Chapter 6
VARIDIAN
The second Mak’s taloned feet touched down in the landing square beside Daurith’s largest tower, I swung myself off his back and slid down his rain-slick side to the ground.
“Are you hurt?” I demanded as I sprinted towards his talons, my already aching chest full of fierce hurt at the careful, tender way he set Nabil on the ground.
“Nabil.” I dropped beside my friend, brushing rain-slick dark hair off his forehead and scanning his yellow leathers for slashes and dark stains of blood.
Mak’s talons had pierced the sturdy hide of his jacket, but no blood flowed, and no part of him was burned to skeletal remains like the wyvernfyre had done to Buchra. “Are you hurt?”
Nabil lifted bleak, empty eyes to me, the rain flattening his hair to his head and the grief slackening his features making him look far younger than his thirty years. “I can’t feel her.”
A twist of sympathy went through my chest, sliding deep.
I was aware of other wyverns landing around us as I wrenched Nabil into a tight hug, my arms shaking, heart full of pain and rage and terror.
It could have been Nabil. If the wyvern’s fire had aimed differently, it could be his bones scattered across the hills outside Daurith.
I could smell it on us both—death and smoke, blood and devastation.
“What the fuck happened?” Shula demanded, her rough voice making my eyes slide shut in relief.
We were all here, all alive. No, not all.
Fahad would always be absent, an open wound I didn’t have the time or space in my head to fully acknowledge.
When there were no more enemy wyverns or dark clergy invading our cities, I would allow myself to mourn.
Someone must have quietly explained the storm, the lightning, the black-hearted wyvernfyre to Shula because she swore softly and then she was kneeling beside me, gripping Nabil’s shoulders.
“We’re right here,” she said, gritty with tears. Zaarib and Aliah knelt around us in the landing square, our leathers dirty and stained against the pristine tiles that depicted the yellow wyvern of Daurith and the silver-flecked black fox of House Kissami.
The others would arrive soon. Zaarib’s uncle would demand answers and explanations, or at least details of the wyverns and their numbers, their fighting style, their riders or lack thereof. But it could wait. It would wait, whether he or the Torn Isle legions liked it or not.
For long minutes we knelt on the ground, the wyverns forming a circle of mourning around us, and we held tight to Nabil as his voice finally broke and sobs tore free, as Buchra’s loss tore a hole through his heart, through the entire Legion of Fyrevein.
Chakir was a gruff, bearded man in his sixties who was the opposite to Zaarib in every way except one—loyalty to his family, to his city, and to Ithanys.
Whatever coarse remark he’d been about to bark died at the sight of our faces when Ghalia, his daughter and Zaarib’s younger cousin, led us into the huge, low-ceilinged circular room at the heart of the tower.
Lamps hung on the walls, casting lacelike patterns on the yellow stone floor, picking out shadows in the arabesque tales of wyverns carved into the ceiling.
Warm amber light set the long table aglow where the Torn Isle’s leaders already sat, throwing back cups of tea and devouring platters of fruit.
The opposite of Morysen manners, maybe even of Red Manniston manners, but I didn’t mind.
Better these coarse, swaggering fae than the cunning, backstabbing people of the capital.
Where I’d sent my wife. Fuck, I wanted her back. My chest physically constricted with the force of how much I missed her. I’d been a damned fool to send her away, not the least because the separation made me mentally unstable.
But I had Mak. I had my bond and my wyvern, and with Buchra’s death still weighing on my chest, I could appreciate Makrukh as the blessing he was instead of taking him for granted as I usually did.
If only Mak could be here in this too-warm room as we entered, my legion at my back and potential allies glancing up with wary, measuring gazes.
There were five of them, one for each legion that had flown to our aid and decimated the enemy wyverns, helped us shatter the second trebuchet we’d found hidden behind the arched backs of grassy hills, and blasted several hundred ground warriors to ash.
It was unsettling to see wyvern bones among those long grasses, not a single swath of flesh remaining.
It shouldn’t have been possible. Wyvern scales burned and warped, but they never incinerated.
Shula kicked my ankle, and I flowed forward a step as if I hadn’t hesitated, as if the weight of Buchra’s death and the knowledge that there were more of those wyverns out there didn’t weigh on me.
More wyverns, more black-hearted fire, more enemies in our own military uniform or masquerading as clergy.
“The Scarred Serpent,” one of the Torn Isle leaders said as she stood, giving me a shrewd once-over with eyes the colour of rich qahwa, her skin only a few shades lighter. Her headscarf was the same salt-stained grey leather as her clothes—well-used and functional, not for mere vanity.
There was an air to all these riders: rough, hardened, like cliffs honed to an edge by the sea’s relentless waves.
But especially the woman who stood, who must be the highest ranked legion commander.
A lethal, honed sort of grace was evident in the way she stood, the way she moved as she reached for a pear and casually bit into it as she assessed my legion, dismissing Ghalia in a way that immediately pissed me off.
Sure, she wasn’t a warrior with blood on her hands and rage in her heart, but there was no one in the empire who knew more about wyvern nature than Zaarib’s cousin.
“You may call me Kanuri,” the woman finished after she took her sweet time swallowing the pear she’d bit into. “I’ve heard many tales of you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said with a roughness I’d usually smooth into amusement.
I was too tired for politicking, but the fate of Daurith rested on this meeting.
I had no doubt wyvern would return to this city in higher numbers, and we could only defend against so many.
The Torn Isle’s legions would be a welcome security force, until we could determine which of Ithanys’s legions could be trusted.
“Anything positive?” I enquired casually as I took a seat across from the Torn Isle delegation, my legion falling into place around me, with Chakir at the head of the table.
Ghalia sat across from him, her hands knitted atop the polished table and her keen eyes bright as she dissected every exchange.
“Bits and pieces,” Kanuri replied, sinking back into her seat between a bearded, scowling man in his sixties and a woman far older, whose eyes were covered in a film of white that ought to have made wyvern riding impossible.
The brutal scar down her cheek and the no-nonsense look on her face told me she was a warrior through and through.
So too was the silent, solemn man at her right, who said nothing and only watched.
“Your loyalty to your family and legion is legendary,” Kanuri said, “though a rift is rumoured between you and your father.”
Lying would win me no favours, especially when the Torn Isle was as close to self-governing as it could get while still under Ithanysian rule. “Some rumours are true,” I allowed, ripping the band from my messy hair to re-tie it just for something to do with my hands.
“And it’s said you’re one of the deadliest wyvern riders this continent has ever seen,” she continued, sitting back in her chair to assess us, those shrewd eyes moving from me to Zaarib, then Shula, then Aliah, and finally Nabil where he sat trembling on the end.
He shouldn’t have been here, but he needed us beside him and we needed to be here, in this damned meeting.
If I played it right, we could gain valuable allies not just to protect Daurith but to scour those dark wyverns off the face of all Ithanys.
“Why did you come to our aid?” I asked instead of acknowledging what she said.
Kanuri blinked, cocking her head at an angle as she held my stare. “You’re blunter than the rumours say.”
“My legion just lost a wyvern,” I said with that same bluntness. “You’ll forgive me if my manners are a little coarse.”
Every one of the Torn Isle leaders cringed. Losing a wyvern was an unspeakable pain. We all feared it from the first flight on wyvernback.
“Bbiya,” Kanuri said, glancing down the table at the third woman in their ranks.
Smaller than the others, and younger, her leathers were cleaner, absent the wear and tear of the others.
Similarly, her scarf was not leather but jade green fabric and soaked through by the storm.
Not a rider, I realised. And yet she sat among four legion commanders.
The fifth, I could only assume, was with the legions in the temporary lodgings Chakir had provided.
Bbiya bowed her head, her round face grave and serious as she looked at us, lingering on Nabil as if she knew it was he who lost his bonded wyvern, as if she’d seen it happen.
Whatever I expected her to say, it wasn’t, “You’re not the only ones who’ve witnessed the Zalaam riders.”
That word clanged through me, through my legion, like a lightning bolt itself.
“Bullshit,” Nabil snapped, his voice a loud crack. “The araethawn are dead, every last one of them. Our ancestors made sure of it.”
Araethawn. I let that word take root in my mind, too, matched it with what I’d seen in Wyfell, in the Red Star, and near the wall for this past year. Wyvern attacking wyvern. Soldiers wearing pitch black, spreading fear, peddling lies.