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.
Acting on instinct, Sardovian soldiers scrambled for their weapons and took defensive positions all along the decks. Talasyn splayed her fingers, ready to spin whatever she would need out of light and aether. But it wasn’t long before it became obvious that no crossbow or blade—perhaps not even the Lightweave—would do much good.
A winding shape unfurled in the mists to the north. It easily dwarfed the Summerwind, was longer even than the Nautilus. It was a serpentine creature covered in barnacle-encrusted sapphire-blue scales, with two forelimbs that bore wickedly curved claws the color of steel. The swift roll of its slithering caused its massive spine to form mountains that collapsed into themselves and took new shape in the next breath. Propelled on a pair of leathery wings that spread out to cast vast shadows over the world, it flew closer with alarming speed, and the sunrise washed over it as it sliced through the fog and circled overhead.
The beast’s head was crocodilian, its snout draped in slender whisker-like barbels that twitched as though trawling the wind currents. Narrowing its rust-colored and star-pocked eyes at the gawking Sardovians, it unhinged its great jaw wide, revealing two rows of sharp, sharp teeth, and it emitted another roar. Talasyn’s flesh broke out in a million goosebumps—and then a second such creature erupted from the surface of the Eversea.
This one had blood-red scales instead of blue, glistening wet and dripping with seaweed tendrils. It shot into the air, sending up an eruption of salt water so immense that it drenched the passengers closest to the Summerwind’s railings. It joined its fellow in sweeping wide arcs across the sky in a dance of lethal grace. The dawn air swelled with the scents of plankton and overturned seabed, of the rotten wood of shipwrecks and the soft things that lived and died in them, there in the black depths where sunlight couldn’t reach.
Bieshimma’s disbelieving tone cut through the stunned stillness suffusing the quarterdeck. “I guess that Nenavar does have dragons, after all.”
Chapter Twelve
Talasyn stared at the dragons. They were too big for her senses to encompass but she drank in the sight of them, anyway.
It had struck her as odd that the Zahiya-lachis’s flagship didn’t have an armed escort. Even if the W’taida possessed weaponry hidden somewhere in its black-and-gold facade, amidst its copper struts, surely a handful of coracles wouldn’t have gone amiss, given that the head of state was about to deal with an unpredictable element in the form of desperate, battle-hardened outsiders.
But who needed coracles, who needed cannons, when they had these? The two dragons positioned themselves on either side of the floating castle and hung aloft on the wind, flapping their mighty wings. They eyed the carrack warily, ready to spring to action at a moment’s notice, at the first sign of threat.
They probably breathed fire as well. There was no reason to presume otherwise, now that the age-old rumors of their existence had ended up being true. Those who’d posited that a dragon could bring down a stormship had been correct. Those gargantuan claws alone looked perfectly capable of tearing through metalglass in one swipe.
Talasyn was struck by the overwhelming urge to—to cry. To scream. To rage at the heavens. The creatures were terrible and beautiful, and what was left of the Sardovian Allfold beheld them far too late. She thought about how many lives would have been spared if the Dominion had agreed to help in the fight against the Night Empire. The stormship fleet wouldn’t have been Gaheris’s trump card for long. The Hurricane Wars would have ended before the cities in the Heartland were razed to the ground. Darius would never have become a traitor, Sol and Blademaster Kasdar would still be alive, and Khaede wouldn’t be missing in action.
But all it took was one glance at Vela’s expression for Talasyn to pull herself together. The Amirante looked stricken, as though her thoughts were running in a similar vein. Not wanting to add to the burden, Talasyn schooled her features into something blanker and more restrained and, after a while, so did Vela.
The aetherwave crackled to life. The brisk voice on the other end ordered the Summerwind to halt and informed them that they could now send a small boarding party “at their earliest convenience,” whatever that meant.
“I think they’re implying that they’ll have those big damn worms eat us if we don’t get a move on,” Bieshimma grumped.