At noon the following day, with the sun of perpetual summer high in the sky, Talasyn grabbed her climbing gear and snuck out of the royal palace, testing her recently devised escape route. Over the balcony of her bedchamber, down the white marble walls, down the limestone bluffs. She timed her descent to coincide with the roving patrols’ brief periods of shift changes and blind spots that she’d spent several sennights taking note of. Upon reaching the base of the cliff, she drew up her nondescript gray hood to cover her face, which had dominated Dominion newssheets these past few months, and forged onward into the bustling city.
She had to hand it to the Nenavarene living in Eskaya. Although an alert had been issued and commonfolk throughout the islands had been advised to prepare to take shelter from the Kesathese warships at a moment’s notice, for the most part life in the capital was proceeding as usual. Taverns and wet markets were still doing business at a brisk pace; the blue skies were littered with trade ships; and carts gently rattled down the streets, pulled by amiable sun buffaloes, bearing milk jugs and sacks of rice. The only thing separating today from any other was the fact that news of the approaching Kesathese flotilla was on everyone’s lips.
Or almost everyone’s, Talasyn mentally corrected herself as she skirted around two children on the sidewalk. They were playing a hand-clapping game without a single worry on their nut-brown faces.
“The west wind sighs, all moons die,” they sang, palms slapping together in time to the melody. “Bakun, dreaming of his lost love, rises to eat the world above.”
Talasyn slipped through the drifting crowds, careful to stick to Eskaya’s gloomy alleys and the quieter residential avenues whenever possible, but she took the extra precaution of keeping her head bowed all the way to the docks, where she rented an airship from the most apathetic-looking proprietor she could find. Her gamble paid off and the man spared her only the most fleeting of glances as he pocketed the handful of silver coins she gave him. He motioned her toward the vessel that was now hers for the day.
It was . . . Well, Talasyn supposed that it could be called an airship, in the sense that it possessed aether hearts, an aetherwave transceiver, and a sail. However, unlike the imposing outrigger warships or the graceful moth coracles or the ostentatious pleasure yachts, this particular Nenavarene design was what was called a dugout. It was little more than a hollowed tree trunk, with a yellow sail that had clearly seen better days.
Talasyn knew that the dugouts were sturdier than they appeared. They were a common enough sight in Dominion skies, being a cheap and convenient mode of travel between islands. But that did little to allay her fears that her tiny airship would fall apart in a stiff breeze.
Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and a few minutes later she was soaring away from the docks and over the city rooftops and the expanse of wild rainforest that hemmed them in. Wind and sunbeams whipped at her face as she set sail for Port Samout.
Ever a reliable source of court gossip, Jie had confided to Talasyn over breakfast that the Kesathese flotilla was now within sight of Nenavar’s shores. No one would tell her anything more, so Talasyn had decided to see for herself. She didn’t have any afternoon lessons scheduled today; all that she’d needed to do was endure another frustrating, bewildering morning session with the dance instructor before she retired to her chambers with a pretend headache, leaving strict orders not to be disturbed.
Even if she was being provided with a detailed report every few minutes—as her grandmother most assuredly was, judging from the constant parade of officers filtering in and out of the Roof of Heaven’s throne room—Talasyn still wasn’t going to sit idly in her luxurious prison while the Night Empire made their move, whatever said move entailed. An age-old fury built up inside her the moment she glimpsed the unmistakable outlines of Kesathese ironclads massing on the horizon, silhouetted against a clear blue sky that had, by the time she docked atop a sandy cliff near the port, turned overcast and gloomy with the promise of rain.
It was mere coincidence. Nenavar could shift from sun-drenched to waterlogged in the blink of an eye. Despite knowing this, Talasyn couldn’t help the shudder of both fear and revulsion that lanced through her being. She couldn’t help feeling as though the Night Empire stormship had brought the clouds with it.
We’ll be all right. She chanted it to herself over and over again. We have the dragons.
And we have the Huktera fleet.
She exited the dugout and scrambled to the edge of the cliff on her hands and knees, sand scraping at her spread palms and her brown breeches until she found a decent vantage point where she could lie flat on her stomach. She retrieved a golden spyglass from her pack and put it to her right eye, squeezing the left one shut as she homed in on what was happening north of Port Samout.
Forming a defensive arrowhead a few miles off Sedek-We’s coast were the outriggers of the Dominion—triple-decked warships bristling with rows upon rows of bronze cannons, with their keels curved like crescents, bows fashioned into snarling dragons’ heads and the sterns into lashing tails. Their crab-claw sails bore the dragon emblem of Nenavar, wings spread, the lower half of its serpentine body coiled, blazing gold against a field of blue. The outriggers hovered in the air on fumes of wind magic, amidst clouds of moth coracles, above an Eversea that had begun churning along with the darkening of the sky, its frothing currents the color of old machine oil, mirroring the tense atmosphere.
At the tip of the formation was the Parsua, the flagship of Elaryen Siuk, Nenavar’s Grand Magindam, a rank that Talasyn had deduced was similar to that of the Sardovian Amirante. Siuk seemed as unfazed as Ideth Vela would be in this situation, standing on the command deck and drinking coffee as she surveyed the Kesathese vessels that had come to a stop just slightly beyond firing range, cannons already swung outward.
Talasyn shifted her spyglass further north. Her brow furrowed. There was something different about the Night Empire’s ironclads and their wolf coracle escorts. Their hulls seemed to be made of thicker plate, the cannons slimmer. Or maybe she just hadn’t seen them in so long. Behind them lurked the stormship, a nightmare assembled from aether and fog, and it was . . .
Her fingers shook around the spyglass as her fury spiked to a magnitude far greater than her body could contain. It was the Deliverance. The Night Emperor’s flagship.
No longer Gaheris’s, but Alaric’s.
Talasyn’s magic stirred within its banks, raring and restless, itching to reach out across the turbulent waves to sink light’s fiery claws into her nemesis. She pictured Alaric on the enclosed bridge of the stormship, his silver gaze dispassionately regarding the white shores of another land that his empire had come to wreak havoc on. And because she couldn’t do anything from this distance, because she felt as though her hatred would eat her alive, she swung her spyglass back to the Nenavarene side of the standoff in a bid to distract herself by waiting for Siuk’s next move.
A shadow fell over the Parsua’s many decks. A dragon had wandered down from beyond the mountains—one of the green-eyed ones, its great length covered in salt-crusted copper scales. It was either curious or protective. No one would be able to tell for sure, save for the dragon itself. While none of its kind ever harmed those with Nenavarene blood, and they were known to protect the Dominion in dangerous times, they could not be commanded. The dragons were creatures of the aether, even more so than the spectrals that could vanish at will and the sarimans that could nullify magic.
This particular dragon emitted a roar of challenge as it swooped toward the Kesathese ships. Talasyn wondered what Alaric’s reaction was to witnessing such a creature bear down upon him. She wished she could see his face.
She gave a start, accidentally knocking her head against the spyglass. Why was she thinking about Alaric Ossinast’s face?
Mentally castigating herself, Talasyn resumed tracking the dragon’s slithering flight, watching intently as it closed in on the Night Empire’s ranks.
Flares of brilliant amethyst lit up the horizon. The ironclad spearheading Kesath’s formation fired off dozens of huge bolts of void magic, several of which hit the oncoming dragon squarely in its left wing. Talasyn’s cry of disbelief was swallowed up by the leviathan creature’s scream of pain as the rot set in, patches of black decay blossoming over copper scales. Its survival instinct kicked in as it dove into the Eversea with uncharacteristic clumsiness, badly wounded, confused to find itself on the receiving end of the only aether magic in the world that could penetrate its hide.
How—
Alaric, Talasyn realized. He’d taken the stolen moth coracle back to the Continent, and Kesath’s Enchanters must have been put to work extracting the new magic from its aether hearts.
As the dragon disappeared beneath the tide, Talasyn rushed back to the dugout. She no longer cared about secrecy. She had to warn the Roof of Heaven that the Night Empire had developed their own void cannons, and then she had to join Grand Magindam Siuk’s fleet, to help them in the battle that was sure to follow. But no sooner had she activated the dugout’s transceiver when a message rolled in on the aetherwave. It was from the lead Kesathese ironclad, and it overrode all nearby Dominion frequencies.
“Greetings,” a woman’s clipped tones said in Sailor’s Common. “I am Commodore Mathire of the Night Empire. Bringing up the rear is His Majesty Alaric Ossinast. More warships are on their way. I regret that we had to harm your dragon, but it was in the interest of preventing further losses. We wanted to show you that we are in possession of this magic as well, and it would be wise to take the path of least resistance. Before the sun has set, you will send an envoy to discuss the terms of the Nenavar Dominion’s surrender. Or we invade.”
On the bridge of the Deliverance, Alaric stalked over to the aetherwave transceiver and yanked at the lever that put him through to the Glorious, Mathire’s ironclad.
“Commodore.” He kept his tone level, much too aware of the many crew members within earshot. “I gave orders to fire only if it was a matter of life and death.”
“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Mathire replied, her civility matching his, “the beast was flying right at us. Any leader worth their salt would have made the same call. At least now the Dominion knows that we’re serious.”
Or they’ll declare all-out war because we injured one of their dragons, Alaric retorted, but only in the silence of his own head. He couldn’t argue with one of his officers in public; he was so very newly emperor, after all, and Mathire was one of the old guard. A hero of the Cataclysm. It wouldn’t do to run afoul of High Command’s panel of veterans and their loyalists just yet.
Alaric settled for instructing Mathire to remain on the alert before he signed off. And then there was nothing left to do but wait for Nenavar’s response—and think about the dragon.
It had been truly monstrous. A snakelike hellbeast that blocked out the sky. Many in Alaric’s crew had screamed and gasped to see a myth come to life in the distance, coiling through the heavens, approaching their formation with inscrutable intent. A myth whose claws and fangs suddenly made their dread stormship seem nothing more than a fragile construct, built by mortal hands.
Alaric grudgingly admitted to himself that it was in many ways a relief to have proof of the new cannons working against such a creature. Gaheris had been instantly enamored with the Nenavarene magic and he’d had his Enchanters toil day and night to master it, to spin out enough of it to arm a good portion of the ironclads and the wolf coracles. But the supply was limited, and the former Night Emperor, who was now styled Regent, was eager to gain access to the amethyst dimension’s nexus point. Hence, this expedition southeast, mounted as soon as the cannons were ready to go.
And it wasn’t just that.
With their technology and vast wealth, the Nenavar Dominion would be a fine addition to any empire. Even if it weren’t, this nation had tried to help the Sunstead Lightweavers nineteen years ago, and Alaric knew that they could never be a trustworthy neighbor if he left them to their own devices.
All around us are enemies. Remember this, my son.
Nenavar’s response came much more swiftly than expected. Within the hour, in fact. As though they had anticipated Kesath’s maneuver and had planned for it accordingly.
Alaric regarded their envoy with no small amount of wariness as she swept into the meeting room of the Deliverance as if she owned it.
As indicated in the Dominion’s tersely worded missive, which had been delivered to the stormship via a crested brown-and-white eagle the size of a canoe, the envoy was Niamha Langsoune, the Daya of Catanduc. Her cross-collared peach-and-apricot robes swished gently with every step, celestial patterns embroidered in copper thread bringing out the burnished tones of her smooth skin. Elaborately stylized paints and powders adorned her graceful features underneath a jewel-encrusted scarf that had been wrapped around her jet-black hair like a halo. Alaric did his best not to gawk, acknowledging her flawless curtsy with a nod before gesturing for her to take the seat across from him at the long table. It was a private audience, with both side’s guards waiting outside the closed doors.
“Daya Langsoune,” Alaric began, “I trust that your journey was a pleasant one.” From Port Samout, it had taken all of fifteen minutes for her skerry to reach the Night Empire airships, but he figured that it didn’t hurt to be polite.
“As pleasant as can be expected, with the threat of war looming over our heads.” Niamha’s voice was disarmingly bright and clear, like a glass bell. In truth, she seemed far too young to have been designated envoy for such a delicate matter. Alaric estimated her to be around the same age as Talasyn was, and then he steadfastly banished his treacherous thoughts about the missing Lightweaver from his mind.
“It doesn’t have to be a war,” he told Niamha. “Should the Zahiya-lachis deign to swear fealty to the Night Empire, not a single drop of Nenavarene blood need be shed.”
“I would not be so certain, Your Majesty. Let me tell you something about my people.” Niamha leaned forward, as if about to impart a great secret. “We will not be ruled by outsiders. If Queen Urduja bows, our islands will revolt.”
“And what are your islands compared to Kesath’s ordnance?” Alaric drawled. “I have the advantage. I have the stormships and your magic. I could decimate the Nenavar Dominion’s army in a fortnight using only half of the imperial fleet.”
“You could, but then you will be king of ashes,” Niamha shot back. “We would sooner salt our fields and poison our waters, burn our castles and bury our mines, and kill every last one of our dragons before we let any of it fall into the Night Empire’s hands.”
“While that would certainly be tragic, it’s still a preferable outcome to Kesath having to share this corner of the Eversea with an independent, uncooperative monarchy. One that sought to destroy us nineteen years ago,” he retorted. “We are wasting time, Daya Langsoune. I expected us to either discuss surrender or to declare hostilities, not to posture and play word games.”
“I did not come here to surrender, Your Majesty. And only a fool would declare hostilities while behind enemy ranks.” Niamha’s ink-black eyes gleamed. “Queen Urduja wishes to avoid bloodshed, same as you. Luckily enough for all of us, Nenavar has a time-honored tradition of settling differences between rival factions via one very efficient method.”
Alaric’s jaw clenched. “Which is?”
“I bring you an offer from She Who Hung the Earth Upon the Waters,” said the envoy. “An offer of marriage to the heir of her throne.”
At first, Alaric was absolutely certain that he’d misheard. After several moments passed with Niamha watching him patiently, he found his voice, his brows knitting together. “Over the years, we have been gathering what intelligence we can on the Nenavar Dominion, as I am sure that the Dominion has done with Kesath.” She smirked, giving away nothing and everything all at once, and he continued, “According to these reports, you have no Lachis’ka. Elagbi’s daughter disappeared during a failed uprising and is presumed dead.”
“Your reports are outdated,” Niamha declared with relish. “Alunsina Ivralis was returned to us some time ago. A union between our two realms would be beneficial for all, don’t you think? The Dominion retains its autonomy and the Night Empire gains access to Nenavar and the riches within.” She stood up. “I’ll take my leave before I outstay my welcome, Your Majesty. We shall await your response to either begin marriage negotiations or exchange broadsides, and rest assured that we are prepared to do either. But do take your time—you have the advantage, after all.”
Niamha swept out of the room in a rustle of silk, leaving Alaric alone and stunned, wrestling with the enormity of the choice set before him.
“They want something.”
His father’s voice echoed low like distant thunder through a place that was not a place. A room that did not exist in the material world.
Gaheris called it the In-Between, this pocket dimension accessible via the Shadowgate. He had found it when he began delving deeper, past the known boundaries of magic. It was a space that could be occupied by more than one aethermancer at the same time, facilitating a method of instantaneous communication across even the vastest distance. The In-Between required tremendous focus and effort to maintain, and thus far Alaric was the only one among the Legion who had mastered such an art.
As a child, he’d clung to the fanciful notion that the In-Between was special, something that belonged to him and his father alone. Perhaps there was a small part of him that still believed so now.
Amidst flickering walls of shadow energy and aetherspace, Gaheris was deep in thought, head bowed, long fingers curled under his chin, unmoving. By contrast, Alaric was restless even as he stood respectfully still, his gauntleted fist clenching and opening at his side in slow, tentative spasms.
“The Dominion wants something from us,” Gaheris repeated. “Given how quickly they responded, they had their offer ready well before we made contact. I must admit that I’m curious.” He looked up, his gray eyes holding Alaric prisoner in their murky depths. “But, in any case, Daya Langsoune is right. A conjugal union between the Night Emperor and the Lachis’ka of the Nenavar Dominion would be most pragmatic.”
“Father.” The protest was ripped loose from Alaric’s throat before he could stop it. “I cannot marry a woman I do not know.” He couldn’t marry at all. A wife had never figured in his plans, and he had no wish to be shackled by the same sort of arrangement that had hung his parents out to dry.
“We must all make sacrifices for our cause. It would not do to falter now.” Gaheris’s tone took on a sinuous cajolery, sinking its thorns into Alaric’s soul. “It is your destiny to rule. With the wealth of Nenavar at your disposal, with the Huktera at your back, you will build an empire on a grander scale than even I could have ever dreamed.”
“It won’t be my wealth, it won’t be my fleet,” Alaric muttered. “It will still belong to—”
“Your bride. Who will one day be the Zahiya-lachis. Who will be all too eager to share her earthly possessions with her husband if she is properly wooed.”
Alaric grimaced. Pride kept him from saying it out loud, but Gaheris seemed entirely too confident in his son’s abilities to woo anyone. “I don’t know if it would be advisable to wager the future on a woman’s heart,” he remarked instead.
“What about a woman’s duty to her people? A woman’s sense of self-preservation?” Gaheris asked, changing tactics with the usual abrupt sharpness that always threatened to draw blood. “Once we have established a foothold in their archipelago, the Dominion will not dare test us. After your marriage, we shall be in a position to hold the sword over their head.”
“Romantic indeed.” Alaric flinched the moment that the words rolled off his tongue, caustic even to his own ears. His stomach dropped once he realized what he had just done, and he immediately sank to the shivering ground, prostrating himself at the regent’s feet. “I apologize, Father.”
“It would appear that you have gotten quite drunk on the power that I deigned to bestow upon you, my little lordling,” Gaheris said coldly. “While you may be the face of this new empire, I am its architect. Your word is law but it is I who speaks through you. Have you forgotten?”
“No.” Alaric squeezed his eyes shut. “It won’t happen again.”
“I should hope so. For your sake,” Gaheris rumbled from his throne, thousands of miles away yet inescapable. “If you insist on acting like a petulant child, then I shall order you around as if you are one. You will marry this Alunsina Ivralis and form an alliance to herald the dawn of a new age, or you will suffer the consequences.” Alaric lifted his head to nod, and Gaheris’s next words were softer, the line of his mouth twisting into a smile laden with dark humor. “Do not fret, my son. You spoke of romance and I would be the first to tell you that such feelings have no place in this, but I’ve heard it said that Nenavarene women are the most beautiful and well-mannered in all the world. It might not be as unpleasant as you fear.”
“I won’t do it!”
Talasyn shook with fury, aiming a virulent glare at the Zahiya-lachis, who, in turn, regarded her with an impassive expression from the scroll-wing chair in her private salon.
“I won’t agree to this.” There was a beast trying to claw its way out of Talasyn’s chest, some vile, ugly thing birthed from anger and disbelief, but she might as well have been the sea, crashing desperately against the insurmountable rock that was her grandmother’s iron will. She turned to Elagbi, who had also gotten to his feet at Urduja’s declaration but was otherwise not saying a word. “You can’t make me do this!” Talasyn snapped at him. “All your talk about wanting me to be happy, to have what you and Hanan had. I won’t find it with that—that monster—” Her voice broke. “Please—”
After Mathire’s aetherwave transmission, Talasyn had returned the dugout to its proprietor and then rushed back to the palace on foot. Common sense had kicked in long enough for her to pretend that she’d still been laid up in bed when Jie came knocking to say that the Zahiya-lachis had summoned her. She hadn’t been all that confident in her ability to act surprised as she sat in her grandmother’s salon and was told about the Kesathese flotilla and their weaponry, but then the offer had come up and there was no longer any need to feign shock and horror.
“Talasyn is correct, Harlikaan,” Elagbi told Urduja quietly. “She has already assumed her role at court under duress, and now you are offering her up like a sacrificial lamb to the Night Emperor.”
“The alternative is to fight a war that we cannot win,” said Urduja. “This is what is best for our people.”
“Then you marry him!” Talasyn spat.
The Dragon Queen raised an eyebrow. “I am not the one he chased over the Eversea, the one he crossed blades with and met his match in. Who better to keep a Shadowforged husband in line than a Lightweaver wife?”
“With what training?” Talasyn let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “I haven’t fought in months and I can’t even commune with the Belian Sever. Your terms made sure of that!”
“And you accepted those terms, did you not? To save your friends. Tell me, what do you think will happen to them if the Night Empire attacks us and finds out that they’re here?” Urduja asked pointedly. “With Alaric Ossinast as your consort, you will have greater control over where his forces may go. We will retain sovereignty of the archipelago and we will be able to keep the Night Empire away from Sigwad, where your comrades are hiding. If you won’t do this for Nenavar, then do this for Sardovia.”
“You have all the answers, don’t you?” Talasyn narrowed her eyes at the woman whom she just couldn’t bring herself to like, even as she’d come to grudgingly respect her power and political acumen. It was a sad thing to realize that the family she’d been searching for was a far cry from perfect—sadder still that one of them was actually capable of making her vision go dim with rage. “Did you know that this would happen? Were you plotting to use me as a bargaining chip right from the start? Did you anticipate that the Night Empire would come calling?”
“I suspected that it would be a possibility,” Urduja said with maddening calm. “New empires are always so eager to make their mark, and who could resist the siren song of the Dominion? A strategic halfway mark between Kesath and both the southern and eastern hemispheres, oozing with precious metals and fertile land and advanced technology . . . Yes, I suspected. And I planned accordingly, because that is what a leader does.”
“Leaders fight for their people!” Talasyn yelled. “They don’t unlock the gates and welcome the enemy with open arms!”
“You foolish child,” Urduja hissed. “Don’t you understand yet? This is how we fight. We give them the foothold that they’re after, but we dictate how they move.”
“You’re using we an awful lot, considering that I’m the only one who’s going to be a tyrant’s wife!” Talasyn’s gaze shot to Elagbi once more but he remained silent, the look on his face conflicted. Her shoulders slumped. Her father might profess to love her but, in the end, he would never go against his own mother, his queen. The Zahiya-lachis was as good as a goddess, her word law.
“You promised, Alunsina,” Urduja reminded her quietly. “You swore that you wouldn’t give me any trouble if I agreed to shelter you and your comrades. I am holding you to that now.”
In spite of her defiance, Talasyn knew that she again had no choice. This time, it wasn’t just the continued survival of the Sardovian remnant that was at stake, but all of Nenavar as well. Even if by some miracle she and her comrades managed to escape from the Dominion unscathed, she would be leaving an entire country at the mercy of the regime that had thought nothing of wiping entire cities from the map. She was well and truly ensnared.
“Take heart, my dear.” Urduja must have sensed Talasyn’s belligerent acceptance, because she now sounded marginally more sympathetic. “Many empires have come and gone since the first Zahiya-lachis took the throne. Nenavar has watched them rise and she has watched them fall, and she will outlast this one, too. The Night Empire will not destroy us, and neither will they destroy you, for you are of our blood. Now—save us all.”
