Page 35 of The Hurricane Wars

She had to hand it to the Nenavarene living in Eskaya. Although an alert had been issued and commonfolk throughout the islands had been advised to prepare to take shelter from the Kesathese warships at a moment’s notice, for the most part life in the capital was proceeding as usual. Taverns and wet markets were still doing business at a brisk pace; the blue skies were littered with trade ships; and carts gently rattled down the streets, pulled by amiable sun buffaloes, bearing milk jugs and sacks of rice. The only thing separating todayfrom any other was the fact that news of the approaching Kesathese flotilla was on everyone’s lips.

Oralmosteveryone’s, Talasyn mentally corrected herself as she skirted around two children on the sidewalk. They were playing a hand-clapping game without a single worry on their nut-brown faces.

“The west wind sighs, all moons die,” they sang, palms slapping together in time to the melody. “Bakun, dreaming of his lost love, rises to eat the world above.”

Talasyn slipped through the drifting crowds, careful to stick to Eskaya’s gloomy alleys and the quieter residential avenues whenever possible, but she took the extra precaution of keeping her head bowed all the way to the docks, where she rented an airship from the most apathetic-looking proprietor she could find. Her gamble paid off and the man spared her only the most fleeting of glances as he pocketed the handful of silver coins she gave him. He motioned her toward the vessel that was now hers for the day.

It was... Well, Talasyn supposed that itcouldbe called an airship, in the sense that it possessed aether hearts, an aetherwave transceiver, and a sail. However, unlike the imposing outrigger warships or the graceful moth coracles or the ostentatious pleasure yachts, this particular Nenavarene design was what was called adugout. It was little more than a hollowed tree trunk, with a yellow sail that had clearly seen better days.

Talasyn knew that the dugouts were sturdier than they appeared. They were a common enough sight in Dominion skies, being a cheap and convenient mode of travel between islands. But that did little to allay her fears that her tiny airship would fall apart in a stiff breeze.

Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and a few minutes later she was soaring away from the docks and over the city rooftops and the expanse of wild rainforest that hemmed them in.Wind and sunbeams whipped at her face as she set sail for Port Samout.

Ever a reliable source of court gossip, Jie had confided to Talasyn over breakfast that the Kesathese flotilla was now within sight of Nenavar’s shores. No one would tell her anything more, so Talasyn had decided to see for herself. She didn’t have any afternoon lessons scheduled today; all that she’d needed to do was endure another frustrating, bewildering morning session with the dance instructor before she retired to her chambers with a pretend headache, leaving strict orders not to be disturbed.

Even if shewasbeing provided with a detailed report every few minutes—as her grandmother most assuredly was, judging from the constant parade of officers filtering in and out of the Roof of Heaven’s throne room—Talasyn still wasn’t going to sit idly in her luxurious prison while the Night Empire made their move, whatever said move entailed. An age-old fury built up inside her the moment she glimpsed the unmistakable outlines of Kesathese ironclads massing on the horizon, silhouetted against a clear blue sky that had, by the time she docked atop a sandy cliff near the port, turned overcast and gloomy with the promise of rain.

It was mere coincidence. Nenavar could shift from sun-drenched to waterlogged in the blink of an eye. Despite knowing this, Talasyn couldn’t help the shudder of both fear and revulsion that lanced through her being. She couldn’t help feeling as though the Night Empire stormship had brought the clouds with it.

We’ll be all right.She chanted it to herself over and over again.We have the dragons.

And we have the Huktera fleet.

She exited the dugout and scrambled to the edge of the cliff on her hands and knees, sand scraping at her spread palms and her brown breeches until she found a decent vantage pointwhere she could lie flat on her stomach. She retrieved a golden spyglass from her pack and put it to her right eye, squeezing the left one shut as she homed in on what was happening north of Port Samout.

Forming a defensive arrowhead a few miles off Sedek-We’s coast were the outriggers of the Dominion—triple-decked warships bristling with rows upon rows of bronze cannons, with their keels curved like crescents, bows fashioned into snarling dragons’ heads and the sterns into lashing tails. Their crab-claw sails bore the dragon emblem of Nenavar, wings spread, the lower half of its serpentine body coiled, blazing gold against a field of blue. The outriggers hovered in the air on fumes of wind magic, amidst clouds of moth coracles, above an Eversea that had begun churning along with the darkening of the sky, its frothing currents the color of old machine oil, mirroring the tense atmosphere.

At the tip of the formation was theParsua, the flagship of Elaryen Siuk, Nenavar’s Grand Magindam, a rank that Talasyn had deduced was similar to that of the Sardovian Amirante. Siuk seemed as unfazed as Ideth Vela would be in this situation, standing on the command deck and drinking coffee as she surveyed the Kesathese vessels that had come to a stop just slightly beyond firing range, cannons already swung outward.

Talasyn shifted her spyglass further north. Her brow furrowed. There was something different about the Night Empire’s ironclads and their wolf coracle escorts. Their hulls seemed to be made of thicker plate, the cannons slimmer. Or maybe she just hadn’t seen them in so long. Behind them lurked the stormship, a nightmare assembled from aether and fog, and it was...

Her fingers shook around the spyglass as her fury spiked to a magnitude far greater than her body could contain. It was theDeliverance. The Night Emperor’s flagship.

No longer Gaheris’s, but Alaric’s.

Talasyn’s magic stirred within its banks, raring and restless, itching to reach out across the turbulent waves to sink light’s fiery claws into her nemesis. She pictured Alaric on the enclosed bridge of the stormship, his silver gaze dispassionately regarding the white shores of another land that his empire had come to wreak havoc on. And because she couldn’t do anything from this distance, because she felt as though her hatred would eat her alive, she swung her spyglass back to the Nenavarene side of the standoff in a bid to distract herself by waiting for Siuk’s next move.

A shadow fell over theParsua’s many decks. A dragon had wandered down from beyond the mountains—one of the green-eyed ones, its great length covered in salt-crusted copper scales. It was either curious or protective. No one would be able to tell for sure, save for the dragon itself. While none of its kind ever harmed those with Nenavarene blood, and they were known to protect the Dominion in dangerous times, they could not be commanded. The dragons were creatures of the aether, even more so than the spectrals that could vanish at will and the sarimans that could nullify magic.

This particular dragon emitted a roar of challenge as it swooped toward the Kesathese ships. Talasyn wondered what Alaric’s reaction was to witnessing such a creature bear down upon him. She wished she could see his face.

She gave a start, accidentally knocking her head against the spyglass. Why was she thinking about Alaric Ossinast’sface?

Mentally castigating herself, Talasyn resumed tracking the dragon’s slithering flight, watching intently as it closed in on the Night Empire’s ranks.

Flares of brilliant amethyst lit up the horizon. The ironclad spearheading Kesath’s formation fired off dozens of huge bolts of void magic, several of which hit the oncoming dragon squarely in its left wing. Talasyn’s cry of disbelief was swallowed up by the leviathan creature’s scream of pain as the rotset in, patches of black decay blossoming over copper scales. Its survival instinct kicked in as it dove into the Eversea with uncharacteristic clumsiness, badly wounded, confused to find itself on the receiving end of the only aether magic in the world that could penetrate its hide.

How—

Alaric, Talasyn realized. He’d taken the stolen moth coracle back to the Continent, and Kesath’s Enchanters must have been put to work extracting the new magic from its aether hearts.

As the dragon disappeared beneath the tide, Talasyn rushed back to the dugout. She no longer cared about secrecy. She had to warn the Roof of Heaven that the Night Empire had developed their own void cannons, and then she had to join Grand Magindam Siuk’s fleet, to help them in the battle that was sure to follow. But no sooner had she activated the dugout’s transceiver when a message rolled in on the aetherwave. It was from the lead Kesathese ironclad, and it overrode all nearby Dominion frequencies.

“Greetings,” a woman’s clipped tones said in Sailor’s Common. “I am Commodore Mathire of the Night Empire. Bringing up the rear is His Majesty Alaric Ossinast. More warships are on their way. I regret that we had to harm your dragon, but it was in the interest of preventing further losses. We wanted to show you that we are in possession of this magic as well, and it would be wise to take the path of least resistance. Before the sun has set, you will send an envoy to discuss the terms of the Nenavar Dominion’s surrender. Or we invade.”

On the bridge of theDeliverance, Alaric stalked over to the aetherwave transceiver and yanked at the lever that put him through to theGlorious, Mathire’s ironclad.

“Commodore.” He kept his tone level, much too aware of the many crew members within earshot. “I gave orders to fire only if it was a matter of life and death.”

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