As soon as she stepped onto the embankment, Vela came striding out to greet her. Sometimes it was a bit of an event when Talasyn visited, everyone hungry for news from the capital, but sometimes, like now, it was just her and the Amirante, speaking quietly in the evening gloom.
The first time Talasyn visited this hideout in the mangroves, she’d been shocked by the remnant’s collective appearance. Sigwad fell under Niamha’s domain and the Sardovians wore clothes provided to them by House Langsoune, all light cotton tunics and brightly colored breeches and striped wraparound skirts. Including Vela, they looked more Nenavarene than Allfold.
The Amirante had been informed of the marriage treaty and the threat of the Voidfell by the Dominion envoys who brought over the spectral configurations as a precautionary measure. She had either gotten all the upset out of her system or was doing a spectacular job of keeping it under control; the gaze that she fixed on Talasyn was remarkably composed.
“Enough is enough, Talasyn. You have to learn how to stand up for yourself. I know that you think that you’ll be endangering us by doing so, but you don’t have to be a witless pawn in the Dragon Queen’s games. Believe me, she needs your goodwill as much as you need hers. The Dominion has no qualms about deposing an heirless monarch—in fact, they were on the verge of doing so before you showed up. Without you, she risks losing everything. It is time that you remind her. Do you think that you can do that?”
“I don’t know,” Talasyn mumbled. “Everyone’s afraid of her, even my father. I’m alone—”
“You aren’t alone,” said Vela. “You have Ossinast.”
Talasyn blinked, uncomprehending. The ambient sounds of the swamp filled the tense space between words and Vela leaned in closer. “Power is a fluid, ever-shifting thing, dictated by alliances. Right now, it seems that Urduja Silim holds all the cards because she is the Zahiya-lachis. But . . . once you marry the Night Emperor, what does that make you?”
“The Night Empress,” Talasyn whispered.
Vela nodded. “While I can’t say that I’m delighted by it, Alaric being your consort buys us time. And it gives you—opportunities.”
“To spy on Kesath,” Talasyn heard herself saying, despite the odd jitters that coursed through her at Alaric being referred to as her consort. Not only was it easier for her to shift into battle mode now that she was in the company of her commanding officer, but the conversation had also unlocked an epiphany that had been waiting for the right nudge to blossom into wildfire. “To learn their weaknesses. To . . .” She trailed off, hardly daring to give voice to such a thing.
Vela finished the sentence for her. “To find the way to Gaheris.”
“We can cut off the serpent’s head, like we always planned,” Talasyn continued slowly. “Gaheris is the real power behind the Night Empire. We kill him, and it will all come crumbling down. And then we’ll figure out what to do with—”
The name caught in her throat.
“The man who will by then be your husband,” Vela muttered.
Talasyn swallowed. “A minor detail,” she said with rather more confidence than she actually felt.
“We can also learn how they’re making their void cannons,” Vela added. “Alaric brought only one moth coracle back to Kesath. The magic inside it shouldn’t have been enough to power entire ironclads. You have to figure out how they did it, and if there’s any way to take those armaments out of the equation.”
“All right. I will,” Talasyn was quick to say. It was a momentuous undertaking, but she felt better now that there was an actual plan.
Vela rubbed a weary hand over her face. “You’re going to be in so much danger. You have to promise us that you’ll call for an extraction if things go south.”
“I will.” Talasyn thought of Surakwel Mantes. “I know someone I can send if I need help—and when I have important information and can’t meet you myself.”
“You have a difficult road ahead of you,” Vela said gravely. “Right now, there seems to be no alternative other than for you to walk it. Do you think that you are strong enough?”
Talasyn lifted her chin. “I have to be.”
“Very well. Hurry back to Eskaya before your grandmother realizes that you aren’t there.”
Talasyn watched the Amirante walk back to her hut. She couldn’t deny there was a part of her that wished Vela had shown more indignation on her behalf, but it wasn’t Vela’s responsibility to coddle her and Talasyn had to do her duty, just as Vela had to do hers. The future was uncertain; it spread before her like the yawning mouth of some dark cave. And she would face it, the way she had faced everything else thus far.
Keep moving forward.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There was a saying in Kesath, one of the many that Alaric had committed to memory back in his schoolboy days because he’d practiced writing it over and over again in the High Calligraphic script of the imperial court: If you pluck the unripe balsam-pear, you must eat the bitterness. It meant reaping the consequences of bad decisions. It meant being careful what one wished for.
It was a saying that flashed across the surface of his mind in a censorious loop as he and Talasyn hiked up the Belian mountain range, bearing heavy packs filled with supplies. The airship that had borne them from Eskaya to Belian had been left behind at Kaptan Rapat’s garrison, along with their respective guards—although in Alaric’s case it was guard, singular, in the form of Sevraim, and that had been the problem. The ruins of the Lightweaver shrine were too overgrown and fragile for any vessel to dock there, and Alaric had refused to be outnumbered by Dominion soldiers in the remote wilderness with no escape route. The Zahiya-lachis hadn’t been all too keen on entrusting her granddaughter to two Kesathese Shadowforged, either. As a compromise, only Alaric and Talasyn would set up camp at the shrine and train there and hopefully catch the Light Sever discharging, so that she could commune with it.
The end result was this—Alaric alone in the Nenavarene jungle with his wartime enemy and political bride-to-be, who was clearly still irate with him because of the quarrel on board his stormship and the one on the rooftop in Eskaya.
In truth, his own anger was dulled by the undeniable confirmation that her former comrades weren’t sheltering in Nenavar, but the weather was most assuredly not improving his disposition one bit. Early mornings in Kesath were chilly gray affairs, breath curling through the air in garlands of silver vapor. Here in the Dominion, it was already as hot as a Kesathese noon in summer and infinitely more humid—even more so than the last time Alaric had trekked here, in secret, focused only on stopping the Lightweaver before she could get to the nexus point.
It was funny how life turned out, but he was in no mood to laugh. It was so very warm.
And it didn’t help matters that Talasyn was wearing a sleeveless tunic and linen breeches that clung to her like a second skin, causing his thoughts to go down dangerous roads. He heartily blamed Sevraim for this, with all that talk of heir-making.
“Are you absolutely certain that we’re heading in the right direction?” Alaric had to raise his voice because Talasyn was several feet ahead of him, stomping amidst vines and shrubbery with a pointedness that drove home her low opinion of this little sojourn of theirs.