Presented like that, the facts were damning. Talasyn tried to recall if she’d ever heard of outsiders being executed for sneaking into the Nenavar Dominion. Then again, if that was par for the course, it wasn’t as though anyone would have lived to confirm it. Perhaps she would just be detained indefinitely—but that was another set of problems in itself.
Her willingness to go on this mission, and Vela’s willingness to assign it to her, had hinged on a Lightweaver’s ability to fight their way out of anything. Without that, the options were severely limited.
Talasyn’s gaze flickered to one of the opaque birdcages in the corner. If only she could figure out how they worked—what they were—and how to disable them. She’d already surmised that whatever they did to suppress aethermancy was contained to a fixed radius, given that the Nenavarene made sure to keep them in her and Alaric’s periphery, but she had no idea how wide the area of effect was.
Following her line of sight, Rapat flashed a tight smile. “A sariman cage,” he explained. “You won’t find its like anywhere else on Lir. Most garrisons have at least a couple, but my men are the only ones who carry several while on patrol, precisely to guard the Belian Sever from unauthorized Lightweavers such as yourself. The fourth Zahiya-lachis commissioned the prototype as a countermeasure against the aethermancers. Such power could not be allowed to go unchecked, you see. Enchanters were useful, but the others . . . they were a threat to the ruling house.”
“You drove them all out,” Talasyn guessed. She saw the collapsed, ghostly shrine in her mind, tangled in wilderness. “Or you killed them.”
“The Lightweavers, the Shadowforged, the Rainsingers, the Firedancers, the Windcallers, and the Thunderstruck all left Nenavar voluntarily countless generations ago,” said Rapat. “They did not wish to submit to the sariman cages and the will of the Dragon Queen, so they went elsewhere in search of other nexus points.”
Dragon Queen, Talasyn noted, wondering if it was literal or simply a part of their nation’s mythology. “And what of the aethermancers that could access the Voidfell?”
“The Voidfell has never had any corresponding aethermancers here in Nenavar. My point is”—Rapat waved off the tangent with a dismissive hand—“there was no genocide. The Dominion is not Kesath.”
Talasyn’s jaw clenched. “So you do know what’s been happening in Sardovia.”
“We do,” Rapat confirmed. “It is unfortunate, but we cannot help. Nenavar has survived for so long precisely because we do not interfere with other nations’ affairs and they in turn do not interfere with ours. The one and only time a portion of our fleet sailed northwest, it ran into the teeth of Kesath’s stormship.” For a fleeting moment, the shadow of an old pain fell across the kaptan’s features. “Queen Urduja was right. They never should have gone.”
Talasyn was confused. “Did they sail without her permission? Isn’t she the sovereign—”
“I am not the one being interrogated here,” Rapat interrupted with the alacrity of one belatedly realizing he’d given away too much. “If you cooperate, perhaps we will be more lenient. Now, what is your name?”
She answered begrudgingly. It was a name that had been given to her at the orphanage, a play on talliyezarin, a kind of needle grass that was ubiquitous on the Great Steppe and had no discernible purpose whatsoever. She’d never liked it even on a good day.
Rapat fired off one inquiry after another and Talasyn responded every time with a combination of the truth and as much vagueness as she felt she could get away with. When he slid the map over to her and asked where she’d docked her wasp coracle, she marked a random location on the outer edge of the coastline. She did tell Rapat who Alaric was and why they’d been fighting—a vindictive part of her hoped that the kaptan would be unnerved by the revelation that he had the Kesathese crown prince in his custody and, therefore, the beginnings of a diplomatic incident on his hands, but his expression didn’t change in the slightest—until . . .
“There remains just one more question to be asked.” Rapat took a breath, as if steeling himself for whatever was to come, looking for a moment much older than his years. “What is your relationship to Hanan Ivralis?”
Talasyn blinked. “I have no idea who that is.”
Rapat frowned. “Who are your parents?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “I don’t know. I was left on the doorstep of the orphanage in the city of Hornbill’s Head, on Sardovia’s Great Steppe, when I was about a year old.”
“And how old are you now?”
“Twenty.”
Rapat’s composure had slipped. A visible tremor ran through his frame as he stared at her, seemingly at a loss for words. Before Talasyn could ponder this odd turn of events, the door opened and one of the soldiers poked his head into the room, speaking to Rapat in the Dominion’s lyrical tongue.
“His Highness Prince Elagbi is here,” Rapat translated for Talasyn’s benefit, still looking at her as though she’d sprouted several extra limbs. “I requested his presence. I think it best that the two of you should meet.”
This only made the situation even more perplexing. Was it their custom for royals to interrogate random trespassers? When she left Sardovia, Talasyn had been prepared for a long flight, an exhausting trek, and perhaps some combat. She hadn’t bargained on Alaric Ossinast figuring in that last bit, and she certainly hadn’t bargained on having to encounter yet another hoity-toity title.
A few minutes passed before the man who was obviously Elagbi swept into the room. Despite his slender build, the Nenavarene prince’s regal bearing still managed to ensure that he cut an intimidating figure in his pale blue tunic and flowing cape of gold silk. His graying hair was pushed back from his high forehead by a gilded circlet crafted in the likeness of two serpentine forms intertwined, and the face beneath the intricate arrangement of precious metal was immaculately proportioned and fine-boned despite the lines of age.
That wasn’t the only reason Talasyn was gawking, however. The Dominion prince was also familiar, in a way that she couldn’t place but nagged at her like a dull toothache. It was almost as though she’d seen him before, but that was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
Elagbi’s jet-black eyes had been trained on Rapat from the moment he padded into the interrogation chamber. He spoke to the other man in Nenavarene, which Talasyn felt was a bit rude—and also dangerous, if she didn’t know what they were planning to do with her.
“Excuse me,” she loudly interrupted. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Without missing a beat, Elagbi switched to Sailor’s Common. “I was telling the esteemed kaptan that he had better have a good reason for summoning me from the capital in the midst of the succession debate—”
Elagbi broke off abruptly as his gaze darted to Talasyn. And stayed there.
She was no stranger to haunted expressions. She’d seen it on her comrades’ faces when they spoke of all that they had lost in the Hurricane Wars. This was different, though: more potent on a soul-searing level. The prince of the Nenavar Dominion was looking at her as if she were a ghost.