The Reconciliation was a ghost ship in the distance. Loth watched other vessels emerge behind it from the fog.
It was the end of the second day of spring, and they were above the Bonehouse Trench, the deepest part of the Abyss. In Cárscaro, a group of mercenaries would be making their way through the mountain pass to kill King Sigoso and secure the Donmata Marosa.
If she was still alive. If the Flesh King had already died, his daughter might be a puppet now.
The ensigns of every country, save one, rippled among the ships. The Unceasing Emperor was gazing at them, hands behind his back. He wore a scaled cuirass over a dark robe, a heavy surcoat on top, and an ornate iron helmet, inlaid with silver moons and stars.
“So,” he said, “it begins.” He glanced at Loth. “I thank you, Lord Arteloth. For the pleasure of your company.”
“The pleasure was mine, Majesty.”
It took time for the ships to be tied to each other. Finally, Sabran came to the Dancing Pearl with Lady Nelda Stillwater and Lord Lemand Fynch on either side of her, followed by most of her Knights of the Body and a throng of Inysh naval officers and soldiers.
Befitting the situation, her attire struck a delicate balance between splendor and practicality. A gown that was more like a coat, lacking a framework and cutting off above the ankle, with riding boots beneath. A crown of twelve stars, interspersed with dancing pearls, sat atop her braided hair. And though she was no warrior, she wore the Sword of Virtudom, the stand-in for Ascalon, at her side.
When Loth saw Ead in the party, wrapped in a cloak with a fur collar, he breathed without strain for the first time in days. She was alive. Tané had kept her word.
Tané herself was also among those who came across, though her dragon was nowhere to be seen. When their gazes met, she inclined her head. Loth returned the gesture.
The Unceasing Emperor stopped a short distance from Sabran. He bowed, while Sabran curtsied.
“Your Majesty,” the Unceasing Emperor said.
Her face was cast in marble. “Your Imperial Majesty.”
There was a moment in which they regarded one another, these two rulers who governed with irreconcilable mandates, who had lived out their lives in the shadow of giants.
“Forgive our ignorance of your language,” Sabran said at last. “We understand you speak ours.”
“Indeed,” the Unceasing Emperor said, “though I assure you that I am ignorant of Inysh matters on most other fronts. Language was one of my passions as a boy.” He offered a gracious smile. “I see you have a passion from my side of the world, too. Dancing pearls.”
“We are very fond of them. This crown was made before the Grief of Ages, when Inys still traded with Seiiki.”
“They are exquisite. We have fine pearls in the Empire of the Twelve Lakes, too. Freshwater pearls.”
“We should like to see them,” Sabran said. “We must thank Your Imperial Majesty, and the all-honored Warlord, for your swift acquiescence to our request for aid.”
“My brother-in-arms and I could hardly have refused, Your Majesty, given the urgency of our situation. And how passionately Lord Arteloth argued for this alliance.”
“We expected no less.” Loth caught her eye, and she gave him the faintest smile. “May we ask if the dragons of the East are close?” she added. “We rather expected to be able to see them. Or perhaps they are smaller than we have always assumed.”
“Well,” the Unceasing Emperor said, “the legends say they could once make themselves smaller than a plum. For now, however, they are as large as you have imagined.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “They are beneath the waves, Your Majesty. Immersing themselves in water, gathering their strength. I hope very much that you will be able to meet the Imperial Dragon, my guiding star, after this battle.”
Sabran maintained a neutral expression. “We are sure it would be an honor,” she said. “Does Your Imperial Majesty”—her voice strained a little—“ride on this . . . being?”
“When I am on progress. And perhaps tonight.” He leaned toward her, just slightly. “I must confess, however, to a trifling fear of heights. My virtuous grandmother tells me I am unlike all my predecessors in the House of Lakseng in this respect.”
“Perhaps that is a favorable sign. After all,” Sabran said, “this is a day for new traditions.”
At this, he smiled. “It is.”
Another fanfare, and the Warlord of Seiiki joined the meeting. Silver-haired, with a thin moustache, Pitosu Nadama had the build and bearing of a man who had once been a warrior, but had not had occasion to take up arms in many years. A sleeveless coat of gold covered his armor. With him were thirty of the dragonriders of Seiiki, who bowed to the foreign rulers.
The rider Loth had seen in the water was among them. She had removed her helm and mask, revealing a sun-beaten face and hair in a topknot. She was looking at Tané, who looked straight back at her.
Nadama hailed the Unceasing Emperor in his own language before turning to Sabran.
“Your Majesty.” Even his voice was military, clipped and clear. “My fellow riders will fight alongside you this day. Despite our differences.” He glanced at the Unceasing Emperor. “This time, we will ensure the Nameless One does not return to plague us.”
“Be assured that Inys stands with you, all-honored Warlord,” Sabran answered. White breath fluttered from her mouth. “This day, and for the rest of time.”
Trumpets sounded then, announcing King Raunus of the House of Hraustr. A pale giant of a man with golden hair, eyes like iron, and great knotted muscles. He greeted Sabran with a bone-crushing embrace before introducing himself brusquely to the Eastern rulers. His hand stayed close to the gold-plated rapier at his side.
Despite the friendly opening, the tension between the four of them was a low-burning fire. One errant breath of wind could fan it. After centuries of estrangement, Loth supposed it was of little wonder that each side should be wary of the other.
When they had conferred in low voices for a time, the rulers withdrew to their own ships. The dragonriders marched after the Warlord. The moment they began to leave, Tané turned on her heel and strode in the other direction.
Ead followed Sabran into her cabin, but motioned to Loth to join them. Loth waited for most of the guests to clear the deck. As soon as he was past the Knights of the Body and through the door, he scooped Ead right off her feet.
“Being your friend is quite a strenuous affair, you know,” he said, feeling her smile against his own cheek. He gathered Sabran close with the other arm. “That applies to both of you.”
“Rich words from the man who sailed into the East with pirates,” Sabran said into his shoulder.
He chuckled. When he set Ead down, he saw that the stain was gone from her lips, though she looked tired. “I’m all right,” she told him. “Thanks to Tané. And to you.”
He cupped one of her hands between his. “You still feel cold.”
“It will pass.”
Loth turned to Sabran and straightened her crown of pearls, which had gone awry in the embrace. “I remember your mother wearing this. She would be proud of this alliance, Sab.”
She raised a smile. “I hope so.”
“We have an hour before the third day of spring begins. I had better see Meg.”
“Meg is not here,” Ead said.
Loth stilled. “What?”
She told him everything that had happened since she had woken from her sleep of death. How Tané had eaten the fruit, and how the rulers of the South had come to broker an alliance. When she revealed exactly where his sister was, Loth took a deep breath.
“You let her go to Cárscaro.” He said it to them both. “To a siege.”
“Loth,” Ead said, “Meg made her own choice.”
“She was determined to play her part, and I saw no reason to take that from her,” Sabran explained. “Captain Lintley is with her.”
He imagined his sister on the barren plain, hunkered in a field hospital among the filth and blood of battle. He thought of Margret with the bloodblaze and felt sick.
“I must address the Inysh seafarers,” Sabran murmured. “I pray we see the dawn.”
Loth swallowed the cork of dread in his throat. “May Cleolind watch over us all,” he said.
On the deck of the Dancing Pearl, Tané stood among the soldiers and archers who had gathered to await the hour.
The Unceasing Emperor was on the upper deck. Behind him, like an immense shadow, the Imperial Dragon loomed. Her scales were darkest gold, eyes blue as glaciers. Long tendrils matched the white of her horns. At the stern were three of the Seiikinese dragon elders. Even after all the time Tané had spent in the company of dragons, these ones were the most colossal she had ever seen.
Close to the elders, the Warlord of Seiiki kept watch beside the Sea General. Tané knew her former commander was more than aware of her presence. Every time she looked away from him, she sensed his attention snap to her face.
Onren and Kanperu were among the dragonriders. The latter had gained a scar across one eye since Tané had last seen him. Their dragons waited behind the Defiance.
A touch on her arm made her look back. A figure emerged from the shadows behind her, wearing a hooded cloak.
Ead.
“Where is Roos?” Tané asked her softly.
“The fever has set in. His fight today will be for his life.” Ead never took her gaze from Sabran. “Has your dragon arrived?” Tané shook her head. “Could you ride another?”
“I am no longer a rider.”
“But surely today—”
“You do not seem to understand,” Tané said shortly. “I am disgraced. They will not even speak to me.”
Finally, Ead nodded. “Keep the jewel close,” was all she said before she returned to the shadows.
Tané tried to concentrate. A breath of wind caressed her spine, unsettled her hair, and rose to fill the sails of the Dancing Pearl.
Deep in the Abyss, there was movement. No more than the flicker of butterfly wings, or the quickening of a child in the womb.
“He comes,” the Imperial Dragon said. Her voice quaked through the ships.
Tané reached for her case. The jewel was so cold that she could feel it through the wood and lacquer.
The wind howled against the sails. This was it. Clouds gathered above the ships. The Imperial Dragon called out to her brethren in the language of her kind. The Seiikinese dragons joined their voices to hers. Water bubbled on their scales. The mist grew thick as they brought the storm, and with it, their strength. As they took off from the sea, water streamed off them, soaking the humans below. Tané shook it from her eyes.
It happened so quickly. One moment, all was silent, save the rain.
Then, madness.
The first thing she thought was that the sun had risen, such was the light that ignited in the north. Then came a heat that sucked the breath from her. Fire exploded across the Seiikinese warship Chrysanthemum, moments before a second eruption tore through the fleet of the Northern king, and a full-throated roar announced the arrival of the enemy.
When the black High Western appeared, the downwind from its flight extinguished every lantern on every ship. “Fýredel,” someone bellowed.
Tané choked on the hot stench from his scales. Screams rang out. In the light from the fire, she saw Loth rushing Queen Sabran to her Knights of the Body and the Imperial Guard encircling the Unceasing Emperor before a shoulder slammed into her chest, knocking her flat.
A war conch sounded in the darkness. The riders disappeared with their dragons into the sea. Even as chaos sparked around her, Tané ached to be among them.
The black High Western circled the fleet. Its servants came tearing above the ships. They tangled with the Eastern dragons. Wings, endless wings, flocking like bats. Tails whipped lightning across the sky.
A wyvern flew straight at the mainmast of the Reconciliation. It groaned and buckled, bringing down the highest sail. An agonized cry went up from the deck.
The sails of the iron-armored Chrysanthemum were engulfed in flame. Tané ran with the crowd, pistol in hand. The force of the power inside her—her siden—throbbed in her blood like a second heartbeat.
A fire-breather landed in front of her. Bigger than a stallion. Two legs. A scarlet tongue rattled in its mouth.
Wyvern.
All her life she had prepared for this. It was what she had been born to do.
Tané took out the rising jewel. White light flared out of it, and the wyvern screamed in rage, shielding itself from the glow with its wing. She drove it back, away from the archers.
Another wyvern crashed down behind her, shaking the deck, eyes like live coals in its head. Caught between them, Tané stuffed the jewel back into its case with one hand and drew her Inysh sword from its scabbard with the other. The weight of it unbalanced her, and the first swing went wide, but the second found its mark. Red-hot blood spurted as the blade hewed through scale and flesh and bone. The wyvern struck the deck, headless, its body still thrashing.
And just for a moment, she saw Susa in that pool of blood, a head of dark hair rolling into a ditch, and she could not move an inch. The first wyvern vomited flame at her back.
She twisted just in time. Of its own accord, her hand flew up, and golden light discharged from her palms. The Draconic fire glanced off her, burning up the shoulder of her shirt and making her cry out as blisters formed, but the rest of the flames petered into the fog.
The wyvern cocked its head, pupils slitted, before it let out a hideous snarl and erupted with more blue-tinged fire. Tané backed away, sword at the ready. She needed a Seiikinese blade. No one could move like water with this dead weight in their hands.
Her enemy spat its fire in bursts. Rain hammered its hide. When it was close enough, Tané ducked a bite from its rotting teeth and slashed at its legs. Her next move was too slow—a burly tail snapped across her midriff, its spines just missing her. She went flying across the deck.
The sword clattered out of her hand just before she hit one of the masts and thumped down again, bashing her head. The shock of the impact held her in place. At least one of her ribs was cracked. Her back felt shredded. As the wyvern stalked toward her, nostrils smoking, a Seiikinese soldier thrust his blade into its flank. In the first moment of its rage, he circled the wyvern and aimed for its eye. It clapped its jaws over his leg and slammed him into the deck, over and over, back and forth, as if he were a scrap of meat. Tané heard his bones shatter, his screams bubbling away. The beast hurled what was left over the side.
A charred soldier lay nearby, clad in blue and silver armor. Tané took up a shield emblazoned with the heraldry of the Kingdom of Hróth and hefted it on to her left arm, clenching her jaw against the pain in her ribs. With her other hand, she lifted her bloody sword.
The heat from the fires drew sweat to the surface. The sword was slippery in her hand.
She was no longer aware of the other fire-breathers that flocked above the ships, tearing at sails and breathing great clouds of fire, or the soldiers battling around her. All she knew was the wyvern, and all the wyvern knew was her.
When it lunged for her, she rolled away from its bite and hurdled the tail that whipped toward her knees. Its lack of front limbs made it too cumbersome to fight at close quarters with something as small and quick as a human. This fiend had been bred for swooping and snatching. Like a bird of prey. As it pursued her, her sword gouged the wound the soldier had left. Her shield blocked a flame. The wyvern wrenched it out of her grip. She thrust the sword up, crunching through the underside of its jaw and deep into the roof of its mouth, and the fire in its eyes was extinguished. She backed away from the corpse.
The siden replenished her before exhaustion could set in. Nothing could touch her. Not even death. As the black High Western smashed down the mast of the Water Mother, Tané snatched up a fallen spear.
Her eyes ached. She could see the fire-breathers as if they were motes of dust in a sunray. With one swing of her arm, the spear flew at a bird-headed monster and impaled its wing, pinning it to its body. Flapping wildly with the other, it plummeted into the waves.
The Reconciliation had pulled away from the Dancing Pearl. So had the Defiance and the Chrysanthemum. Their cannons were slanting upward. She heard the crump of a swivel gun before the Reconciliation released everything it had. Chainshot swiveled skyward and snagged on wings and tails. A deafening whump-whump began as the cannons fired. Crossbow bolts shivered from the Lacustrine ships, splinters of bronze catching the firelight. She could hear captains bellowing orders and pistols discharging from the decks of the Defiance and the twang of bowstrings across the fleet.
The clamor was too much. Her head was spinning. She was drunk on siden, seeing the whole battle like a vision.
A weapon. She needed another weapon. If she could reach the Defiance, she could find something. One step took her onto the gunwale, and she dived into the sea.
The quiet beneath the water cooled the fire within. She surfaced and swam hard for the Defiance. Nearby, one of the Ersyri ships had been overcome by flame, and it shed its crew from every side.
There would be black powder on that ship. Lots of it. She took a huge breath and swam downward.
When the ship exploded, she felt the flash of heat through the water. Foul orange light stained the Abyss. The force of it took hold of her and spun her off-course. She kicked back, blinded by her own hair. As she neared the Defiance, she surfaced.
Black smoke swelled from the flaming carcass of the ship. For a moment, Tané could only stare at the destruction.
The black High Western settled on the ruins as though they were a throne. Flesh-fed and banded with muscle, it was a grotesque size. The spikes on its tail were each ten feet long.
Fýredel.
“Sabran Berethnet.” His voice bled with hatred. “My master comes for you at last. Where is the child that will keep him at bay?”
As he mocked the Queen of Inys, a Seiikinese elder dragon, glowing all over, shattered the surface of the Abyss. One great leap took him high over the Dancing Pearl to catch a wyvern in his mouth. Lightning flashed between his teeth. His eyes shone blue-white. Tané saw the wyvern erupt into white flame before the dragon plunged back into the sea, taking his trophy with him. Fýredel watched the display with bared teeth.
“Dranghien Lakseng.” The name boomed across the water. “Will you not show your face?”
Tané kept swimming. The cannons of the Defiance seemed as loud as the thunder. She found the handholds and climbed.
“Behold the Roar of Hróth, who hides in the snow,” Fýredel sneered, exposing his teeth again. Cannons barked from the Bear Guard in answer. “Behold the Warlord of Seiiki, who preaches unity between human and sea-slug. We will throw down your guardians and scatter them like sheep, as we did centuries ago. We will leave black sand from shore to shore.”
Tané reached the deck of the Defiance. Seiikinese soldiers wielded longbows and pistols. An arrow skittered off a wyvern. She pulled a sword from the hand of a dead woman. Somewhere in the night, a dragon was keening.
“Gone are the days of heroes,” Fýredel said. “From North to South and West to East, your world will burn.”
Tané took the rising jewel from its case. If Kalyba was close, she would be drawn to its power.
Sterren punched through the waves like a needle through silk and drew them like a shroud over Fýredel. He launched himself skyward with a snarl, droplets raining off his wings, scales billowing steam.
“Black sails, west sou’west!” came a shout.
In the distance, through the haze of smoke, Tané could see them.
“Yscali ensign,” the captain of the Reconciliation bellowed. “The Draconic Navy!”
Tané counted them. Twenty ships.
Another wyvern swooped, and she rolled behind a mast. A full line of archers fell to its tail. A soldier hurled his halberd at the creature, straight into its haunch.
An archer was slumped over the gunwale, bones shattered. Tané shoved the jewel away and took his bow and quiver. Four arrows left.
“Fire-breather,” the lookout above her roared. “Port, port!”
The remaining archers turned and drew while matchlocks were reloaded. Tané nocked an arrow of her own.
A second High Western, pale as a crane, came out of the night. Tané watched the wings fold inward, the scales change seamlessly to skin, the green eyes gain their whites, and black hair flow where horns had been. By the time it landed on the Defiance, the wyrm had become the same woman Tané had seen in Lasia. Red lips closed over the last flicker of a forked tongue.
“Child,” Kalyba said in Inysh, “give me that jewel.”
Something in Tané urged her to obey.
“It is not a weapon. It is the imbalance.” The witch stalked toward her. “Give it to me.”
Shaken, Tané pulled back her bowstring and forced herself not to look at what Kalyba held. The blade was the bright, pure silver of a star.
Ascalon.
“A bow. Oh, dear. Eadaz should have warned you that you cannot kill a witch with a splinter of wood. Or fire.” Kalyba kept striding toward her, naked, eyes wild. “I should have expected this defiance from the seed of Neporo.”
With every step Kalyba took across the deck, Tané took one away from her. Soon she would run out of ship. The bow was useless—her enemy could shape-shift away from an arrow in a heartbeat, and it was clear the sword could transfigure with her. When it was in her hand, it was like another limb.
“I wonder,” Kalyba said, “if you could best me in combat. After all, you are Firstblood.” Her mouth curved. “Come, blood of the mulberry tree. Let us see who is the greater witch.”
Tané set down her bow. Planting her feet apart, she let her siden rise like the sun into her hands.
