CHAPTER TWO
The training hall echoed with the guttural shriek of shadow-metal, summoned from the aether in the form of talons. They were small, curved knives resembling raptor claws, often a Kesathese soldier's weapon of last resort in close quarters—used when crossbow bolts were depleted and swords and spears had been knocked aside. With a talon in each hand, Alaric and Sevraim met in the center of the hall, slashing and parrying, ever alert for a weak spot in the other's defenses.
Alaric found sparring with Sevraim predictable for the most part; they had been at it since they were children. Today, however, the lanky, mahogany-skinned legionnaire had adopted a new tactic to throw him off balance: running his mouth about Alaric's wife.
"You've slowed down, Your Majesty," Sevraim panted, sliding beneath the arc of Alaric's strike. "Has marriage dulled the Night Emperor's lethal edge?"
Alaric rolled his eyes. The sole of his boot connected with Sevraim's midriff, sending the other man flying across the floor. Sevraim landed on his back with a grunt and hurled one of his knives at Alaric, who sidestepped the shadow-wreathed projectile with ease.
Alaric stalked toward his fallen opponent, idly flicking his own talons from one gauntleted knuckle to the next. Sevraim lay sprawled on the floor, seemingly oblivious to the harm looming in his immediate future, an irreverent grin spread across his face.
"Are you missing your pretty bride?" he suggested. "Counting the minutes until you see her again? Not that I blame you. A most fascinating girl, Talasyn. Or should I say, Alunsina Ivralis. I can see why you—"
Alaric went in for the kill. Sevraim sprang to his feet, blocking with his remaining talon as he conjured a new one in his empty hand, trying to drive it between Alaric's ribs. But his opponent had been expecting this. Alaric spun, trapped Sevraim in a headlock, and pressed a shadow-spun blade against his throat.
Sevraim was unfazed. "Will the children be Shadowforged or Lightweavers, do you think?" he asked brightly. "It warms the cockles of my cold, cold heart to picture a pint-sized prince brightening these gloomy halls. Then again, His Majesty's firstborn could be a daughter, so you'll need to keep trying—"
He broke off when the talon's crescent-shaped edge was wordlessly pushed closer to his neck.
"All right, I yield!" Sevraim called out, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. The black knives in his hands disappeared in wisps of smoke as he batted Alaric's arms away. "So much for my new distraction technique."
"I'd hardly call that a technique." Alaric banished his own weapons and strode over to one end of the hall. Grabbing a washcloth from the nearby rack, he dipped it into a barrel of rainwater before scrubbing the sweat from his brow.
Sevraim was soon beside him. "Well, you can't blame me for trying to rattle you. You've been in a mood since we returned. Even more so than usual." Forgoing the washcloth entirely, he dunked his head into the barrel.
A vein at Alaric's temple twitched. Not only was the water indubitably fouled, but he was rattled, more than he would ever let on. Since sailing away from Nenavar, he'd been haunted by that last glimpse of Talasyn, standing on the front steps of the Roof of Heaven, watching him go. Right now, she was most likely preparing for the three-day airship voyage to Kesath, for her coronation as his empress. The prospect of seeing her again, not in the hot jungles of Nenavar but on the Continent, where the echoes of their war still hung in the air, made him feel strange.
It certainly didn't help that Sevraim had brought up the issue of progeny. Once, that notion would have repelled Alaric, but now it only elicited intrusive memories of his wedding night. How easy it would have been to hold Talasyn closer, to press deeper and…
*We shouldn't have done this,* she'd told him then, her chestnut-brown hair a mess and her lips still swollen from his kisses. The faint, lush scent of her release lingering, and his spend on her slim fingers.
Jaw clenched, Alaric fought back the memory. Talasyn had made herself clear in that regard, at least. He buried his tumultuous emotions before he could give name to them. There was a matter he had to take care of before her ship made landfall.
"There's something that we need to discuss," he said when Sevraim resurfaced from the depths of the barrel.
For all his cavalier ways, Sevraim understood when his commander meant business. He ran a washcloth through his soaked hair, then waited, canny and alert.
"My father—" Alaric's mouth snapped shut. They were alone in the training hall, but one could never be too careful within the walls of the Citadel. He lowered his voice. "My father has acquired a sariman from Nenavar. Commodore Mathire captured it without my knowledge while we were searching the archipelago for traces of the Sardovian remnant."
"Those odd little birds that cut us off from the Shadowgate?" Sevraim scratched his head, perplexed. "I hate those birds. What does Regent Gaheris want with it?"
Alaric watched Sevraim's face carefully. Ever since he'd walked out of his father's hall that morning, Alaric had been gauging the situation, weighing the dangers. Revealing what he knew was treasonous, and it put them both at risk. If he'd underestimated the extent of Sevraim's loyalty to Gaheris, then everything would come crashing down. Practically a lifetime of knowing each other, fighting side by side, defying death together—it would all be put to the test in this moment.
But he had no choice. Only two Kesathese had been in that atrium when Ishan Vaikar explained how Dominion Enchanters suspended sariman blood in the Rainspring so they could manipulate its effects. Alaric had to make sure that this knowledge never reached Gaheris's ears.
Alaric still believed that the Night Empire was the way forward. It would restore order and stability to the Continent and keep the Shadowforged safe from all who would destroy them. When it came to that, Alaric and his father were in accord.
But Gaheris looked to a better future from where he sat in the shackles of the past. He believed that war was the only option. And even though Alaric knew that he couldn't trust Talasyn, he had to figure out a way to secure the Night Empire while not destroying her and the Dominion in the process.
He needed to buy time.
It took Alaric a worrying amount of effort to keep his expression neutral, his tone steady. "Regent Gaheris thinks the sariman could hold the key to removing Talasyn's magic. Permanently."
Sevraim arched a brow, but gave nothing away.
"It's imprudent to antagonize the Nenavarene," Alaric said quickly. "The trade agreement and the mutual defense treaty that come with the marriage alliance are far more beneficial to Kesath than anything that we can hope to gain from another conflict so soon after the Hurricane Wars. My father is a wise man, but in this case I believe that his hatred for Lightweavers has made him reckless. Understandably so, but reckless nonetheless."
"And what of your opinion of Lightweavers?" Sevraim asked.
Alaric nearly blanched. He reined it in at the last possible second.
Upon closer inspection, he could see that the glint in Sevraim's eyes was playful rather than malicious. Yet Alaric knew that, as a combatant, Sevraim had a knack for drawing the enemy out and striking hard when they slipped into complacency. It wouldn't do to rest easy just yet.
"Light magic is a plague on the world," Alaric replied, echoing the words his father had spoken so many times. "But Talasyn's bloodline grants us access to Nenavar, and we need her power. For now. Until the Moonless Dark."
The words were heavy on his tongue. He felt as though he were lying. He couldn't tell Sevraim that, as abhorrent as he knew the Lightweave to be, it filled him with a bone-deep ache to imagine Talasyn permanently losing her connection to it. Losing the magic that set fire to her eyes and lit her skin from within and had come close to killing him on more than a few occasions, yet that had also merged with his to create something that had never before been seen in all of Lir.
Something that was theirs alone.
Sevraim studied him for an unsettlingly long while. At last, he shrugged, as though they'd been discussing nothing of importance. "I wish our esteemed Regent luck on his new project, but I have no idea how his Enchanters can pull it off, considering that the sarimans cancel aethermancy."
The weight that Alaric had been carrying since he first heard lilting birdsong echoing through his father's darkened hall finally began to lift. "You have no idea?" he repeated, hardly daring to believe it.
"Not in the slightest." Sevraim smiled, brilliant and sharp. "The Nenavarene didn't explain anything about those creatures to us, did they? They just keep them in cages as a safeguard against aethermancers."
Alaric swallowed. They were sixteen again, stumbling back to the Citadel after their first taste of rose myrtle and rice wine, and Sevraim was loudly swearing on his life, slurring promises to Alaric that he wouldn't tell Gaheris. This was a far more serious matter than two schoolboys carousing out of bounds, but Sevraim hadn't betrayed him then, and the atmosphere in the training hall was the same now—solidarity.
And rebellion.
*It's what's best for Kesath,* Alaric told himself. *We can't afford to start another war.*
That didn't stop the guilt from gnawing at him, nor the adrenaline rush that was so much like what he'd felt on that rare night of defiance he had allowed himself as a child. But it was with the gratitude of years that he agreed with Sevraim's statement.
"No. They never explained it to us."
Lidagat, the southernmost of the Dominion's seven main islands, was a realm of lakes connected by the odd strip of field and jungle and airship grid here and there. The lakes were said to have formed from the tears of a dragon—more specifically, Bakun the World-Eater, who wept when his mortal love, Iyaram, the first Zahiya-lachis, reached the end of her life. Once he had shed all his tears, Bakun took to the skies and wrought vengeance on the world that had caused him such sorrow.
Talasyn was thinking about this legend as she sat in a private room on the top floor of a teahouse, looking out the window. She was in Eset, Lidagat's second-largest city. Like all the other settlements on the island, Eset had sprouted out of a lake; its wooden buildings, with their vibrantly painted, upturned roofs, stood on stilts that rose above the water and were linked by grand bridges that arched like hills. The teahouse was no exception, and the room that Talasyn had rented provided a sweeping view of the rippling waves beneath, as gray as the thundering sky above.
Chin propped up on one hand, ignoring the tea and sweets on the table before her, Talasyn peered out the window into the lake's depths. She imagined Bakun taking wing long ago, a serpentine leviathan caught in a whirlwind of fury and heartbreak, unhinging his great jaws wide enough to crush Lir's eighth moon between his devastatingly sharp teeth.
According to legend, this was also how the rare gemstone vulana came to Nenavar. It was harder than diamonds, brighter than moissanite, and said to be the pieces of the eighth moon that had dripped from Bakun's maw and fallen onto the islands.
Talasyn held up her free hand, fingers splayed out against dark water and darker clouds, brow furrowing at the sight of her wedding ring, where the vulana stone gleamed like a star plucked from the heavens, embedded in a band of gold. Alaric had a matching stone on his ring, for all that he was ignorant of its significance.
"You shouldn't care whether it's significant to him or not," Talasyn chided herself out loud.
The room's bamboo door slid open, causing her to jump.
After latching the door, the brown-cloaked new arrival tugged her hood away from her face, revealing graying curls and a patch of steel and copper on a leather strap where her left eye should have been.
Talasyn sprang to her feet and saluted, an instinctive gesture borne of years of training.
"No need for that." Ideth Vela hurriedly motioned for her to sit back down. "You're not my soldier anymore. In fact, I should be saluting you."
"Please don't," Talasyn said, with feeling.
It was the first time she had seen Vela since the wedding, and a sledgehammer's blow of guilt momentarily stole the breath from her lungs. If Vela were to ever find out what Talasyn had done with Alaric—
*Composure.* That was the first step to Vela never finding out. Talasyn had to keep her composure.
"How is everyone?" Talasyn asked, feeling a glimmer of pride at how normal she sounded, and not at all like a foolish girl driven to the height of treachery by ungovernable lust.
"Surviving." The Amirante sat across from Talasyn, her bronze features drawn. Talasyn had sent word yesterday, and Vela must have left the isles of Sigwad in the dead of night to avoid being spotted by Nenavarene patrols, then hidden somewhere here in Lidagat until it was time to meet.
Clearly in no mood to linger on the niceties, Vela immediately changed the subject. "That young lord who relayed your message and brought me here—are you sure that he can be trusted? On the way over, he was very"—her lip curled in disdain—"chatty."
"Surakwel Mantes owes me a debt of the self," Talasyn explained. "There is no love lost between him and the Night Empire, and he in fact petitioned Queen Urduja to help the Allfold during the Hurricane Wars." Also, she thought, *he and Alaric tried to kill each other the first time they met.* "We can trust him."
"Very well." The Amirante poured the teapot's vibrant green vanilla-pine concoction into their two cups. "Speaking of your grandmother, I'm surprised you were able to steal away from her in broad daylight."
"The Zahiya-lachis has no more say on my comings and goings." Gods, but it felt amazing to give voice to that fact. Talasyn felt no remorse at all that she was breaking her promise to Urduja to not contact the Sardovians; what her grandmother didn't know wouldn't hurt her. "I've taken up residence at Iantas. I run my own household now."
"That's right. Because you're a married woman…" Vela's remaining eye fixed upon her with a hard gaze. "A married woman who will soon be the Night Empress."
Talasyn occupied herself with spooning generous dollops of honey into her tea. To take the edge off the bitter-leaf-water taste that she would probably always detest, yes, but also so that she wouldn't fidget under Vela's scrutiny.
Someone knocked on the door. Vela and Talasyn exchanged sharp glances, rose to their feet, and approached the sound cautiously, fingers flexing to aethermance.
While Vela took up position by the adjacent wall, well away from the immediate line of sight, Talasyn unfastened the latch, niceties on the tip of her tongue in case it was a teahouse attendant, magic surging through her veins in case she and the Amirante had been found out. She slid the rectangular bamboo panel open and—
—a pair of walnut-brown eyes blinked back at her.
"You're supposed to be keeping watch!" Talasyn hissed, hauling Surakwel Mantes into the room by his collar. Behind them, an equally exasperated-looking Vela secured the door once again.
"Group of minor lords passing through Eset—they spotted me." Surakwel made a beeline for the tea, helping himself to an extra cup. "I told them I'm meeting a friend, which is surely less suspicious than skulking around in the corridor by myself." He regarded the two women expectantly from beneath a fringe of shaggy brown hair. "So what were we talking about?"
Vela appeared severely unimpressed by this new development, but she wasted no more time once she and Talasyn had joined Surakwel at the table. "Repairs and modifications on our vessels here in the Dominion are going slowly," she told them. "It's no easy task synthesizing Nenavarene with Sardovian tech, but we're getting there."
"It's not enough," Talasyn said quietly. "We need the Huktera fleet, but the Dominion court will revolt if Queen Urduja outright breaks the treaty with Kesath for a venture with such an uncertain outcome. We'll need numbers on our side to convince them. We need more allies."
"Precisely. Which is why I've started sending envoys to other nations again," Vela told her. "My best spies and politicians, who can be counted on to infiltrate discreetly and broker deals with the right people, those who won't rat us out to Kesath. Of course, they're at a disadvantage because we can't reveal where we're hiding, but it's worth a shot. And they have time, considering that we can't make our move until after the Moonless Dark."
"Isn't it dangerous, though?" Talasyn asked. "If Queen Urduja finds out…"
"Nothing about this is safe." Vela sipped her tea sparingly. "But I think there's a reason why the Nenavarene no longer patrol the waters southwest of the Storm God's Eye. I think your grandmother fully expects me to use this time to rally sympathetic nations to the Sardovian cause so that she can use the additional troops as leverage to convince her court to go to war." She gave Talasyn a searching look over the porcelain rim of her cup. "You need to use this time wisely as well. Along with your new role."
Surakwel had thus far been showing proper Nenavarene male deference in letting the women speak without interruption, but at the mention of Talasyn's "new role," he cried out, "How can you stand it, Lachis'ka? Being married to that—that figurehead of all evil—"
"It's because of Talasyn's marriage into the Night Empire that we might actually be able to liberate the Continent from it," Vela reminded him.
"Still!" Surakwel rounded on Talasyn. "Aren't you ever tempted to drive a blade through Alaric Ossinast's heart while he lies in your bed?"
"In my defense," said Talasyn, "he's only ever lain in my bed once. Before I kicked him out of it, after we did something that I swear I will never tell another living soul. But I'll let you know where we're at with the stabbing in due time."
The breeze picked up, stirring the edges of their cloaks and the gauzy curtains that framed the window. Eset's sea of weathervanes spun frantically as the black clouds that had been haunting the sky all afternoon made good on their promise and a heavy rain came pouring down, water on water, the lake churning around the stilts that held the city above it.
"You leave for Kesath tomorrow, don't you, Lachis'ka?" said Surakwel.
"Yes," Talasyn replied. "There's a storm coming. It will be a rough journey in this weather."
"A storm indeed." Vela stared out over the lake. Whatever stared back at her—whatever she saw in the charcoal swirl of waves and lightning—made her draw a breath.
"After the Moonless Dark, Talasyn," she repeated. "Be ready."
Talasyn could only nod. The waters of Eset boiled within their banks and a cold wind swept through her heart.