A small team of healers had stitched up the Amirante’s wound, and her body’s innate shadow magic had fought off the worst effects of the legionnaire’s blade. However, blood loss and minor organ damage had taken their toll, and Vela’s remaining eye was clouded over with suppressed pain and her lips were pale when Talasyn went up to her.
“You should be resting, Amirante.”
“I’ve been laid up in my cabin all this sennight. Besides, fresh air does wonders,” Vela said with a trace of her usual dismissiveness. “So—it looks like you’ll be seeing your family again, after all.”
Talasyn blanched. “I didn’t want this.”
Vela’s features softened. “I know you didn’t. Just some dark humor on my part. But I do wonder what will be in store for you, should the Dominion respond.”
“What do you mean?”
Vela countered Talasyn’s question with her own. “You said that Prince Elagbi called you the heir to the throne. I take it that Urduja Silim has no daughters?”
“I don’t—” Talasyn broke off as a memory from that fateful night came back to her. “Elagbi mentioned that Rapat had called him away from the capital in the midst of the succession debate.”
“No man may rule the Nenavar Dominion,” said Vela. “Accounts have been sparse over the millennia, naturally, but it is generally accepted that the title of Lachis’ka always passes on to the eldest daughter. If the queen has only sons, the firstborn’s wife is expected to take the throne.”
“I guess that the Nenavarene are a bit confused about what to do, seeing as Hanan passed away, and if the other son . . .” Talasyn faltered as the connection lanced through her: her uncle, the uncle who had wanted her dead. “If the other son”—she tried again—“was married to someone who survived the civil war, she would be a traitor’s wife, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes,” Vela said thoughtfully. “A most untenable set of circumstances. Perhaps we are delivering the solution right into their hands. But I suppose we’ll deal with that storm when it makes landfall.”
“I suppose,” Talasyn echoed.
In truth, it was a relief that they were letting it go for now. She was exhausted; she felt defeated even while clinging tightly to that one last shred of hope that she had led Sardovia to sanctuary instead of doom.
Then Vela surprised her by asking, “We haven’t heard from Khaede yet, I take it?”
“No, Amirante.”
In the past, Vela had rarely, if ever, discussed personal matters with her troops, always focused on the next battlefield, the next tactical maneuver. Perhaps she wasn’t herself due to her injury, or perhaps there was time now that they were waiting for the Nenavarene response. Whatever the case, she sighed, sneaking a glance at Talasyn before transferring her gaze to the moonlit ocean.
“The last thing I said to her was that she couldn’t fly on account of her pregnancy. I ordered her to help get the cityfolk to safety instead. She put up less of a fight than I expected.”
“Which is how we know that she was really sick,” Talasyn muttered.
Vela cracked a wan smile. One that was quick to fade. “I never told her how sorry I was about Sol. There was never enough time for that. There was never a correct moment. I hope—” She paused abruptly, as though seizing a chance to regain composure. “I hope that she and the baby are all right.”
“They are,” Talasyn said, willing herself to believe it as well. “Khaede is fast and she’s smart and she’s strong. If anyone can survive this, it’s her.”
Vela gave a slight nod, and the conversation ebbed along with the tide, a heavy silence settling over the airship’s bow, which no one else occupied. It seemed to Talasyn that it was just her and the Amirante, alone together, at the end of the world.
A crewman shook Talasyn awake shortly before dawn. The bulb on the aetherwave transceiver was blinking yellow. She crowded around it with several crewmembers while a runner was dispatched to the officers’ berths.
The feminine voice on the other end of the line spoke in crisply accented Sailor’s Common. “You have been cleared for an audience with the Zahiya-lachis on her flagship,” it announced without preamble. “To get there, you may take only one carrack with no escort. The rest of your convoy will stay where they are, especially your stormship. Only a small party of unarmed individuals will be allowed to board the W’taida. Failure to comply with these instructions in the presence of the Zahiya-lachis will result in the Dominion opening fire on your ranks.”
The voice then reeled off a detailed slew of coordinates and the transmission came to an abrupt end, with no one on the Summerwind allowed to get a word in edgewise.
By now, Talasyn was no stranger to déjà vu where Nenavar was concerned. This time, however, she understood where the feeling came from. She had been here before—and not that long ago, in fact. Little more than a month had passed since the sun rose through the mists as she wove her way through the same numerous craggy islands that the carrack was coasting over now.
The elevated quarterdeck was serene compared to the other sections, where people jostled one another and the swell of the throng pressed against the railings as the war-weary and forlorn angled for a better view of mangroves and rainforests and white-sand beaches. The fog was thick and cool, swirling all around, encasing faces and exposed limbs in fine dew. The Summerwind laboriously plowed through it, the fire lamps that adorned the stern and the masts burning bright as Vela and the rest of the officers gradually made their way to the quarterdeck.
The coordinates they’d been given took them further south along Nenavar’s disjointed stretches of coastline than Talasyn had previously ventured. The outlying islands grew thinner and taller and steeper, until they were pillars of sheer rock scattered through with the occasional streak of greenery here and there. The sun had almost fully risen when the Summerwind arrived at its destination, carefully navigating around a tightly packed cluster of stony peaks.
An awed hush fell over the pitiful band of refugees.
A mile away, hovering in the mist-laced air above blue waves and endless islands, was what could be none other than the W’taida. It was unlike any airship that Talasyn had seen before. It actually took her a while to come to terms with the fact that she was looking at one.
Mounted on a roughly circular bed of glossy, midnight-black volcanic rock that was nearly as wide as a stormship, wreathed in the emerald veils of what must have been hundreds of aether hearts, was a massive assemblage of steel towers and ornate copper-sculpted battlements, speckled with a plethora of large metalglass windows tinted pink by the dawn’s rosy light, threaded through with huge, whirring clockwork gears, and capped with golden spires.
This, then, was the flagship of the Nenavarene queen, and it was—
“A castle,” General Bieshimma said blankly. “A floating castle.”
“These people certainly do well for themselves,” Talasyn groused.
A deafening roar shattered the early-morning stillness.
It was a sound that only some monstrous wild animal could make. It seemed to come from everywhere all at once, echoing off the steepled islands, surging forth from the Eversea.