There was a freshly drawn tub waiting in Talasyn’s bathroom at the Roof of Heaven. Jie—who had been quite aghast at the prospect of the Lachis’ka gallivanting about in the woods—had even sprinkled yellow custard-apple petals all over the surface of the water, and they gave off a sweet perfume in addition to the scented oils and herbal soaps.
Talasyn soaked in the marble tub until her skin pruned, brooding in a way that would have put Alaric to shame. They’d exchanged few words on the hike to the garrison, and fewer still on the airship voyage back to Eskaya. At least he had then promptly departed for his stormship with the excuse of having urgent matters to work on and she wouldn’t have to see him again until the eclipse, when they were to create the barrier so that the Dominion Enchanters could study it.
That gave her some time to firmly anchor him in her mind as someone around whom she couldn’t let her guard down. To forget everything that had happened between them on Belian.
I’m sorry, she told Khaede. The Khaede who lived in her head, who might be dead now, for all that Talasyn knew.
There was no response—she was too overwrought even to dream up what kind of response her friend would give—and there in the safety of the perfumed water she finally let a few tears fall.
With Commodore Mathire attending to business on her flagship, Alaric and Sevraim comprised the entirety of the Kesathese contingent who, on the night of the eclipse, strode out into the same atrium that had been the site of a failed barrier demonstration—and would soon hopefully be the site of a successful one—to find that the Dominion’s Enchanters had been hard at work on . . . something.
Ishan Vaikar cheerfully explained the mechanics of the amplifying configuration to him as she and her people arranged the wires and shifted the metalglass jars to form a perfect circle big enough for two people to step into.
Sevraim went to take a closer look; then he returned to Alaric’s side with a shrug. “It’s probably not a murder device, but I say that we let them try it out on your lovely wife-to-be first—”
“Try what out on me?”
Sevraim snapped to attention and Alaric went rigid. Talasyn had snuck up on them, as quiet as a cat. Jaw clenched, Alaric turned to look at her for the first time since they had returned from the Belian range.
The wild soldier with the unkempt braid and the mud-spattered breeches had been banished. In her place, trailed by her taciturn guards, stood the Nenavarene Lachis’ka in a crown of hummingbirds and rose mallows wrought from gold.
Alaric cast around for a suitably wry remark, but Talasyn’s brown eyes slid away from him to some point over his shoulder. A throb of disappointment sliced through him, nauseating in its ferocity.
Talasyn didn’t seem to be all that surprised by the amplifying configuration, but she was probably used to Nenavarene ingenuity by now. She went over to Ishan and they spoke quietly, and, after a while, Alaric joined them.
“Sariman blood, Daya Vaikar?” he queried, glancing at one of the shimmering molten sapphire-and-scarlet cores in the jars. “Do you kill them?”
“Absolutely not!” Ishan looked scandalized by the mere prospect. “The blood is extracted from young and healthy specimens by only the most well trained of handlers. It’s against Nenavarene law to kill an aether-touched creature for any purpose other than self-defense.”
Alaric found himself thinking about the chimera on Kesath’s imperial seal. Once plentiful on the Continent, the beast had been hunted in droves for its leonine fur and the medicinal properties of its antelope hooves and eel scales, as well as the sheer glory of slaying one. The last chimera sighting had been a century ago. It had always seemed like a shame to him, and he wondered if he could introduce a law similar to what Ishan had just described.
Surveying the amplifying configuration one last time, Ishan gave a satisfied nod and gestured for Talasyn and Alaric to step into the circle of jars and filaments.
When a moon was in its eclipse phase, it rose over the Continent already a blood-red or silver-gray orb, and it could take minutes to hours before it reverted to its normal state. Here on the Dominion archipelago, where they were several hours ahead of the Continent, they would bear witness to the whole process from beginning to end. Tonight would be an Eclipse of the First, the largest of the seven, and as she rose to her highest point above the panorama of her ghostly sisters the courtyard shone nearly as white as pristine snow.
Talasyn had never seemed as far away from Alaric as she did now, even though they stood within the circle side by side, almost close enough to touch.
“Shouldn’t be long,” said Ishan. She had brought six other Enchanters with her and they stationed themselves several paces away, each one standing parallel to a jar. “Let’s wait until the First is partially obscured.”
The next few minutes passed in silence, with everyone in the atrium looking up at the full moon. And then, slowly, a wash of inky darkness unfurled over its glistening white surface, and bit by bit it melted into the surrounding night sky. Nibbled at by the sun god’s peckish lion, or gradually engulfed by the reptilian jaws of Bakun mourning his lost love.
Perhaps it was all the same, in the end. Stories to tell around the fire and put children to bed the world over. Perhaps more than one thing could be true at the same time, when they were the folktales that made a nation. Perhaps the great lion still snarled down at Alaric even though he was in a land far away from his gods.
“Now,” said Ishan Vaikar.
In unison, Talasyn and Alaric stretched out their hands in front of them and ripped away the veil of aetherspace. She was his radiant mirror, a shield of light pouring forth from her fingertips while his shadowy creation sparked and hissed in response. Their eyes met and they brought their magic together, and underneath the Eclipse of the First that black-gold sphere bloomed to encase them.
Ishan and the other Enchanters moved in unison as well, arms and wrists flowing like water in arcane patterns. The cores of sariman blood and rain magic within the metalglass jars suddenly flared as bright as tiny suns, the glow filling up their containers and spilling out, running through the wires.
Before Alaric could even blink, the sphere that he and Talasyn had made expanded to cover the whole atrium.
Everything was aether. Everything was light and shadow and rain and blood. Alaric’s magic was screaming through the air, carried on weightless, jeweled wings, stronger than he ever thought possible. Amplified.
It was the signal that the palace guards on the surrounding battlements and balconies had been instructed to wait for. They took aim with their muskets and they fired down into the atrium in a conflagration of amethyst bolts. Each bolt was ineffectual. Each bolt crashed into the barrier and disappeared.
So this was what it was like when a country hadn’t spent the last decade at war. When their Enchanters weren’t focused on powering stormships. When metalworkers and glass-smiths weren’t kept busy creating and repairing frigates and coracles and weapons.
This was what could be achieved.
This was what the Continent had lost in its nation-states tearing one another apart.
“I know,” Talasyn murmured. Alaric couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when he’d turned to look at her, when they’d turned to look at each other. But they were doing so now, and her brown eyes were fiery with magic, with wonder, with regret.
“I didn’t say anything,” he protested.
“You didn’t have to,” she told him, under these black-gold nets, under this mottled eclipse. “It’s written all over your face.”
I could kill him, she thought. Here and now.
No one could penetrate the sphere. No one would be able to stop her.
If she managed to catch him by surprise, if she moved fast enough to slip a light-woven dagger between his ribs, she would be able to avenge Khaede and everyone else.
But there was the Night of the World-Eater to consider. There was the long game.
And, yet, that wasn’t all that stayed her hand.
Talasyn had cut the Belian sojourn short to stop things from becoming too complicated. Now, looking into Alaric’s silver eyes, looking at his moon-kissed face reflecting the molten panels of black and gold that were swirling all around them, she feared that it was already too late.
She saw the Night Emperor. She saw the boy who had shared her loneliness. She saw the Master of the Shadowforged Legion she had battled on the ice and amidst a ruined city through which the stormships raged. She saw the man who had chucked her under the chin, who had so patiently taught her how to make a shield, whose dry remarks had sometimes made her laugh. She saw her first kiss, the first time someone else’s hands had touched her and made her burn.
She saw danger, in more ways than one.
Eventually, the barrier vanished. Talasyn wasn’t sure whether it was Alaric or an Enchanter or her own self who had lost concentration first. It was just a good thing that the guards on the battlements had already stopped firing.
In any case, Ishan was pleased. “Almost six minutes, Your Grace!” She beamed at Talasyn while Sevraim rushed over to make certain that Alaric was all right. “Of course, on the Night of the World-Eater, the Void Sever will flare for an hour or so, and this entire courtyard is only a fraction of its range, but you will have almost five months to practice keeping up your shields and you may rest assured that we in Ahimsa will use this time to devise even bigger and better amplifying configurations.”
“If anyone can do it, it’s you and your people, Daya Vaikar,” Talasyn said sincerely.
Ishan ducked her head in a brief half-bow, which was how the Nenavarene tended to respond to praise. However, her excitement remained palpable. “I look forward to reporting these results to the Zahiya-lachis.”
Acting on a hunch, Talasyn searched the surrounding towers. There, in one of the highest windows, illuminated by a rectangle of warm lamplight, she caught a crowned silhouette in the act of moving away. “Something tells me,” she said wryly, “that Her Starlit Majesty might already have an idea.”
