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S TANDING IN THE strategy room of the Blood’d Tower, Aalia read through a set of curled missives. They marked the first dispatches from the battle along the southern coast of Hálendii. The skrycrows flew swiftly, but the messages were still four or five bells old. Wing Perash and Sail Garryn had already related their contents. Still, she felt it her duty to read them, knowing the blood that had already been spilled.

As she did, she sighed at the grimness. The Wing had lost two warships and several smaller ships. The Sail had fared even worse, likely because the severe storm made a sea battle all the more treacherous.

And this is just the start of the conflict.

According to the messages, Hálendii had sent out a large portion of their forces by air and sea, to confront the challenge to their coast. No doubt King Mikaen had been stiffened to a manly hardness at this chance to clash with his enemy. Especially after his defeat last winter at the borders of Kysalimri. Afterward, there had been skirmishes, but this marked the first all-out battle.

Aalia knew Mikaen all too well. Diplomacy and the coddling of allies likely grated on the Hálendiian king. Blood and cannon fire fit his mood far better.

Still, despite the tragic losses, the draw of such a strong Hálendiian force was exactly what they had hoped, to lure as much strength from Highmount as possible, to better the chances of Kanthe and the others reaching Eligor. Their raid had been timed to the last bell of Eventoll.

Already, the first bell of the new day had rung out.

Fearful, she stared to the north.

How are they faring?

She anxiously awaited word, but it would take even longer for a skrycrow to fly from Azantiia. Her forces had been ordered to engage the enemy for half a day—if they could last that long. While she had full confidence, she still worried about what this bloodshed would cost in grief and loss. She prayed it proved to be worth so many lives.

She crossed back to her seat and sank down. Sail, Wing, and Shield gathered by the map along the curved wall that showed the Hálendiian coast, discussing strategy, scribbling down missives to send back to the ships. She knew she should engage them, but she trusted these men to handle any necessary details.

Plus, her heart weighed too heavily at the moment, anchoring her to the seat.

She had tried to get some sleep earlier in the day, but fears kept her awake. Tazar had joined her, allowing her to seek refuge in his arms, to allow her to be weak so she could be strong later. They had eventually found succor in more tender embraces. He had used his mouth and tongue to speak to her in ways that only lovers understood. It was more about reassuring than pleasuring.

She’d stolen his steel while atop him, her back arched, drawing that strength until he was spent. They’d lain together afterward, with him still inside her, sharing their heat as one.

In that moment, she’d needed to feel like a woman.

Not an empress.

By letting that responsibility briefly go, she was able to pick up the reins more firmly.

But is it enough?

A slight movement drew her from her reverie. She found the Eye of the Hidden staring askance at her, as if looking past her shoulder, but she felt the weight of his attention. One finger rested at his temple. She sensed he wished to speak but held off, perhaps judging whether she had spirit enough to hear what he wanted to share.

She answered that silent query. “What is it, Eye Hessen?”

The finger lowered, and his gaze fixed on her, its rheumy cast masking a sharp cunning. His every movement held meaning, each twitch of a muscle fiber, every slight pause between words.

He stared at her for a breath, dead silent, no movement at all. This worried her more than if he had stood up and pounded a fist on the table. When he finally spoke, it was in his usual rasp, but she somehow knew his words reached only her ears. Even Tazar, who sat on her other side, likely could not hear the Eye.

“My crows have been flying since the quake a day ago. The third rumbling in as many days. More and more clerics whisper of the wrath of the gods. Some look for blame beyond the waters of the Hresh Me to the imperial citadel. Unless addressed, it will grow worse.”

“I’m not sure what more I can do. With the appearance of Prince Mareesh bending a knee, of swearing loyalty to the imperium and its empress, I had hoped that would quell some of the unrest.”

“And while it did, it was not hard to take Mareesh’s bended knee and twist it the other way. Hálendiian spies continue to work in the corners of the Eternal City where the shadow of my crows can’t reach. They whisper that the return of Mareesh—the insurrectionist, the traitor—to the imperial fold only reinforces the blatant corruption of the current rule. And the gods rumble with anger because of it.”

Aalia struggled for a solution, for a way to turn that growing tide.

A knock on the door cut through her worries.

She shifted straighter, expecting another raft of skrycrow messages. With the fighting engaged, flocks of birds would be continually winging back and forth.

A Paladin opened the door and allowed a familiar figure to enter. It was Chaaen Hrash, once bound to Aalia’s father and now to her.

“Your Illustriousness,” he said, dropping to a knee and offering a bow of his head. “I apologize for the intrusion during such a trying time.”

She motioned him up. “Chaaen Hrash, you are always welcome, especially your counsel.”

Her words were sincere. Hrash had been the oldest Chaaen bound to her father, serving as the former emperor’s closest adviser and dearest friend. Aalia valued and appreciated his wisdom.

“I imagine your arrival suggests some urgency,” Aalia noted. “Something you believe I must know right away.”

“That is sadly true.” He motioned to two others who hovered at the threshold. “This is Chaaen Magritte and Chaaen Laugyn.”

She nodded to them. While Hrash was into his sixth decade, with a bald pate and a mask of wrinkles earned from years as imperial counselor, these two—a woman and a man—looked tens of years older. The two appeared as frail of limb as Eye Hessen, but they kept their backs straight and carried a collection of lengthy yellowed scrolls under their arms.

Aalia noted the woman, Magritte, wore the silver collar of a hieromonk. The other had an iron collar of alchymy that matched Hrash’s.

“May we approach?” Hrash asked.

“Of course, but formality will slow this discourse. If you come with urgency, let our manner of talk reflect it.”

“Thank you.” Hrash crossed to the table, sidestepping around others, drawing the older pair of Chaaen with him. “With all that’s happening, we’ve had a difficult time reaching you. Or we would’ve come sooner with our fears.”

Aalia frowned. “That should never be the case. I’ll make sure of it.”

It was one of the unfortunate drawbacks in loosening the silver chains that bound such learned people to their imri. She had thirty-three Chaaen, all trained at the Bad’i Chaa, the House of Wisdom, but with these new freedoms afforded them, she had lost a measure of immediate and regular counsel.

“What do you wish me to know?” she pressed him.

He waved Magritte and Laugyn to the table. “It concerns the moon, Your Illustriousness.”

Aalia’s heart clenched between beats. All in this room knew about the threat of moonfall, as did all her Chaaen.

“What about the moon, Hrash?”

“I’ve spent considerable time of late at the astronicum at the Bad’i Chaa, studying the faces of the moon through the school’s powerful lenses. Over the past three months, the edges of the moon have begun to shine with a reddish hue, more prominently when at its fullest. We believe the corresponding stronger tremors and quakes are related.”

“By the pull of the moon as it nears?”

“Same as the surging tides.” He gave a slight bow of his head. “As we’ve discussed before.”

She motioned for him to continue, knowing this was not all he had come to report. Especially with his fellow Chaaen weighted down by scrolls.

Hrash stared down at the map of the Southern Klashe carved into the table. He shifted to one side of it. “For millennia on end, Kysalimri has been plagued by quakes. A suffering attributable to the wrath of the gods of the underworld, specifically the vengeful Menn’n. Across these ages, alchymists and hieromonks have recorded each tremor and shake in our respective archives.”

Hrash leaned down to the table and drew a finger along the western edge of the Hyrg Scarp, the mountain range that split the land into two halves. “From our alchymical studies, by tracing these quakes and studying the terrain, we’ve known for many centuries of a massive rift in the Urth that traces the edges of the Scarp, running from north to south. Most of the upheavals that plague the Klashe rise out of that crack.”

“Where it is said Menn’n resides,” Magritte added.

Laugyn interjected, “Thus, both alchymists and hieromonks come to an agreement regarding the source of these quakes.”

“But what bearing does this have on the empire?”

Hrash leaned farther out over the map. “There are hundreds of additional clefts that break from the Scarp’s crack and spread westward.”

He used his finger to scribe jagged lines from the mountains and through the breadth of the massive spread of the Eternal City.

Aalia stood and peered closer. “They cut under Kysalimri?”

“It’s why we’ve suffered so many tremors over the passing millennia. Both alchymists and hieromonks have mapped where each one strikes and how often. It has allowed us to chart the path of those clefts. But more importantly, over such a long span of time, patterns have emerged. Patterns that have allowed us to somewhat track when one quake might lead to another.”

Aalia could already guess where this was headed. “And you’ve detected some pattern to these recent quakes.”

Hrash nodded and had Laugyn roll out a scroll across the table. It revealed a map, drawn in fresh ink. It approximated the one carved under it. Throughout the expanse of the city and surrounding lands were hundreds of small radiating crimson circles, each inscribed with blue lines and small numerical notations.

“These chart each tremor, shake, and quake over the past three months.”

“So many?” Aalia’s shock pushed her back to her seat. “I hadn’t known.”

No wonder the people of Kysalimri are so scared.

Hrash tried to assuage her guilt. “Most are very tiny, felt only in a small corner of our vast city. Still, a pattern has slowly emerged. One that has been recorded in the past.”

He nodded to Magritte. The hieromonk carefully unrolled a yellowed scroll, cracked at its edges, with ink that had faded to wispy lines. Magritte held it open, fighting as the parchment’s age tried to reroll it, as if to hide what was revealed.

Again, it was a map of the city, one more crudely sketched. Upon it were drawn similar circles and notations. Even Aalia could recognize they roughly mirrored what had been freshly inked on Laugyn’s chart.

“That ancient map comes from the seventeenth imperial dynasty,” Hrash explained. “From the rule of Emperor Gaius.”

Aalia flinched. “No… you can’t be suggesting…”

She shook her head, refusing to believe this. Still, she understood why Hrash had been so desperate to reach her. The reign of that emperor was known for one ghastly event, a tragedy so catastrophic that its pain echoed down through history. Scars still remained of that event, etched across the face of the Eternal City.

“The Cataclysm of Gaius,” Aalia whispered.

Two millennia ago, a massive quake had shattered the city, opening vast chasms, lifting some sections, dropping others, toppling towers like a storm through saplings. Hundreds of thousands had died in the first quake, more from the tremors that followed. It had altered the shape of the Bay of the Blessed and cast huge waves that drowned a quarter of the city.

Aalia challenged Hrash. “You think the pattern of our quakes portends another cataclysm?”

The Chaaen looked to his companions, then faced her. “We do.”

Aalia glanced to the Eye of the Hidden. His face looked dour, his lips drawn into tight lines. All knew the fate of Emperor Gaius. The tragedy had been blamed on Gaius’s rule. In retribution, the populace rose up. The emperor had been gutted in his throne room, as was every one of his bloodline. Their entrails were strewn to thirty-three pyres, where they were burned as offerings to the Klashean pantheon. Thus ended the seventeenth imperial dynasty and heralded the eighteenth, giving rise to a new bloodline, one that distantly traced to her own.

Worried about the similar rumblings of her own people, Aalia returned her attention to Hrash. “If you’re right, when might this happen?”

The Chaaen frowned at the old map. “According to historical records, the pattern in the past was slow in building. It took a decade for whatever tension was accruing to finally break forth and tear the land asunder.”

“And what about now?” Aalia pressed him.

“The moon’s pull. The worrisome rate of its crimson blushing as it draws closer. It’s all building the same pattern much faster.” Hrash winced at the two Chaaen. “We’ve done many calculations, leaning upon the resources of Bad’i Chaa, consulting with those we most trust, both for their knowledge and discretion.”

“When?” Aalia stood up again. “When might this happen? A year? A month?”

Hrash looked down. “You won’t have a month.”

Aalia stared hard at him. “Then when?”

Hrash lifted his gaze, which shone with certainty. “Anytime now.”