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R HAIF CIRCLED THE massive ta’wyn device installed at the center of a storage room. Its spherical shape—all bronze and dark crystal—rose to twice his height. Another unit had been fitted on the portside. Ductwork burrowed throughout the ship, extending outward from each device. It had taken the bulk of the journey to the Eastern Crown to complete this installation.

But that was not the hardest task.

“Maybe try kicking it,” Rhaif offered. “Like urging an ox to move.”

Down on a knee, Shiya cocked her head to one side, as if trying to listen to the heartbeat of the device. She held a palm against its lower flank. Her bronze figure looked like a statue sculpted to hold up the metal-and-crystal sun.

Then again, the two were forged from the same furnace, creations of the ancients, those who walked the world while it still turned.

Rhaif scratched the stubble over his chin, remembering all that Shiya had shared, about her past, about her creators. Those godlike beings had feared the catastrophe that the Urth now faced, of the moon crashing into the planet. Those elder gods had left guardians that could survive the Forsaken Ages, the turbulent millennia that followed the Urth’s sudden stoppage.

Rhaif stared at Shiya as she worked. She was one such guardian—part of a collective known as the ta’wyn. The ancient word meant defender in the Elder tongue, but in the Klashean texts, they were deemed undying gods —which was closer to the truth. The ta’wyn were creations, sculpted of bronze, fueled by ancient alchymies, and imbued with near-eternal life, along with an intelligence that surpassed those whom they had been crafted to defend.

Rhaif studied the flowing metal that made up Shiya’s form, constructed by the ancients to survive the passing millennia.

But those Elders had crafted with more than just bronze.

Other guardians had been forged of flesh and blood.

Like Bashaliia.

Colonies of great bats, attuned to the moon, had been imbued with bridle-song, enhancing their natural abilities into a potent weapon. It was a gift powerful enough to merge the colony into a great horde-mind, an undying intelligence that could carry memories across thousands of years. Their duty was a simple one: to monitor and watch for the possible doom to come—and if that should happen, to awaken the buried Sleepers with their bridle-song, stirring them to save the world.

Shiya was one of those Sleepers.

R HAIF REMEMBERED DISCOVERING Shiya deep in the mines of Chalk, of her violent birth from a copper egg. She had come out damaged. Even worse, her memories—preserved in a vast crystal archive—had been shattered by the enemy. It had left her with only shreds of instinct and a fleeting understanding of her true role.

That enemy had also been ta’wyn.

Rhaif shook his head.

Maybe those Elder gods shouldn’t have made the ta’wyn so blasted intelligent, so self-aware.

It had proven to be a costly mistake.

Lost in the mists of the Forsaken Ages, a great war had broken out among that bronze collective. Originally, the ta’wyn had been tasked to cross into the inhospitable halves of the world—the frozen dark and the burning brightness— and build the massive turubya, world-turning engines, to ready those enormous forges to get the Urth to spinning if the worst should happen.

Alas, during the turbulent times of the Forsaken Ages, the ta’wyn had fractured. A large group broke away from their creator’s path, coming to believe the Urth belonged to them, not to those whom they were meant to protect. They called themselves the Revn-kree and were led by a ta’wyn named Eligor. They were eventually thwarted and their leader shattered into pieces. Unfortunately, the enemy had succeeded in securing the two turubya.

Even after the war, agents of the enemy proved to be insidious. Over the passing millennia, they hunted and destroyed Sleepers—those ta’wyn who had been buried away, seeds planted against the possible apocalypse to come.

Though compromised, Shiya had survived. With their group’s help, she had recovered enough of her memories to reveal the world’s hidden past, along with the locations of the two turubya.

But so much remained lost.

Like how to accomplish the task before them now.

Rhaif frowned at the towering sphere of bronze and crystal. It remained dark and inert. Shiya was confident she had successfully installed it. Yet she seemed incapable of stirring it to life.

Still on a knee, Shiya hummed quietly, her emanations warming her fingers to a meager glow. Her bridle-song—or synmeld, as the ta’wyn called it—was potent, yet it still failed to wake the hearts of the two devices.

“It can’t hurt to try kicking it,” Rhaif offered again.

He had no sounder advice. His former life had been as a thief in the city of Anvil, where he had been part of a guild before being handed over to the authorities by the guildmaster herself, Llyra hy March. Thus, he had ended up imprisoned in the Guld’guhlian mine, where he had eventually escaped with Shiya.

“Physical force will do no good,” Shiya whispered, her voice still melodic from her efforts to divine an answer to this puzzle box.

The pounding of boots drew Rhaif’s attention to the door. Graylin stalked into the room, trailed by Darant, who looked like a bedraggled cur at the moment. The pirate-captain had shed his blue half-cloak, exposing a roughspun shirt stained in oil. Dark stubble shadowed his cheeks, and his eyes were two black diamonds. He looked both exhausted and furious.

The two men were followed by the knight’s vargr, who pushed inside and curled a lip, as if in distaste at the lack of progress.

Darant seemed no happier, especially with the news he brought. “Enough with this puttering,” he blustered. “Word of our ship has spread as far as Bhestya. Worse yet, Hálendiian emissaries are swarming into this half of the Crown. We move now, or we may never get a chance.”

Graylin crossed closer and circled the room’s bronze sun, pulled into its orbit by trepidation. “How are you faring? Darant’s crew has already test-fired the repaired forge. And Jace and Krysh have secured a rough map of the Barrens. Beyond a few minor repairs, we’re set to go.”

“Except for one glaring problem,” Rhaif said.

Darant joined Shiya. “Mayhap we should set sail, continue to work on these damnable devices while in the air.”

Graylin scowled at this idea. “And if we still fail? We won’t make it more than fifty leagues past the sandy necropolises that mark the Barrens’ border before the heat forces us back.”

Darant challenged Shiya. “Is there any hope you can stir this to life? Or are you simply wasting our time?”

Rhaif stomped over, coming protectively between the captain and Shiya. “Back off, Darant. She’s doing all she can. Without her knowledge, we wouldn’t even have these cooling units.”

“Fat lot of good they’re doing us now,” Darant groused.

Shiya stood up, only now seeming to acknowledge the others’ presence. She rose to her full height, a head taller than Rhaif’s bowlegged stature. She was draped in a simple shift that reached her knees, but the grandeur of her form could not be so easily hidden. Her bronze face was a handsome oval, her hair a plait of the same, so finely wrought that the strands shifted with her motion. Even her skin swirled in soft hues, flowing as easily as any flesh, all warmed by the power at the heart of her figure.

She turned her gaze upon Darant, then Graylin. Her eyes, an azure blue, shone in the dimness. Her lips, a rosy metallic hue, parted with a sigh of resignation. “I believe I’ve done all I can.”

“What about consulting with Tykhan again,” Graylin offered. “Perhaps he could offer further counsel.”

Rhaif grimaced. Shiya had not been the only Sleeper to awaken. Many centuries ago, Tykhan had been attacked where he had been buried in his copper egg, but he managed to survive, defeat his assassin, and escape. Woken far too early, he went out into the world and took on the role of the prophetic Augury of Qazen. He hid his ta’wyn heritage behind artifice and paint. Still, he remained loyal to the original imperative given to the ta’wyn —to defend the Urth. To that end, he now aided their allies in the Western Crown, where the others faced their own daunting task: to secure a relic from the defeated Revn-kree leader and use it to hunt for a lost key needed to control the two turubya once they were activated.

For any hope for the world, both sides had to work in tandem.

To help with this, Tykhan had taught Shiya a means of communication through the air, but it came with a risk. The Iflelen dogs who aided the Hálendiian king seemed to have a means to track such messages. Fearing this, both groups knew every outreach had to be brief and sporadic. They also guarded how much knowledge to share, wary that it might fall into the wrong hands.

To reach out again now, to simply gnaw over this same difficulty, risked too much.

Shiya reinforced this. “I’ve already employed all of Tykhan’s recommendations, but to no avail.” She shrugged. “Maybe if he were here. Instead of at Kysalimri.”

Graylin persisted. “Still, it might be worth contacting him once more and—”

Rhaif cut this off with a growl. He suspected that even if Tykhan were aboard the ship, the result would be the same. “We dare not reach too often into that well,” he reminded Graylin. “We all know who might be listening.”

Graylin nodded, conceding this point. “Then what do we do? Do we tarry here and hope for a breakthrough? Or set off and pray we can get this to work before we reach the Barrens?”

All eyes turned to Shiya.

She stood tall before their combined gazes. “I have reached a firm conclusion from my inspection of the cooling units.”

“Which is what?” Darant asked.

She turned to the captain. “I cannot activate them.”

Rhaif coughed to cover his shock.

“No one can,” Shiya added.

“Then we’ve failed before we’ve begun,” Graylin moaned. “We’ll never be able to cross the Barrens.”

Shiya simply cocked her head. “That is not true. I’ve surmised that the units are self-activating. The devices are already emanating vibrations. It’s taken me until now to discern their function. They appear to be monitoring the very particles in the air surrounding the ship. I’ve concluded that the units will only stir to life once they detect excessive heat.”

“So, when the air gets hot enough outside,” Rhaif said, “they’ll come to life?”

“I believe so.”

Darant looked even more dour. “You believe so? We’ll be staking all our lives on that belief.”

“And the lives of everyone on the Urth,” Graylin added.

Shiya’s silence answered them both.

Rhaif swallowed hard. “Is there any way to test it? Like heating the air around the ship with the firepots atop the deck.”

Shiya shook her head. “The devices will not be fooled. The emanations reach farther out than any pot or forge can warm.”

Graylin shook his head. “Then we must fly blindly into the Barrens and hope the devices ignite on their own… is that what you’re saying?”

“That is my assessment.”

Graylin and Darant cast uneasy glances at one another.

Rhaif reached over and took Shiya’s hand. Her fingers folded over his. He felt the warmth of her body, the pliant nature of her skin.

In this moment, he felt like a mudtoad next to a goddess. Rhaif had inherited his squat form and rocky countenance from his Guld’guhlian father. Luckily, the blood from his mother—a huntress who hailed from the forests of Cloudreach—had softened those rough edges, while adding a few fingers of height and an unruly mop of fiery hair. He had also gained her natural agility, speed, and balance, all of which had served him well as a thief.

Still, Rhaif knew he was no prince of the realm—not in appearance, certainly not in manner. Yet he and Shiya had grown closer during the long journey here. While they could not share the intimacy of flesh, they found other ways to be tender, to show affection, though it was still more one-sided than he would have preferred.

But that didn’t lessen his conviction.

He put it into words.

“I trust her fully,” Rhaif declared. “So, the answer is clear. We trek onward.”

Her soft fingers firmed on his, expressing her thanks.

Darant blew out a long sigh, finishing with, “Not like we have much choice.” He headed toward the door. “Let’s go plot a course.”

Graylin followed, but he looked back at the dark bronze sun. “And pray we’re not doomed already.”