Kullen was too cold to the touch, his clothes too damp with sweat. “You have to stop this!” Merik shouted. “Stop your winds, Kullen!”
“If I stop,” Kullen answered with surprising strength, “then we lose your contract.”
“Your life is worth more than a contract,” Merik said, but Kullen started laughing then—a hacking, gulping sound—and he lifted a weak arm to gesture south.
“I have an idea.”
Merik followed Kullen’s finger, but all he saw there were dark skies and the flickers of distant lightning.
But then Ryber breathed “No,” and Merik’s stomach bottomed out.
“No.” He towed Kullen around to face him. The first mate’s hair was so plastered by sweat, it didn’t even move in the wind. “That is not an option, Kullen. Ever.”
“But it’s the only option. Nubrevna needs this … trade agreement.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I don’t need to stand,” Kullen said, “if I’m riding a storm.”
Merik shook his head, frantic now. Panicking, while Ryber whispered over and over, “Please don’t do it, please don’t do it, please don’t do it.”
“Have you forgotten what happened last time you summoned a storm?” Merik looked at Ryber for support, but she was crying now—and Merik realized with a sickening certainty, that she had already resigned herself to this course.
How, though? How could she give up so easily and so fast?
“We don’t need the trade agreement,” Merik insisted. “The Nihar lands are growing again. Growing, Kullen. So as your Admiral and your Prince, I command you not to do this.”
Kullen’s coughing subsided. He sucked in a long, vicious breath that sounded like knives and fire.
Then the man smiled. A full, frightening smile. “And as your Threadbrother, I choose not to listen.” In a clap of heat and power, magic sizzled to life and Kullen’s eyes shivered. Twitched. His pupils were shrinking … vanishing …
A wind ripped over the deck—collided into Merik and Ryber, almost knocking them flat. It left Merik with no choice.
He ripped off his coat, and Ryber moved to take it. The wind battered them, but they both bent into it—she aiming belowdecks with his jacket and he staggering for the tiller.
As he moved into position at the helm of his father’s warship, Merik prayed once more to Noden—but this time he prayed that Kullen and everyone else in his crew survived the night.
Because the storm was on its way now, and Merik could do nothing to stop it.
*
Safi had never pushed a horse so hard. Sweat streaked her mare’s sides, foamed on Iseult’s roan. At any moment, they might throw a shoe or twist a leg, but until that happened—until the creatures gave out from exhaustion—Safi had little choice but to keep galloping down this cliff-lined road.
The girls’ long shadows galloped beside them, the dawn sun a pale flame over the Jadansi that lit up a bay so wide, Safi couldn’t see its end. Bare rock islands of all shapes and sizes speckled the glowing tide waters.
The Hundred Isles.
The road followed a descending curve, eventually reaching sea level—and Lejna too. After green for half a mile, they’d suddenly galloped back into a wasteland. It was all too quiet. Too dead. Safi didn’t like how the alert-stone pierced the sky from its spot tied to her saddlebag. They were literally asking to be noticed.
“Anyone here?” Safi shouted over the four-beat hammer of hooves.
Iseult’s eyes squeezed briefly shut. Then burst wide again. “No one. Not yet.”
Safi’s grip tightened on her reins. One hand moved to her sword hilt. Just get to the pier. That was all she had to do.
“Sign!” Iseult barked.
Safi squinted ahead. What had once been an ornately stamped sign now dangled atop an iron column. It was the fourth like it they’d seen.
LEJNA: 1 LEAGUE
One league—that was minutes away. Despite the tears in Safi’s eyes from the wind and the dirt, despite the fact that her heart might rip from her throat with fear, and despite the fact that she and Iseult could be cut down by a Bloodwitch at any moment, Safi grinned.
She had her Threadsister beside her. That was all that mattered—all that had ever mattered.
Her horse rounded a bend. The ghost forest opened up to reveal a city ahead. Lejna’s crescent shape hugged the shore, and the row-buildings that lined its streets might have once been colorful and crisp. Now they crumbled and their roofs caved in. Only three docks still stood, the rest reduced to abandoned posts jutting up from the waves.
Safi spurred the mare faster. Harder. She would get Merik his thrice-damned trade agreement.
“Is that Merik?” Iseult asked, blasting apart Safi’s thoughts.
Safi searched the sea, hope soaring into her skull … until she spotted the Nubrevnan warship coasting into Lejna’s crescent bay. It moved at a breakneck speed, sails glowing orange in the sun.
And with green-clad sailors crawling the decks.