“Nice to meet you too, Vashodia,” Mevon Daere said, then grunted. “So much that I didn’t understand before suddenly makes sense.”
Still marching away, Vashodia smiled.
Draevenus dipped the oar in the rippling water for what seemed the millionth time, the need for speed warring with the need for silence and forcing extra tension into each beat of rhythmic motion. Muscles slick with sweat had long since passed the point of exhaustion, only able to continue rowing through sheer force of will. But even that was starting to run out.
“I think . . . we’re almost . . . there,” Tassariel said between labored breaths.
Draevenus hazarded a glance over his shoulder, just able to glean the shadowy outline of the woman rowing behind him. “Quiet,” he whispered. “Voices carry . . . over water.”
“In this wind . . . it doesn’t . . . really matter.”
He couldn’t argue with her there. He’d estimated the trip across the channel on the inland side of Yusan would take two tolls, three at the most, but he hadn’t accounted for the headwind, which seemed to push them backwards a pace for every two they rowed forward. The eastern sky was growing brighter with frightening quickness, destroying their cover of darkness.
“Row faster,” he said quietly. Belatedly, he added, “If you can.”
He switched the oar to the other side of the small boat, giving one arm the illusion of rest. The wooden vessel wasn’t much, but he had no reason to complain; they’d stumbled upon it by luck, and it had save them from having to try fashioning a makeshift boat.
Squinting, he peered forward, searching for a hint of the island’s coastline, but even his dark-honed vision couldn’t make anything out. He didn’t know how she could possibly make an assertion as to their proximity to shore.
Unless, of course, she senses other casters of her kind waiting for us. Ruul’s light, I’m not ready for that. I’ve no idea what kind of reception awaits us, and I hate surprises.
He could not detect their kind unless they were actively using their sorcery, something neither of them had been able to do in weeks.
Entering Yusan had been simple enough. Nearby ruvaki patrols had rushed to the scene of the destroyed flagship, allowing him and Tassariel to slip unnoticed across the strait and into the woods along the horseshoe-shaped nation’s southwestern shore. The countryside had been breathtaking. Autumn had turned the trees brilliant shades of red and pink and yellow, the spine of a mountain range running along the island’s length was high and narrow and powdered with snow, and around every bend it seemed a new brook could be found babbling happily and kissed by mist.
Nothing after their arrival, however, could be described as easy.
Every step they’d taken had been drenched in signs of ruvak occupation. Soldiers had been stationed along every trail, and skyships had swarmed overhead by the thousands. Any advance they’d made had been an exercise in patience, as they’d waited for the sluggish occupiers to get out of their way and reveal a path. Too often none did, forcing them to worm their way through or along the edges of enemy encampments. They’d spent most of their journey across the outer island with their faces buried in the dirt.
He wasn’t sure if he’d prefer to be back there, or here on the water.
Draevenus shifted his oar back to the other side again. Several drops plunked across the back of his cloak, indicating that Tassariel had done the same. He was just about to ask her how much farther she thought they had to go, when something other than the wind reached his ears.
The thrumming whine, now all too familiar, that preceded the approach of ruvaki skyships.
“Get down,” he rasped.
He pulled the oar into his lap and hunched down over it, spreading his cloak over both sides of the boat. He could only hope his companion was doing likewise behind him. The goal was to obscure their profile, making them look like just another lump of driftwood. Though he didn’t know the extent of the enemy’s detection capabilities, this simple concealment technique had kept them from being discovered so far.
Though, if they actually knew what they were looking for, and made an effort to track us down in a logical, coordinated manner, we might be in trouble. There’s one drawback, at least, to their chaotic ways.
Too winded to hold his breath, he settled for calming it to a measured cadence. His muscles rejoiced at the much-needed break. Even knowing they could be discovered at any moment, and pressed into a fight where they’d be heavily disadvantaged, the sudden stoppage of his labors made him relax, far more so than was probably wise.
The sound grew louder, closer, but still he couldn’t bring himself to worry. Numb from exhaustion and practically blind, his hearing seemed elevated to almost magically enhanced levels of acuity. He could tell the skyships weren’t coming straight at them.
Ten beats later, the whine lowered in pitch and began fading, clearly moving away. Within a mark, it had given way altogether to the wind.
“We’re safe, now,” he said, straightening back to an upright position with a groan.
“I think we were anyway,” Tassariel said.
Draevenus half turned on the bench to look at her. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you notice the skyship’s trajectory? They avoided the central island. Intentionally.”
“Interesting. I guess that explains why this resistance group has managed to survive this long. Though I’m still baffled as to how.”
“Which, hopefully, we’ll be able to figure out when we meet them.”
“Well, no time like the present.” He let go of the oar, letting it slide into the bottom of the boat, and stood.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Taking a shortcut.” He unfurled his wings, sprouts of darkness no different than what surrounded them. Still, he knew she couldn’t fail to sense it. “Care to join me?”
Laughing, she stood as well, setting the deck beneath him to wobbling. “You might want to cover your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Do you really need to ask that?”
Thinking about it for half a moment, Draevenus realized just how idiotic his question was. “It’s not just my body that could use a rest, apparently.”
He shuffled around, trying to rock the boat as little as possible, and placed his hands over both closed eyes. Even so, after so long in darkness, the light that flared to life a beat later still nearly blinded him.
The valynkar made a sound somewhere between a squeak and a groan.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“Let’s just say, we might want to get to the island sooner rather than later.”
Draevenus didn’t need to ask why; he heard the whines returning, piercing the predawn sky. Several of them.
He flapped once, lifting himself into the air, and carefully peeled his hands away from his face. It was no use. “Ruul’s light, which way?” he said. “I can’t see more than twenty paces, and even then all I can make out is the glare off the waves!”
“Take my hand,” Tassariel said. “I’ll guide you.”
He reached out and felt her palm slip into his, grasping firmly. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Do, however, try to keep up.”
He felt a tug on his arm and flapped to match pace. The surface glistened below, passing by in a sparkling, lavender-hued blur. Flying into the wind made it shriek around his ears. The whines behind them intensified.
“How much farther?” he asked.
“Almost there. Just hold on!”
“I couldn’t let go if I wanted to!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve got a good grip is all.”
“I’m literally in the process of saving your backside. Is this really the best time to insult my mannish hands?”
“How is that an insult?”
“Watch out!”
Her hand released his and pushed on his shoulder, driving them apart from each other. A bolt of chaos scre
amed between them, hissing as it impacted with the surface of the water and turned it into a churning whirlpool.
Another bolt struck the water to his left and two more to the right. A fifth whistled by, slightly higher than the others.
This last one detonated in a maelstrom of sand.
“The beach!” he shouted, eyeing Tassariel’s signature glow ten paces away. “The island!”
“I see it!”
He dove forward, spinning as he dodged another round of chaotic projectiles. Trees splintered ahead of him, ravaged by the blasts. Then, he was among them, twisting around trunks that were thin individually, but spaced densely enough to provide a measure of protection. He landed, dismissed his wings, and spun in a crouch. Tassariel came to his side, mimicking his posture.
No more of the deadly volleys came their way. The ruvaki skyships—five of them, he could now see—banked sharply well clear of the island and began drifting away. As if they were children told their friend wouldn’t be coming out to play today and sulking back home.
“You’d think this place was cursed,” he said, rising out of his crouch.
Tassariel rose beside him, sighing. “Not cursed,” she said, slowly turning to face inland. “Just . . . well-defended.”
Draevenus followed her gaze. Standing in a broad half-circle behind them were dozens of figures. Both genders were represented, from pock-faced teen to wrinkled elder. Dressed in animal hides or tattered scraps of wool, they all glared at him and Tassariel with almost feral tenacity.
And every last one of them pulsed with sorcerous energy.
A figure approached from the rear, and the others parted to admit him passage. He was a tall man, if slightly hunched in the shoulders, bearing weary eyes far older than his features suggested. Disheveled hair hung just past his neck, the color of the midday sky.
He stopped ten paces away.
And stared.
“Hello, Father,” Tassariel said.
The man said nothing. His whole body started shaking, until the spasms seemed ready to overwhelm him. Several of the elder women started towards him, but he dismissed their attention with raised hands and a sharp hiss of breath. Eyes wide, he examined Tassariel for another thirty beats.
Then turned and walked away.
Draevenus looked to his companion’s face, unsurprised to see the tears brimming in her eyes. Yet her cheeks remained dry, her jaw clenched, her hands balled up into fists.
He put an arm around her shoulder. It seemed the right thing to do.
She did not resist.
Chapter 15
“Thank you for meeting me,” Arivana said. “I know you’re a very busy man.”
Chase waved a hand dismissively. “These days, I’m actually not busy enough.”
“The enemy still has not attacked?”
“Nothing but probes, I’m afraid. And half-hearted ones at that. I’ve a feeling they’re gathering themselves for something big.” He shook his head. “At least we have some time to drill the young ones. I only hope it makes a difference.”
“Surely it can’t be worse than sending them into battle untrained.”
“Perhaps. But until you’ve survived that first brush with the enemy, the first time a blade swings for your head, you can’t know if you’re truly a soldier or not. All the training in the world won’t mean a thing if you don’t have it in your heart to kill.”
“It’s been a long, trying journey to get here, and few among us haven’t lost someone along the way. Unfortunate though it may be, I think you’ll find plenty of hearts that are up for the task.”
“We’ll see.”
Arivana smiled tightly, then beckoned to him. “Please, join me.”
She turned, peering down at the open floor as she leaned both forearms on the loft’s odd railing. It had a look and feel halfway between metal and stone, and managed to stay warm despite the chill outside, which grew deeper by the day. Jasside had constructed this entire building—and many more besides—out of the strange material, all of it from thin air. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done.
And they all had more important things to worry about than aesthetics.
Chase joined her at the waist-high ledge and pressed down his palms on the smooth surface. He looked in the same direction as she did, examining the figures below. A few were old, but the rest were quite young. Most were male. They sat, or paced, or wandered, or stared off into the abyss. None spoke. Not to each other, anyway.
“Who are they?” Chase asked.
“You don’t recognize them?”
“Should I?”
Arivana sighed. “I suppose not. But we’ll get to that. First, tell me, how is your brother?”
“Daye? He’s . . . well. As well as can be expected, anyway. I don’t think either of us will ever get to used to it when I—his younger brother—have to reprimand him for things like this.”
“For disobeying orders? It has happened before?”
“Many times. You should have seen him when he was younger.”
“Would that be before or after you two wormed your way into being princes in a foreign land?”
“Both. And what do you mean ‘wormed’? We earned our place among the Sceptrines.”
“A truth you’ve both proven many times over. Still, I find it odd that you never went back to Weskara.”
Chase gazed upward, eyes glazing over. “We both left it young—though, in Daye’s case, it would be more appropriate to say he was taken. Even so, by the time we were in a position to leave Sceptre, we were old enough to have built more ties to our adopted homeland than to the one that had given us birth. Besides, it’s hard to love a nation whose chief defining trait is purposefully turning a blind eye to the world.”
“Oh, Weskara doesn’t seem all that bad.”
He appeared to contemplate that. “Times do seem to be changing. I mean, have you met the new queen?”
Arivana laughed again. This time, he joined her.
After their shared mirth had faded, she patted his arm. She kept the motion easy, natural, but withdrew her hand before he might conceive the gesture as awkward. “I’m glad we can laugh together, Chase. It wasn’t that long ago that all our people shared was hatred and bloodshed. If it weren’t for the ruvak and their invasion—or, rather, their reclamation—we would likely be killing each other still.”
His knuckles turned white, shaking as they gripped the ledge. “If it weren’t for the ruvak framing us for those assassinations, we’d have never gone to war with each other in the first place!”
A sudden vision of her family flashed before her eyes, their faces still painfully indistinct. All she remembered with any clarity was something that she had never actually witnessed herself.
The flames that had claimed their lives.
The screams.
Even the horrors she’d seen since could never match the nightmare she’d created in her mind. Yet for all the pain it caused, it acted as an excellent motivator.
“You’re right, of course,” she said at last. “The ruvak deceived us all. And my advisors, at the time, deceived me a second time, propelling the conflict onward for their own gain. But as despicable as their actions were, it only served to accentuate an even bigger problem.”
“Panisian presumption of superiority,” Chase said sourly.
Her eyes widened. She was surprised he’d been able to arrive so quickly at such a conclusion, especially considering it had taken her this long to realize it. “Is it that obvious?”
He nodded. “To an outsider.”
“Yes. I see how it would be.” She sighed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “People always seem blind to their own flaws, often willfully. I suppose it’s no different with nations.”
“True. But in both cases, those who can look inward, examining everything without prejudice or mercy, seeing both good and bad as they are, not as they fear or wish them to be . . . well, such a talent is rare indeed.”
“Too rare
. And as difficult as it is to see your deficiencies, doing something about them may very well be impossible. Just look at them.”
She punctuated her last word by flicking a wrist toward the figures below.
Chase narrowed his eyes at them again, leaning towards one in particular. “Wait a mark, I do recognize one of them. That’s the Sultan of Fasheshe. And that boy over in the corner, I’d bet my kingdom that’s the Crown Prince of Mataroa.”
“He’s king, now.”
“King? What happened to his father?”
“Dead. Decided to send his house into safety and stand his ground when the ruvak first came. An idiotic move in hindsight, but none of us exactly knew what to expect back then. By the time we mustered a defense, half the rulers of the southern nations had already died, and three others perished due to the strain of the exodus. Only two of the people down there have held their throne longer than a year.”
“And so you’ve invited them all here. But why?”
“I didn’t invite them, as such. They’re simply . . . waiting.”
“For what?”
Arivana pointed to the far end of the lower level as a door opened. “For that.”
Claris stepped into the room, instantly garnering the attention of every person present. The silver platter she carried was filled not with food but with folded sheafs of paper, which she handed out to each ruler in turn as she made her way swiftly, smoothly around the room.
“What is she giving them?” Chase asked.
“News, and instructions,” Arivana replied. “Though mostly the former.”
“I don’t understand.”
“With the rest of you busy yourselves preparing the defenses, the task of governing the civilians has fallen to me. My council, who have actually become helpful of late, help me make decisions for how best to run things here, for everyone. I try to keep the rest of humanity’s rulers informed.”
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