“Are you serious?” Ellarion yelled. “This isn’t like you, Galen. What game are you playing?”
“The game where I’m the leader of the Unbroken, and you’re just a tactician,” Galen replied, and I actually winced. “The mission stands. We ride tomorrow.”
I DIDN’T GET TO TALK to Ellarion again before we left, because he stormed out of the tent in a huff, but he was there when we rode out, waiting by the camp’s gate the next morning. There were five of us going on the rescue mission: me, Zell, Galen, Lyriana, and Manos. Ellarion watched us all go, one by one, and he gave a little wave at Lyriana as she passed him, and a sad little smile at me. With us gone, he was in charge of the Unbroken. He took it seriously, but I knew he’d give anything, anything, to be going with us.
The Fallowfields were a dusty windswept region on the Heartlands’ eastern border, right at the base of the green hilly mountains that separated the Province from the Eastern Baronies. The name, it turned out, was right on point. The fields and forests gave way to vast plains of brittle gray dirt, interrupted only by scraggly black trees, towering rock formations, and looming canyons so jagged they looked like they’d been cut into the earth with a massive blade. This was a mining region, Lyriana explained, famed for its rich quarries and deep caves. The people who lived out here were hard folk, prospectors and pilgrims and outlaws, and they were ruled over by Lord Alayne Delaux, a hawk-faced old man legendary for his cruelty and pettiness.
“Delaux was one of the few Lords who survived your father’s coup, and he eagerly bent the knee,” Galen said with disgust, as our horses tromped over a craggy outcropping. “He’d always felt snubbed by the Volaris, like they treated him and his people as if they weren’t important. He took the first chance he could to get revenge.”
“How’d he survive the bombing of the Masquerade?” I asked. “I thought all the Lords of the Heartlands were in that ballroom.”
“Most of the Lords,” Lyriana admitted. “Lord Delaux and a few other lesser ones weren’t invited.”
Zell and I shared a look. “So…you did snub him and treat him like he wasn’t important?” I asked.
“I…We…I mean…” Lyriana stammered, and Galen just shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
We wore our cloaks with the hoods up and traveled by backroads, avoiding settlements and trade routes. I didn’t think anyone was looking for us, not out here, but we were better safe than sorry. After four days, riding through the day and sleeping under the stars, the spires of Delaux’s castle loomed on the horizon.
They called it the Dragonsmaw, which was both needlessly dramatic and totally accurate. A sprawling castle made of sturdy gray stone, it sat in a stretch of gravelly emptiness, like a massive skull bleached in the sun. Dozens of pointed towers reached up into the sky like teeth, framing a round central dome. The banners of House Delaux hung off the tall gray walls: black and red, with a skeletal serpent wound around a spear.
But it wasn’t the banners that caught my eye as we lay on our bellies on a flat outcropping about a mile away, staring at the castle through Artificed telescopes. Stretching out from the castle’s drawn gates was a long dirt road, and lining the road on both sides were dozens of tall wooden posts, standing out like nails driven into the earth. At first I thought they were signposts or monuments or something, but then I saw the shapes on them, slumped figures, some scorched black, some still writhing. “By the Old Kings…are those people?”
“That they are,” Manos growled next to me.
My stomach roiled. There were at least thirty posts out there, and each had a person hanging from it, bound up high with a thick rope, their arms folded behind their backs. Looking at them through the telescope, I could make out men and women, burned and tortured, hung out to die in the hot sun. Each had a sign around their neck, and I could read a few of them: TRAITOR. REBEL. SPY.
“Gifts for the Inquisitor,” Galen explained. “He likes to know that Lords are doing their part in purging disloyal citizens. So they’ve taken to putting up this kind of display.”
“Are they actually rebels?” Zell asked, and I could hear the coiled fury in his voice.
“Some might be. Most aren’t. It’s the gesture that matters.” Galen let out a terse breath. “Welcome to life under King Kent.”
We didn’t talk much after that, just lay there waiting for Miles and his company to arrive. I knew I should have been more worried, but for now, we felt safe; the plan was just to scout and not go in unless we were absolutely sure we could pull it off, and I had enough faith in everyone’s sense of self-preservation that we wouldn’t do something too stupid. Besides, the outcropping we’d picked gave us a good view of the castle and the surrounding fields, while keeping us hidden from view no matter which road they came from.
Too bad they didn’t come on a road.
We heard it before we saw it, a low hum from somewhere past the horizon, a vibrating pulse like you felt in the walls of the Godsblade. Lyriana perked up, eyes darting around, and I could tell she felt it in her bones, the surge of looming magic. “Something’s coming,” she said. “Something big.”
And oh yeah, was she ever right. Galen was the first to spot it, a dark looming shape in the sky, approaching through the clouds like the world’s fastest thunderhead. I whipped up my scope to get a better look, and nearly fell off the outcropping in shock. Because this thing wasn’t a cloud, not at all. It was a ship, an enormous rectangular metal block of a ship, hurtling through the sky in a way that defied all sense or reason. It was massive, as big as a galleon, but it had no mast, no riggings. The front came together in a jagged point lined with shimmersteel windows. Heavy iron cannons jutted out of slats on the side, and six wings hung above them, three on each side, gently swaying and turning. The whole thing practically oozed magic. The air around it wavered and trembled, and the ground below it quivered as it passed, the light bending and arching in impossible ways.
“The Skywhale,” Galen said, and I don’t think I’d ever heard awe in his voice before. “I heard rumors that Hampstedt built this…but I never thought I’d see it with my own eyes.”
“Titans grant us mercy,” Lyriana whispered.
“Forget mercy,” Manos grumbled. “Titans grant me a damn catapult.”
I turned to Zell to see what he thought, but he just muttered something in Zitochi, a prayer maybe. Never a good sign.
The Skywhale drew closer, that low hum growing louder and louder until I could practically feel my bones grinding together. I wondered if we ought to move, if we’d be exposed from above. But it stopped by the side of the castle, a good ways off. The wings rotated, turning sideways, and as they did the whole ship slowly descended, like a leaf fluttering off a tree, before coming to a rest on the brittle earth and sending a cloud of gray dust billowing up around it. It was impossible, unfathomable, one of those things you see in a dream that doesn’t make sense but still chills you to the bone. It reminded me of how I’d first felt when I’d gotten to Lightspire, the sheer staggering awe, the sense that nothing could ever triumph over something so vast and powerful.
But Lightspire had fallen. And so would my father.
We watched through our telescopes as the ship’s front slid open like a gaping maw, revealing a long ramp that descended down into the dirt like a tongue. First came the soldiers, at least three dozen men in red-and-gold armor, wielding jagged spears and heavy broadswords. The bloodmages came after them, ten or so, Western men and women. They wore plain leather armor and brown hoods, and most were unarmed, but you could tell they were bloodmages by the quiver of the air around them, the steam billowing off their shoulders, the crackle as they walked.
The soldiers and the bloodmages marched through the curved gate of the Dragonsmaw, and then a man emerged after them. He was a Westerner, tall and thin, wearing a tight gray robe and walking with his hands folded behind his back. His silver hair was tied back in a ponytail, and a perfect pointed goatee framed his lean jaw. The air around him shimmere
d weirdly, and as I squinted I could make out shapes moving behind him, just barely there, like a trick of the light: tendrils of spectral darkness, emerging from his back like the legs of a spider.
A pang of stress curdled in my stomach. I’d never seen the man before, but I knew him by reputation. Archmagus Jacobi. My father’s enforcer. The most dangerous bloodmage in the Kingdom.
Jacobi had been a House Hampstedt scholar, a mentor to Miles long before the war had broken out. He’d been one of the first to volunteer for the bloodmage injection, and the most successful at harnessing its powers. Most bloodmages came away with one Art, maybe two, but Jacobi had been able to master dozens, including the dark tendrils of the Shadows of Fel. There were all kinds of rumors about him: that he’d single-handedly wiped out a company of mages, that he never slept or ate, that he personally tortured prisoners for the thrill of it. Looking at him now, his lips a hard line, his gray eyes smoldering with black veins, I believed all of it.
Jacobi marched forward, after the soldiers, and once he was at the gates he turned around, gesturing, just barely, toward the ship. Then another man walked out, and at the sight of him my heart lunged up into my throat.
Miles Hampstedt, the Bloodhawk, Inquisitor of Noveris, descended down the ramp out of the Skywhale. The last time I’d seen him had been in my room in the Undercity, where he’d grabbed my face and slammed me against a wall. The sight of him still made me feel sick. He wore his Western General’s uniform, a long black coat that trailed after him as he walked, and he’d taken on the sigil of the Inquisitor, an iron eye hanging over his chest by a chain. His curly blond hair hung long around his shoulders, and a golden beard framed his jaw. Despite being the guy who’d invented the bloodmage serum, Miles refused to use it, determined to keep himself clean. Not that he needed the extra power. He walked with the confidence of a man who had nothing to fear, a man who had the world laid out in front of him like a buffet, a man going through his life with a perpetual self-amused smirk.
I had never wanted to punch someone so bad.
Then he strode on, toward the gates of the castle, and one more man walked out after him, and now I actually gasped out loud. Because I’d steeled myself to see Miles, prepared myself for the surge of fear and anger and hatred I knew I’d feel.
But I was totally unprepared to see my father.
He hadn’t changed much since that day in the throne room a year ago. He had the same brown hair, neatly cut at his shoulders, the same pointy beard, the same contemplative scowl. He’d traded his plain Western robes for a more ostentatious look, with a trailing red cape and a sparkling golden breastplate and a delicate shimmersteel circlet, thin and subtle on his forehead. He looked like a King right out of the history books, regal and commanding and maybe even wise, the kind of King I always imagined when I heard the stories of the Old Kings of the West. The kind of King he must have always dreamed of being.
My gut lurched, and I had to fight back a sudden rush of vomit. My eyes burned. How did he still make me feel this way? How could I feel so many different things at once, and every one of them so overwhelming?
“Fuck me in both eyes,” Manos growled, and that kind of grounded me, because it was pretty clear he only felt one thing. “The Usurper himself.”
“The Raven didn’t say anything about him being here,” Lyriana murmured.
“The Raven’s locked up and bribing jailers. He must not have known,” Galen replied. His voice was flat, his brow furrowed in deep concentration. I could tell he was plotting something, and I was a little afraid to ask what.
My father entered the castle’s gates. Four more soldiers emerged out of the maw of the Skywhale after him, and took up posts just past the ramp. Sentries, then, to guard it. Probably from the likes of us.
“They didn’t have a prisoner with them,” Lyriana said. “The Raven must still be in the ship.”
“Forget the Raven,” Galen said. “We’ve got a bigger target.” We all turned to him, confused, and he looked back at us like the answer was self-evident. “We’re taking the Skywhale.”
“Wait, what?” I said, a pit of dread tightening in my stomach.
“We can get in with Lyriana’s Glimmer Art, just like we planned. Then we find whatever they use to fly that thing, take control of it, and steal it for ourselves.” Galen grinned, and I’m pretty sure it was the first time I’d seen him smile since the coup. “And then we unload every cannon it has right into that castle.”
Manos laughed, a low booming thunder. “Oh, Lord Reza. I love the way you think.”
“Well, I don’t!” Lyriana replied. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we have no idea how that thing works! We don’t know what kind of magic powers it might have or how to fly it or anything! How do you expect to steal a vessel you don’t even understand?”
“It’s a ship.” Galen shrugged. “It’ll have some kind of deck and some instruments to control it and a navigator who knows how it works. I say we put a sword to his throat and make him do the rest. It’s no different than taking a boat in the harbor.”
“A boat in the harbor doesn’t fly,” I said quietly.
“We came out here to rescue the Raven,” Lyriana insisted. “That’s what this is about. Saving a loyal and faithful ally!”
“Your Majesty, with all due respect,” Galen said, in a voice that most certainly did not have all due respect, “we’re talking about a chance to kill King Kent and Inquisitor Hampstedt in one fell swoop. We’ll never get an opportunity like this again.”
I had a thought, a sudden thought so loud I couldn’t keep it from tumbling out. “Did you know this was going to happen?” I asked Galen. “Is that why you agreed to come out here?”
Galen’s gaze flitted away. “I’d suspected it might happen. But that’s not why I agreed.”
“You agreed to rescue the Raven,” Lyriana insisted. “That’s what we all agreed to.”
“Your Majesty—” Galen started, but Lyriana cut him off.
“I am Your Majesty,” she said, harder and more forceful than I’d ever heard her talk to Galen. A part of me had always suspected a confrontation between the two of them was coming, but I couldn’t think of a worse time or place. “And I’m giving you a direct order. We’re here to rescue the Raven. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Why don’t we do both?” Zell said, before Galen could reply. “We sneak in there and find the Raven. Odds are good he’ll know how the ship works. If he thinks it’s feasible, we steal it with his help. If not, we run.”
We all turned and stared at him for a long, silent minute. “Damn it,” Galen said at last. “That is a good plan.”
“It is,” Lyriana said, though she still eyed Galen with a measure of suspicion. “Which is why we’re going to follow it.”
So we made our way off the outcropping, as close as we could without being seen, and in the dusty basin below we armed ourselves for battle. I put on Western armor I’d stolen during a raid, chain mail sleeves and a leather helm and a metal breastplate adorned with an eagle. Zell crossed his blades across his back in an X; Manos held his hammer at his side; and I strapped on Muriel, snug in a sheath at my hip.
Then came the Glimmering. We’d realized pretty early in our planning that the one downside to a magic that made us impossible for our enemies to see was that we couldn’t see one another, either. So we stood together in a tight pod and tethered ourselves with thin ropes hooked at our hips. It felt unnatural, restrictive, but it would keep us together, and safely within the five-foot radius Lyriana insisted her Art was good for.
“All right.” Galen cleared his throat. “Let’s do this.”
Lyriana closed her eyes in deep concentration, her lips moving just barely in some inaudible chant. She wove her hands in precise delicate motions, bending and releasing her fingers like she was playing a giant invisible mandolin. The world around us was already pulsing with the hum of magic, but I felt something else, a warmth in my skin, a tingle deep in my bones
. Motes of dirt lifted up from below our feet and spiraled around us. The air shimmered with that oil-slick multicolored glow.
Galen vanished first. Then Manos, then Lyriana, then Zell. I was about to ask when it was my turn, and then I looked down and realized my body was gone.
It didn’t matter how prepared my brain was. Looking down and seeing nothing made my gut churn. “Whoa,” Manos said from somewhere, his voice queasy, and I heard Zell sharply draw in his breath. It was weird—profoundly, disorientingly weird. There was always an innate wrongness to magic, to seeing the rules of the world bent and broken, but I’d never experienced it firsthand like this.
Then I felt something else, a pressure on my hand, warm and tight. Zell’s grip. And I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and in that darkness I was just a girl holding hands with her boy. That was all. So long as I had that, his hand in mine, I’d be okay.
It took us about ten minutes to get to the Skywhale. It was even more impressive up close, a colossus of metal and shimmersteel, at least twice the size of the largest galleon I’d ever seen. Squinting through the big window in the front, I could make out what looked like a deck, but my eyes were mostly drawn to the dozens and dozens of cannons along the side. I hated to admit it, but I was impressed, blown away by the ingenuity of my father or Miles or both. That they were capable of building something like this was amazing. If only they’d put their talents toward something good.
I’d worried a little that the sound of our footsteps would give us away, Glimmered or not, but it turns out I had nothing to fear; even at rest, the Skywhale was noisy, that hum of magic we’d heard from afar a deafening roar, like waves crashing into cliffs. The ground underfoot rumbled constantly, which had the nice added benefit of throwing up a small cloud of perpetual dust that obscured our footprints. The whole area around the ship surged with energy, loud and unstable.
War of the Bastards Page 4