Chapter Twenty-Five
C HAPTER T WENTY -F IVE
She lasted all of four days before writing her first letter to him.
In her defense, she had important news to share.
Talasyn was communing with the Light Sever on Belian for the third day in a row, folded into a cross-legged sitting position at the heart of the pillar of golden magic that suspended her a few feet above the ground.
She had learned, through a great deal of trial and error, that the Sever could be somewhat responsive to her thoughts when she immersed herself in it long enough, and this was the longest that the Sever had flared yet. For the last several minutes, it had been showing Talasyn her memories of her mother from a time when she should have been too young to remember anything. Aetherspace flowed into her and excavated the scenes from her soul. Whenever one scene started to fade, she snatched the threads of light that shaped it, willing them to lead the way to the next. Her mother singing her to sleep. Her mother laughing at a joke made by a younger Elagbi while Talasyn—Alunsina—cooed in her arms. Her mother leaning over the cradle, spirals of golden magic dancing between her fingertips while the room echoed with a child’s squeals of delight.
Amidst all those idyllic memories, aetherspace kept spinning back to the conversation between Hanan and Sintan, and to Hanan in her gilded prison, knowing that she was about to die, holding her daughter for the last time. Perhaps that was the work of Talasyn’s will, too—a subconscious desire, despite the heartache, to stay as long as she could in those final moments between her and her mother.
I will always be with you. We will find—
The Light Sever deactivated. The column of magic collapsed back into the stone fountain and winked out of existence, and Talasyn fell to the ground. And Hanan was gone—gone again …
Talasyn screamed. The sound echoed through the ruins, startling the birds away from their roosts in the grandfather trees. As they took wing all around her, she reached deep into the aether in her soul, desperate for more time with her mother, desperate to cling to the love she’d never known.
Radiance filled her vision. At first, she thought that by some miracle the Sever had flared again. Then she realized it was coming from her . The Lightweave was flowing from her fingertips, forming a golden dome around her about half the diameter of the Light Sever when it was active, but it was the largest magical summoning that Talasyn had ever managed to date that had a solid shape. It didn’t break, it didn’t burst, it didn’t flare wildly into the sky. It was controlled. She was controlling it.
She finally understood how to.
In her longing for her mother, she’d ridden the currents of aetherspace, drawing out the connection to the past. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but she could almost feel Hanan Ivralis guiding her hand—could almost hear a voice in her head that she thought might be Hanan’s.
This is how we build a wall.
This is how we save the things we love.
At Talasyn’s whim, the dome grew and shrank, brilliant and flickering. She kept it up for as long as her concentration and energy held, then allowed herself a moment’s breath before casting it again.
The first time hadn’t been a fluke. The second dome was just as solid, just as malleable, and Talasyn pushed herself to maintain it for an even longer period of time, as Ishan Vaikar had recommended.
She could do this. She would not let eclipse magic consume her.
After a while, she sank to her knees on the sun-warmed stone, spent, heavy with exhausted hope.
There was only one thing on her mind. She wanted to share this triumph with someone.
She wanted it to be Alaric.
It wasn’t that she missed him. Of course she didn’t. But he was the only one who would truly understand this feat. Perhaps if he were here he might even smile that fleeting, crooked grin—
Talasyn put her fingers to her mouth and whistled. As her messenger eagle glided over to the campsite from where it had been patrolling the skies, she pulled out the stylus and ink set from her pack, along with a fresh sheet of parchment, and began to write, determinedly ignoring the stuttering of her pulse.
It’s nothing, she told herself over and over.
At the edge of the Citadel, between the obsidian gates and the barren plains, thick plumes of shadow magic tore through the air.
The Sever wasn’t active. All that raw, screeching energy was coming from the Night Emperor, who stood in the center of a protective ring of darkness that rose and dipped and flowed as though it were made of black fire. The ring stalwartly bore the attacks launched at it from all sides by a dozen legionnaires, growling and sparking silver every time a shadowy blade collided against it.
Alaric’s strength was beginning to wane. The exercise had been going on for almost an hour, which was far longer than he’d managed in previous sessions, but it still wasn’t good enough. His gaze remained fixed on the timepiece on the barren ground at his feet. Just a little while longer …
A vicious-looking greataxe broke through the ring. Its wielder, Nisene, swung the head at Alaric, who quickly dodged to the side and at the same time dismissed the barrier with a hiss of frustration. The axe and all the other weapons surrounding him winked out of existence, and the gray training grounds were still once more.
Alaric curtly ordered his legionnaires back to the Citadel. They turned and trooped toward the tall gates, Nisene shooting him a triumphant smirk over her shoulder. Soon only Alaric and Sevraim were left outside the walls, under the watchful eyes of the sentries posted above.
Alaric crossed his arms and arched a brow at the other man. “You are still here because …?”
“Just wanted to tell you that none of us could have done better today,” Sevraim quietly replied, “and it’s probably all right if you got some rest.”
“None of you carry the fate of entire civilizations,” Alaric shot back. “For whatever reason, that burden has fallen to me. I’ll rest after the Moonless Dark.”
Sevraim grimaced. “If we return to Nenavar with you looking like death and too exhausted to hold back the Voidfell, your wife will—”
“ We are not returning to Nenavar,” Alaric corrected him. “You and the other legionnaires are staying here, to assist with the evacuations. And, on the night of reckoning, you will all be on the ships heading north, away from the blast.”
Sevraim paled. “I can’t let you go alone.”
“I’m not asking for your permission. This is an order.”
“But—”
Alaric held up an imperious hand. It was a command for silence that he rarely used on Sevraim, and the latter fell into a mutinous silence.
“Should Talasyn and I not be successful,” Alaric said, “there is still a chance you and the other Kesathese will survive. If so, I need you to be with my father, to sway him from any warmongering, any rash course of action. I need you to get him to focus on rehabilitating the Continent after death magic sweeps through it.”
“The Regent is not going to listen to me .” Sevraim was aggrieved. “He still thinks of me as that initiate who organized a party in the barracks and got everyone foxed before the oathtaking.”
“You will have to try.” Alaric’s tone was firm. “Should I not return from the Dominion, this is going to be the last thing I ever ask of you.”
The legionnaire stared at Alaric, looking stricken. Alaric felt his own jumble of emotions rising to the surface, but he forced it back down with a clearing of his throat. “If I die and Talasyn lives,” he continued, “I charge you with protecting her. From my father, and whoever else.”
“You have to tell me why,” Sevraim said with a hint of startling, uncharacteristic fierceness. “I deserve that, I think. You’re asking me to abandon you—my commander, my friend —and carry out your bidding after you’re gone. So, at the very least, tell me why you would still care about the Lightweaver’s fate even from beyond the willows.”
Alaric swallowed. What could he say beneath this gray sky, against these black walls? What did he owe to this person who had been by his side through everything since they were boys?
How could he even begin to explain what he felt whenever he thought of Talasyn?
How much he missed her?
Helpless anger flickered through him. He shouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place. He’d gone soft, and Sevraim was taking him to task for it.
“Will you do it or not?” he demanded. “If you don’t feel capable, I’ll find someone else.”
It was a bluff, and a pathetic one, at that. They both knew that there was nobody else he could ask.
“Fine,” Sevraim conceded. “You can leave it to me.” His dark eyes narrowed. “But you do realize that, for the rest of this month, the twins and I will be arguing with you over your decision to go back to Nenavar alone? You’ll never know peace.”
“I haven’t known peace since I got married,” Alaric retorted. “So—nothing new there, as far as I’m concerned.”
A few days later, Alaric’s father’s eyes followed him through the mists of shadow magic that inked the hall.
“At last,” said Gaheris, “my son shows his face.”
A sennight had passed since Alaric returned from Nenavar, a sennight spent mostly shut away in council meetings or investigating rebel activity when he wasn’t training with his legionnaires. A sennight of rebuffing Gaheris’s summons with any convenient excuse that came to mind.
But this —Alaric could no longer let this lie.
There was a weak chirp from the lone sunlit corner. Tracking the sound to its source, he was pierced by shock and unease. The sariman looked ill, its head tucked limply against its chest. Feathers littered the floor of the cage; what remained on its thin body had lost most of their iridescence.
“The weather doesn’t suit it, I believe,” Gaheris said lightly.
“Draining it of its blood on a regular basis certainly didn’t help,” Alaric snapped.
“The suffering of one creature in exchange for the greater good. You are well aware of that.”
Alaric forced his thoughts away from the sickly animal. He’d come here for a reason. “I need to talk to you about the exclusion list.” Commodore Mathire had presented it to him earlier that morning: a breakdown of the villages on the Continent that were heavily suspected of sympathizing with the Allfold rebels.
Gaheris smirked. “I wondered if that would finally bring you to me. What of it? Is it not simple common sense to deny Kesath’s enemies passage on our ships?”
“It’s cruel,” Alaric stonily insisted. “These are not listed individuals but entire towns. I won’t leave innocent civilians stranded on account of mere whispers.”
“We’re not stranding them. They’re free to evacuate as they please. Just not on our vessels.”
“ Whose vessels, then?” Unlike Nenavar, where it seemed nearly every household owned at least one coracle, Kesath had allocated most of its raw shipbuilding materials to the war effort. Yet even coracles had not been able to save that village at the foot of Aktamasok when the Voidfell caught it unawares. The smell of rot, of all that death … As Alaric envisioned it spreading over his native land, he forced a surge of bile back down his throat, swallowing anger and frustration like a mouthful of thorns.
“Father, I’ve seen the destruction of the Void Sever firsthand. If the light-and-shadow barrier doesn’t work,” he tried to explain, tried to get Gaheris to see reason, “everyone left behind will die.”
He searched the Regent’s face, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man from before the war. The man who had sometimes smiled at a dry remark from his wife, who had sometimes ruffled Alaric’s hair. But there was only ice and resolution.
“The Night Empire will not shoulder the burdens of those who conspire against us,” Gaheris declared. “That is my order.”
When it came to dealing with his father, Alaric knew that it was about picking his battles. This one wasn’t a total loss; if anything, it gave him added incentive to succeed in holding back the Voidfell. But it still rankled.
“Very well.” He looked at the sariman in the cage again, at this wilting reminder of those sun-drenched isles, and some helpless impulse, some shout into the endless abyss, made him add, “But if you don’t want this creature to die, you will entrust it to my care until it is strong enough to withstand more experiments.”
Gaheris sneered. “I doubt your meager talents extend to zookeeping, my boy.”
Alaric stood his ground. “It needs fresh air, more light, and rest. You can’t unlock its secrets if you kill it.”
“Perhaps I can,” Gaheris mused. “We’ve run all the tests we could on feathers and blood samples. Perhaps its bones are the key. Or its heart.”
“ No. ” The Shadowgate roared through Alaric, his eyes flaring silver. But he caught himself, forced himself to speak more calmly as the Regent stared at him. “Father, don’t waste the sariman the way the Sardovian guerrillas wasted their stormship. Don’t burn it all to the ground before the endgame.”
It was another way to buy time. He held his breath until Gaheris finally gave a measured nod.
“Have it your way. But if the bird ends up dying despite your efforts, it will be on your head.”
“Naturally,” Alaric muttered.
As he left his father’s hall, it occurred to him that it had almost been too easy. Gaheris never backed down once the course was set. But perhaps his Enchanters had truly run out of ideas. Alaric could hope that was the case; for now, he’d gotten what he wanted.
Thus it was that he found himself locked in a staring contest with the sariman later that afternoon in his chambers. He’d had the cage placed by the window and its inhabitant was stretching its bald neck toward the sun. Studying him with copper eyes.
Now what? he could almost imagine it asking.
“I have no idea,” he said out loud.
He turned to his desk to pen a response to Talasyn’s letter, which had arrived the previous day.
Preparations were well underway throughout the Dominion archipelago for the sevenfold eclipse. As Aktamasok boiled over with increasing regularity, death magic shot into the air from its crater and spilled down its rugged slopes. Beneath the beating of its amethyst pulses illuminating the sky for miles around, the Nenavarene packed up their houses and loaded their vessels with as many supplies as they could find room for on board. Fields and orchards were stripped of seeds and grain, to be planted in case the ships returned to barren earth. Farmers picked out their best animals to acclimatize them to life on deck and in the holds; the rest would be left behind.
Talasyn helped whenever she could—readying Iantas alone was a slow process that would take sennights—but sometimes she slipped away.
To Belian, to commune with the Lightweave, making sure that her magic was as strong as it could be on the night of reckoning.
To Eskaya, to visit her family, savoring every moment like it was her last with them—just in case it was.
To the privacy of her chambers, where she wrote letters to Alaric.
And on this night, to the Storm God’s Eye. With Surakwel Mantes.
He’d insisted on accompanying her to the Sardovian encampment this time. “So,” he said as they squeezed through the dark mangroves, “where are we on stabbing your husband while he sleeps, Lachis’ka?”
“Keep your voice down,” Talasyn hissed. “The Lachis’ka isn’t supposed to be here, remember?”
“It’s not as though there are any patrols,” Surakwel pointed out. “All the soldiers are busy with evacuation procedures.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the mudskippers themselves reported to Her Starlit Majesty.”
He laughed, a flash of white teeth and merry walnut-brown eyes in the moonlight. Then he pushed his shaggy hair back from his wide forehead, a gesture that called attention to the ring on his finger, a large silver one embossed with the same serpent that adorned his yacht’s sails. While it was the seal of House Mantes of Viyayin, the intricate metalwork was a signature of Lidagat. Niamha’s domain.
“But Her Grace didn’t answer my question,” Surakwel pressed. “Will you stab him immediately after the Moonless Dark? He might be expecting that, though—”
“Maybe you should worry about your own relationships first,” Talasyn sniped. “How you’re naming yachts after Daya Langsoune and she’s giving you rings yet the two of you still haven’t declared for each other is beyond me.”
Surakwel opened his mouth and then shut it again, as though Talasyn’s bluntness had demolished his repertoire of languidly caustic comebacks. Silence festered between them there in the swamp.
“Niamha is marrying someone else,” he said at last. “A pact between her mother and his, kept secret all these years, as the possibility of marrying into House Langsoune is a powerful political tool. But they should be announcing it any day now.”
“Oh.” Talasyn swallowed. “I didn’t—”
Surakwel cut her off with a brusque shrug. “It is what it is. The motherland cradles the family and family is where duty is born. That’s the old Nenavarene saying, is it not? And who is Daya Langsoune to go against her late mother’s wishes?”
Resentment laced his every word. Talasyn couldn’t muster anything in the form of response, and fortunately she didn’t have to; they soon broke into the clearing, and she locked eyes with the waiting Vela.
In the distance, the stormship Nautilus rippled with aether sparks on its grid. Its translucent metalglass panels were aglow as shipwrights worked on its inner modifications, their silhouettes hammering away and installing aether cores and circuitry long into the night. Another airship, a smaller frigate, was nearby and also being serviced. Its cannons were loaded with hearts that shimmered amethyst with the energy of the Voidfell.
“Nenavar’s reserves of death magic are dwindling,” the Amirante said. “We won’t receive any more void hearts until after the Moonless Dark, when it’s safe to harvest from Aktamasok again.”
“And a very pleasant evening to you, too,” Surakwel piped up.
Vela ignored him. “I have some good news,” she told Talasyn. “General Bieshimma has secured an alliance with the Emberlords of Midzul. They’re willing to send fifty warships. And twice that number of aethermancers.”
Talasyn bit back a gasp. Midzul, the Land of Fire. Their help would be invaluable. But she had spent too many months under Urduja’s tutelage to refrain from asking, “What’s in it for them?”
“Aether hearts,” Surakwel replied. “I’ve been there. Their soil runs too hot for crystals to properly form. Their nearest neighbor exports to them at a premium.”
“And let me guess,” Talasyn said slowly. “Bieshimma neglected to mention to the Emberlords that we blew up the mines on the Sardovian half of the Continent during the retreat and the Kesathese half has hardly any left to spare.”
“It’s all Kesath now,” Vela countered. “That is the problem that we need to fix first.”
“Nenavar has aether hearts aplenty, Lachis’ka,” Surakwel reminded Talasyn. “I’m sure some kind of deal can be cut after we win.”
After we win.
What was it about this optimism that carried some presentiment of doom? Perhaps her unease stemmed from not being able to see a clear way forward just yet.
“That’s not all,” said Vela. “Ornang has agreed to be a staging point. They are a tiny nation and can’t offer ships or warriors, but our allies coming from the west may recharge aether cores and resupply there. As for what the benefit is to them … well, Kesath is too close for comfort. The Sardovian remnant is all that stands between them and a possible invasion.”
Surakwel rolled his eyes. “More probable than possible, Amirante. The Night Emperor won’t be satisfied with only Sardovia for long. He’ll continue sending his stormships outward, occupying more lands, stealing more resources—”
“He wants to keep his people safe.”
Both Vela and Surakwel turned sharply to Talasyn.
“He believes that the only way to do that is to wage war,” she continued, remembering the wild look on Alaric’s face and the barely concealed panic in his voice, his fear that the amplifiers had weakened his magic. She remembered a room in a black city, hot water and valerian, her wounded husband pleading, Who am I if I’m not a weapon? What have you done to me? “He sees Sardovia as a threat because of the Cataclysm and the Hurricane Wars. And the Nenavar Dominion sent ships to help the Lightweavers a long time ago. But a country like Ornang, which never did anything to Kesath, he wouldn’t …”
Talasyn trailed off, the rest of the sentence dying in her throat when she registered Vela’s expression. Even when she learned of Darius’s betrayal, the Amirante hadn’t looked like this.
“You’re—you’re defending him,” Surakwel sputtered. “Lachis’ka, you’re actually—”
“I’m not ,” Talasyn insisted, her heart dropping, her stomach hollowing out. “I’m just trying to explain that this is how Alaric thinks.”
“Well, then, shall I have my envoy tell Ornang ‘Never mind’?” Vela asked. Her tone was low, veering into scorn. It made Talasyn want to sink into the ground.
Talasyn shook her head. “No, of course not. I was only—”
Trying to convince Vela and Surakwel that Alaric wasn’t like his father?
Trying to lay the groundwork for sparing his life?
She blinked rapidly at the mud-stained toes of her boots. She felt doomed. She couldn’t see the way forward.
“I told you to be careful,” Vela spat. “I told you not to have sympathy for him.”
The Amirante sounded bitter and disgusted. She sounded like Urduja.
That was when understanding clicked into place for Talasyn. Her superiors saw her as a Lightweaver, as the Lachis’ka. As a means to win the war and secure the throne. They didn’t trust her to make her own decisions. Whenever she showed the slightest sign of going against their wishes, they treated her like a child.
She had to do this on her own.
“I am being careful.” Talasyn lifted her chin, meeting the Amirante’s gaze squarely. “I haven’t told Alaric anything. But how do you think it’s going to look when our rebellion kills the man who saved Nenavar and the Continent from the Voidfell?”
“It is my personal opinion that there will be dancing in the streets,” Surakwel said wryly. “Why should Sardovians mourn the Night Emperor who terrorized them?”
“After the Moonless Dark, he will be a hero in the eyes of the people,” said Talasyn. “There’s Kesath to consider as well. They’re almost as insular a nation as Nenavar. All of their younger generation—every single one—grew up believing the rest of the Continent was out to get them. They look to Alaric for protection. If we kill him, the Kesathese will want vengeance, and a lasting peace will never be achieved. Somewhere down the line, yet another war will start.”
Vela was looking at her strangely. She opened her mouth, as though to say something, then hesitated. “Is that one of your conditions, then, Talasyn?” she finally asked. “That Alaric Ossinast lives?”
Talasyn’s nape prickled with a sense of wrongness. With the feeling that that hadn’t been what Vela initially wanted to say.
But a question had been asked, and so she answered it. “Yes, Amirante.”
“You do realize that he will never forgive you?” Vela pressed. “Even if we spare his life? I warned you about that before.”
Even if he hates me in the end.
Even if they hang me for it.
“It doesn’t matter whether he forgives me or not.” Hearing herself say that out loud, Talasyn felt as though her heart had cracked in two. “This is the best course of action.”
Vela nodded. “Then—I’ll see what can be done.”
Talasyn couldn’t feel relief. Not yet. There was something the Amirante had wanted to say but for whatever reason hadn’t. And Surakwel was looking at them both in disbelief, shaking his head.
“You do see my point, don’t you?” Talasyn asked him.
He went still, his gaze growing cool. “No, I don’t,” he said flatly. “But I have thrown in my lot with the Allfold, and that means I must trust in their judgment.”
There was a creaking sound in the distance as one of the Nautilus ’s cannons swiveled into firing position. The shipwrights were conducting a weapons test, and Talasyn watched as a stream of pure lightning emerged, arcing up into the starry heavens.
“I will send you my instructions after the Moonless Dark,” Vela told Talasyn. “Everything should have been prepared by then.”
“You can count on me,” vowed Surakwel, looking only at Vela. “House Mantes’s private army is at the Sardovian Allfold’s disposal.”
Talasyn said nothing. The lightning cannon, freshly repaired, newly recharged, tore the night sky apart in fragments of white. Her eyes filled with tempest.