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For a brief moment, I wondered if the captain would try to go down with his ship. He had the look of a noble martyr. But as soon as my revenants boarded the ship, he scrambled portside, tossing himself directly into the bay and swimming frantically to his men waiting for him. Shivering, he huddled on the lifeboat, his head bowed in defeat.

I grinned. I had my castle behind me, my army was growing, and now I had a ship. When I found the other necromancer, the one who had caused so much suffering, I would be ready.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Grey

The Lord Commanderwas the governor’s right-hand man. Usually a person of extreme importance already, and an adept alchemist. I hadn’t known that Governor Adelaide had selected anyone to take the position since her inauguration. The news sheets had reveled in the tragedy of her falling ill, but the boring politics of who had acquired which title hadn’t been as popular.

The captain of the guard swung open the door of the Lord Commander’s office, and I followed him inside. Rather than a room, we were in another hallway.

The captain stepped back through the door. “Wait here,” she said, then shut it, trapping me inside.

I waited for several minutes, but nothing happened. I drifted closer to the door at one end of the hall; it was marked again with the Lord Commander’s seal, and I assumed it was his private office. I walked the length of the hallway to the other end and shifted the cloth just enough to see what was on the other side.

The throne stood on a dais overlooking the marble floor. An enormous oil painting of the Emperor hung from velveteen ropes behind the throne—a reminder that Governor Adelaide served the Emperor first and that he was the true ruler of Lunar Island.

I stepped farther out, surprised that no one rushed to stop me. Movement caught my eye, and I noticed a woman sitting on a chair positioned at the bottom of the raised dais, just under the throne.She was wrapped in black damask, with long dark hair streaked with gray. She turned her head, and I caught a flash of gold—a diadem was braided into her tresses.

I stepped down from the dais. Governor Adelaide looked up at me with milky eyes.

Her image was plastered throughout the city, but I thought of the last few times I’d seen her in person. At the quarantine hospital, walking with Nedra, her body regal, gracious, an easy smile on her lips in the face of tragedy—a mask clearly worn for the benefit of those around her. Before that, standing strong with her people on Burial Day. And before that, at her coronation ball, her face alight with laughter.

She was a shell of who she had been. The woman who sat before me now was faded, her face sunken in, her hair dull and brittle, her skin ashen. I had known she was sick, but I didn’t realize just how bad it was.

“We keep her from the public eye for obvious reasons.” Master Ostrum swept aside the red velvet curtain and strode into the throne room. “It would be demoralizing.”

“Os—Master Ostrum,” I said, shocked. “I thought you’d been—”

“Yes, the papers greatly overstated the situation.” His voice was dry. “I wasn’t arrested. I was promoted.” He tapped the bronze badge pinned to his alchemical robes. It was shaped like a hand forming the first rune of alchemy.

“You’re—”

“Lord Commander now, yes.”

I bowed my head quickly, then looked over at Governor Adelaide.

“I misjudged her,” Lord Commander Ostrum said as he walked closer to the governor. “My politics seem silly now, in the face of this plague. Especially since we were more politically aligned than I’d thought.”

“I’ve never seen symptoms like this,” I replied. Although I spoke right in front of her, it was as if Governor Adelaide was in a world of her own, not even registering the sound of my voice. The only movement she had was in her fingers, as she rolled a small iron bead in her hand. While all the news sheets reported that she had contracted the Wasting Death, she didn’t have blackened appendages or amputations, no green film in the eyes. This was... different.

Master Ostrum motioned for me. “Greggori,” he said. “Come with me.”

We crossed the throne room, heading toward a door on the other side. “Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Staff has been systematically reduced. Plague took many, soon after the governor fell ill. The others... were fired,” he said, as if that wasn’t the right term for it.

“But the governor is too ill to—”

“By the Emperor.”

I drew up short. Master Ostrum paused, impatient. “Try to keep up, Greggori,” he said, exasperated. “And forget what you’ve read in the news sheets.” He paused. “I assume your father has kept you abreast of the current political situation.”

“We rarely talk,” I said immediately, but while that was true, I did have some understanding of the unrest in the government.

“The citizens of Lunar Island want freedom. That’s what your father’s group wanted.”

I was reminded of how Master Ostrum had been close to Lord Anton before his death. “But not you?” I asked.