All her life she had prepared for this. It was what she had been born to do.
Tané took out the rising jewel. White light flared out of it, and the wyvern screamed in rage, shielding itself from the glow with its wing. She drove it back, away from the archers.
Another wyvern crashed down behind her, shaking the deck, eyes like live coals in its head. Caught between them, Tané stuffed the jewel back into its case with one hand and drew her Inysh sword from its scabbard with the other. The weight of it unbalanced her, and the first swing went wide, but the second found its mark. Red-hot blood spurted as the blade hewed through scale and flesh and bone. The wyvern struck the deck, headless, its body still thrashing.
And just for a moment, she saw Susa in that pool of blood, a head of dark hair rolling into a ditch, and she could not move an inch. The first wyvern vomited flame at her back.
She twisted just in time. Of its own accord, her hand flew up, and golden light discharged from her palms. The Draconic fire glanced off her, burning up the shoulder of her shirt and making her cry out as blisters formed, but the rest of the flames petered into the fog.
The wyvern cocked its head, pupils slitted, before it let out a hideous snarl and erupted with more blue-tinged fire. Tané backed away, sword at the ready. She needed a Seiikinese blade. No one could move like water with this dead weight in their hands.
Her enemy spat its fire in bursts. Rain hammered its hide. When it was close enough, Tané ducked a bite from its rotting teeth and slashed at its legs. Her next move was too slow—a burly tail snapped across her midriff, its spines just missing her. She went flying across the deck.
The sword clattered out of her hand just before she hit one of the masts and thumped down again, bashing her head. The shock of the impact held her in place. At least one of her ribs was cracked. Her back felt shredded. As the wyvern stalked toward her, nostrils smoking, a Seiikinese soldier thrust his blade into its flank. In the first moment of its rage, he circled the wyvern and aimed for its eye. It clapped its jaws over his leg and slammed him into the deck, over and over, back and forth, as if he were a scrap of meat. Tané heard his bones shatter, his screams bubbling away. The beast hurled what was left over the side.
A charred soldier lay nearby, clad in blue and silver armor. Tané took up a shield emblazoned with the heraldry of the Kingdom of Hróth and hefted it on to her left arm, clenching her jaw against the pain in her ribs. With her other hand, she lifted her bloody sword.
The heat from the fires drew sweat to the surface. The sword was slippery in her hand.
She was no longer aware of the other fire-breathers that flocked above the ships, tearing at sails and breathing great clouds of fire, or the soldiers battling around her. All she knew was the wyvern, and all the wyvern knew was her.
When it lunged for her, she rolled away from its bite and hurdled the tail that whipped toward her knees. Its lack of front limbs made it too cumbersome to fight at close quarters with something as small and quick as a human. This fiend had been bred for swooping and snatching. Like a bird of prey. As it pursued her, her sword gouged the wound the soldier had left. Her shield blocked a flame. The wyvern wrenched it out of her grip. She thrust the sword up, crunching through the underside of its jaw and deep into the roof of its mouth, and the fire in its eyes was extinguished. She backed away from the corpse.
The siden replenished her before exhaustion could set in. Nothing could touch her. Not even death. As the black High Western smashed down the mast of the Water Mother, Tané snatched up a fallen spear.
Her eyes ached. She could see the fire-breathers as if they were motes of dust in a sunray. With one swing of her arm, the spear flew at a bird-headed monster and impaled its wing, pinning it to its body. Flapping wildly with the other, it plummeted into the waves.
The Reconciliation had pulled away from the Dancing Pearl. So had the Defiance and the Chrysanthemum. Their cannons were slanting upward. She heard the crump of a swivel gun before the Reconciliation released everything it had. Chainshot swiveled skyward and snagged on wings and tails. A deafening whump-whump began as the cannons fired. Crossbow bolts shivered from the Lacustrine ships, splinters of bronze catching the firelight. She could hear captains bellowing orders and pistols discharging from the decks of the Defiance and the twang of bowstrings across the fleet.
The clamor was too much. Her head was spinning. She was drunk on siden, seeing the whole battle like a vision.
A weapon. She needed another weapon. If she could reach the Defiance, she could find something. One step took her onto the gunwale, and she dived into the sea.
The quiet beneath the water cooled the fire within. She surfaced and swam hard for the Defiance. Nearby, one of the Ersyri ships had been overcome by flame, and it shed its crew from every side.
There would be black powder on that ship. Lots of it. She took a huge breath and swam downward.
When the ship exploded, she felt the flash of heat through the water. Foul orange light stained the Abyss. The force of it took hold of her and spun her off-course. She kicked back, blinded by her own hair. As she neared the Defiance, she surfaced.
Black smoke swelled from the flaming carcass of the ship. For a moment, Tané could only stare at the destruction.
The black High Western settled on the ruins as though they were a throne. Flesh-fed and banded with muscle, it was a grotesque size. The spikes on its tail were each ten feet long.
Fyredel.
“Sabran Berethnet.” His voice bled with hatred. “My master comes for you at last. Where is the child that will keep him at bay?”
As he mocked the Queen of Inys, a Seiikinese elder dragon, glowing all over, shattered the surface of the Abyss. One great leap took him high over the Dancing Pearl to catch a wyvern in his mouth. Lightning flashed between his teeth. His eyes shone blue-white. Tané saw the wyvern erupt into white flame before the dragon plunged back into the sea, taking his trophy with him. Fyredel watched the display with bared teeth.
“Dranghien Lakseng.” The name boomed across the water. “Will you not show your face?”
Tané kept swimming. The cannons of the Defiance seemed as loud as the thunder. She found the handholds and climbed.
“Behold the Roar of Hróth, who hides in the snow,” Fyredel sneered, exposing his teeth again. Cannons barked from the Bear Guard in answer. “Behold the Warlord of Seiiki, who preaches unity between human and sea-slug. We will throw down your guardians and scatter them like sheep, as we did centuries ago. We will leave black sand from shore to shore.”
Tané reached the deck of the Defiance. Seiikinese soldiers wielded longbows and pistols. An arrow skittered off a wyvern. She pulled a sword from the hand of a dead woman. Somewhere in the night, a dragon was keening.
“Gone are the days of heroes,” Fyredel said. “From North to South and West to East, your world will burn.”
Tané took the rising jewel from its case. If Kalyba was close, she would be drawn to its power.
Sterren punched through the waves like a needle through silk and drew them like a shroud over Fyredel. He launched himself skyward with a snarl, droplets raining off his wings, scales billowing steam.
“Black sails, west sou’west!” came a shout.
In the distance, through the haze of smoke, Tané could see them.
“Yscali ensign,” the captain of the Reconciliation bellowed. “The Draconic Navy!”
Tané counted them. Twenty ships.
Another wyvern swooped, and she rolled behind a mast. A full line of archers fell to its tail. A soldier hurled his halberd at the creature, straight into its haunch.
An archer was slumped over the gunwale, bones shattered. Tané shoved the jewel away and took his bow and quiver. Four arrows left.
“Fire-breather,” the lookout above her roared. “Port, port!”
The remaining archers turned and drew while matchlocks were reloaded. Tané nocked an arrow of her own.
A second High Western, pale as a crane, came out of the night. Tané watched the wings fold inward, the scales change seamlessly to skin, the green eyes gain their whites, and black hair flow where horns had been. By the time it landed on the Defiance, the wyrm had become the same woman Tané had seen in Lasia. Red lips closed over the last flicker of a forked tongue.
“Child,” Kalyba said in Inysh, “give me that jewel.”
Something in Tané urged her to obey.
“It is not a weapon. It is the imbalance.” The witch stalked toward her. “Give it to me.”
Shaken, Tané pulled back her bowstring and forced herself not to look at what Kalyba held. The blade was the bright, pure silver of a star.
Ascalon.