Chapter 6
I’m finally going home. Standing at the docks and watching Rancor make its final approach, my heart pounds fast. I wipe my sweaty left palm on my naval jacket for the tenth time, then clasp my hands behind me again.
The clothes don’t fit like they used to, but it’s better than meeting the War-Father in rags.
“It’s huge,” Malkin whispers behind me. She’s right: the War-Father’s Hellion ship is a monstrosity.
It’s nearly as tall as the Bluff’s castle, towering over all of us at the docks.
And yet the Bluff’s western shore is so sharp and deep that the Hellion doesn’t have to anchor further out in the water, as the warships do in rockier places.
“You’ve never seen a Hellion before?” I whisper under my breath, squinting into the light. It's been years since I saw such bright enchantment. I forgot how much it hurts to look at.
“Only in drawings,” Malkin whispers back. “Are they all that big?”
“No. Rancor’s a breed apart.” The other inhabitants of the Bluff stand behind and to the right of me. The Governor is at our front. He didn’t meet my eyes as we walked down to the docks, but I heard the commotion in the kitchens as they began preparing the feast.
“I’m going to miss you, lady knight.” Malkin reaches forward to squeeze my shoulder.
“I’ll visit,” I whisper back. I remember how grim it felt to be abandoned out here.
“You’ll be far too busy killing witches.”
“Not too busy to have friends.”
I haven't told her my plan to get the Governor replaced with someone less selfish, but I'll make sure it happens.
Rancor pulls right up to the docks, steered by enchantment with the sails furled.
The crystals anchored in the ship’s prow hum with such a ferocious glow it bathes us all in blue light even at the height of the day.
I don’t know why they’re burning through the Enchanted here, behind the safety of the barrier.
When I was still a knight, Rancor rarely left the front lines, so perhaps the sailors on board have forgotten how to power a ship with simple wind and oar.
Such cruel wastefulness fills my mouth with a sour taste.
When I was younger, I longed for a peaceful end to the war.
I wished the witches would agree to negotiate so we didn’t have to keep consecrating new Enchanted.
But now, I’ve spent two years dreaming of revenge on the man who killed my crew and ruined my life.
I'm going to end this war in blood and fury. No matter what it costs.
There’s a flurry of activity on board as the wooden gangway rolls out.
The first sailors jog down and secure the base.
Then they stand at attention, forming a line at the bottom of the ramp, their black and gold uniforms crisper than mine.
I straighten my shoulders and draw in a deep breath, fighting to keep my expression blank, my jaw pressed so tight it hurts.
Hope and fear mix in my stomach until it’s all I can do to stay upright.
There’s a moment’s pause, and then a figure emerges at the top of the gangway.
My jaw trembles and my knees nearly buckle out from under me. A strained sob escapes my lips.
Alive.
Harfor is alive.
For two years, she’s been alive, and nobody bothered to tell me that even one person from my ship survived. How is it even possible?
The sun is glaringly bright on her chestplate. Her shoulder pauldrons are etched with decorative lines—the kind of ornamentation only knights are allowed to add. She’s chosen a pattern of fangs and blades.
Six years after she gave up, and Harfor is finally a knight, and I wasn’t there to congratulate her.
It hits me suddenly that I haven’t just been miserable out here, I’ve been missing out on my own life.
I watch her scan her eyes over the Bluff itself, and the group gathered at the docks.
Her eyes skim past me, then back over the crowd, then past me again, before finally settling on me. Do I look that different?
My former squire strides down the ramp and approaches. Her face is just as I remembered it, sharp-chinned with black hair in ribboned braids down to her waist. But she’s frowning, her forehead creased as she looks at me. There’s a trace of confusion in her eyes. My stomach clenches.
I snap my arm up in a salute, the movement not as crisp as I’d hoped, the muscle memory long gone. A tear wobbles in my left eye, threatening to fall, and I tilt my chin a little higher to try and stop it.
Harfor walks right past the Governor as he bows. My former squire stops five feet from me and stares, her face grim as she inspects me. I stand there like a fool with my metal arm frozen in a salute and my lips quivering.
“Greetings,” the Governor says loudly. “Your most esteemed dame, I—”
Harfor holds a hand up to silence him without even glancing the Governor's way.
This is the same woman who saw a young girl preparing for knighthood and made sure the men didn’t bother me, who stayed up late with me into the hours of the night training, and training, and training, until she’d taught me everything she knew, and then kept going until nobody could beat either of us.
Who picked herself back up after every time the God-Emperor denied her knighthood.
Who grinned and clapped when I, four years younger, took the dream she had, and agreed to squire for me without a second of hesitation or complaint, and then carried me all the way across Barivum city on her back when I got blind-drunk after my knighting.
But now she’s looking at me like I’m a picked-over carcass rotting in the sun. I grit my teeth tighter.
She doesn’t release me from the salute, and we stand in silence long enough that it’s clear she isn’t going to. I slowly drop my arm, conscious everybody is staring at the two of us.
“Harfor. How did you live?” I say. My throat feels tight, and I’m afraid I might cry if I don’t stand perfectly straight, my shoulders tense, the muscles of my core clenched tight just to stop myself from falling straight down into pity. “And you're a knight. I…”
“Are you a witch?” she interrupts quietly, with no trace of her familiar smile. I shake my head no. “If you lie to me…”
“I’m not,” I insist. Doesn’t she already know that, if she’s come all this way? “The War-Father himself said he believed me.” I clutch the necklace’s leather tube.
Harfor looks away. She runs a blue leather-gloved hand across her face for a moment, and from the familiar set of her stubborn jaw I’m pretty sure she’s trying not to cry, too. It takes a lot to get her to that point.
“I just… the thought that you were lying to me, all that time,” Harfor rasps. My throat tightens.
“No. Never.”
“I watched it happen. The fall.” One hand gestures loosely at the right side of my face and the burn scars there. “Nobody could survive that. But you did.”
“How did you?”
“Five of us managed to escape with a rowboat,” she tells me stiffly. “We reached Lodengras two full weeks after your trial ended.”
She says it like an accusation: how could I have reached the shore so long before she did?
“If I really were a witch,” I say, practically spitting the word, “why the hell would their king try so hard to kill me?”
And why did he let Harfor live? Was the cut from my dagger so bad he had to retreat?
“I’ve been asking myself that a lot.” Harfor’s hand finds my chin, her grip a little too tight and yet comfortably familiar all the same.
She’s so close that I can smell the expensive clove and ginger perfume she’s always favored.
Harfor tilts my face, inspecting the scars on the right side of my head.
I fight the urge to tilt my face away from her.
The scars are part of me. They’re a reminder of everything I’ve lost, and everyone I failed.
Even if Harfor was never dead at all.
She whistles softly, and lets go.
“Two years. You couldn’t write?” I whisper, blinking hard.
“To a witch who knows my deepest secrets? No. What could I possibly have had to say?”
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. Harfor isn’t acting like my titles have been restored.
“When I saw the ship, I assumed the War-Father had finally convinced the council, and my exile...” My heart hurts so much I can barely stand it. From the corner of my eye the Governor shifts, folding his arms as he stares at us.
“He could find no way to prove your innocence without testing your loyalty first.”
“I’m loyal,” I beg Harfor as a chill slithers through me. In the distance a sea-titan caws. “It wasn’t my fault. I’m more loyal than anybody else on this rock.”
“Good. He’s giving you a chance to prove it.”
I should have known going home wouldn’t be as easy as just walking up the gangplank. My face burns as I realize what a fool I’ve been. But if the War-Father has a test, all the better. I’ll convince everyone who doubts me. Including Harfor.
“How? Should I go up to see him?” My eyes flick unintentionally back to the gangplank, like the War-Father himself is about to appear there in his gold-washed, crystal-laced armor.
“Here?” Harfor raises an eyebrow like she’s surprised I’d even imagine our War-Father wasting his time at the Bluff. “No, he’s moved ships. And he’s busy plotting an assault against the Gray Tower.”
For a moment I’m speechless. I don’t know what surprises me most: that he’s left Rancor, the most powerful of our Hellions, or that he didn’t bother to come get me himself. But with a reason like this… it’s selfish of me to expect any of his time. I ignore the way my stomach twists.
The Gray Tower—whether or not it’s even a tower—is what they call the heart of the witch-lands. The hatchery for the dragons that the witches’ leaders tie their souls to in unholy bonds.
“We found it?”
The Governor clears his throat like he’s about to say something.
“We found it,” Harfor says coolly. “I'm on my way to convince the council to release more funds, consecrate more Enchanted, so we can attack with our full power and shatter those sinners against the sea-rocks.”
The mention of the Enchanted makes me as uneasy as ever. My lips twist down and Harfor’s eyes sharpen.
“Problem for you?” she asks quietly.
“Of course not,” I say. She’s read my discomfort wrong. I want the witches gone, just like she does. “What does the War-Father want me to do?”
The Governor clears his throat again and takes a step forward. I grit my teeth.
“Welcome to the Bluff, lady knight. I’ve prepared a feast for you and yours…” he begins, like he can’t wait another moment before jamming himself into our conversation.
Harfor’s eyes flick to the man for a moment, carelessly. Then she turns back to me like he never spoke at all. Knights are their own hierarchy, the left hand of the Exalted War-Father. I might be on a leash, but Harfor owes the Bluff's ruler nothing.
“We have a prisoner,” Harfor tells me, as the Governor stares at her back, his mouth gaping at the fact she ignored him. “They’re desperate to get him back. And the War-Father wants you to keep an eye on him.”
“Me? That’s the test?” My eyebrows raise. The War-Father isn’t a big believer in taking prisoners.
“He won’t be easy to keep alive.”
She turns and snaps. One of the soldiers, still lined up at the ship's ramp, salutes with his sword and trots back up the gangplank.
And then a figure appears at the top of the ramp. My breath hitches as my mouth goes dry. Involuntarily my metal hand shifts toward my left hip, where my sword hilt used to sit, but there’s nothing there now.
He’s as beautiful and deadly as the sea. And he’s the only witch I’ve come face-to-face with before and not been able to kill. Not for lack of trying.
I’ve spent two years dreaming of revenge against this man.
He’s big, as broad shouldered and tall as I remember, with long black hair hanging loose around his shoulders. But now his hair is oily, and his skin unwashed.
And they’ve covered him in so many enchantment marks, I'm surprised he's even walking.
The thin black spellmarks curl out from beneath the rags he’s dressed in, climbing in lines and circles up his neck and jaw, leaving enough bare space around his facial features for me to recognize him. The fierce, hawk-like golden eyes that burn with unholy power. The square jaw.
My right armored hand curls into a fist, a reminder of what this man, the king of my enemies, took from me.
I’m breathing too fast. I may have only seen him once before, but his face is seared into my nightmares.
Harfor lived, but there’s still the Enchanted, and my sailors.
He’s the reason they’re all dead, the reason I’m trapped here on the Bluff.
The reason my oldest friend no longer believes in me.
The witch’s muscular arms are chained in front of him, though from how complex the enchantment on him looks, I bet it’s more for show than anything else. And as much as I hate him, I don’t like seeing those marks on anybody’s skin.
“Who—” the Governor sputters beside me.
“What is this?” I hiss as a group of sailors march the prisoner slowly down the ramp, their weapons prodding against his back.
“They keep trying to rescue him,” Harfor folds her arms, still staring at me. “War-Father wanted him brought on this side of the enchantment. But we can’t very well take him somewhere civilized. At least he’s all spelled up. The bastard has to take your orders.”
“What?” My eyes flick between Harfor and the captive as my stomach sinks. This doesn’t make any sense. Why take a witch captive instead of killing him? Why enchant him if they aren’t going to drain him to power our crystals? And why bring him here, to me, on Rancor?
This is fine, I try to tell myself. If the War-Father is giving you a prisoner, it means he really does trust you. They wouldn’t place a witch in the keeping of another witch. Especially not one as powerful as him.
But the logic doesn’t cheer me as much as it should. I’m missing something. This isn’t normal or smart.
“And my test…? It’s just… to guard him?” Now that he’s inside the enchantment barrier, the other witches can’t reach us. What am I supposed to be guarding him from?
The prisoner is herded over to us. My blood goes cold at his approach.
He stops two feet from Harfor, towering over the knight, over the Governor, over me, glaring at the Bluff as he looks everywhere but my face.
His golden eyes glow with rage, his expression set in hard lines.
So. Whatever spells they’ve marked into his skin, they haven’t given him oblivion. He still has a mind.
I shouldn’t be relieved, but part of me is anyway. Maybe I just want him to know I’m the one killing him, when I finally do.
I clench my jaw. The witch's eyes stop examining the isle and finally land on me. His angry expression hasn’t changed once since he got off the ship. But the moment his eyes find me, his shoulders straighten and a muscle in his jaw clenches tight. He takes a step back.
So. I’m not the only one who remembers that day.
And it seems he never realized the burning woman who fell through the sky survived.