Elagbi cleared his throat. “I believe that the Lachis’ka is referring to the new Night Emperor, Harlikaan.”
“I am.” Talasyn glowered. The Dominion had an extensive spy network that kept tabs on the affairs of other realms and, a few sennights after Talasyn had settled in Nenavar, she’d been informed that Alaric Ossinast had ascended to the throne of Kesath. She had no idea if that meant that he was in charge of all the decisions now—especially since his father was reportedly still alive—but surely he wouldn’t attack an entire archipelago with only thirty warships and one stormship.
“Alaric was captured on the Belian range with me,” Talasyn continued. “He knows what the Dominion is capable of. He’s been on the receiving end of void magic and he’s flown a moth coracle. He could also have seen a dragon while he was here but, even if he didn’t, that’s not the sort of thing that any commander in their right mind would leave to chance.”
“Indeed,” said Urduja. “Recklessness isn’t a quality that one might expect to find in a person who would infiltrate a foreign land hostile to outsiders with not a single reinforcement in sight.”
Talasyn flushed. It seemed that her grandmother wasn’t in any hurry to let her or Alaric live that down.
“Well, I, for one, am very happy that you infiltrated us, my dear.” Elagbi reached out to pat Talasyn’s hand. “Her Starlit Majesty is very happy, too, even if she doesn’t deign to show it.”
“Sentimentality will get us nowhere at the moment,” Urduja huffed. “Returning to the situation: whatever this may be, it doesn’t feel like an invasion attempt. Not yet, at least.”
“Could Kesath have learned the whereabouts of the Sardovians?” Elagbi asked, his brow furrowed, and Talasyn went cold. “Perhaps they seek to intimidate us into surrendering our refugees.”
If there was one thing that Talasyn had figured out about the reigning monarch of the Nenavar Dominion, it was that she always kept her cards close to her chest, never letting on what was truly on her mind. This time was no different; Urduja rose to her feet, an abrupt dismissal. “I shall speak with the Grand Magindam to determine the best way to handle this development. In the meantime, I expect utmost discretion from the two of you regarding this matter.”
Elagbi led Talasyn to another wing of the palace. “Your grandmother is rattled,” he told her as they walked.
“I find that difficult to believe, to be honest,” Talasyn remarked.
“You learn how to tell after a while.” Although the hallway was deserted save for the Lachis-dalo trailing the two royals at a courteous distance, Elagbi lowered his voice. “This could easily turn into a crisis. If the Night Empire manages to enter Dominion territory and catch wind of a Sardovian presence, their wrath will know no bounds. You have not revealed the bargain to anyone else at court, have you?”
Talasyn shook her head. Since there had been too many witnesses on the Belian range, Urduja had had to disclose to the other nobles that Talasyn had grown up on the Northwest Continent and that she was a Lightweaver. However, no one knew that she hadn’t returned to claim her title of her own free will—no one except for House Silim’s closest allies and the Lachis-dalo who had been present at the W’taida meeting, who were bound by sacred oaths to keep the secrets of the royal family.
“I suppose that there is no use worrying about it until Alaric Ossinast makes his intentions clear,” said Elagbi. “For now, let us speak of happier things.”
Talasyn was actually quite worried about it, but their relatively brief time together had enabled her to form a comprehensive picture of this man who was her father. As the younger son, Elagbi was the despair of Urduja’s eye, a laidback sort of fellow who possessed no grand ambitions and absolutely none of the cunning that the Nenavarene aristocracy was infamous for. He was, in Talasyn’s very affectionate opinion, flighty, and it was endearing.
“What sort of happier things should we talk about, then?” she gamely asked.
Elagbi looked proud of himself. “I found some more old aetherlogs.”
In the Nenavarene prince’s study, a beautiful woman cajoled the squirming infant in her arms to look at some unseen nearby lens, a moment immortalized in grainy black-and-white flickers on a field of canvas.
Talasyn would never cease to be amazed by the Dominion’s ingenuity. Back in Sardovia, aethergraphs were not unheard of, although rare. These were contraptions mounted on wooden tripods that used the light of a Firewarren-imbued aether heart to transmit an image onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. Here in Nenavar, the aethergraph had been modified to be capable of imprinting a series of images in strips of cotton film that could then be projected in rapid succession on a flat surface. The result was that the subject of the images looked as if it was moving.
This, then, was the sort of thing that could be created in a nation whose inventors and Enchanters weren’t devoting all their time and energy to the war effort. These days, Talasyn often found herself feeling a twinge of melancholy for what Sardovia could have become without the shackles of a ten-year conflict.
But, on this particular morning, she focused on nothing else beyond the woman and the child on the canvas.
No matter how many times Talasyn beheld her mother’s likeness, the eerie resemblance always caught her off-guard. It was as if she were peering not at the past but at the future, at an older version of herself. In all the oil portraits and aether-graphy, though, Hanan Ivralis’s smile tended to be brittle at the edges. She had not been very happy at court, preferring instead the jungles that reminded her of her homeland and the ruins of the Lightweaver temple on Mount Belian, where she could commune with the only Light Sever to be found in the country.
In the aetherlog, Talasyn was only a few months old, yanking at strands of her mother’s hair with chubby fingers and her features scrunched up, her mouth open in a soundless wail. It was so close to being familiar, like a word on the tip of her tongue. If she strained harder, if she dug deeper, surely she could discover this half-minute in the depths of her memories. Surely she would be able to recall what it had felt like to be held in her mother’s arms.
Prince Elagbi cranked a lever on the aethergraph, rewinding the film without having to be asked. Talasyn could have watched it forever. Just this moment, just this sliver of love, on a loop. Somewhere out on the Eversea the Night Empire fleet was amassing, but it took no great effort on her part to push that concern aside for now. For just a little while longer. The Hurricane Wars had taught her that these moments of grace were few and far between and she had to take what she could get. When she could get it.
“Tell me again how you and Hanan met,” Talasyn requested, not taking her eyes off the canvas.
Even though Elagbi had repeated this story quite a few times over the months, he was glad to indulge her once more. “I traveled often in my younger days, exploring Lir and learning about other cultures. I was still the second son then, with no major responsibilities to my name.” A shadow fell over his features, the way it always did when he thought of Sintan, the brother he had killed in battle, but it passed quickly, with an acceptance that time had taught. “On one such sojourn, I stumbled upon a group of islands west of Nenavar, where the sky constantly blazed with Light Severs.”
“The Dawn Isles,” Talasyn breathed.
“How did you guess?” Elagbi teased gently. “My airship was caught up in one of the discharges and we crashed. The crew and I survived the impact, but we were stranded in the middle of the jungle for days. I thought that it was rather miserable luck at first, but then I bumped into your mother beneath the trees. I startled her, to be more accurate—she nearly ran me through with a light-woven spear.”
“She had a temper,” Talasyn said with a grin.
“A formidable one,” Elagbi confirmed, chuckling. “We couldn’t understand each other initially. Sailor’s Common is not widely spoken in the Dawn Isles. Through an inspired combination of pantomime and drawing in the dirt with a stick, I was able to convince her to bring me and my crew back to her village. Her mother was the clan matriarch, and we were begrudgingly offered shelter and assistance. It took almost a month to repair the airship, during which time Hanan and I got to know each other better.”
“And fell in love,” Talasyn supplied, her smile widening.
Elagbi smiled back. “It was a whirlwind romance. When I finally left the Dawn Isles, she went with me. We were married within days of our arrival in Nenavar. The Zahiya-lachis as well as the whole court didn’t take too kindly to an outsider joining the royal family, especially since Hanan refused to be proclaimed the Lachis’ka and it jeopardized the succession because Sintan had yet to take a wife. But mine and Hanan’s marriage remained steadfast. After a year, we had you.”
In the aetherlog, Hanan Ivralis’s slim shoulders shook with silent laughter as she tried to extricate strands of her hair from where they’d wrapped around a three-month-old Talasyn’s curious fingers. This time, the twenty-year-old Talasyn, who was watching the scene, registered the vague scent of wild berries and knew, without a doubt, that this was what her mother had smelled like.
It was a start. It was enough for now.
She and her father never talked about the role that Hanan had played, however inadvertently, in the civil war. For Urduja, Hanan would probably always be the naive, easily manipulated woman who had nearly destroyed the Dominion. Elagbi, on the other hand, held his wife’s memory sacred, and even though the Nenavarene civil war had consigned Talasyn to a life of hardship for several long years, she chose to believe in the recollections that were borne of love.
“I want that for you, too, you know.” At Elagbi’s cryptic statement, Talasyn turned to him, not understanding what he meant. He cupped her face between both hands. “Whirlwind or not, be it a lightning bolt or a slow fall, I want you to someday have what your mother and I had.”
“I don’t think there’s time for that,” Talasyn said dismissively. Romance was a foreign concept to her. And, from what she’d learned about them, the majority of the Nenavarene lords and ladies didn’t seem to set much store by it either, focused as they were on power plays and financial gain. Urduja’s marriage to Talasyn’s grandfather, who had died before Elagbi was born, had been a purely strategic choice, a consolidation of territories between two noble houses to resolve a centuries-old border dispute.
Elagbi was the outlier, and perhaps there was no greater proof that Talasyn was his daughter because there was a small part of her that was curious about it. About how it felt to love somebody so much that you could defy tradition or leave behind everything you had ever known.
And then she remembered what had happened between Khaede and Sol, the grief that she knew Khaede was carrying wherever she was and would carry until the end of her days, and she thought about how bittersweetly her father spoke of his long-gone wife.
Talasyn revised her opinion. Surely no romance was worth all that.
“Someday, dearest one,” Elagbi repeated. “Of course, whoever it is will have to go through me first, and I shall have no qualms about telling them that they aren’t good enough for you.”
