A narrow blade ran her through. The sterren blade.
A sliver of the comet.
Kalyba drew in a sharp breath. As she stared at the shard of metal in her breast, her hooded killer revealed her face.
“I do this for you.” Ead twisted the blade deeper. There was no malice in her expression. “I will take you to the hawthorn tree, Kalyba. May it bring you the peace you did not find here.”
Dark lifeblood flowed from the witch, down her breast and past her navel. Even immortals bled.
“Eadaz uq-Nāra.” The name left her like a curse. “You are so very like Cleolind, you know.” Blood speckled her lips. “After all this time, I see her spirit. Somehow … she outlived me.”
As she sank over her mortal wound, the Witch of Inysca let out a scream. It echoed across the water, far into the Abyss. Ascalon fell from her hand, and Sabran seized it. At the last, Kalyba grabbed her by the throat.
“Your house,” she whispered to the queen, “is built on barren ground.” Sabran strained to break her grip, but her hand was a vise. “I see chaos, Sabran the Ninth. Beware the sweet water.”
Ead pulled her blade free, and more blood pulsed from Kalyba, like wine from a gourd. By the time she had fallen to the deck, her eyes were cold and dead as emeralds.
Sabran gazed in silence at the naked body of her forebear, one hand at her throat, where finger marks had already blossomed. Ead removed her cloak and covered the witch, while Tané picked up another sword.
A bell rang from the Inysh fleet. The sails of the Defiance stirred. Tané watched as the same wind set the Seiikinese flag aflutter. Even the cannon fire seemed to grow softer as a preternatural hush descended.
“This is it,” Ead said, her voice calm. “He is coming.”
In the sky, the fire-breathers moved the way starlings did, whirling in great clouds of wing. A dance of welcome.
In the distance, the sea exploded upward.
The waters of the Abyss convulsed. Shouts of panic spiked the night as waves crested the ships. Tané hit the gunwale as the Defiance lurched, unable to wrest her gaze from the horizon.
The eruption of water rose high enough to obliterate the stars. Amidst the chaos, a shape took form.
She had heard stories of the beast. Every child had grown up hearing about the nightmare that had crawled out of the mountain to ravage all the world. She had seen images of him, richly painted in gold-leaf and red lacquer, with blots of soot-ink where eyes ought to be.
No artist had captured the magnitude of the enemy, or the way the fire inside him made him smoulder. They had never seen it for themselves. His wingspan was the length of two Lacustrine treasure ships. His teeth were as black as his eyes. The waves crashed and the thunder rolled.
Prayers in every language. Dragons rising from the sea to meet their enemy, letting out haunting calls. Soldiers on the Defiance brandished their weapons, and on the Lord of Thunder, archers exchanged their arrows for longer ones, fletched with purple feathers. Poison arrows might fell a wyvern or a cockatrice, but nothing would get under those scales. Only one sword had a chance.
Ead retrieved Ascalon.
“Tané,” she shouted over the din, “take it.”
Tané took its weight in her clammy hands. She had expected it to be heavy, but it felt as if it could be hollow.
The sword that could slay the true enemy of the East. The sword that could earn back her honor.
“Go.” Ead gave her a push. “Go!”
Tané scraped up all her fear and crushed it into a dark place inside her. She made sure her borrowed sword was secure at her side. Then, keeping Ascalon in hand, she made for the closest sail. She scaled the battens, fighting through wind and rain, until she reached the top.
“Tané!”
She turned. A Seiikinese dragon with silver scales was rising from the waves.
“Tané.” The rider beckoned her. “Jump!”
Tané had no time to think. She threw herself from the beam, into nothing.
A hand sheathed in a gauntlet took hold of her arm and hauled her into the saddle. Ascalon almost slipped from her embrace, but she pinned it with her elbow.
“It’s been a while,” Onren called.
The saddle was just big enough for two, but there was nothing to hold a second rider in place. “Onren,” Tané started, “if the honored Sea General finds out you let me ride with—”
“You are a rider, Tané.” Her voice was muffled by the mask. “And this is no place for rules.”
Tané pushed Ascalon into a sheath on the saddle and secured it. Her fingers were wet and icy, clumsy on the hilt. The sheath had not been made for such a long blade, but it would hold the sword better than she could. Seeing her struggle, Onren reached into one of the pouches and passed Tané a pair of gauntlets. She slipped them over her hands.
“I assume you found a way to kill the Nameless One on your travels,” Onren said.
“A scale of his chest armor is loose.” Tané had to shout to be heard over the clash of weapons and the roars of wyrms and fire. “We have to tear it off and pierce the flesh beneath with this sword.”
“I think we can manage that.” Onren gripped the horn of the saddle. “Don’t you, Norumo?”
Her dragon hissed his agreement. Cloud frothed from his nostrils. Tané held on to Onren, her hair flying about her face.
The Seiikinese dragons were coming together. Most of their riders held longbows or pistols. At the same time, the fire-breathers flocked to protect their master, forming an appalling swarm in front of him. Tané felt Onren freeze. After all they had learned, all they had sacrificed, none of their schooling had prepared them for this. This was war.
They were close to the front of the formation, behind the elders. The great Tukupa the Silver led the charge, with the Sea General buckled into the saddle on her back. The Imperial Dragon flew beside her, leading the Lacustrine dragons. Tané shielded her eyes against the rain, straining to see. The Unceasing Emperor was a small figure astride his fellow ruler.
Bracing herself, Tané locked her arms around Onren. With a growl, the great Norumo lowered his head.
When they hit the flock, the collision almost threw Tané from the saddle. She clung to Onren, who hacked with her sword at wings and tails while Norumo rammed his horns into anything in his path. All was uproar and thunder, screaming and death, rain and ruin. She had the short-lived sensation that this was a terrible dream.
Lightning flashed through her eyelids. When she looked up, she met the eyes of the Nameless One. He stared into her soul. And when he opened his mouth, she saw doom.
Fire and smoke blasted from his jaws.
It was as if a volcano had erupted into the night. The dragon elders parted around the Nameless One and snapped at his sides, but Norumo, like his rider, had a taste for breaking rules.
He dived beneath the inferno and rolled. Tané tightened her arms around Onren as the world turned on its head. Another dragon tried to avoid that cavernous mouth, but the Nameless One bit her in two. Scales glittered as his teeth scattered them, like a fistful of coins tossed into the air. Tané watched, sickened, as the two halves of the dragon sank toward the sea.
Smoke was in her chest and eyes. Blood surged to her head. They passed beneath the Nameless One, close enough for the heat from his belly to parch her skin and steal what was left of her breath. As Norumo spiraled, Onren thrust out her sword. It sparked over red scales, but made no mark. Norumo swerved between the spikes of an endless tail—and then they were flying even higher, above the beast, back toward the flock.
I see you, rider.
Tané stared at the Nameless One. His eye was upon her.
You carry a blade I know well. The voice rang in every crevice of her mind. It was last in the possession of the White Wyrm. Did you slay her for it, as you now hope to slay me?
Her hand flinched to her temple. She could feel his rage in her very bones, in the hollows of her skull.
“We need to get closer,” Onren said, panting.
Norumo was moving back into formation, but his breathing was just as labored as hers. The heat had baked the moisture from his scales.
I smell the fire inside you, daughter of the East. Soon your ashes will scatter the sea. I suppose that befits one who swims with the slugs of the water.
Tears streamed down her face. Her head was going to burst open.
“Tané, what is it?”
“Onren,” she gasped, “do you hear his voice?”
“Whose voice?”
She cannot hear me. Only those who have tasted of the trees of knowledge can, the Nameless One said. Tané sobbed in agony. I was born out of the hidden fire, forged in the vital furnace that gave you but one spark. For as long as you live, I will live inside you, in your every thought and memory.
One of the Seiikinese dragons that had separated from the rest of the formation slammed into his neck. The vise on her mind sprang open. She fell against Onren, shuddering.