Air

by Rosie Scott

  “Who?” Maggie replied.

  “Bhaskar, the Sentinel,” the necromancer clarified.

  “Mm...gods.” Maggie appeared thoughtful. “One of the Sentinels must have died in battle recently. I know of no Bhaskar, so he must have been promoted in the past moon or so.”

  Cerin and I exchanged glances.

  “I can tell ya that the queen was very excited at the idea that ya would be headed here, Kai,” Maggie went on, after a moment. “I can't imagine why she'd put ya in danger. Of course...” The engineer trailed off. “Queen Tilda has made brash decisions before. Decisions which have resulted in the deaths of her own Sentinels. She doesn't consider the consequences of her actions in war sometimes because she gets high off of danger and the unknown.”

  “That's...uplifting,” Nyx muttered.

  “Do you know which gods have approached her about killing me?” I questioned, next.

  “Which...gods?” Maggie stared at me, perplexed. “The gods are alive?”

  My friends and I were quiet. Whatever was being kept from us was hidden from Maggie as well, for I could tell she was honest. On the one hand, we still had no idea what the queen had planned behind the scenes so we could not prepare for it. On the other hand, it seemed we'd finally found someone else in Eteri we could trust.

  Eight

  Paranoia plagued us over the next week as my friends and I stayed in Tal to develop plans for the warships. In many ways, it felt much like it had while we were on board the Galleon Stallion two years before, just prior to all of our ails. The only difference was that those I could not trust were the same people I had an alliance with.

  I threw myself into my work so I wouldn't fret over it. I'd found from Jakan that he'd learned illusion magic in Nahara, for the Vhiri were not connoisseurs of the lesser magics due to their stringent justice system. Given that illusion and alteration magics were most often used for illicit activities, the two were illegal here. I found this ironic since the queen wasn't the most forthcoming herself.

  This made it easy to develop a plan to shield the warships from magic, however. After all, Calder had taught me an alteration spell long ago that could not only protect from magic but absorb its energy. Such a spell would be immensely helpful for Eteri's warships once it came time to confront the Serans. I only had to convince the queen to allow her navies to use the so-called lesser magics.

  It was alteration magic which also helped me to develop a method to allow the adult giants of Eteri to board its warships without sinking them. Back in Quellden, Queen Achlys had used a black alteration spell to disable Nyx in battle. At the time, I'd worried it had been necromancy because I'd never seen an alteration spell that was so dark. In our stay in Quellden after taking it, we'd come across the spell in books looted from the apartments of the heirs. Burden, it was called, used to disable a person or object by imbuing it with excess weight. Though I hadn't found a spell to do the opposite in the underground, I knew the language of magic well enough that I soon developed it with little issue. Alleviate, I named it, for its ability to alleviate an object of most of its weight.

  A little over a week into our stay in Tal, Cerin and I were awakened by a harsh knocking on our inn room door. The noise was so abrupt that Cerin jumped out of bed as if ready for a fight. As I watched through fatigued eyes, the necromancer answered the door, revealing Altan on the other side of it.

  “Altan?” I lifted myself up onto my elbows, thoroughly confused. “Why are you here? You stayed in Mistral.”

  The ordinarily energetic first Sentinel appeared oddly reserved, and his eyes flicked from me and back to Cerin with an edge of nervousness. “I apologize for the intrusion. Queen Tilda requested I follow you to ensure you are holding up your end of the bargain.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Of course I am! Perhaps if she did not hold secrets from us, she would have no reason to suspect anything from others.”

  Altan tilted his head at me, surprised at my open distrust. When he finally spoke, however, it was as if I'd never admitted it. “Have you developed a plan for the ships?”

  Normally, I would have appreciated his to-the-point demeanor, but it concerned me now. “...yes,” I admitted.

  “Have you tested it?” He questioned next.

  “Yes, Altan. Why?”

  “I need you to be one hundred percent certain it'll work,” Altan insisted, his tone almost a plea.

  My heart thudded in my chest. “Is Eteri being attacked?”

  Altan's usually jovial red eyes were intense in mine. “Are you certain they will work, Kai? Answer the question. Yes or no, your shields will prevent powerful magic from reaching the ship or those on board?”

  “Yes.” I scrambled out of bed, not worrying about propriety. “What is happening?”

  Altan sighed. “I have been asked to test you.”

  “What do you mean, test her?” Cerin retorted. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Altan regarded the necromancer carefully. “It only means that I need to make sure Kai is telling the truth. If she has developed a shield that will work, it will be tested, and we will report back to Mistral with the results.”

  “We?” Cerin replied.

  Altan wrinkled his nose. “Yes. You all will come with me back to the capital.”

  “Already?” I started pulling pieces of armor over my underclothes. “We just got here, Altan. Is there a threat?”

  Altan twisted his neck to the side, where a bony crack sounded out from his spine. “Kai...just get dressed. Meet Maggie and me in the harbor as soon as you're ready. Bring your Renegades.”

  “I am supposed to just trust you?” I asked, exasperated. “Altan, you could not be more suspicious if you brandished your damn weapon!”

  “For fuck's sake, Kai!” Altan shouted in a burst of anger, his red eyes crazed. Cerin and I both stiffened with shock before the Sentinel pulled a bronze hand over his face. “Just...do as I say. Don't make this harder than it has to be.”

  Altan turned abruptly, leaving Cerin and I breathing hard from our encounter and more paranoid than ever. When we heard the door of the inn downstairs open and shut, my lover turned to me, his eyes sharp with concern.

  “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”

  “I...don't know,” I admitted, nervously.

  Bounding footsteps sounded outside in the hallway before a quick knock came at our door. Since I was mostly dressed, Cerin opened the door again. This time, Jakan waited for us and glanced inside our room, concerned.

  “Anto and I heard yelling,” the thief explained. “What's going on?”

  “Altan is here,” Cerin replied. “He claims he wants to test Kai's shields because the queen somehow doesn't trust she would be here working on them.”

  “What?” Jakan pulled his head back, utterly confused. “What is wrong with these people?”

  “You tell us,” I muttered.

  Jakan raised his eyebrows. “I promise you, Kai, I have no recollection of any of this bullshit from living here. But then again, I was never one for politics until I met you.” He exhaled heavily. “I'm sorry Eteri's been such a mess. Maybe we should just...leave.”

  I laughed dryly as I pulled on my boots. “We can't just leave, Jakan. We've signed an alliance. We are...bound.”

  Jakan watched me with sympathy. “Tell me how I can help.”

  “Get the others, and make sure they are dressed and ready. Tell them to meet us at the docks.”

  Jakan did just that. Cerin and I were beside Maggie and Altan minutes later, waiting for the other Renegades to arrive from the inn. I was mostly quiet, my mind trying to make sense of any of this. Asking questions had gotten me nowhere thus far. I was especially anxious because Altan was the one Sentinel here, and I'd been sure he was one of the Sentinels we could trust.

  “And ya want me to take the ship up the coast?” Maggie asked Altan for clarification, pointing one giant finger to the north, where the harsh cliffs rose above the ocean.

/>   “Yes,” Altan replied, sounding as if the two had already been over this.

  “Why?” Maggie nodded toward the ship we had been testing my theories on over the past week. “Right now, Kai can shield the ship, and ya can throw a fireball at it from here for all I care. You'll see it works.”

  “Between your questions and Kai's, I am going to go mad,” Altan muttered.

  “It just doesn't make any sense to me, is all,” Maggie replied defensively.

  “These are my orders, Maggie. I must abide by them.”

  The others arrived at the docks over the next few minutes in a fog of confusion and questions, further testing Altan's patience. I noticed that each of my friends had brought their weapons, prepared for a fight. I mentally thanked Jakan for informing them all of our suspicions.

  “Maggie,” Altan said, pointing down the dock. “Perhaps you can utilize a smaller boat for this.”

  “What size boat do ya want me to use?” She inquired, confused.

  “As small as possible that can utilize shields,” Altan replied.

  “I have a schooner I can use. Ninety feet,” Maggie said. “It'll only take one other sailor and me to move it up the coast like ya asked.”

  “That'll work.”

  Within the hour, Maggie was leading us onto a schooner much like the one we'd taken from Al Nazir to Killick years before. I knew the crew usually was larger than two, but we would only be out on the sea for the better part of an hour as we followed Altan's directions. Maggie pointed out the charger locations on the schooner, which were in the same respective places along the boat as they had been on the warship. While we were still docked, I tested a physical shield on the ship, ensuring everything worked as planned and that no parts of Maggie's creation were broken. It also gave me an excuse to store extra energy in the chargers for extra protection. As Maggie had taught me over the past week, shielding the ships in such a way stored the energy in the metal boxes even after the spells were dispelled, so repetitively protecting a boat with magic could potentially build up its energy reserves. All of the copper wiring on the warships connected to both chargers, which meant that if multiple mages were working on shielding one, the energy was shared across the entire vessel and able to be used by any mage on the crew. For as long as the chargers held power, it would give mages in the vicinity a supply.

  It was an ingenious design, combining the mechanical aptitude of the dwarves with the skills of the Vhiri mages to create a system that was both powerful and useful, particularly considering that the Vhiri ships did not have cannons to combat the war machines of the dwarves. In addition, the copper wiring of the vessels attracted the lightning of the massive storms which often passed over Eteri. If the boat were struck by lightning, the resulting energy would be harvested into the chargers via the wires while keeping the wooden parts of the ship relatively safe. There were still risks involved, of course, because wet wood could conduct electricity. But Maggie had perfected the designs of the vessels over decades of work, ensuring the maximum chances of success in funneling the lightning into the wires rather than the planks.

  Altan watched us depart from the docks with a look of concern, two tanned arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing his Sentinel armor today, which was a light leather armor imbued with the colors of yellow and black. The armor shone more than most leather armor, almost as if the Vhiri somehow found a way to use metals in light armor to better wield their elemental spells. With another glance to the glimmer of the metal wires along our ship, I realized that thought wasn't as crazy as it seemed.

  “Maggie, how weird were Altan's orders?” Nyx questioned once we were out of his hearing range, her hands on her hips.

  “Pretty fuckin' weird, love, I have to be honest,” Maggie replied dryly, straightening out the steering wheel once we were at a safe distance from the shore.

  “So it wasn't just me,” Nyx mused.

  “Azazel,” I called, turning my head to find the archer. He had his hood pulled over his head, blocking out as much sunlight as he could. Still, he kept his head downturned. Even in shadow, the bright sun of High Star was affecting his sensitive eyes.

  “Yes?” He turned toward me, closing our distance.

  “Keep your eyes on the shores as much as you can.”

  “I am,” he promised.

  “When should I shield the ship, Maggie?” I questioned, my eyes on the coastline.

  “When Altan throws his spell,” she replied, pointing farther north along the shores beside the cliffs. “It only takes a few seconds for the shield to work. Ya did time it, right? The alteration spell?”

  “I did. Five seconds, tops,” I murmured distractedly.

  Jakan came up beside me. “There would be no point in bringing us out here just to kill us,” he murmured before he chuckled dryly. “Right?”

  “I wouldn't think so,” I replied, waiting as a breeze whipped through the sails above us before going on, “Altan doesn't know the spell, and he didn't ask for it. It's not like he could take my work to benefit their navies. Besides...Maggie is with us. They can't be planning on killing their own people.”

  “I'm not their own people, Kai,” Maggie spoke up from the wheel. I stiffened because I hadn't been aware she could hear me over the breeze between us.

  A few more minutes passed before Nyx called over, “Uh...Maggie? You said Altan was supposed to throw magic at us from the cliffs, right?”

  “Yeah, love.” Maggie glanced back to the Alderi. “Why?”

  “He hasn't left the harbor. I mean, I'm almost to the point where I can't see him anymore, and he's still there.”

  Maggie pressed her lips together. “Maybe he...maybe he's brought one of the other Sentinels. Cyrus, maybe. Throwing water at a ship would have fewer chances to go wrong than fire.”

  The engineer maneuvered the schooner a bit farther away from the shore, before the Vhiri sailor adjusted the sails, starting to decelerate the ship.

  “You're too far from the shore,” I told her.

  “Altan told me to pull farther away,” Maggie replied, before pointing west where the edges of a small island were visible over the ocean waters. “And he said to start stopping here.”

  “Magic can't reach this far,” I insisted, pointing off to the cliffs in the opposite direction. “If magic is thrown from the shore, it won't get a chance to hit our shield at all.”

  “Perhaps that's a good thing at this point,” Cerin muttered.

  “That's what Altan said, though,” Maggie rambled, frustrated.

  “Kai.” Azazel's voice pulled my attention to the archer. He pointed one periwinkle blue finger to the shoreline. “There is a man on the coast.”

  I squinted my eyes, but I couldn't see who Azazel was talking about. Memories of facing Vertun off the shores of the wildlands floated unwelcome through my head. “Where?”

  Azazel continued to point. “He is using magic.”

  My heart picked up its pace. I still could see nothing. “Maggie, binoculars?”

  The engineer handed me binoculars a moment later, and I lifted them to my face. Immediately, I could see the man Azazel was talking about, and I wasn't sure how I'd missed him. He was Vhiri with skin of sparkling gold and wore armor that was also gold, though it was extremely metallic as if the protection was made out of the actual metal. He had a hairstyle very similar to Cyrus's, kept fairly short though shaggy enough in the front to drift before his face in shimmering dark gold. Everything—everything about this man was gold.

  As I watched in confusion, the man built up a spell that looked like life magic, before thrusting it to the ground. An orb of life magic surrounded him, glistening white.

  “Azazel, eyes,” I murmured, desperately. “Can you see his eyes?”

  “They are gold.”

  My blood ran cold. “Fuck! Shoot him!”

  “Shoot to kill?” Azazel questioned. Though I watched the god through the binoculars, I heard the archer prepare his bow.

  “Shoot to ki
ll multiple times,” I hissed, just as the god held both arms outward, palms together, shaking with effort. In a matter of seconds, a blinding golden-white light shone between them, immediately growing so bright that the world around us disappeared in scorching white.

  “Aggh! Shit!” Azazel screeched. His bow fell to the wooden deck in a clatter. “My eyes! My fucking eyes!” When I heard Azazel collapse, I realized he wasn't the only one who couldn't see. My eyes had closed themselves defensively from the blinding light. Disoriented, I fell to the deck.

  “Kai! What's happening?” Jakan was screaming it, over and over. I could see nothing. The light was so blinding that it somehow seeped over the railings of the ship and onto its deck, even from this distance. My sight held only the red of the blood within my own eyelids. I heard the crackling of fire. I wasn't sure how that was possible, given we were so far from him.

  All of my friends were screaming. I was so terrified by what was happening that I nearly forgot I could try to do something to stop it. I blindly crawled over the wooden deck, desperately trying to reach the metal charger. As I pulled myself over the wood, splinters slicing through the palms of my hands, I ran into the side of someone's fallen body. I didn't take the time to check if they were dead or merely debilitated because I needed to save everyone else. As I crawled, the noises of my panicking friends dulled, until I finally realized it was because the god's power was sucking up the energy of their screams.

  At last, my hand found the metal box. Only when the skin of my fingertips started to melt with excessive heat did I realize the temperature was rising rapidly around us. My skin audibly sizzled, burning at an accelerated rate under the sun.

  Absort la mana de spula! It was a desperate cry within my head as I forced the alteration spell to build in both of my burning palms. In the distance to the east, I heard what sounded like the groan of a beast, though it was actually energy being forced with such massive power through the ocean and the air above it.

  I thrust the alteration shield to the metal box, only knowing it had hit because the temperature stopped rising. Our ship was shielded, but the world was still a blinding white, so I could not see. I breathed hard through the already thick heat, only hoping that if we died here today, it would be quick.