In all the White’s army had lost over half its strength, losses that might have crippled a human force, but the surviving residents of Feros provided ample reinforcements. The conversion process was much more protracted than in the Isles. So many captives required days of close guarding before they could be forced to take their turn at the crystal. Riots and escape attempts were common, particularly amongst parents desperate to find their vanished children. Sirus had been assiduous in ensuring the slaughter of the infants took place far from the sight of the adults, aware such a spectacle might produce a riot no amount of cruelty could contain. Instead the children were crowded together in a valley beyond the northern hills and left for the sport of the drakes, the White’s dreadful brood taking particular delight in such easy prey.
Throughout it all Sirus kept a corner of his mind open for any report of a strange, balloon-like craft seen flying away from the city during the first attack. So far it seemed that if any Spoiled had witnessed such a thing the knowledge had died with them.
Come with us, she had said. Sirus believed this may have been the only occasion where she genuinely seemed to want his company.
The sight of Katrya’s slumped, lifeless corpse also lingered in his mind. Was I her Tekela? he wondered in quieter moments, thinking how much he wanted to claw his way into his own past and make a different future for both of them.
He was at the docks overseeing the conversion of the last few hundred captives when lookouts on the eastern shore reported the approach of a ship. Sirus began to order one of the patrolling frigates to intercept the intruder but stopped at a sudden command from the White. No, it told him, Sirus sensing an eager anticipation beneath the thought. It seemed that whatever was coming was expected.
He went to the outer mole and ordered the harbour door raised. The tide was low enough that it posed little danger but they had kept the door lowered since the city fell lest any escapees attempt to steal a ship. The White’s fleet now stood at fifteen frigates and six cruisers plus a number of smaller craft and several civilian freighters. They would all be very useful in the months ahead.
Sirus watched smoke rise on the eastern horizon as the ship steamed closer, his inhumanly keen eyes revealing her as a mid-sized two-paddle passenger liner. She seemed to him to be in a poor state of repair, the hull streaked with smoke and cast-off waste, a tangle of flags and ropes hanging from her single mast. The SSM Northern Star, he read as the ship came fully into view. A corporate vessel.
The liner steamed towards the harbour mouth at an excessive speed, forcing her to reverse paddles in order to make her way beneath the door. Sirus could make out the dim shape of the helmsman behind the besmirched glass of the wheel-house, but the only other passenger was a tall young woman standing on the fore-deck. He walked along the mole as the liner entered the harbour, keeping pace with her as she steamed towards the wharf. The young woman wore a ragged dress of some kind, torn and scorched in places to reveal much of her body, though she exhibited no sign of concern at her near nakedness. The woman’s gaze roamed the harbour and docks, a fierce expectant scrutiny on her face as she searched for something. Sirus saw the scrutiny turn to outright, unalloyed joy as a large shadow swept across the harbour.
As the White flared its wings and landed on the prow of the ship the young woman put her hands to her mouth, and Sirus saw tears streaming from her eyes. As if greeting a lost love, he thought. The liner’s engine died and the paddles stopped turning, a deep hush settling over the entire harbour so that Sirus could hear the woman’s whispered greeting to the White.
“You called to me . . .” she said, rushing towards the beast with her arms outstretched, “. . . and I answered.”
And the White spread its wings wide, raising its head to roar out a welcome of fire.