“No one is coercing her,” said Elagbi, pale-faced and looking as miserable as it was possible for a prince to look. “You have the Zahiya-lachis’s word that you will be free to go should you decide not to take the deal.”
“And then what, Your Highness?” Vela snapped. “Let the Night Empire weed us out like rats as the months pass? Let Talasyn be burdened by the knowledge that she could have prevented it? This is coercion, whether or not you dress it up with pretty words.”
A slow, anxious horror was dawning on Talasyn at the prospect of being separated from her comrades and thrust into some bizarre new world. She wanted nothing more than to rage at the unfairness of it all and at the uncertainty of the time to come, and maybe even burst into tears at the fierceness with which Vela was fighting for her. But she’d decided back in the throne room that she needed to do something and this was something. This was the only thing. She had to be strong.
“I’ve made my choice,” she announced. She stared only at Elagbi, because the sight of Vela’s face might shatter her resolve. “I’ll do it. I will be the Lachis’ka.”
Gaheris kept a utilitarian office on the Deliverance. It was not a large room, as most space on the stormship had been allotted to its vast array of aether hearts. It was constantly plunged in shadow, the only sources of illumination a few weak slivers of afternoon sun filtering in through the gaps in the window drapes, well out of reach of the seated figure in the middle of the room—until a withered, skeletal hand was extended into the grayish light, beckoning Alaric closer.
Alaric had long suspected that light hurt his father’s eyes and the perennial gloom that he draped himself in was to hide his current state. Though Gaheris was only fifty years of age, he looked easily twice that number. He had accomplished great feats of shadow magic during the Cataclysm and he had, in the years that followed, spent most of his time experimenting with aetherspace, pushing his body to the limit. It had taken a physical toll, although his magical prowess was now beyond measure.
Alaric had been seven when the war between Kesath and Sunstead broke out. He’d witnessed his father’s gradual deterioration, often wondering if it was a glimpse into his own future. For all of Gaheris’s assurances that knowledge was worth the cost, he had yet to teach Alaric his more taxing secrets—the Master of the Shadowforged Legion was needed on the front lines.
“You have not yet found the Sardovian remnant.” It was a statement rather than a question. The voice was a hoarse rattle, burbling icily from a wizened throat. “You let the Lightweaver get away and now you cannot find her and the others. She could be on the other side of the world by now—and, with her, Ideth Vela. The realm is not secure as long as Vela draws breath and as long as there is a Lightweaver for people to rally around. A match to strike against the darkness.”
Alaric bowed his head. “I apologize, Father. We have searched extensively, but if you will clear us to sail southeast—”
“No. Not yet. We are not yet prepared to tangle with the Nenavar Dominion. They might be on high alert, as they have every right to be after what you did.”
Alaric held his peace. Silence was a pitiful defense, but it was the best recourse available to him at the moment.
“It is not yet the time. I have plans for the southeast,” Gaheris continued. “Plans that I shudder to leave in your less-than-capable hands, but who knows—perhaps the added responsibility will do you good.”
Alaric stilled.
“Now the real work begins. I pray that you will not disappoint me,” his father intoned. “Are you ready, Emperor?”
Alaric nodded. He felt strangely hollow. “Yes.”
Part II
Chapter Thirteen
Four months later
The rope stretched taut as Talasyn scaled the Roof of Heaven’s tallest tower, the grappling hook’s steel barbs straining against the sides of the crenel a dozen meters above her head. It was late morning in the Nenavar Dominion and she squinted in the brilliant sunlight, the humid breeze fanning her sweat-dotted brow. Higher and higher she went, heart pumping and adrenaline rising as the capital city of Eskaya grew smaller and smaller, until the rooftops were nothing more than a carpet of multicolored jewels on a field of green. Clenching her teeth, she pushed up on her knees and straightened her spine so that she was practically walking along the side of the building’s alabaster facade, her body slanted against horizon and blue sky.
Over the months of making the climb a daily ritual, Talasyn had grown to treasure these moments when it was just her and the tower and gravity. It was a form of moving meditation that kept her reflexes sharp, kept the vertical ramshackle slums of Hornbill’s Head alive in her heart. It was good to remember where she’d come from. It ensured that the upgrade in her living situation didn’t turn her head.
She hauled herself up over the battlement and onto a balcony, her feet on flat, solid flooring once more. The royal palace was perched atop steep limestone cliffs that overlooked the sweeping city of gold that she had once seen in a vision. From this tower, she had an excellent view of lush gardens, gleaming waterways, and busy streets dotted with landing grids where constant streams of airships—coracles and freighters and pleasure yachts and consular barges alike—came to dock. The skyline was dominated by curvilinear buildings fashioned from stone and gold and metalglass, although none stood as tall as the Roof of Heaven itself, and tucked among them were pockets of residential areas, where houses atop wooden stilts sported brightly colored facades and ornate stucco pillars, capped by upturned eaves and multi-inclined roofs that were home to bronze weathervanes depicting roosters and pigs and dragons and goats, swiveling with each breath of wind.
Surrounding the urban sprawl—sprouting up immediately right along its borders, in fact—was a rainforest that went on for miles upon miles in every direction, interrupted only by patches of the odd small town here and there. The horizon was ringed with the blue-gray silhouettes of distant mountains.