Chapter Six
C HAPTER S IX
By nightfall, Talasyn’s shock had mostly worn off and the next steps that were within her capabilities had taken shape in her mind. She would learn where exactly Hiras and the other rebels were being held and what the security measures were. She would meet with Vela upon her return to Nenavar, armed with all the data needed to coordinate a rescue mission. Then she would camp out at the Belian shrine for as long as possible, missing no chance to commune with the Light Sever whenever it activated.
Her aethermancy was the only thing that had a hope of countering such a display of Shadowgate as had come from Gaheris. Talasyn had no idea how she would even begin learning an equivalent skill, but she would make do, she would blunder through, as she always had.
But first, she had to endure the gala.
Her coronation dress was a lost cause, so Jie had strapped her into another Nenavarene contraption of stiff ice-blue abaca fiber and embroidered silver trim, studded with pearls to match her dented crown. It dipped appallingly low in the back, but she found consolation in remembering that she would be seated for most of the event—even though she would be sitting beside Alaric, in the middle of one of the long banquet tables full of his officers.
The overall mood was festive. Or as festive as Kesath could get, anyway. The generals congratulated one another on successfully holding the plaza. They sang the Night Emperor’s praises and the Regent’s, proclaiming the might of shadow magic over and over. They toasted the Chiton ’s destruction. As Talasyn maintained the most neutral expression that she could muster, her insides turned over with bile, the food like cardboard in her mouth.
The Kesathese did not mourn their dead, she noticed. They seemed to accept that everyone who fell on the battlefield earlier had simply been doing their duty. Well, she couldn’t say that it wasn’t the same for the Allfold. They’d willingly sacrificed a stormship and everyone on board. And even before that, in the thick of the war …
Talasyn remembered Sol, the life gone from his blue-black eyes, the Summerwind ’s deck spattered with his blood. There had been no time to mourn him as they fled, his death being just one of many, barely a footnote in the grand scheme of things.
And thinking about Sol naturally led her to think about Khaede, whom Alaric hadn’t been able to find, who was either dead or not. If not, then Khaede must have delivered her child, Sol’s child, by now, if she hadn’t miscarried. Khaede could be alive and well somewhere, with her baby, or she could be one of those crushed beneath today’s rubble. Or her ship could have been shot down during the Sardovians’ retreat from the Continent and her bones were being picked clean by the creatures of the deep. Talasyn didn’t know, and it was starting to look more and more likely that she would never know.
Khaede wasn’t a footnote; she was a story without an ending.
Talasyn tried to watch the evening’s entertainment, if only to distract herself from spiraling. At the northern end of the hall was an orchestra of bronze gongs and reed pipes and boat-shaped rosewood xylophones, and moving to the deep and rousing beat these instruments struck were dancers in chainlink attire, cavorting and cartwheeling along the aisles between the tables. They twirled burning staves through the air and breathed plumes of fire, a clever mimicry of aethermancy achieved by fuel mists and precision. Talasyn was struck by how ghastly it was, all this merrymaking in the same city where the Shadowgate had ripped an entire shipload of people to shreds that very afternoon.
Her gaze met Darius’s at another table. He inclined his head in a quick bow that contained a hint of apology. Her lips struggled not to twist into a scowl as she realized that he assumed they really were allies now. Now that the Sardovians had tried to kill her and the Kesathese had witnessed her kill them .
It was apparently a notion shared by the officers at Talasyn’s table. Commodore Mathire, who had only ever been stern or threatening during the marriage negotiations, was all deferential smiles as she encouraged Talasyn to try the fermented plums. When Talasyn ate only a spoonful—and only to be polite—the commodore clucked her tongue in sympathy. “I suppose these Sardovian rats can put a damper on anyone’s appetite. Have no fear, Empress. They’ll never bother you again.”
One of the generals chortled. “Even if they do, Her Majesty will easily put them in their place.”
“To be sure.” Mathire’s smile turned almost lupine in the glow of the flickering fires. “Shadow and light have long been at odds, and for good reason, but today has shown us that much can be achieved by working in concert.”
“Enough.” Alaric broke the gloomy silence he’d sunk into at Talasyn’s side. “My consort has had a long day. Let her dine in peace.” He was looking at Mathire with something like anger, an anger that puzzled Talasyn, that was quite disproportionate to the apparent cause—the commodore’s disruption of her meal.
“Of course, Emperor Alaric.” Mathire’s smile faded a little, but never truly left.
Before Talasyn could even wonder at this strange interaction, there was a swirl of black amidst the dancers and their red-gold streams of flame. One of the Shadowforged Legion had entered the hall, made his way to Alaric, and was murmuring in his ear. Talasyn was close enough to hear the man say, “Your Majesty, the Regent wishes to see you.”
Alaric waited for the legionnaire to leave, then pressed a black-gloved hand against Talasyn’s shoulder in a fleeting, feather-soft touch. “You’ll be all right?” he inquired.
She almost bit through her tongue to stop from begging—no, ordering —him not to leave her alone in this chamber of wolves, but it wasn’t as though she would ever take precedence over Gaheris in Alaric’s head. And perhaps his departure was a blessing in disguise: without him breathing down her neck, perhaps she could set in motion her plan to extract information.
“I’ll be fine,” she told him. “Of course you must go to your father when he asks for you.”
A slight flush rose to the top of Alaric’s cheeks. She had once called him his father’s dog, and she herself was uncertain as to whether her latest implication of such was accidental or not. Maybe she was lashing out to feel a little bit less helpless, maybe he deserved it, and maybe she stared after him a little too long when he got up and walked away.
Even though Gaheris’s private hall was only a handful of buildings away—a ten-minute stroll, at most—it might as well have been a world away from the gala. Everything in the hall was silent, dimly lit. The caged sariman slept on its perch, in bars of moonlight, its golden-plumed head tucked beneath one iridescent wing missing several feathers.
There were no shadows this evening. Gaheris usually filled his hall with magic, to muffle the highly sensitive conversations that took place within, but even he needed time to recover after aethermancing an entire stormship into dust.
Alaric sank to one knee before the dagger-shaped throne, waiting for judgment.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Gaheris’s voice was painfully raspy through heaves of threadbare breaths. Alaric’s heart ached to see his father so gravely weakened—because of him . His failure. “Either Ideth Vela is alive somewhere on the Continent, or someone else has stepped up. We have a full-blown insurgency on our hands.”
“Yes, Father,” said Alaric.
“I’m curious,” drawled Gaheris. “What would you have done if I hadn’t been there today?”
Alaric swallowed. “It was unusually cloudy, and the rebels used it to cover their approach. A tactic that will work only once, because we will be more vigilant in the future—”
“There would have been no future if not for me. You were staggeringly incompetent.” Gaheris sat a little straighter, as though his rage gave him new strength to tap into. “You were so incompetent that the Lightweaver had to save your skin, after your magic faltered instead of cutting down an enemy. This is in addition to all your shortcomings in dealing with the whole Nenavar mess. What is the matter with you lately?”
“I apologize.” Alaric’s response was automatic. The field of combat had been thick with legionnaires, and there was no use wondering which of them had reported to his father. It could have been anyone aside from Sevraim, Ileis, and Nisene—and he wasn’t even certain about the twins.
What are you, then? Talasyn’s jeering tone rose from the depths of his memory. Emperor in name alone?
But whoever reported it clearly hadn’t noticed that Talasyn was the one who’d stayed Alaric’s hand, for Gaheris made no mention of such a thing.
This was where rebellions began. In the little cracks that people slipped through.
The thought snaked up from a shuttered corner in Alaric’s mind, perilous yet somehow oddly tempting. As though he could give in to it and then his failures would matter a little less.
“And now our people’s view of the Lightweaver has softened,” Gaheris muttered. “The worst possible outcome from this crisis.”
“She killed several of her former comrades today,” Alaric pointed out. “They threatened her and her family. And she chose my life over that rebel’s—”
“That is nothing to be proud of. If a Lightweaver had to come to your rescue, you should have just died.”
It hurt, of course. Like a knife from out of nowhere, slipped between the ribs. But Alaric persisted. “Be that as it may, doesn’t this prove that the Lachis’ka’s allegiance is no longer with the Allfold? Perhaps she is truly willing to work with Kesath.”
“Perhaps,” Gaheris begrudgingly conceded.
“So—there might be no need to continue the experiments with the sariman—”
Alaric knew that he’d made a mistake as soon as the words left his lips. The Regent’s eyes darkened, then flashed silver.
The shadows rose.
It shouldn’t have been possible. Not after all the magic that Gaheris had expended earlier that day.
But wrath was a powerful fuel.
“How quickly my son forgets the lessons of the past,” the Regent growled. “You would have Kesath work with the same magic that once sought to destroy it. You would place your faith in the same breed of aethermancer that killed your grandfather. Rather than striking first, you would leave our realm vulnerable to the whims of the Dragon Queen.”
Alaric hung his head.
“You weren’t ready, after all. It’s a shame. What the Night Empire could become with a capable ruler …” Gaheris trailed off, features twisting in disgust.
So why don’t you take over again, if I’m doing such a poor job of it? Alaric thought, in a burst of sudden defiance. Ah. That’s right—you never will, because you don’t want people to know how much the Shadowgate has aged you, and you see assassins everywhere.
Caught off-guard by his own insolence, no matter how secret it was, he lowered his gaze to the floor.
“I have let you get away with far too much for far too long,” the Regent concluded. “Your wife will have to preside over her coronation banquet without you. Now … rise and face me, boy.”
Alaric got to his feet, steeling himself for what was to come. A hollow sense of despair washed over him as he realized that this was why he’d initially been let off the hook when he returned from Nenavar a fortnight ago. Gaheris had been saving the punishment for the most humiliating moment that it could be inflicted—with Alaric’s new empress and her family in the Citadel, wondering along with his officers where he’d gone off to during an important celebration. On a night that marked a triumph and a turning point of his reign, he would slink back to his chambers alone and heavily injured, like a street dog hit by a cart.
His father was reminding him of his place. And there was nothing that Alaric could do about it as the shadows enveloped him.
Nothing except stand tall and rely on his pride to suppress his cries amidst waves of debilitating pain, tendrils of magic lashing at his skin, his eyes gazing upon only darkness, swirling with flecks of aether like the ghosts of stars in some black night. He could do nothing except ride it out, breathe out each current of agony as it seared into the marrow of his bones.
And yet there was a part of him that seemed to experience all this from far away. Some tiny part of him had left his body and was wrapped in sunlight, sheltered somewhere spun from memory, a place where Talasyn carded her fingers through his hair as he lay atop her, the gentlest touch he’d ever known.
As the pain heightened, this sunlit place grew larger—
—and when the next shadow-whip cracked against a fresh wound in his back—
—when his knees threatened to give out at the renewed onslaught—
Alaric seized control of his father’s magic and, arms slicing through the air, sent the shadows roaring toward the throne.
He had no idea how he did it. He wasn’t even fully aware that he’d done it until the dust settled and the waves of attacking darkness parted from Gaheris’s form to reveal that the Regent had managed to cast a shield before he was consumed.
Through the haze of lingering anguish that ripped into his nerves like knives, Alaric dimly registered the smile of twisted delight on Gaheris’s face.
“Pain is instructive,” Gaheris whispered. “Do you understand now how it brings out the best in you? Not even I can bend someone else’s aethermancy to my will. You brim with raw power, child of darkness. I will see that you learn how to harness it properly—that you learn how to rule properly—so that you may always keep our people safe.”
Something warm and wet was streaming down Alaric’s cheek. At first, he assumed that he’d started crying from the physical toll, but when he blinked his lashes became tangled in something too sticky to be tears. He was bleeding from a cut on his head. The hall swam before his eyes.
“F-father,” he heard himself stammer out. “I can’t—”
“You will,” said Gaheris. Black fumes of magical energy gathered around him once more, preparing for the next strike. “You are my son. Your grandsire watches from the willows. You will endure this and prove worthy of our family’s legacy.”
And the Shadowgate swept over Alaric once more, and he could no longer hold back a scream as his torment began anew.