Chapter 11
Panic rushed through me, making me lightheaded.
“Hello,” I tried, remembering at the last moment to adapt my accent.
My mind spun through a million stories I might tell them, but I would not give away information they didn’t need.
The cart was right at the northern entrance of Klepton, and over the driver’s shoulder, the city stretched wide, sloping downward before stretching to the sea: the Midly Strait.
“Just asked for a ride.” The cart driver shrugged.
The closest of the three soldiers eyed me. He had two silver marks on his collar, no notation as crafter. “Your name?”
“Lissela,” I offered, rushing to think of a Sestan surname.
“Your full name,” he clarified.
“Lissela Dan.” I tried to adopt the unassuming nature of my sister, Lissel. I imagined myself younger and inexperienced, kindhearted and shy. I glanced away and tucked hair loosed from my braid behind my ear.
“What’s your purpose?”
“I’m visiting my grandmother,” I explained carefully, shaping each vowel with care. “Elantriana. She’s a midwife here.”
The driver crooked an eyebrow.
The first soldier took my chin in his bare hand and turned my face one way, then another, like I was a fair animal. He glanced to his companions; the second soldier nodded.
Panic rang in my ears. They knew me. I fit a description. I’d traveled too slowly, and word of me had reached Klepton before I did. They were going to take me. I knew it in my half-formed heart: They were going to take me.
Before the soldier announced the verdict, I grabbed his hand and dowsed into his lumis. Barely recognized the shape of it before I tore into pieces marked by death lines. Enough to hurt him. Enough to slow him.
I leapt from the carriage as he cried out, leaving my things behind, sprinting into the city.
The second soldier rushed to the aid of the first, but the third took chase, barreling after me.
I dove onto a side street, desperate to find and take as many corners as I could to lose him.
However, as soon as I veered around one, he seized me by the braid, yanking my head back.
His other arm hooked around my waist. I fought as he pulled me back two steps, then forced myself to go limp in his arms. The sudden imbalance of weight sent us both to the slick cobbles, drawing attention from passersby.
The man wrestled me down. I kicked my leg, making my skirt ride up, and he made the mistake of grabbing my knee.
I dowsed. I hurt him. Only for a second before he jerked away, sending me slamming back into the city, but it was enough.
I kicked my heel into his chest before scrambling to my feet and darting around the corner, west, south, west, south, trying to put as much distance between me and the soldiers as I could.
I dove under two men moving a shipment of lumber and dashed between market stalls, the smell of salt and fish growing strong as I went.
Someone, a local, grabbed my sleeve, perhaps thinking me a thief, and tore it at the shoulder.
I wrenched away. Circled around the next corner, the slope of the city propelling my steps.
My lungs burned terribly, and when I took the next corner, I forced myself to slow to a jog, then a quick walk, trying to appear more as a woman in a hurry and not a convict.
I could not stop moving to catch my breath or to find a drink of water.
I looped onto a main road and took it south until I felt too exposed, then dodged into winding side alleys.
Anywhere, as long as it took me closer to the ocean. I would swim to Cansere, if I had to.
At the side of a dress shop, I bent over and threw up.
Heard a shrill whistle and darted farther into the alley, hiding behind some garbage.
Curled up, wishing myself small. Dowsed, but there was little more to do than strengthen my weak heart.
It felt like a bird’s—too light, too quick. I urged it to settle.
New fear fountained in me from my connection to Renn. Fear and . . . hope?
I cleaved to it. Formed my hands into fists and imagined that golden thread beneath my grip. I craved an anchor. A compass. Anything to stave off my helplessness.
Trying to keep my desperate breaths quiet, I peeked around the garbage.
Didn’t see anyone pursuing me, only a family passing by, a young boy complaining about not getting a sweet.
I crept down the alley, coming upon a shop for fine porcelain, and peered at my reflection in the window.
Gaunt, eyes wide as a doe’s and gray as a storm.
My hair frizzed around my braid. Spitting into my hands, I smoothed it down.
Noted the rip in my sleeve and tore at my other arm to make the sliver of exposed shoulder look intentional.
Fisherman’s daughter. Surely I could be a fisherman’s daughter.
A customer inside the shop met my eye. I turned and hurried, pushing my weary legs forward.
A burst like thunder echoed from the strait.
I didn’t know what it was. Collectively, people paused.
Stepped out into the street, opened doors and windows to peer out.
I moved along with them. Good; they could hide me, though all the while I searched for the black and blue of the Sestan military uniform.
A few people pointed, and I heard the words ship and cannon.
I lifted my eyes to see smoke tinting the air gray at the port.
A second boom split the air, and this time people gasped.
A few turned and began hurrying uphill, north, away from the water.
More came out onto the street to find the source of the commotion.
I pushed through them, eyeing the strait, spying a ship with a white-and-blue Sestan sail.
Cannon testing? But the murmurs of the throng said this was unusual, unexpected. Whispers of war and Cansere—
I pushed through faster, ignoring elbows to my side and the feet I stepped on.
My eyes locked with the sea, desperately searching over heads and shoulders, shoving back when people tried to move me from their path.
Rows of Sestan ships, most with their sails furled, docked.
But beyond them I saw two more, one closer and one farther, both without notable colors or markings. Massive ships, not fishing boats.
Boom!
Who would be setting off cannon fire at a far west Sestan port, with ships that size?
Cansere. It had to be. Eden had told them .
. . or Nicosia had moved his armies in attempts to find me, or some other reason I wasn’t privy to, but those had to be Canseren ships.
I begged the gods they were Canseren ships.
I ran. I ran with everything in me, breaking free of the oglers on the main road, feet pounding on cobbled pavement.
I ran so wildly I tripped over myself twice.
My heart steamed and spat like an overhot tea kettle.
Just a little longer, I pleaded, gasping for air as stitches formed in my sides. Just a little farther.
A second crowd had formed near the docks, city folk more interested in a show than safety.
Many Sestan soldiers moved about them, barking orders, hauling supplies onto a ship, or simply marching, searching, watching.
As I grew closer, I saw a line of soldiers pushing at the crowd, admonishing them to “Get back!” I squeezed through the masses, bent low to better wind through bodies, earning several curses.
The moment I saw a gap between the soldiers, I dashed.
Body fueled on hope and desperation, I split through the line of soldiers, jumped over a short wall, and sprinted for the docks.
Whistles and bellows followed me. I searched frantically for a rowboat to take me out to the nearest unmarked ship, but a soldier had taken off after me, leaving me no time to embark.
Nearly twisting my ankle, I bolted east, toward the larger ships.
The soldier grabbed my arm. Jerked me around. I saw his collar before I saw his face. The silver triangle there. Soulbinder.
No!
I could not let him.
So I leapt on him, every bit a deranged animal, kicking and clawing and biting.
He stumbled back as I seized his ear and dowsed, unleashing myself on him, wielding magic like the ship cannons against his lumis, enough to make me nauseous.
I let go, not lingering to see the damage.
More whistles, more men breaking formation to pursue me.
I bolted down the nearest dock. Snatched the rope ladder hanging off the main deck rail of a large ship. It swayed and twisted. My muscles shook as I tried to hold on and climb. Hands grasped at my legs, my ankles. I kicked, I dowsed, I hurt. I scrambled over the lip and toppled onto the deck.
The dragons were right behind me.
I wheezed, pain thumping in my chest, but I could not slow now.
Not when I was so, so close. I sprinted across the deck, building up as much speed as I could until I reached the opposite bulwark.
I jumped up and leapt, just barely clearing the space between that ship and the next.
My hips slammed into the bulwark. Hissing through my teeth, I pulled myself over and onto the deck. Spied a rowboat.
I frantically dug my nails into its lashings, tugging rough rope, ignoring the splinters it left in my hands. I’d nearly undone the first knot when a crossbow bolt slammed into the bulwark only inches from my shoulder. Whipping my head around, I spied two more soldiers climbing up a gangplank.
Not enough time. But they would not have me. I would never let them have me.
I would drown before I returned to that gods-forsaken tree.
I ran, this time down the length of the ship. An adjacent Sestan vessel, its sails unfurled, was pulling away from the dock. Moving into the strait, closer to the fray. My ticket out.
My weak heart guttered as I pushed my legs faster, faster, all the way to the prow.
I realized I’d misjudged the distance the moment I sprang from it, reaching forward for the moving vessel as though I might catch its railing with the tips of my fingers.
But the gap proved too wide, my body too weak. I jumped and met only air.
Blue sky and blue sea spun around me as I fell, the sick feeling of weightlessness shoving at my stomach. The water struck like an open-handed slap across my entire body.
The blueness faded the deeper I sank. It turned murky and gray, swallowing me as if a great, ghostly maw.
The cold shocked my skin and burrowed deep.
Bubbles escaped my mouth, my lungs burning for air after such abuse, but momentum sank me deeper, the water pressing in on all sides, clogging my ears and sucking me down, down, down.
I reached upward toward a sliver of contorting sunlight, urging my expended legs to kick, to save me, but my calves spasmed.
It was as though Salm himself wrapped his fingers around my ankles and pulled.
Light. That sliver of sun brightened as though the great star had shifted in the heavens to beam directly down at me.
Brighter, bigger, until it pierced the surface of the water, shooting toward me like a heavenly arrow.
It took on the form of an angel, a golden man with wings of gossamer, his hand outstretched toward mine.
My last bit of air escaped my lips. Renn.
That I would see a dream of him before dying was a gift.
His hand passed mine. Clamped on to my forearm.
Suddenly we were surging up, up, up, as though the sea had become one great, torrential wave.
Salm’s hold shattered. Water sluiced away all at once.
Cool wind whipped into my lungs as we soared higher, higher, his other arm encircling my waist, steadying me, holding me, and as the pressure of rising abated and we banked south, I looked up, looked into his gold-flushed face and his beautiful blue eyes, and knew he was real. This was real.
An angel of fire.
I was home.
I barely registered landing. On a ship, I thought, farther into the strait.
I couldn’t quite see it, what with my face pressed so tightly against Renn’s soaked shirt.
Soaked from seawater and soaked from my tears, for I gripped handfuls of cloth and sobbed against him, great, heaving cries unlike any I’d ever had before.
His arms bound me completely to him, leaving no space between us.
He pressed his face against the side of my dripping hair and whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again.
Another boom shouted. I held on to him until my hands went numb, as though he might vanish if I did not, all the while sobbing under the golden glow of wings made of light.