Page 5 of A Monsoon Rising

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 salutingyou.”

“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 canbe 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 virulently 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 feltamazingto 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 theAmirante 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.

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