Talasyn leaned against the wall outside Vela’s office, attempting to center her emotions. The weight of the Amirante’s words hung heavily on her heart, but that wasn’t what preoccupied her. In a little over twenty-four hours from now, she would be in Nenavar. At last, she would learn what was pulling her there.
Come off it, she chided herself. Here you go again, looking for connections where there aren’t any.
As she had so many times before, she recited a mantra of cold logic to herself. Her parents were most likely descendants of the Sunstead Lightweavers, which explained her magic. They had, for whatever reason, left her on the doorstep of the Hornbill’s Head orphanage. And she would never know why, so it was better to make her peace with that instead of live on wishful thinking, nurturing the part of her that believed she would still be able to find them again one day. It was better to go to Nenavar focused solely on the mission that she’d been entrusted with, and nothing else. Everyone was counting on her.
Slow, shuffling footsteps resounded through the quiet hallway. Coxswain Darius was approaching Vela’s office, with the ponderous steps of one who carried the world on his shoulders. He stopped when he reached Talasyn.
“You’re off, then?”
She gave a cautious nod, unable to speak. The coxswain looked—defeated. As if he’d been running on fumes for months and now there was nothing left.
“Not sure how much good it will do now,” Darius mumbled, almost to himself. He shook his head, as though belatedly remembering that there was someone in the hallway with him. “Word has just come in from the Highlands,” he told Talasyn. “It’s over. The King on the Mountain bowed to the Night Empire. And the Shadowforged Legion cut off his head.”
Dread swept through Talasyn’s veins in an icy wash.
Following the Cataclysm between Kesath and Sunstead, the Sardovian Allfold had been composed of the Great Steppe, the Hinterland, the Highlands, the Coast, and the Heartland. Now, after a decade of ground warfare and stormship battles, Sardovia was down to those last two states. Surrounded on all sides except seaward.
“It’s not over,” Talasyn insisted to Darius, trying to convince him as well as herself. “We’ll fortify our defenses. I’ll commune with the Nenavarene Light Sever and then I’ll come back and I’ll be there on the front lines—”
“What is the use?” Darius burst out. His words echoed off the stone walls, and Talasyn paled, remembering the Hornbill’s Head orphanage, a time when a caretaker’s raised voice heralded his palm ringing against her cheek.
Darius didn’t strike her, of course. Instead, he continued in a quieter tone that was raw at the edges with despair, “What good will one trained Lightweaver be against the entire Legion? And that’s assuming you’ll even be able to access the Dominion’s Light Sever. The Amirante is grasping at straws, Talasyn. We’re—” He swallowed. His next words quavered on his tongue. “We’re all going to die. The Shadow will fall across the Continent and Gaheris will show us no mercy. Why would he? We’ve been a thorn in his side for so long.”
Talasyn stared at him. She had never witnessed a Sardovian officer crack like this—least of all Coxswain Darius, who had been as steady as a rock since the day they met. Across the span of years, a child in rags screamed as a Kesathese soldier who’d spotted her through the dust and the rubble pulled his crossbow trigger, the light inside her growing until he was burned to dust. She remembered Darius calmly leading her through the wreckage of Hornbill’s Head, away from the Kesathese soldier’s light-ravaged bones, assuring her that everything would be all right as she trembled, afraid of what had just happened, not understanding what she had done and how she’d been able to do it. He had saved her that day.
How difficult it was to reconcile that memory with the broken man before her now.
“I have to report the Highlands’ surrender to Ideth,” Darius choked out before Talasyn could respond, which was just as well because she didn’t have the slightest idea how to respond. “Safe travels, helmsman. May Vatara’s breath grant you a fair wind and carry you back to us.”
He pushed open the door of Vela’s office and shut it behind him, leaving Talasyn alone in the hallway to wrangle with the fact that the success of her mission was now so much more critical than ever before.
Before the sun had risen the next morning, her wasp coracle glided out of its dock and shot over the deep gash of the Wildermarch, cloaked in the gloom of nautical twilight.
No one had seen her off; she’d said her goodbyes the night before. A faint tinge of guilt mixed with worry waged within her at leaving Khaede, but if she didn’t, there would be nothing left for any of them.
Forty-five minutes flew by before she lowered the sails—plain ones, replacing the striped cloth with the phoenix crest that would have easily marked her vessel as Sardovian—and gradually brought down the lever that controlled the Squallfast-infused aether hearts, reducing speed as she slipped into the zigzagging ravine that was aptly called the Shipsbane.
She needed to concentrate here. Navigating the sharp and rocky turns in daytime was already a challenge for even the most veteran of helmsmen, and as this was a covert mission, the Firewarren-powered lamps affixed to her tiny airship’s bow were dimmed. However, despite her concerns, the wasp wove through the treacherous ravine with minimal trouble.
Still, Talasyn didn’t allow herself to relax until the narrow maze of earth and granite opened up into an expanse of sycamore forest. She flew low, as close to the treetops as possible, the aether hearts emanating their fumes of greenish light.
Some of her earliest memories involved sitting on the front stoop of the orphanage at night and looking up at the rushing sound of the Squallfast, her eyes widening in wonder at the sight of coracles streaking overhead and trailing aether in their wake like emerald shooting stars. Back then, she would never have imagined that she’d grow up to steer one of these things. There had been no space in the Hornbill’s Head slums for dreams like that.
As the sky lightened into a less oppressive shade of gray, Talasyn extinguished the fire lamps and unfolded the map that Bieshimma had provided, checking it against her compass to make sure that she was on the right course.
A Shadow Sever picked that moment to discharge, its distant guttural shriek piercing the air. She looked out the sidescuttle to her right and saw an enormous pillar of dark magic erupt from the earth in whorls of thick smoke, just past the Sardovian side of the fraught southern border. It blossomed over the treetops, inky tendrils reaching for the heavens like clouds of ash spewed forth from an enraged volcano.
Zannah’s Fury, older Sardovians called it whenever a Shadow Sever flared into existence, ascribing the phenomenon to the goddess of death and crossroads. Talasyn could almost believe it, viewing the harrowing display even from afar. The Shadowgate had brought nothing but horror and anguish to the world.
She tore her gaze away from the billowing column of magical energy. There were ten more kilometers’ worth of forest to go before the coastline. If she sped up, she’d be able to reach the Eversea before true sunrise and minimize the risk of being spotted by Kesathese patrols.