Chapter 3
Water sloshes over my calves in a relentless rhythm. I open my eyes to bright light and stinging pain.
My throat’s raw and my whole body aches. The black shore beneath my cheek is hot from the sun, the stone worn smooth by water. How am I alive?
Waves.
Crashing over my legs.
The ocean is touching me. I realize it with sudden, disgusted clarity, and my whole body jerks violently awake.
Throwing myself forward, I scramble away from the water.
My hands shake and I gag before collapsing again.
Gods, but I hate the sea. Just thinking about it is like a hand wrapped around my neck, squeezing so hard it might collapse.
I reach for the protective necklace the War-Father gave me, but all my fingers touch is the smooth metal of my breastplate.
Scrabbling at the neck of my armor, I dig two fingers beneath the edge, hunting for the leather cord.
But the necklace is gone, probably burned away by the dragon's fire, and I’m not safe here, so close to the sea. I pant in short, sharp breaths.
Have I washed up on one of the Wild Sea’s many rock isles? The islands near Rampage’s course were small and desolate. This one’s bigger, and there’s a row of buildings on the crest of the barren rock hill in front of me. They’re small and square, stone constructions with clay-tile roofs.
There’s a spot on Amkrieg, the War-Father’s island, that looks just like this. The huts house the fishermen who feed the keep. But Amkrieg is five hundred miles north of where the witch attacked us, so I must be somewhere else.
As I squint up at the houses, a man appears between two of them on the hill above me, dressed in beige. He holds up a hand to shield his eyes as he stares at me.
If these are the Wild Seas, it could be a witch. He’ll tell their king I’m still alive, and…
A mosquito buzzes around my ear, hunting for exposed flesh. I box it, then struggle up to my feet. By habit my hand goes to my sword.
My gauntlet fingers close around the hilt, and then I freeze. Didn’t I drop my sword when I fell off the dragon? I remember the look on the Witch King's face when my dagger cut him. Falling, and fire, the ocean closing around me. There was a voice below the water, and I was….
Pain shears through my head like a cleaver snapping bone. For a moment I remember a figure beneath the water, coiling tentacles and an eye so vast it filled my field of vision. My head pounds so ferociously that I let out a sob.
What happened? Where am I? The headache eases the moment I turn my focus to this island that looks just like home. Easier not to think about whatever happened in the sea, then.
I can’t see the man on the hill anymore. Just the stone houses, so familiar it's like they were plucked from my memory.
With the sea behind me, the only place I can go is up the hill, praying this isle doesn’t belong to our enemies. My muscles protest the first step. Sea-water sluices out of the armor. Is that smoke I smell? And the distant sound of a bell?
One foot after the other I struggle up the rocky incline. What should be a ten minute climb takes me half an hour. If there are witches here, I’m in no condition for a fight.
When I reach the crest of the hill the island sprawls out before me, and I blink.
There’s the village, four dozen houses and scattered shops, all brute stone constructions with none of the inner empire’s elegance.
There’s the watchtower and gated stone wall surrounding the War-Father’s gardens, the one green place on the isle and the only source of food besides what the sea provides.
From the top of the hill I can see over the garden wall to the crowns of the fruit trees, a green sight that makes my heart ache.
And there’s the keep, the squat black stone tower where I spent my winters as a child, between long summer campaigns at sea where the War-Father taught me how to kill.
Amkrieg. But it isn’t possible.
A group of three robed men rush toward me across the rocky path from the keep. The one I saw in beige trails behind them. I’m exhausted, my muscles trembling, and I just want to sit down on the stones.
For a moment my mind turns back to the dragon and the battle on its back. The way the Witch-King’s eyes bore into mine as the wind caressed me.
I failed to kill him. I should be dead. Nobody walks away from a battle with a witch that strong.
“That is her,” one of the men says, jerking me back to the present. His blocky face is familiar. The new captain of the guard.
“Lady knight Caiteven. What happened to your face?” the castle's steward whispers in disbelief.
But what does he mean, about my face? When I open my mouth to ask, only a croak comes out. I take a stumbling step forward, swaying. The men yelp and grab me around the waist and arms.
“Get her inside,” the steward says, and they hustle me toward the nearest fishing hut.
I clunk after them, moving my feet obediently to keep from falling as they half-drag, half-push me toward the door.
Beneath the armor, my clothes are soaked and my skin feels raw.
Wouldn’t it have been simpler if I hadn’t washed up at all?
I should have stayed in the foul ocean, where I probably belong.
It’s dark inside the hut, and cold, the stone walls too thick for the sun to heat. It smells like fish guts, and smoke even though the fire in the hearth is banked.
This has to be a dream. I can’t be on Amkrieg. I stand, arms out the side, as the men divest me of my armor. Buckles clack and metal scrapes as the weight comes off my chest; as the gauntlet slides off my left hand. I take a deep breath and the pounding in my head gets a little lighter.
I still have no idea what’s wrong with my face. My eyes hunt for a mirror but find nothing, just dark stone and a few pieces of bone furniture illuminated by the narrow windows.
“I can’t find the clasps,” one says on my right. I think he’s a fisherman, not a castle servant. I turn my head slightly and watch him run his knobby, calloused hands over my right arm. The steward comes over to inspect.
“It looks like it…” the fisherman says.
“That’s not possible,” the steward says. “Go light the fire. Brugias, come here. Polwec, run to the keep and fetch a change of clothes for our lady. A large shirt, with sleeves.”
Brugias, captain of the guard, strides towards me as one of the men trots back out the door.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Like the bits all melted together,” the fisherman says nervously from in front of the hearth. Brugias shoots him a look and the fisherman shuts up, turning to his task.
I stare down at my right arm. The ridges of the armor still have their definition, but the actual joints between the sections of the plate look like soft clay that somebody smoothed over, molding sets of interlocking pieces into a single block.
It’s like it’s just pretending to be functional armor.
With a frown, I try curling my fingers, then bending my arm.
It works just like it used to, even though the metal shouldn’t move like that.
I had designs on my armor, a freedom the military only allows to knights. I chose feathered wings on my shoulder pauldrons and vines marching down the arm. But the metal melted and reformed without any hint of my designs. It’s gone back to the basic shape of the enchantment.
From my shoulder down to my fingertips, my arm is covered by enchanted metal plate. The soaked sleeve of my gray undershirt has burned off at the edges of where the melted metal begins.
Brugias bends over my arm, then shakes his head. Behind him, the hearth fire flares awake, brightening the room in a red glow.
“The enchantment found a way to save her arm,” the steward pronounces, but he sounds nervous. “We’ll just… let’s leave it be.”
Someone drops a canvas blanket over my shoulders and I’m shepherded to the kitchen table. I sink into a creaking bone-and-fishleather chair and feel the exhaustion rise up through me.
I think this is real. It feels real. I don’t have a strong enough imagination to be making it up so vividly. But I shouldn’t be alive, and I can’t be five hundred miles north of the attack.
Everytime I close my eyes I see the King of Witches, pinned beneath me, gazing up with a fearless curiosity. Whispering: who are you?
“Tell us what happened,” the steward prompts. I make myself focus on his words, but my head is still ringing.
“An attack.”
“Not… inside the barrier?” He asks, as if that would even be possible. But then, he's probably wondering how else I could have washed up at Amkrieg.
“No.” My throat is so raw it feels like blades flay it open when I talk.
The fisherman sets a cup of fresh water in front of me. I grab it in my metal hand and chug it in one go. It soothes my raw throat, barely.
There’s salt crusting all of me, thick on my eyelashes and in my hair. I can feel a breeze through the window though, on the right side of my head. I reach up with my metal arm, then with my normal one.
Hair on the left side of my head, salty, damp, and tangled. No hair on the right. My skin on my bare scalp there feels… corded and rough, not smooth. Like scars. Like it burned off.
“What…?” I whisper. The accident can't have been long ago. I just washed up. If I had scars that intense, the wound wouldn't have healed so quickly.
Maybe I'm dreaming after all. I squint at the cup, then at the steward, trying to find some proof this isn't real.
“We saw your ship go dark on the map, lady knight, two days ago. In the middle of the Wild Seas,” the steward says, voice shaking.
My throat goes tight. Rampage is gone, lost to the depths. Could anybody have escaped? Probably not, the witches don’t leave survivors. Harfor must be dead. And the sailors, and the Enchanted.
And all I managed to do was slash a shallow line across his chest with the knife I threw.
Did I live so I can have another chance to kill him, or is the death-god just mocking me, keeping me alive long enough to punish me for the Enchanted I’ve freed?
“Lady knight,” the steward says, leaning toward me. “You weren’t on that ship. It wouldn’t be possible.”
“I was,” I answer raggedly. “A witch attacked us, with the biggest dragon I’ve seen. Their king, I'm sure of it.”
I remember the expression on my enemy's face, cold and cruel as the sea, as his magic tossed me up into the air.
If I'd struck harder. Pulled more power through the Hellion, and faster. Drained the Enchanted in one go for a single attack. Could I have rid us of the Witch King for good?
Could I have saved Harfor and the others?
“It can’t be,” the steward hisses. His voice is quiet, but the room is quieter. “You weren’t on that ship. Say it.”
They know, just like I do, that my survival is impossible. And when someone does the impossible, it means they’re a witch. Usually.
“I’m not going to lie,” I tell him.
The steward turns in his seat. Brugias, standing next to him, bends over and the steward whispers something in his ear.
“We could say the witch must’ve done something to her,” I hear Brugias answer, though he’s trying to keep his voice quiet.
“That would still put her on the ship,” the steward whispers back.
“...After all the work he put in training her…” Brugias mutters. They don’t think I can hear them. I close my eyes and lean back in the chair. My head throbs.
It’s obvious what’s on their minds. Nobody, not even the War-Father's adopted daughter and champion knight, who wields enchantment as easily as breathing, could survive dragon fire, or the Wild Seas, or swim five hundred miles in two days to wash up back at home.
But the witches, with their foul bonds to their familiars, are capable of impossible feats of magic.
I’m not a witch.
For a dizzying moment I remember being underwater, as the voice below the depths spoke directly to my mind. Pain pounds in my head. I might not remember my childhood, but the War-Father would never have taken me into his household if I weren’t human.
My eyes may look shockingly bright, but they don't burn with inner light like a witches’.
The Witch King’s eyes burn orange. I bet, if it weren’t for the magic shining through them, they’d be deep brown. But if you could strip a witch of magic, we wouldn’t have to kill them.
“Lady knight Caiteven,” the steward says, talking at a normal volume again. My eyes crack back open. “You need to say you got off the ship. Perhaps you took ill?” he says that last bit almost hopefully. Nobody wants to anger the War-Father.
They all stare at me, their faces grim. They’re giving me a chance to lie.
And who could contradict me, if I did? Rampage is gone, sunk to the bottom of the depths, where reaper-fish will feast on the crew’s flesh. The Enchanted I woke died in horrible pain for nothing. And Harfor, she died without visiting all the imperial isles, like she was dreaming of.
I stare straight ahead as my throat goes tight. Tears prickle at my eyes, and then the feeling vanishes, and I’m left numb and empty in the fishing hut.
“Caiteven?” the steward prompts.
Even the Exalted must die, eventually, when their enchantments can no longer string their bones together. So what am I afraid of? The War-Father taught me to obey the Empire and its rules. To speak only in truths.
“I was on the ship,” I rasp. “I fought. I fell. I failed.”
“Dame, you understand…” Brugias says.
“It means a trial,” I say flatly. I’m probably going to die for this.
At least I’ll die with honor.