The Hurricane Wars （The Hurricane Wars, #1）
Thea Guanzon
Prologue
He heard the girl before he saw her, a high and golden hum that cut through the chaos of battle like the first flare of sunrise.
Sheets of floating ice seesawed and creaked under his boots as he ran across the frozen lake, making his way toward the sound. It beckoned to him amidst the other noises piercing the winter air—the screaming, the rattle of crossbows, the roar of cannons, all from the burning city that lay behind the ancient forest at the water’s edge. The fanned gaps between the longleaf pines offered glimpses of destruction in veins of red-gold embers, their needle-pricked canopy silhouetted against a crown of smoke beneath the seven moons.
There was smoke out here on the ice as well, but it was the smoke of aetherspace, not inferno. Shadow bloomed over frost in shivering rings, trapping everyone trying to escape the city, everyone except him and his legionnaires. With a wave of his gauntleted hand, each dark barrier parted before him, until—finally—
There she was.
Loose strands of bedraggled chestnut hair streamed in the montane wind, escaping her braid to frame an oval face with freckled, olive-skinned features. She was coltish on the bobbing ice, light blazing in her hands against the swirling darkness, the twitching body of one of his men crumpled at her feet. He hurtled forward, a weapon of his own blocking what would have been her killing blow to his erstwhile legionnaire, and as she staggered back, her eyes met his, her magic reflected in shards of gold setting fire to brown irises, and perhaps this, too, was how a war began. In the space between heartbeats. In the room of night.
He lunged at her.
Part I
Chapter One
Wartime weddings were all the rage in a land where every single day threatened, quite emphatically, to be one’s last, but the skies could rain stones for seven nights without ever hitting an available officiant. Most clerics were at the front lines, singing to Sardovian troops of Mahagir the Saber-Heart’s courage and guiding the souls of dying soldiers to the eternal twilight of Adapa the Harvester’s willow groves. By some rare stroke of good fortune, however, there was one cleric remaining in the mountain city of Frostplum, where Talasyn’s regiment was stationed and where her fellow helmsmen Khaede and Sol had decided to pledge their troth.
Not that it’s any great mystery as to why they left this grandfather behind, Talasyn mused, watching from a dim corner of the thatched longhouse as the stooped, elderly cleric in pale yellow robes struggled to lift a large pewter goblet over the crackling fire that was reflecting off his marble-ball scalp. In reed-thin and quavering tones, he meandered haphazardly through the closing words of the marriage rite while the bride glared at him.
Khaede had a glare that could cut through metalglass. It was a miracle that the frail little man wasn’t sliced into ribbons on the spot. He eventually managed to hold the smoke-warmed goblet to the groom’s lips and then to Khaede’s, so that the couple could drink of the golden lychee wine consecrated to Thonba, goddess of home and hearth.
From where she hung back at the edge of the crowd, Talasyn applauded along with the other soldiers when the cleric tremulously pronounced Khaede and Sol bonded for life. Sol flashed a shy grin, one that Khaede was quick to press her lips against, her ire at the bumbling officiant a thing of the past. The raucous cheers from their comrades echoed off the thick limestone walls.
“Think you might be next, helmsman?”
The jovial quip came from a point over Talasyn’s shoulder and she rolled her eyes. “Nitwit.” As Khaede’s closest friend, she’d been on the receiving end of similar wisecracks all evening and it had left her feeling rather defensive. “Why would that even be on my list of priorities—” Her brain caught up to her tongue as she turned around, and she snapped to attention upon realizing who the jester was. “Respectfully speaking, sir.”
“At ease,” said Darius, an amused smile lurking underneath his bushy beard. When Talasyn joined up five years ago, the coxswain’s hair had been salt-and-pepper; now it was mostly just salt. He lowered his voice so as not to be overheard by the people around them. “The Amirante would like a word.”
Talasyn’s gaze darted to where she’d spotted Ideth Vela in the crowd earlier. The woman who held supreme command over the entirety of Sardovia’s armed forces was now in the process of disappearing into a side room, accompanied by a portly officer sporting a black horseshoe mustache. “General Bieshimma’s back from Nenavar already?”
“Just arrived,” said Darius. “As I understand it, the mission went belly-up and he had to pull out. He and the Amirante need to discuss a crucial matter with you, so—go.”
Talasyn made her way through the crowd. She didn’t hesitate to use her elbows, her sights fixed on the door at the other end of the longhouse behind which Bieshimma and the Amirante had vanished. She was so curious that it burned. And it had only partly to do with the fact that she’d been summoned.
The embittered league of nation-states known as the Sardovian Allfold had sent General Bieshimma southeast of the Continent to the mysterious islands of the Nenavar Dominion, in an attempt to form an alliance. Perhaps even rekindle one, if the old stories were to be believed. The general was a former political adviser who’d swapped his badge of office for sword and shield, and he had been expected to utilize all his diplomatic prowess in convincing the Nenavarene queen to help Sardovia defeat the Night Empire. Things had clearly not gone according to plan, given his swift return, but still—Bieshimma had been to Nenavar.
Talasyn’s stomach fluttered with the blend of intrigue and unease that thoughts of the Nenavar Dominion always, without fail, evoked in her. She’d never been there, had never so much as strayed from Sardovia’s dwindling borders, but the slightest mention of that reclusive archipelago across the Eversea always left some part of her oddly hollow, as though she’d forgotten something very important, and she was desperate to find out what it was.
In all her twenty years, she had yet to tell a soul about the strange connection she felt to Nenavar. It was a secret, too fragile to be spoken out loud. But talking to someone who had just returned from there seemed as good a step in the right direction as any.
Despite her eagerness, Talasyn slowed down when she passed by one of the lance corporals who had escorted General Bieshimma on his diplomatic mission. The boy was pink-cheeked from the cold outside, snowflakes melting on the upright collar of his uniform as he recounted the adventure to a small circle of raptly attentive wedding guests.
Everyone else was in uniform as well, including Talasyn. Wool breeches, thick boots, and padded coats the color of orange peels. There was no time for pretty dresses or an elaborate ceremony. This wedding was a stolen moment in between skirmishes.
“It went as badly as it did when we last sent an envoy to the Nenavar Dominion,” the lance corporal was saying. “Remember, a couple of years back? Although I’ll grant that this time they let us make landfall instead of turning us away at the harbor again, it was only so we could rest and resupply. Their queen, the Zahiya-lachis, still refused to see us. Bieshimma gave the harbor guards the slip and set out for the capital on horseback, but he wasn’t even allowed into the royal palace, apparently. The concerns of outsiders are not the concerns of the Dominion—that’s what the harbor guards told us when we tried to state our case.”