“They did,” Coxswain Darius said shortly. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, a haggard imitation of the good-humored officer that Talasyn had spoken to at the longhouse. “Now that he has Frostplum, Gaheris is in prime position to conquer the rest of the Highlands. It won’t be long before he brings the King on the Mountain to heel.” Vela made no response and Darius sighed, fixing her with a morose gaze. “Ideth, the Sardovian Allfold’s holdings shrink with each year that passes. Soon there will be nowhere left for us to run.”
“What would you have us do, then?” countered Vela. “Surrender is not an option. You and I both knew that when we left Kesath. Gaheris made it plain: anyone who stands in the way of his empire’s destiny will meet a terrible end.”
It was Darius’s turn to say nothing, although he kept his eyes fixed on the Amirante while she returned his stare. Not for the first time, Talasyn felt like an intruder witnessing a conversation that she couldn’t hear. Vela and Darius had their own silent language; they had known each other since Vela was a new recruit to the Kesathese fleet, and ten years ago they had defected together with several other officers and some loyal soldiers, taking eight stormships with them over the border to Sardovia.
Vela and Darius were resolute in their determination to prevent the Night Emperor’s cruel reign from encompassing the whole Continent. But the Hurricane Wars had dragged on and Sardovia was down to five stormships, and Talasyn was starting to see the cracks in her superiors’ facades.
Darius rubbed a weary hand over his face. “If only Bieshimma had been successful,” he muttered. “If only the Nenavar Dominion had agreed to help.”
“It was a long shot in the first place,” said Vela. “They’d already turned away our previous envoy. I’m sure that the Nenavarene are still smarting from the last time they sent aid to a Sardovian state.”
There it was again, the quickening of Talasyn’s pulse that accompanied anything and everything to do with the Dominion. “So it’s true, then?” she blurted out. “Nenavar sent airships to help the Lightweavers of Sunstead during the Cataclysm?” She’d heard the old stories; they were whispered in taverns and marketplaces, bandied about in the barracks.
“Yes,” Vela confirmed. “I was a quartermaster in the Kesathese fleet at the time. I saw the Nenavarene flotilla from a distance, but they never reached our shores. Emperor Gaheris sent the stormship prototype out to meet them.”
“It was his father’s pet project,” Darius added, lip curling in distaste. “Ozalus had just been slain in battle. Gaheris was newly crowned, and angry and desperate. He ordered the first stormship to be deployed. It hadn’t been tested yet, but it worked. The Nenavarene flotilla never stood a chance.”
Talasyn pictured it—bursts of straight-line winds, torrents of heavy rain, waves of destructive lightning, unfurling over the dark blue Eversea and crushing the Dominion’s airships as though they were matchsticks. After Kesath annexed Sunstead and became the Night Empire, they had kept on building more of these dread weapons. Huge armor-plated vessels, nearly impossible to bring down and wreaking untold devastation on the land.
Each stormship required hundreds of aether hearts to be fully operational, but Kesath’s mines were on the brink of depletion, and so Gaheris had looked to his neighbors. The remaining states of the Sardovian Allfold had refused. Deciding to take Sardovia’s supply of aether hearts by force, Gaheris began conquering one Allfold city after another, his Night Empire growing with each victory. Vela and Darius and their men had rebelled and brought stormship technology to the Sardovian forces and now, a decade later, here they all were. Fighting a war without end.
“Speaking of Gaheris,” said Vela, her remaining eye flickering to Talasyn, “and fathers and sons—”
“That’s right.” Darius grew even more solemn. “So. Alaric Ossinast knows you’re a Lightweaver.”
Talasyn nodded.
“He will have informed Gaheris by now,” said Vela. “They will stop at nothing to neutralize you. Not only can your magic cancel out theirs, but it’s personal for them. Gaheris watched Sunstead Lightweavers kill his father, and he has instilled that same desire for vengeance in his son. You have a target on your back.”
“I’m sorry,” Talasyn mumbled, shame heating her cheeks. Sardovia had needed helmsmen and she’d shown an aptitude for the wasp coracles, but she’d been warned over and over again to hide the fact that she had the ability to channel aether magic, that she could tread the line between dimensions and make one in particular do her bidding.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” Darius conceded. “But this does mean that it’s time for you to start training in earnest.”
“Training won’t suffice,” Vela said grimly. “Not for long. Fortunately, we may have found a way around that.”
Before Talasyn could ask what she meant, the Amirante spoke to Darius. “Check if Bieshimma’s at the door yet.”
He was. It was only when Darius stepped aside to let Bieshimma into the office that Talasyn remembered they had wanted to meet with her back at the longhouse in Frostplum. Although thinking about the wedding made her heart ache, a shard of her former curiosity managed to shine through, along with a healthy dose of wariness.
The officer with the black horseshoe mustache acknowledged Talasyn’s salute with only the barest of noncommittal grunts. She didn’t take it personally; Bieshimma looked as though he was deep in thought as he unrolled what appeared to be a map over Vela’s desk.
The Amirante beckoned Talasyn nearer and she complied, standing beside Darius. Up close, she saw that the old, fading map was that of Sardovia’s southeastern coastline and of the Nenavar Dominion, the grid of the Eversea stretched between them. In stark contrast to the intricate details of the Sardovian portion of the map, Nenavar was rendered as a scattering of islands, roughly sketched and mostly unlabeled, as if the cartographer hadn’t had time to study the terrain.
Which made sense, Talasyn supposed. The map had to have been drawn up from onboard an airship, and none but the foolhardiest of crews would loiter in skies rumored to be guarded by fire-breathing dragons when their vessel was made mostly of wood.
Still, there were freshly inked markings on the rust-tinged paper. Place names, landmarks, and notes. Most conspicuous of all was the black X over a frieze of mountains that was halfway between Port Samout, where Bieshimma’s airship had docked, and the Dominion’s capital city, Eskaya, which the general had apparently stormed all by himself, according to that lance corporal.
“As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted by Kesathese scum,” Bieshimma rumbled, “I think it’s doable.” He dipped a stylus into a nearby inkwell and traced a route in a series of dashes. “A lone wasp is certainly less conspicuous than a carrack, so she needn’t go the roundabout way like we did. If she leaves central Sardovia via the Shipsbane and hugs forest all the way to the coast, she’ll be able to make a clean exit. The Night Empire will never know as long as she steers clear of their outposts in the Salt Cays.”