Rhaif swallowed hard, his stomach churning with the implication. Everyone knew of the escalating tensions between the Kingdom of Hálendii and the Southern Klashe. Any spark risked blowing both sides into a raging conflagration. He pictured the fiery arrow igniting the volatile gasses filling the other balloon.
Was that it? Did I just ignite a war that could consume half the Crown?
Rhaif quailed, imagining the many deaths from such a war. All the bloodshed and grief. He pictured cities burning, armies battling across mucked fields, innocents put to the blade. Aghast at such a fate, he stumbled back from the window.
Pratik caught his arm. The Chaaen’s eyes pinched with concern. He clearly sensed Rhaif’s dismay. “Do not draw that blood to your heart. Even if what I say comes true, you will not be the cause—only the excuse. And if it wasn’t you today, it would be another tomorrow. This hostility has been brewing long before either of us was born. It is rooted far into the past, tied to ancient animosities, clashing creeds, even differing gods. You cannot take all of history’s burden upon your shoulders.”
Rhaif heard the wisdom in his words, but it still failed to reach his heart. He shook his arm free from Pratik’s grip. Whether a scapegoat or an excuse, it’s still my hand that lit the fuse, not yours.
Pratik stepped toward him, ready to press his case, but a sudden flash of bright light flared all around, growing to a stinging blindness. He gasped and shielded his eyes.
Rhaif squinted against the glare as he turned to the cabin’s row of windows. The balloon had finally lifted free of the black shroud over Anvil. Raw sunlight streamed through the windows with all the force and vigor of the Father Above.
Rhaif drew it all in with a breath. For a moment, the brightness helped dispel the gloom inside him. Or maybe it was that the world below was now nothing but a rolling black sea, hiding all the fire and death beneath it.
He was not the only one affected by the change.
Movement drew his attention to the bronze figure of Shiya. Her face swiveled toward the radiance. She lifted her palms toward it, too. Her lips parted as if trying to inhale the potency in the sunlight. She took a stiff step toward the windows, then another. As she continued, her movement melted into a smoother stride. The bronze of her face and hands softened, their surfaces swimming in swirling patterns of crimson and copper.
Pratik retreated from her. Rhaif realized that the Chaaen had only witnessed her in a muted, stiffened state, never at her most glorious luminosity.
She reached a window and placed a palm against it. Her eyes—whether reflecting the brightness or fueled by it—turned to fire.
Rhaif drew next to her. He realized two things at that moment.
She was again facing west, as she had for days. And her gaze was fixed to the half-moon shining near the horizon, as if it beckoned her. Her expression turned pained, even anguished.
“Shiya,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
She finally found her voice, though it was only a whisper, like wind through crystals. “I must go there.”
Rhaif touched her arm. “Where? Why?”
She turned to him, her eyes still afire. “To save you all.”
SEVEN
BLOOD & FURY
I saw the grett beast flie ouer the quaggy clime. Ah! such was the terror that I barely ken the breadth of leather’d wing & mighty cry & how it wrought upon me such wondre. It is poison on the air, yet beautuous, too. How I wyssh I could read its heart as my own. But be warn’d most soundly. Its cry is death.
—From The Illuminated Bestiary, by Alkon hy Bast
22
NYX STRUGGLED TO convince her father about the storm of wings due to crash upon the town of Brayk and the Cloistery. “Dah, you must believe me.”
He stood before the hearth, where a thick stew bubbled in a kettle that hung above bright coals. He held a large wooden spoon in hand, ready to keep his late Eventoll meal from burning. During the telling of her tale about the coming danger to all, his eyes had narrowed, but the lines of his face remained etched with doubt.
“We must seek the stoutest cover.” She pointed to the roof. “Our thatch will not hold back the beasts.”
Jace stepped forward, adding his support. He still panted hard from their flight across Brayk to reach her homestead at the swamp’s edge. His cheeks were as ruddy as the hearth’s coals. “She’s right. You must listen to her.”
Her dah remained incredulous. He gave the kettle another stir. He had been preparing a late meal for Bastan, who had taken Gramblebuck to the top of the school, and Ablen, who was bedding down the herd in the back paddock. Her dah shook his head as he slowly scraped his spoon around the kettle. A tale of death and vengeance on the wing was clearly too fanciful for a man who had spent all of his days tied to the ageless tides of the wetlands, to the slow rhythms of a bullock pulling a sledge, and to the pace of one day bleeding into another. Even the aroma of bubbling potageroot and marsh hare in the kettle sought to squash her urgency with its promise of familiar comfort.
“Don’t see no need to get all fluttered,” her dah said. “This ol’ place has stood pat through spit and gristle. Going back near unto two centuries. It’ll weather any storm just fine.”
“Not this time,” Nyx stressed. Like a black shadow building in the back of her skull, she sensed the fury of the tempest about to break upon them all. “We could hole up in the winter bullock barn.” She pictured the thick-walled structure, where the calves and yearlings were housed. It had a stone roof, only slits for windows, and beams timbered from trees older than Brayk. “If we bar its doors, we can withstand any attack there.”
Jace nodded. “I don’t fully understand how your daughter knows what’s to come, but we should take heed. Especially with the king looking to steal Nyx away to Azantiia. Regardless of the strength of your home here, it might be better if we were elsewhere, and Nyx tells me the winter barn is buried deep in the fen.”
“Aye, lad, ’tis indeed. But I can’t see what King Toranth would e’er want with little Nyxie. You must’ve not heard it right.”
She shared an exasperated look with Jace. She wished Bastan and Ablen were here. She knew her dah’s stubbornness was as much a part of the old man as his bones. To move him from his ways often took many hands, like pulling a mired sledge free of sucking bog muck.
Jace tried one final gambit. “Trademan Polder, please trust your daughter. Even Prioress Ghyle believes her story.”
At the mention of the prioress, a crack appeared in her dah’s high walls. He turned to them both, looking both worried and stupefied. “She does, does she then?” He thought for a moment, then straightened, clearly coming to a decision. “Then, big lad, you best help me with the stewpot. We’ll want something warm in our bellies when we get to the old barn.”
Nyx sighed with relief.
Finally …
Before her dah could swing the pot from the coals, a resounding clatter from outside drew all their eyes. The door crashed open. Nyx cringed back, and Jace stepped in front of her.
Bastan burst inside. Red-faced and sweating, he cast a harried glance around the room. “We must go!” he blurted out between gulps of breath. “Now!”
Nyx struggled to understand her brother’s sudden appearance. Past his shoulder, the hulking silhouette of Gramblebuck chuffed and steamed out on the street. The great beast was tied to a teetering wagon that had no back wheels and a broken rear axle.