by Sara Wolf
“Translation for the translation, anyone?” I ask.
“They’re gearing up for war,” Lucien says. “Consolidating their resources over the capital city. Pulling the armada in from all over the country communicates they aren’t even considering being open to negotiations. And that they’re viewing Cavanos as the only threat worth their attention.” He frowns. “All of their attention.”
“Which leaves the cities on the western coast almost completely defenseless to Qessen pirates,” the sage mutters. “Not to mention the Feralstorm.”
“All this for the valkerax—”
“This is the bare minimum preparation for the valkerax,” the sage interrupts, waving his hand at the books. “I’ve pulled every Old Vetrisian tome on the subject I could find. There is, unsurprisingly, very little humans can do to prepare for a valkerax attack.”
“You’re not badly defended here in Breych,” Malachite grunts. “Sheer mountain faces on all sides, no paths up. It’s not like the valkerax can hitch a ride on the airships.”
The sage traces a book cover. “The tomes say they can fly.”
The room goes deathly quiet, the fire crackling as he looks up at us with his wrinkled eyes.
“Is this true? Have you seen it?”
“One of them can,” I admit. “I know that for sure. Most of Vetris knows it, too. But that one isn’t on Varia’s side.”
“If the princess has the Bone Tree, they are all on her side.”
“How do you know that?” I narrow my eyes.
“Unlike Cavanos, Helkyris does not burn books it doesn’t agree with.” His eyes twinkle back at me. I raise my chin.
“Right. Regardless, this valkerax isn’t on her side, Elder. I’d stake my immortal life on it.”
“Why?”
“I taught it to Weep. It’s free of the Bone Tree’s command.”
“Ah.” He nods, chin in his hand. “Weeping. I’ve read of it in the rare Sunless War record. You are…capable of it?”
“I’d do a casual demonstration, but that’s against the spirit of the thing.”
“Can you teach any number of the other valkerax to do it, too?” he presses.
My laugh bursts out, and I just barely cover my mouth.
“S-Sorry. No. Not without a lot of drugging, underground dungeons, and dying on my part. It’s a frankly awful time. And a lengthy one.”
“Not feasible, then,” Fione muses, pulling out a notebook and a quill. She scratches something out.
“You thought of that already?” I tilt my head.
“Obviously.” She taps her quill on another sentence. “What about the Bone Tree? Can we go back to the mountaintop and destroy it, strip her of her source of power?”
She’s the Duchess Himintell right now. Strong spine, unblinking periwinkle eyes. Apple-cheeked, blushing-in-love Fione is nowhere to be seen. Malachite and I share a look as Lucien shakes his head.
“The Bone Tree’s gone,” Lucien muses. “That thing on top of the mountain is a shell—the entirety of its magic is inside her now.”
“In that choker around her neck,” I say. “Right?”
Lucien shrugs. “I can’t say. But it’s a physical symbol of her new power, certainly.”
“It’s feeding off her,” Fione says. “Her magic. Which means we don’t have much time to stop her.”
“There is a time limit either way, Your Grace,” the sage says. “When one takes into consideration the imminent loss of life from a valkerax invasion.”
My stomach turns uneasily. The dream last night…Varia was close to Vetris; she was in the grasslands. But she wouldn’t—her parents, the king and queen, are there. She wouldn’t kill them. She’s still Varia, and the Varia I know treasures the people she loves.
Even if they’ve betrayed her.
But her parents haven’t. She loves them. Vetris is safe. I’m not sure about anywhere else, but I’m sure Vetris, at least, is safe.
“How do you stop someone with the most powerful weapon in the world?” Malachite muses.
“Calvary-General Rodituller proposes two theories in his Recitations of Field Warfare,” Lucien says. “You either amass an equally powerful weapon of your own or you destroy theirs.”
An idea comes to me. Not a great one, but at this point I’ll take anything.
“It’s like the hunger,” I say. “The hunger binds me to Lucien. There’s a voice—I think it’s the same hunger—connecting the valkerax to the Bone Tree. If we could weaken that bond somehow, like white mercury does—not Weeping but a spell, or…something. I don’t know.”
“Yes,” Fione agrees dryly. “If we could undo an immensely powerful Old Vetrisian artifact with a spell, it’d solve many problems.”
“But there’s gotta be something, right? There was the Hymn of the Forest, and the Elder here has read books about valkerax and their connection to the Bone Tree. It’s recorded. Someone has to know something.”
“Elder?” Lucien looks at the sage. “Any ideas?”
He shakes his old, wispy head. “The books I spoke of said nothing of weakening such a bond. That is knowledge the world of Arathess hasn’t seen in a very long time—from the time of Old Vetris. I can think of only one entity who would know what you seek. The High Witches of Cavanos.”
“You really think they’d help us?” Malachite scoffs.
“Three enemies means two of them are friends,” the sage says. “Princess Varia is using magic against the world. Surely they’d want less of that.”
“The High Witches haven’t been seen in decades. Do you not have Helkyrisian witches who’d know something?” Lucien asks.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, Your Highness, Cavanos has always been the seat of magic. Witches in the rest of the world have not perfected magic as they have, through regrettably constant strife. Ildolia on the Star Continent is perhaps the only rival to Cavanos, but even their magic falls short, and you would find the journey too long, too allowing of Princess Varia’s destruction. Cavanos was the seat of Old Vetris, the very heart that beat outward the blood, and that legacy lingers in your witches.”
The sage leans back, smacking his chocolaty lips with an air of certainty.
“Yes. Yes, I’m quite sure. There is no better place to learn of the magic binding the valkerax than Windonhigh.”
“The last witch enclave in Cavanos?” Fione asks. “The one no human has ever found?”
“Precisely,” the sage asserts.
“My sister’s been there,” Lucien says.
“Then surely,” the sage leads, “you must hurry. If Windonhigh does know how to stop the valkerax, it will be the first place she destroys.”
“Uh, hello?” Malachite frowns. “Breaking the valkeraxes’ bond with the Bone Tree means they’d be let loose on the world. You know, the whole reason Old Vetris banded together in the first place?”
“We hold on to it, until we have a better plan,” Lucien says.
Malachite shifts uncomfortably on the wall. Fione stares down at her notebook intensely, her still quill blotting an ever-expanding dot of ink in the center of the page. My dream bubbles up—the fevered one I had when I blacked out from the fall, the one this morning. I’d been Varia. I had her hands, her arms. Her body. I was in her body, seeing through her eyes. And the voice in my head, worse than the hunger, wanted to destroy everything. But it wasn’t hers. They weren’t her thoughts. Fione was superimposed on the destruction. Fione was the only thought she still had that was her own. And if the rest wasn’t hers, then…
“The Bone Tree wants this.” I break the quiet. “It’s urging her to destroy.”
“How would you know that?” Fione’s voice is instant and biting. Understandably so. How dare I presume to know what Varia’s thinking, feeling? I’m not the one in a relationship with her. It’s time to tell them. No more s
ecrets. Secrets are what drove us apart in Vetris.
“When we fell, I blacked out,” I admit. “And I had this dream. I was with her. I saw through her eyes. And this morning, I had the same dream. She was—”
“She’s alive,” Lucien says, an assertion, not a question.
I nod. “The valkerax fell on her, but she cut through them. I could hear something screaming in her head, like the hunger screams in mine. But hers was louder. Untempered by witch magic. It wanted ruin indiscriminate. It was fury and fear and pain, all at once. And the only way she was keeping sane was by holding on to the idea of—”
My eyes skitter over to Fione, and I feel suddenly raw with the awareness of what wounds I’m testing the stitches of. I clear my throat.
“She killed Gavik.”
Fione has the same reaction her love did—she doesn’t flinch. Lucien exhales, just barely, and Malachite rolls his eyes.
“Fuckin’ finally,” Mal says. “Good riddance.”
I inhale sharply. “The Bone Tree wants her to destroy. Anything. Everything. But she’s fighting it. She’s trying to keep it in check so she can accomplish her goals. It got softer when she killed Gavik, but it didn’t go away. It’s so godsdamn powerful, like nature itself—”
“She can,” Fione interrupts me. “She will.”
Lucien glances over at me, then her. “Of course she will.”
Their faith in her is ironclad. Or maybe they just want it to be. Belief is sometimes the only thing you can hold on to. But I’ve felt it. By some arsed-up twist of dream-magic, some echo of Varia being my witch once, I’ve felt what she’s feeling. What she’s going through. And no mortal would be able to keep strong against something like that for long. Worry runs taut threads through the room, between Malachite and Fione, between Fione and Lucien most of all.
Windonhigh. If the sage is right, the High Witches have to know something. Some spell, some information to help us separate the valkerax from the Bone Tree. But no human’s ever found Windonhigh—not even Nightsinger ever mentioned it to me.
And then it hits me: the letter. The one Y’shennria sent me while I was still Varia’s Heartless. I scramble in my pockets, pulling it out from the little bag I keep the fragments of Father’s sword in—blade and hilt, disassembled. The bag made for me by Lucien.
“Here,” I chirp, flattening the letter on the table as everyone bends over it. “Y’shennria sent me this when I was in Vetris. She said to come to Ravenshaunt when I got my heart back.”
“And?” The old sage wrinkles his nose. “How does this help you young ones find Windonhigh?”
“Y’shennria is an Old God family,” Fione interjects. “She conspired with the witches to steal Prince Lucien’s heart, but when she failed, she fled.”
“She was confident she’d be safe,” I say. “On the night of the Hunt, when she sent me off to take Lucien’s heart, she assured me she’d be fine, that the witches would give her asylum.”
“And the only place left that’s safe for witches is…” Lucien murmurs, eyes sparking as he looks up at me.
“So.” I clap my hands together, standing and dusting my garish skirt off. “How long should I book our vacation to Windonhigh for?”
5
TO VETRIS
When Varia first dragged me up here in a fit of excitement, she failed to mention the only way down off the Tollmount-Kilstead mountains involves very large and very unstable-looking hot air balloons. Or rather, hot air balloons attached to ships by copper lashing cable.
Which isn’t a recipe for disaster at all.
“For the last time, Zera, it’s not air. It’s aergasel. It’s lighter than air, and it provides support to the thrusters by lessening the velocity of the load required for takeoff—”
“Fione, you’re beautiful,” I start, wrapping the fur covering around me tighter as the crate-lugging, passenger-swarmed bustle of the chilly Breych airdocks hums around us. “And extremely smart, and incredibly good at explaining things, but alas, I have no heart and very little brain.”
“It’s not air, is all.” She leans on her cane to avoid a man carrying what seems to be ten boxes crowded with furiously mating chickens on his shoulders.
“Then why call them airships?” I ask.
“Because it’s easier than calling them aergaselships.”
“Fair.” I nod. “But still mystifying. I’d call them titships, personally.” A pause. “Because that’s what they look like.”
“Yes.” She giggles. “I got that.”
“Hey, you two!” Malachite shouts, his pale, lanky frame towering over the crowd. “This way!”
I pick up my bag and lug Fione’s far fancier one over my shoulder for good measure. She pouts, a shard of before-duchess, before-heartbreak showing through.
“I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own things.”
“I know. But do you want to?”
She glances at me sheepishly. “No?”
“That’s what I thought.” I muscle through the crowd, shoving as many people aside as will let me to make just a bit more room for her. Most of the crowd are armada soldiers, coming in from the sleek black airships sent to the Cavanos-Helkyris border. They don’t look like titships in the slightest—all dark lacquer, their aergasel balloons streamlined and tipped with terrifying black iron warspikes. They fly flags of deep purple with four bronze wildcats centered around a moon—the seal of the sage-dukes of Silvanitas, Fione informs me. Breych is, apparently, one of the few cities nearest the border, and that means one of the few places the armada can refuel.
“They got here quick, huh?” I shout back at Fione over the engine drone.
“I told you, the Helkyrisian armada is one-of-a-kind. They fly at speeds of up to thirty miles a half and can pivot 180 degrees in a matter of seconds—”
“Ooooh, cannons!”
“Are you even listening, Zera?”
“All ears, Your Grace!” A passing carriage of birch branches thwacks me in the side of the head, roughly clipping my temple. “Make that just one ear, Your Grace!”
We finally reach the far end of the dock, where a chained gangplank hovers precariously over a very far drop down into the mountainous abyss. The merchant ship it’s attached to is being loaded with barrel upon barrel of some sort of pickled good—the vinegar a strong perfume in the air. Fione gags a little, pulling her scarf over her mouth.
“It’s like—like sour feet!”
“Could be worse!” I chime. “Could be actual feet!”
The weight on my back lifts, Fione’s bag taken from me. I’m halfway through a whirl to grab whichever wharf rat thinks I’m an easy target when Lucien’s voice lilts in my ear.
“Allow me to lighten your load.”
He’s dressed in his black leathers—not the same as his disguise as the altruistic thief Whisper, but close. The hooded cowl, the closer fit for mobility. It’s an echo, but not the whole thing. He sees me staring and smiles over his cowl.
“Thought I ought to start blending in.”
“So you chose a full black outfit in a place with nothing but snow,” I drawl.
“Old habits die hard,” he says simply.
“Or not at all, in my case.” I tap my empty chest, and he laughs low in my ear, kissing my temple gingerly.
“Are you all right? I saw that load of branches hit you.”
“Oh, psh.” I wave him off and start up the gangplank toward Malachite. “Don’t worry about me.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?”
“Take up crocheting?” I throw a smile at Malachite. “Nice of you to commandeer the only ship smelling of pickled feet for us.”
“Considering they’re doing this for absolutely free”—Malachite’s milk brows knit as he leans in and whispers—“maybe don’t go around complaining about the smell.”
The duchess looks unsteady on her feet, and Lucien grabs her elbow to steady her when one of her gags wrenches her entire body to the left.
“Somewhere on the railing it is, then,” Lucien says, grinning back at me and helping her toward the side of the ship. The flame-haired captain and her crew come aboard. She nods at us as she passes on her way to the helm.
“No drinking, no smoking, and for the love of mercury piss in the buckets, not on the deck.”
“Yes, Cap’n,” Malachite salutes, and the red-haired woman launches an eyeball-inquiry my way.
“You. You look like trouble.”
“Astute and gorgeous,” I say, making my best Y’shennria curtsy. She’s buying none of it, her gaze narrowed.
“You’re the other bodyguard, then?”
I know better than to flicker a look at Malachite. “Yes.”
“No sword? No weapon?” She scoffs. “A bad one, then.”
“Oh, it’s all hand-to-hand combat from me. A bit of biting here and there.”
“She’s good for it,” Malachite jumps in, and when the woman throws him a nasty look, he adds, “Cap’n.”
The captain sizes me up one more time. The woman has the instincts of a wolf—she’s every inch right about me. Trouble is all I know how to make.
“You work for what you eat.” She grunts.
“Gladly.” I smile. And what I eat is you.
Finally, she turns and starts barking orders into the frigid air, and the crew scatters to haul rope. “You—” She points to me. “On the anchor. And you, beneather—you’re on winch release. The disc levers over there, the middle one. Get to it!”
“Aye-aye!” I salute, dashing over to the heavy iron clasp and the ten sailors attempting to haul it off the magnetic dock and wind it back into the airship. Malachite only breaks two levers before the captain realizes just how strong he is and has him hauling rope effortlessly instead.
By some combined miracle of our strength and the captain’s precise maneuvering, the airship starts to move, drifting away from the Breych docks and floating with generous creaks out of the mountain’s shadow and into the pale sunlight of Cavanos, the green of its grasslands beckoning us home.