Nyx swiped her wet brow. Under the low weeping clouds, the heat smothered. Over the past days, it had quickened tempers and slowed everyone’s pace. But the strident blaring could not be ignored. The novelty pulled everyone out of hiding.
“This way,” Jace urged.
He guided her through the worst of the gathering throng and over to a terrace just off the steps. It offered an expansive view to the town of Brayk below. The sight and spread of the world transfixed her and terrified her. In the past, her clouded eyes had always kept the world tight around her. Now it spread endlessly in all directions.
Another blow of horns drew Nyx’s attention down to the swamps. “Look!”
Bright torches flickered through the shadowy bower. Scores and scores of them, all slowly drawing toward the island of rock in these drowned lands. The faint beat of drums rose, along with the deeper lowing of bullocks. Hard snaps of whips echoed up now, sounding like the crackling pops of a log in a hearth.
“It seems we’re being invaded,” Jace mumbled.
Nyx glanced sharply at him, all too aware of the tensions with the lands of the Southern Klashe.
He gave her a consoling shake of his head. “This morning at the scriptorium, I overheard talk of a large hunting party coming through M?r. The teeth of the storm had kept them holed up in Fiskur for a while. Still, never imagined there’d be so many.”
The first of the torches reached the edge of the swamps. Crimson oilskin banners were raised, but with no wind to unfurl them, their bearers had to wave them loose. Though the distance was far, Nyx recognized the black crown against a gold sun.
“Sigil of the king,” Jace said.
Despite the heat, Nyx shivered with dread.
What is going on?
A commotion on the neighboring stairs drew their eyes. A long-legged figure flew up the steps, taking them three at a time. Nyx recognized one of her former seventhyears, identifying him by his lanky form and flailing gait. His face now glowed with excitement, practically bursting with barely suppressed glee. She also knew this particular student was the class’s chinwag, always ripe with gossip.
“Lackwiddle!” she called out to him.
The damp-haired youth nearly tripped over himself trying to stop. He glanced around and spotted Nyx. He gave her a hard scowl. With that one look, he revealed what all her former classmates likely thought of her.
“What’s happening down there?” she asked.
He gestured rudely and braced his legs to continue his flight upward.
Before he could, Jace thrust out an arm and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him closer and anchoring him in place. “Answer her!”
As wet as Lackwiddle was, he probably could have broken free, but he was clearly incapable of keeping what he knew bottled up any longer. “It’s the king’s legion, I tell ya! A full mess of ’em. Even some red-faced Vyrllians. Can you believe it?”
Nyx’s chill sank deeper to her bones.
But Lackwiddle was not done. “And who’s marching with ’em? It’s Kindjal and her father, the highmayor of Fiskur. I’d give up one of my hairy bollocks to be sitting there with ’em.”
Nyx shared a worried look with Jace. Her heart pounded. She again felt the weight of Byrd’s headless body atop hers, the spill of hot blood.
Jace finally let the boy go and moved closer to her.
Though freed, Lackwiddle dawdled, his eyes bulging with one last bit of gossip. “And best of all, I heard they captured one of those winged bastards.”
Nyx stiffened, picturing the lurker in the rafters. “What?”
“A big ’un,” Lackwiddle said, holding his arms wide. “All arrowbit and caged. Heard they’re dragging it up top. Gonna burn it alive in the pyre. As fitting vengeance for Byrd.”
To hide her reaction, Nyx turned to the twin fires ablaze in the drizzle. The taste of sweet milk again filled her mouth. She felt the enfolding warmth of protective wings. A keening filled her head, full of grief.
“Can’t wait till that beast be flopping and screaming in those flames,” Lackwiddle said, and darted away, anxious to spread what he knew.
Nyx continued to gaze upward, but she fell back into a smoke-shrouded world of screams and thundering war machines. She found herself again on a mountaintop, running toward a huge winged beast nailed to a stone altar. Her foremost desire in that moment fired through her again.
To free what was captured.
Then she snapped back into her own flesh, standing in the drizzle. The keening remained—both past and future—but it had grown into the buzz of an angry hive inside her skull. It spread through her bones, sharpening her certainty.
She turned to face the approaching legion.
She didn’t have a plan, only a purpose.
I must stop them.
15
KANTHE STOOD SULLENLY in the rain.
He could have sought shelter in the covered livery sledge, where the highmayor of Fiskur and his daughter were offloading a mountain of the girl’s chests and crates. The pair of bullocks at the front looked no happier than him, with their pelts sodden and dripping, huffing heavily and stamping the splay of their three-toed hooves.
He saw no reason to be over there. His breeches were already soaked to the skin. His boots squelched with mud and bogwater. His hair was pasted to his scalp. It seemed like ages since he’d been dry, though it had only been a dozen or so days. Not that he was confident in his accounting. The large company had left the port of Azantiia during a lull in the stormfront. Still, winds had tossed the seas into frothing white peaks. His stomach still had not fully settled from the voyage.
When they finally made landfall at Fiskur, the squall strengthened again. The skies blackened, split with jagged spears of lightning. Thunder boomed loud enough to shake the stilts that held up the town. They had been trapped in Fiskur for four long days, where the only fodder had been salted, dried fish and equally briny ale.
Kanthe had initially been relieved to escape Fiskur as the black skies turned gray and the worst of the storm blew off to the east. Then came days of sucking mud, bellowing beasts, pushing through clouds of bloodsucking meskers or stinging botflies that left worms under the skin. All along, whether they were on foot, huddled on sledges, or poled on rafts, the swamps tried to trap them. Thorny vines tugged at clothes or pulled caps from heads. Then again, better that than be grabbed by the fanged jaws of the multitudinous adders and pit-vipers that draped from mossy branches or slithered across the water.
Kanthe cursed his father with every hard-earned league. He now wished he had allowed Mikaen to intercede on his behalf and convince the king to spare him this torturous trek.
Their group’s only advantage lay in their numbers. The passage of a hundred knights and a score of Vyrllian Guards had kept the worst of the swamp’s denizens away. And the storm god Tytan—perhaps apologizing for his temper—had granted them a rare boon with a well-aimed bolt of lightning.
Kanthe looked past the livery sledge to a raft being poled toward the rocky shore. A large wrapped cage rested atop it. The two bullocks nearby lowed a note of distress and shifted away from the approaching raft, dragging the livery to one side. The driver had to crack a whip over their haunches to root them back in place. Still, the beasts shivered their flanks in anxiety.
Despite the bullocks’ warning, Kanthe found himself crossing in that direction. It felt good to feel solid ground under his feet. Plus, he didn’t want to be conscripted into setting up the tents or gathering firewood. Out in the swamps, his princely status had held no sway. It was hard to maintain a royal decorum when groaning as one shite over the edge of a sledge.