Chapter Four
C HAPTER F OUR
Though Urduja was well versed in the art of keeping her own counsel, the way her right eyebrow threatened to prematurely join the ancestors in the Sky Above the Sky made it easy for Talasyn to discern that the Zahiya-lachis found it more than passing strange that drinks were served before the coronation.
It was the anticipation of refreshment that kept the Nenavarene court moderately well behaved during important ceremonies; Talasyn believed that as firmly as she also believed that the Kesathese needed copious amounts of liquor to get through this one.
None of the black-and-silver-clad officers in this cavernous hall wanted her to be the Night Empress. To be fair, neither did the Night Emperor himself. But at least Alaric had so far refrained from huddling in corners with his cohorts, muttering into his wineglass and darting occasional glances at her that ran the gamut from suspicious to resentful.
It took all of Talasyn’s self-control to stop from returning the officers’ dark looks in kind. The Hurricane Wars were as fresh in her memory as it was in theirs. She was surrounded by former enemies, stuffed into an impractical dress that was a swirl of black and red, layered skirts and ribboned train flowing from a structured bodice with an asymmetric neckline and wrist-length sleeves. It was a dress that made her feel ridiculous, that was not at all conducive to fighting or running away. She would have happily done either.
Black and red. The colors of Alaric’s battle regalia. She wasn’t sure if the color choice was mere coincidence or if Urduja and the dressmaker were in cahoots to stage some elaborate joke. She wondered how Alaric felt about it, but his granite-carved features were as unreadable as always as the two of them stood around nursing lychee wine and accepting clipped congratulations and insincere plaudits from various guests.
It wasn’t as big a gathering as one might have expected for such a landmark ceremony. Only some commodores and generals, and even fewer regional governors, were in attendance, lending credence to Urduja’s theory that Alaric wanted to limit interaction between his people and the Nenavarene.
“Your father has not seen fit to grace us with his presence?” Talasyn asked Alaric after their latest well-wisher had walked away. Not that she particularly cared what Gaheris chose to do, but the fact that he was not present for his daughter-in-law’s coronation was suspicious. And if she were being truly honest, she had to admit that she was impatient to lay eyes on the man at last, to see what he looked like in the flesh, this shadowy specter of every Sardovian child’s nightmare, this architect of all the destruction that had plagued the land for years.
“He has retired from the public eye,” Alaric replied. “Your grandmother, on the other hand, appears to be enjoying herself quite thoroughly.”
Talasyn followed his line of sight to where the Zahiya-lachis was holding court amidst the regional governors, but she said nothing.
“They’re building diplomatic relations,” he explained, “in order to facilitate the lucrative flow of commerce.”
“You mean that each one of them is sucking up to her in the hopes that she’ll prioritize importing his region’s products.”
“Not only that. Each region is also vying for that much-coveted first direct trading route to Nenavar.”
“The capital would claim that, surely?”
“Perhaps not.” He scratched at his jaw, appearing a little self-conscious. “It’s something I’ve been working on. A robust national economy would necessitate diverting focus from the center instead of leaving other regions out in the cold. That, I believe, was one of the problems of the Sardovian Allfold: the majority of trade dealings benefited only the Heartland, while other states languished.”
Talasyn stayed quiet. Stricken. There hadn’t been much employment to be found in Hornbill’s Head, or elsewhere on the Great Steppe. Most people with skills and some education had made their way south, leaving those bleak grasslands behind forever.
“Things are going to change,” Alaric vowed, as though he’d correctly deciphered the look on her face. “I— we will make it better. You’re my empress, and you’ll rule by my side.”
A chance to change things. To distribute what wealth there was and make sure that no child would have to grow up the way she did, that no one would have to suffer as she’d suffered. Alaric held it out to her so tentatively, this future. The ambient noises in the hall melted away and it was only the two of them on the verge of … something . Something that called to mind promise, and a far horizon.
But it all came crashing down quickly when she remembered what it had cost. The future that Alaric envisioned—a Continent where Kesath was in full control—was only possible because of the war she and her comrades had lost. What so many of them had died for.
And now he was hiding something from her, something that potentially threatened Nenavar and the impending Sardovian attack that she was hiding from him .
They couldn’t trust each other. She would do well to never forget that. She had to put things back the way they used to be before the Belian amphitheater, before the wedding night.
“Is that before or after we murder every dissenter on the Continent?” Talasyn asked with false brightness. “ After would be more convenient, I think. That way, there’ll be no one to stop us from doing whatever we want. It’s for the greater good in any case, isn’t it?”
Alaric’s gray eyes turned as hard as flint. “The Nenavarene have certainly trained you in sarcasm. It doesn’t suit you, my lady.”
She met his gaze boldly. We are our nations’ blades.
“How unfortunate, seeing as I hold your opinion in the highest esteem,” she drawled, just to rile him up, and he … stormed off.
To an outside observer, it probably would have looked as though the Night Emperor had merely walked over to the entryway to greet the generals who had just arrived. Only Talasyn knew that she’d gotten under his skin and he’d seized the first convenient excuse to get as far away from her as possible.
She couldn’t exult in her petty triumph at his hasty retreat for too long—because now she was standing awkwardly by herself. Talasyn spun on her heel with the intent of finding either Elagbi or Jie, but she stopped short, her fingers tightening around the stem of her wineglass as she came face to face with the bushy-bearded Kesathese officer who had crept up behind her. The absolute last person she’d wanted to encounter in the Citadel.
“Lachis’ka,” greeted Commodore Darius, the former Sardovian coxswain who had betrayed the Allfold in the final months of the Hurricane Wars. “Or should I say—Empress.”
The last that Talasyn had heard of Darius, she and Alaric had been hiking up to the ruins of the Lightweaver shrine and he’d made some snippy reference to the man’s new rank. It was Darius’s reward for passing information to the Kesathese on the Sardovian Allfold’s defenses in the Heartland, as well as for telling them about Talasyn and providing the map to the Light Sever in Nenavar.
She could find no trace of the kindly coxswain who had led her fourteen-year-old self away from the rubble of Hornbill’s Head, the same person whom Ideth Vela had once trusted with her life. Neither was there even the slightest glimpse of the frightened, despairing veteran outside the Amirante’s office bringing news of the Highlands’ surrender and whispering that they were all going to die. Darius was wearing a spotless, smartly tailored dress uniform, his eyes cool and his manner professional, and it was as though he and Talasyn had never met before.
But that didn’t stop her from daydreaming about plunging a light-woven dagger into his chest. Or maybe chopping his head off with an axe …
She found her voice at last. “I guess Empress is a step up from when you were addressing me as helmsman ,” Talasyn said, rather ungraciously, but she figured that she was entitled.
“Several steps up,” Darius agreed. “Although I never pegged you for the type to lord a new rank over others.”
“Indeed, there’s no telling what people can be capable of, Commodore.”
Darius beckoned a serving-girl over and plucked a goblet of plum brandy from her tray before sending her on her way. He peered into the depths of the goblet, swirling its contents around. “There’s no telling how the need to survive can change people, either,” he said solemnly. “Hate me all you like, but some of us don’t have a royal heritage in a far-off land to fall back on.”
“The Amirante would have died for you,” Talasyn hissed.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard.” He let out a quiet, disparaging chuckle. “Ideth would have died for Sardovia, yes. She would have died to defeat the Night Empire. But not for me or for you. We were chess pieces in her war, purely expendable. Why else would she send a young girl across the sea to look for a Light Sever, all alone and in unfriendly territory? But”—and here he looked up at her and gave a shrug—“it all worked out in the end for the two of us, didn’t it?”
Talasyn wondered if she could get away with throwing her barely drunk wine in his face. One quick glance around the hall was enough to make her decide against it, though. A few Kesathese officers were avidly watching her and Darius; it was clear that they were anticipating a scene between their emperor’s new consort and the man who’d sold out her side of the war.
Like steppe vultures circling a sick muskox, she thought with disgust.
But the Nenavarene had prepared her for this. She had never been so grateful for her time in the Dominion court as she was now. Drawing herself up a little straighter, she offered Darius the frosty, enigmatic smile that Queen Urduja was so, so good at. “I am rather content with my lot.”
Darius’s beard twitched, his upper lip curling. “And I suspect that Ideth Vela hasn’t died for Sardovia yet, for that matter.”
Talasyn kept utterly still and blank-faced. It was a sheer feat of self-control, hastily walled over the panic that unfurled from the depths of her soul and numbed every part of her being. This was the greatest danger, what she and everyone else in on it had failed to account for in all their desperate grasping for a lifeline, for a way forward. Darius knew the Amirante well. He had been her right hand for a decade. He was well acquainted with her resourcefulness and determination, with every trick up her sleeve.
He knew that Vela would never have gone down easy.
Talasyn was overwhelmed by the urge to vomit up the few drops of wine that she’d been able to bring herself to sip thus far. She was spared from actually having to do so by her father swooping in, smoothly taking her by the arm, and leading her away from Darius.
“Goodness, what was Ossinast thinking, leaving you in the lurch like that,” Prince Elagbi grumbled. “The least that he could have done was escort you to me or to your grandmother first. I suppose that you must introduce social graces to his court in addition to better cuisine.” He shot her a sideways glance of deep concern. “I hope that I didn’t overstep, my dear—you looked so uncomfortable chatting with that man. Who was he, by the by? Shall I call him out?”
“I’ll tell you everything later, Amya,” Talasyn assured him faintly.
Her Grace Alunsina Ivralis of the Nenavar Dominion was crowned the Night Empress of Kesath while a light spring rain fell from the skies above the capital. Sheltered from the drizzle by the roof that hung over the grand balcony of the Citadel, from which streamed black-and-silver banners bearing the chimera crest of House Ossinast, Talasyn knelt before her husband. The blood-and-midnight train of her dress was splayed across the polished obsidian tiles as he held up her crown.
The crown was another cause for anger. It had been hammered out of platinum mined from the former Sardovian Hinterland, where the only deposits on the Continent were found, and it was studded with pearls from the Coast, as well as with Heartland rubies. The crown was downright plain by Nenavarene standards, but it was a powerful symbol of the Night Empire’s total conquest of this corner of Lir. A slender thing, it was dwarfed in Alaric’s black-gloved hands as he raised it above Talasyn’s head with everyone watching—from Kesathese High Command and the Dominion representatives on the balcony with them to the scores of soldiers and legionnaires spread throughout the vast plaza in precise rows, raindrops spattering their dress uniforms and black armor.
Her knees were starting to twinge. She silently urged Alaric to get on with it.
“Do you swear to govern the people of the Night Empire in accordance with our laws and customs and the tenets of our gods?” he asked, his stony eyes never leaving her face.
“I swear it.” Her declaration rang through the air, calm and steady despite the fact that she was speaking in front of those who numbered among her most despised foes. The Sardovian Amirante was alive and well in Nenavar, gathering allies. There was a way forward, and knowing that gave her composure. She would cooperate for now because one day Kesath would fall.
“Do you swear fealty to my crown and obedience to my will for as long as we are bound in matrimony?”
This was the part that she especially didn’t like. “I swear it.” A vaguely belligerent note crept into her tone as she came dangerously close to rolling her eyes. Obedience to his will —she’d show him!
The line of Alaric’s mouth curved upward in a faint smirk, as though he knew exactly what she was thinking, and for the briefest second something companionable passed between them, as though their quarrel had never taken place. His voice was noticeably gentler as he segued into the final lines of the oath. “Will you stay by my side?” he asked. Framed by obsidian buildings and rain and silver chimeras on black banners blowing in the wind, he added, “Will you stand with me against my enemies and help me build my empire?”
“I will,” Talasyn said over a racing heartbeat, through the chill of the knowledge that she was lying.
He placed the crown on her head, released it, and let his hands drift down her face, his silk-clad fingers brushing against her cheekbones. Fleeting, soft, most probably accidental touches, but her pulse skipped all the same.
She was looking up at him, and so was one of the first to see it—in the heavens, over his shoulder, the stormship emerging from behind thick gray rainclouds. It plunged into a swift descent over the Citadel, lightning cannons extended outward in firing position to fringe its convex underbelly like hundreds of metallic limbs. Painted over a wide section of the translucent metalglass panels comprising its elliptical hull, shining bright orange even in the weak daylight, was the Sardovian phoenix.
To her shock, Talasyn recognized the Chiton , one of the three Allfold stormships that had survived Lasthaven and the only one that hadn’t made it to the Storm God’s Eye in Nenavar. Like everybody else, she’d assumed that the Chiton had either been destroyed by Kesathese search parties or escaped to the other side of the world. But here it was now, a dread colossus above her, moving at reckless speed toward the coronation venue, which had devolved into roaring chaos.
Alaric hauled Talasyn to her feet and shoved her away from the balcony railing, toward the Nenavarene contingent. The lightning then came in waves, spilling from the Chiton ’s cannons in bluish-white streaks that swept through air and buildings and bodies with searing fury. As Alaric cast an inky shield to protect himself from the onslaught, Talasyn’s eyes met her father’s in the shadow of the stormship, and she broke into a run, no thought left to her but to get him and Jie and Urduja to safety. She had almost reached her delegation, she was only a few more steps away from the Lachis-dalo, who were reaching out to drag her into their protective circle and usher the Nenavarene nobles indoors, when the space in front of her erupted in a blinding barrage of lightning streams.
The floor disintegrated, and she was falling, along with a rain of broken stone that had once been the balcony.
A golden dagger appeared in Talasyn’s hand, and she plunged it into a crumbling column within her reach. The radiant blade sent up flecks of obsidian like black sparks as it gouged a deep path down the column, stopping her fall five feet above the ground, while she clung to the hilt for dear life.
Amidst the debris, a grappling hook summoned from the Shadowgate sank into the column next to hers. The crackling midnight rope it was attached to quickly shortened until Alaric was dangling on its length slightly below her.
“Jump!”
Alaric so rarely raised his voice that Talasyn immediately obeyed without thinking. She dropped to the plaza floor and he followed, landing beside her as another tidal wave of lightning bolts shattered the columns they’d been clinging to scant seconds ago.
Lying on her stomach, Talasyn looked around wildly. Wasp coracles were spewing out of the stormship’s hangars, firing crossbow bolts at anything that moved. Most of the plaza’s surrounding anti-aircraft towers had been obliterated by the initial lightning wave, and Kesathese soldiers and Shadowforged legionnaires alike were scrambling to take up defensive positions behind pillars and doorways and crumbled sections of roof.
A rebellion. Talasyn pieced her scattered thoughts together. There was a rebellion on the Continent. The Sardovians had not simply rolled over and accepted Kesath’s rule.
But it was a suicide mission. Once the Citadel rallied its own airships, its own stormships, which would be at any moment now, the Sardovians would be crushed—and with them the Chiton , the most valuable weapon that they could ever have at their disposal. What was the objective here?
And was Khaede with them?
She sat up as Alaric scrambled to his knees. They’d both lost their crowns. “My family” was all that she could choke out over the din of battle.
“I saw them get indoors right before the balcony collapsed. My men will watch over them.” He wove a knife from the Shadowgate and brought it down over her skirts.
“ What are you doing? ” she shrieked as he slashed at the silken material, ripping off the underlayers, hacking at the edges, cutting away the voluminous train. She would have kicked him if not for the fact that she did not want to disrupt the delicate, perilous dance of the whispering blade gliding so close to her bare legs.
“Making it easier for you to run.” Satisfied with his handiwork, Alaric stood up—just in time to face the ground force of Sardovians swarming out of a battered shallop that had landed in the middle of the plaza under cover of the Chiton ’s lightning.
They were a ragtag bunch who wore no discernible uniform save for orange-and-yellow armbands. Some carried crossbows and others were armed with swords, but a good majority wielded only farming implements. Talasyn couldn’t save them all, but she had to try. If she could just find a way, without blowing her cover, to let them know that they had to retreat—if she could just tell them to not waste the stormship, to wait for the Amirante—
A ceramic object with rounded sides and a conical base was hurled into the space between her and Alaric. It was instinct, simple and unthinking, as though the war had never left her bones, that enabled Talasyn to fling herself away in the nick of time. The shell exploded as soon as it hit the ground, with a bang that thundered in her ears as the world dissolved into clay shards and quicklime and sulfur.
Talasyn couldn’t even check on Alaric, because a wasp coracle swooped down low before the dust could settle, reeling off a volley of crossbow bolts in her direction.
What the—
The helmsman nestled in the vessel’s well was slightly familiar to Talasyn, but he clearly didn’t recognize her. She wove a shield and held it in front of her, hoping that the display of light magic would jog his memory. But he kept on coming, and she ran to find more cover. The iron bolts bounced harmlessly off her aethermanced defense, catching one of the Shadow-forged legionnaires barricading a doorway unaware.
He collapsed, one bolt through his chest and another through his abdomen. The hem of Talasyn’s slashed skirts brushed against his corpse as she sped past to crouch behind a pile of debris. His fellow legionnaires unleashed their magic with a vengeance, crafting javelins of shadow energy that flew through the air and tore the wasp coracle and its helmsman to pieces.
Talasyn fought back a wave of nausea. The sane thing to do was to stay put, stay with the Legion. But she couldn’t just hunker down and let more Sardovians die. She had bargained and begged, trained in politics and in aethermancy, shut herself off from everything she’d ever known, and pledged her troth to her sworn foe so that no one else would have to die.
And she couldn’t let her husband get himself killed, either. She scanned the plaza until she saw him, fighting in seamless formation with Sevraim, Ileis, and Nisene. Alaric was disheveled, his fine clothes soot-stained, but he was in one piece and that was what mattered, in a way that went beyond the treaty and the need to stop the Voidfell. A way that was too dangerous to acknowledge, and Talasyn certainly wasn’t going to dwell on it now , because she saw Hiras a little further away.
Hiras. The young cadet whom Talasyn had saved from the Legion at the battle of Lasthaven. She hadn’t even realized that he’d gotten left behind in the mass retreat. He’d grown like a weed since then. The gangly and pockmarked young man had currently taken up a defensive position with four other rebels between two pillars, a wall behind them.
The Chiton sent another barrage of lightning into the plaza, and Talasyn seized the opportunity to run to Hiras while the Kesathese were distracted. White-hot currents zapped at her heels as she wove between broken stone and broken bodies, and finally she made it to the wall that ran along behind the little group of rebels and she was calling Hiras’s name …
He whirled around, along with the four other Sardovians. Beneath a shock of russet hair, his brown eyes widened in recognition. She opened her mouth to tell them to escape while they still could, or to ask about Khaede, she couldn’t decide—
—and in that split-second of hesitation Hiras’s boyish features twisted in fury.
“There she is!”
He raised his crossbow, aiming it at Talasyn’s head while his companions charged at her, brandishing pickaxes and hunting knives.
“There’s the traitor! Kill her! ”