Page 64

Twenty-Nine

E verything had gone wrong. The ship had launched early. The explosives had been jostled and gone off prematurely. And there was an elephant on board.

Another jerk shuddered the ship, and a piece of the siding tore off, exposing me to my first full view of the situation. We were descending fast. Licks of flame came into view as the fire in the engine room spread across the ship.

From the deck, I heard shouts of dismay and the pounding of many feet and saw three bodies launch themselves off the top deck, smashing into the water beneath.

Even if I had jumped, there was no chance I would survive a fall like that. For a moment, the ship steadied, coming flat, still over a hundred feet above the water. I could see the shoreline in the distance.

Heron Lake was an uneven body of water, shaped by the peninsula that stuck out in the middle of it.

Most of it was surrounded by the estates of powerful members of court or rich citizens from the Imperial Capital.

They had eaten away at the coastline, chopping the natural trees down.

It made it easy to see the crowds that had come out to watch General Bemishu’s display.

“At least we’ll win,” I said, leaning back against Eldest. The elephant wrapped a curious trunk around my midsection.

Maybe we would be able to jump when the ship got lower, but we were flying too quickly. Even jumping would be dangerous at that speed.

Another explosion rocked the ship. Seka had been right. Setting it off in the engine room had been a good decision.

“You know, I knew this was possible.” I raised a hand, rubbing it over the soft, velvety skin of the elephant’s trunk. “I think even Tallu thought it was. He must have. Still, I can’t say that I want to die.”

As though from very far away, I heard a voice whispering in my ear. “ None of us want to die. ”

I turned, jerking so fast that Eldest nearly lost her grip on me. “Was that you?”

It would be a terrible sort of irony if my ability for animal speak came back only as I was this close to death.

“Tallu will find a way to salvage the situation even if I am dead,” I assured myself. He had done well without me for years; the loss of a single pawn wasn’t enough to make him lose focus.

The lies sounded too flagrant to my ears. Tallu had told me himself I was no pawn.

“ Do you always give in to defeat this easily? ” The voice boomed in my mind, louder now, and it didn’t sound anything like Eldest.

In fact, it sounded like frozen mountains, frost so thick that if you sank into it, you would never get free. Cold so brutal it would freeze the blood in your veins if you stayed out in it.

“ Airón of the Silvereyes Clan, have you made your choice? ”

I knelt, feeling a scream build in my throat, feeling blood leak from my eyes and nose.

Still, I managed, “What choice?”

“ Have you chosen to lie down and die or accept the fate given to you? ” The voice was unyielding, a sword frozen in the ice and then pulled free to touch against living skin.

The chill burned as much as fire.

“What?” I practically screamed the word, feeling it echo in my brain, feeling it thunder through my blood.

“ You must choose .”

“I will not lie down and die. I will live. I will fight.” I wiped at my eyes, my fingers coming away bloodied, the world around me shifting as the ship began its precipitous descent.

The houses and people on the shore became no more than streaks of color. I could feel the thrumming in my brain.

In the distance, the electro magic rang as though it was spoken words, the desperate shouts of The ship is falling echoing the sound of electricity forced back into the electrical coils, as though it could possibly work with half the engine missing.

“ Do you vow it? ”

“Yes!” I wasn’t sure why it was so important. I wasn’t even sure who I was talking to except that everything about it felt like home.

“ Then live .”

An ice dragon the length of the massive airship tore open the other side of the room, its claws large enough to envelop a horse. For a moment, I didn’t recognize it.

Everything about it was strange. It had a snout with teeth as long as my palm and horns that curved over its head in enormous spirals. Eyes watched me with more intelligence than most people I spoke with. Perhaps the old legends of the One Dragon had come to life after all.

Then it nuzzled me, and I realized who it was.

It was the dragon Eona? had gifted me with.

The egg that had cracked open, revealing a creature no larger than my palm.

Now, less than a month later, it was the largest creature I had ever seen, twice the size of an elephant.

This morning, I had left it in Tallu’s bedroom, and it had been the size of a small pony. How had it become this ?

Eldest screamed, scrambling to its feet, panicked by the predator the size of a whaling vessel. For a moment, the dragon slowed the ship, its wings freezing the air around us, icicles forming on the hole it had blown in the ship.

“ Come. You have work .”

The dragon spoke in the language of ice and cold, its words just as frigid as the far north beyond where my people would dare hunt.

I stepped closer and scrambled up the dragon’s shoulder, finding purchase behind its head. With two clawed paws, it reached back in the hole for Eldest, managing to hold tight even as the elephant struggled in its grip.

Then, it launched upward, sending the frozen ship crashing into the lake. It sank quickly, the buoyant wood pulled down by the heavy machinery necessary to keep it floating in the air.

I closed my eyes, tilting my chin up to feel the sun on my skin. I had expected to die.

“ Are you ready? ” the dragon asked directly into my brain.

I reached down and stroked a hand across its scaled neck. Downy plumes of fur blossomed between the scales, tickling my palm.

“If this is a dream, or if you are taking me to the afterlife, I thank you for the service. If it is real, then I am ready.”

The dragon’s wings beat, frost trailing behind it like storm clouds as it headed straight for the imperial property.

The closer we got, the more the small blobs of color became visibly sharpened into discrete people.

Tents stretched along the shoreline, vendors and entertainers frozen in place as they watched the dragon.

We crested just over them; a flick of the dragon’s tail could have taken out all of it, but the dragon flapped its enormous wings and rose a dozen feet, taking my stomach with it, before it spun in a circle in the air, landing precisely and gently in front of the Imperial Pavilion.

Tallu stood, eyes wide, staring at us. Bemishu was frozen in the middle of giving commands, his voice dying off into nothingness as we landed.

Delicately, the dragon released Eldest, who sat heavily, lying down on her stomach as though she had been the one to take flight. I slid off the dragon’s neck, feeling a chill of cold wash over me.

I looked down. My plain brown disguise had been covered in frost, giving it the effect of crystals, as though I had been stitched inside a suit made of gemstones. It covered my exposed skin, crawling up my neck and onto my cheekbones.

It effectively matched Tallu, who had rubies glued to his skin like licks of flame curling up from his jaw. On his fingers, he wore long gold rings that matched his circlet, the joints decorated with matching rubies.

Silence enveloped the massive courtyard. A press of people from all walks of life stood frozen. Courtiers and peasants, members of the military, no one seemed to know what to do.

Ignoring them, I stepped forward, striding up the stairs. The ice dragon curled on the ground in front of us, its wings spread wide. Tallu’s eyes searched my face.

Finally, he said, “Consort, your arrival was unprecedented. Even I would not have thought to try something so extravagant. You do the Imperium an honor.”

“I wish I did not have to arrive in such a surprising way,” I said loudly, letting my voice carry. “It was not by choice that I did so.”

“What do you mean?” Tallu asked, his voice mildly interested. It was only in the subtle tensing of his fingers that I saw his desperation, his fury and fear.

“General Bemishu’s men captured me when our carriage was stopped earlier. He took me to his airship, intending to kill me and leave my body in the lake. It is only by the grace of this creature that I was saved.” I gestured to the dragon.

As Tallu turned to examine it, his hand brushed mine, the sharp engravings of his rings catching on my skin. I started to pull away, but he grabbed my hand tightly.

A gasp moved through the crowd, followed by whispers.

At first, I thought it was because Tallu had grabbed my hand. Emperors did not touch anyone. The space around the emperor was his power. No one dared breach it, and his Dogs would kill anyone who tried. Then, I looked past the massive ice dragon and caught sight of General Bemishu.

He had stepped backward, a phalanx of his own men surrounding him. The swords and spears they had for show looked considerably less decorative when they were aimed at the emperor.

“I was going to ask if my husband told true, General, but it appears you answer the question.” Tallu’s voice carried across the crowd, stilling them.

When two wolves fought, the others would stand back, waiting to see who won.

That was the feeling in the crowd, the anxiety of waiting, the curiosity of who was going to win.

“You are no emperor. You are a filthy usurper! You killed your father and now defy the promise given to the first emperor!” Bemishu dropped his hand to his sword, drawing it free.

Tallu frowned, the expression so at odds with his usual remoteness that it moved his own men into motion. Layers of yellow-orange guards sped in front of him. Four Dogs moved around us into position, drawing their own blades.

“You commit treason, General Bemishu.” Tallu’s mouth dropped down into a grimace. “And for that, I sentence you to death.”