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CHAPTER

Sixty-Eight

I N THE LINE OF CONTENDERS , Shal Worthy had often felt invisible. For the first two days of the Festival he had held a comfortable lead over his rivals. He was liked and admired by the palace Hounds and by the wider court. Several influential courtiers had said to him, in confidence—we are praying for your victory, Contender Worthy. And yet he had never felt at the centre of things. Perhaps this was an inevitable consequence of his gift, that made him always the observer. Even as the courtiers had flattered him with their kind encouragements, he had always known their true attention lay elsewhere. Ruko. Cain. The dramas surrounding the Raven contender. As he’d slipped further down the points table, the court’s interest had slipped with it. The forgotten contender.

So it had been a surprise to find Princess Yasila’s invitation waiting for him in his rooms. With his broken collarbone, he’d needed help to change into his best clothes. His contingent—who loved him more than he realised—had presented him with three embroidered cotton slings to see him through his recovery. He had chosen the plainest—dark blue, with the silver square of the Hound sigil forming the buckle.

And Yasila, on seeing him, had thought: How dashing he looks, without trying. It was a trait she’d noticed in him the first time they met. The young Hound captain as he was back then, with his polite manners and skewering gaze, standing alone on her doorstep. Trying to look older and rougher than he was with his chopped hair and moustache—but clothes hung better on some men than others. He carried himself well, and this Yasila appreciated.

“If it is any consolation, Lord Shal, I think you would have made a fine emperor,” she said, then smiled at his discomfort. “Your new title is not to your taste.”

They were standing on the eastern balcony of her suite. From here they could see the Garden at the Edge of the World, perched over the sea far below, the lanterns no more than dots of light as guests arrived for the emperor’s reception. The full moon shone over the water, the Tiger’s Path a diamond cascade across the sky. Two Leviathans moved slowly in black silhouette against the night. They lacked the urgency of their cousins on the channel, there were no small boats in attendance, no loading and unloading. From here the seas were endless, so far as anyone knew.

“Would you prefer High Commander?” she asked Shal.

He frowned. Here was a dangerous conversation, bordering on treason. “Is that in your gift, your highness?” he asked, carefully.

“Not here.” She tilted her chin towards the sea, and the ships. “Those two are mine. We sail for Helia at dawn.”

“We?”

A door opened deep within the suite, and then another. They both turned as a girl entered the living area, bundled in a hooded robe and blankets. Save for her face and hands, not an inch of skin was showing.

Nisthala. Yana’s sister. She lowered her hood, revealing a sleepy tangle of grey hair, streaked with white. Her ash-grey eyes were almost entirely eclipsed by her pupils.

Shal gave a deep bow, to hide his shock. “My lady.”

“Lord Shal. I am pleased to meet you at last.” If she’d had an Armas Common Grid accent, and surely she must have once, it was long gone. Her intonation was more like her mother’s, if not quite so formal. She looked like Yasila too, beneath the strangeness. Shal was both grateful and saddened that she did not resemble her older sister. Yana had been small and energetic, and very easy to read, despite her best efforts. Nisthala was tall and willowy, listless in her movements, and her face held mysteries. Clutching her blankets closer, she continued to stare at him, unblinking, as if he were a mythical beast.

“Please excuse my daughter,” Yasila said. “Her world has been very small since she came here. You are the first stranger she has met in over six years.”

Nisthala yawned behind her hand and moved to join them.

Yasila patted the air, to stop her. “It is too cold for you out here, darling. Wait for us by the fire. We shan’t be long. Do you have books?”

“I always have books, Mama,” she murmured, and retreated to the fire.

Shal was a perceptive man, it only took him moments to add up what he had seen, and find an answer. Her uncanny eyes, the blankets. The fire on a warm summer night. Thinking back, he remembered she was not quite nine years old when she fell “sick,” and was brought here. Locked away from the world. “She was Chosen,” he said, awed.

Yasila was pleased with how quickly he understood, that she did not need to explain her reasons. She watched him think it through. Her own troubled history with the Dragons. The loss of her older daughter. And what she might be prepared to do to keep the younger one safe.

Anything. She would do anything.

Voices carried from the reception far below. She was dressed for the occasion in a silvery grey dress, her hair netted with diamonds. For years she had longed to wear grey, for her daughter. Now it was permitted, to honour the Visitor. She had decided to only wear grey from this day forward. Let her grief be visible at last.

She leaned her arms on the balustrade. Shal mirrored her. They looked out at the stars, side by side. She liked his silence. She was in no rush to join the party. Not yet. The moon said not yet.

“I know why you entered the Festival,” she said.

Shal bowed his head. For Yana. He would have found a way to pardon her, had he won. Honoured her memory as best he could.

“She haunts you,” Yasila murmured.

Shal’s brow furrowed. “I hope not. I hope her spirit has returned to the Path.” He sighed. “I haunt myself.”

“It is not your fault Yana died as she did.”

Shal winced at the old wound. They were not supposed to talk of her. By law she did not exist. But who was to stop them, up here alone? No one could hear them, not even Nisthala, huddled by the fire.

“I gave birth to my twins in these rooms,” Yasila said. “Twenty-four years ago, almost to the day. In the middle of the Festival. Nineteen years old, a child of Helia. I knew nothing of such matters. Nothing. My husband was fighting for the throne, I could have dropped dead in front of him and he would not have noticed. Empress Haven saw how ill I was. She ordered her physicians to take care of me, here in her own suite. She saved my life. And the twins. I am sure of it.”

“My uncle always spoke highly of the late empress.”

Yasila was lost in reverie. “Two days,” she said, wistful. “The twins were healthy, against the odds. For two days I thought myself blessed by the Eight.” An ironic lift of an eyebrow.

Shal turned to study her, and waited.

“Andren believed it was his destiny to rule Orrun. To save it. When Bersun won the Dragon Trial he was…” There were no words to describe the intensity of Andren’s rage. The terrible, manic gleam in his eyes. “We all tried to reassure him. Bersun didn’t want the throne; he had no appetite for power. He hated the court. Wait a few years, and there would be another Festival. Another chance to rule.”

Shal nodded. It was Brother Lanrik who’d had ambitions for the throne. The saintly, ascetic abbot had imagined an empire transformed, just as he had transformed Anat-garra. Too old to fight himself, he had sent Bersun as his proxy.

“I thought we had persuaded him,” Yasila said. “My husband was always a patient man with a cool head. But the Dragon Trial had affected him so strangely… And then Bersun made his coronation speech…”

His promise to reform the monasteries. Higher taxes for the wealthiest citizens, court positions opened up to every class. A war would be waged, Bersun said, against the twin curses of nepotism and corruption. Brother Lanrik had achieved this at the Bear monastery. Bersun would do the same for the empire as a whole. However long it takes, he’d said. If I must serve the full twenty-four years at my disposal, so be it. Orrun shall be reborn.

“Andren took it personally,” Yasila said, sighing at her own understatement. “That night I woke to the sound of my twins, crying for me. Even before I found them, I knew something was terribly wrong. He’d carried them out here in his arms. He was…” She hunched her shoulders, the memory frightening her even now. “He was standing up here, on the balustrade. An inch from the edge. Raving to the sky.”

Bersun stole the throne from me. Now he steals their future. This is a kindness, Yasila—an act of love.

That is what her husband had said to her, as if he were the hero in a tragic opera.

“Eight,” Shal breathed.

Another step, and she would lose them over the edge. Her twins, her babies. The words of the binding spell had poured out of her unbidden. She was not yet its mistress, she was young, untrained. Exhausted. But it was enough to hold them there, for a moment. Enough time for Andren to see— Well, well. My wife is a witch. That changes things. That changes things entirely.

She did not tell Shal the rest. How Andren had forced her to teach him how to spell cast, using the twins as leverage. That terrible night on the balcony had taught him one vital lesson: that she would do whatever it took to keep them safe.

Andren always got what he wanted, one way or another.

“I saved Yana that night, and Ruko. But I did not know, back then—magic demands balance. Especially when you disturb the patterns of life and death. I saved my children, and doomed them in the same moment. You cannot cheat the Dragon. And those who try are punished for it, most severely. It is a lesson I am still learning.”

Shal thought about this for a time, mulling over her story. “You are saying that Yana’s exile was inevitable.”

“I am saying it was not your fault. The blame lies with Andren, and with me. Well—if you wish to travel back even further, one could blame my father, for taking his boat out against his captain’s advice. Or my mother, for abandoning me with the Dragons. Or Jadu for offering me nothing but indifference, where there should have been love. We are all responsible, in differing degrees, for what happened to Yana. But not you, Shal Worthy. You at least are blameless.”

He shook his head. The roots of his guilt ran too deep, were too tangled up within him to be removed so easily. He could have helped Yana escape on the road, there had been plenty of opportunities.

“My words do not persuade you,” Yasila said. “Then let me offer you this gift of redemption.” She glanced into the living room, where Nisthala sat quietly by the fire, absorbed by her book. “Everything changes for her tonight. There are things I cannot tell you now, for your own sake.” A slim hand on his wrist, swiftly removed. “But this you may know. Tonight, Nisthala will come into her full power. And tomorrow we shall set sail for Helia, where she will rule.”

Shal gave a start of surprise, and concern.

“Yes, I know. She is young, and sheltered. She will need guidance, as well as protection—someone she trusts. A good uncle. Will you pledge yourself to her service? Will you come with us to Helia?”

Shal felt his heart lift. A second chance. “I will.”

“Hmm,” Yasila murmured, quietly pleased. Some good news on a dark night. It was important to her that he had chosen this path of his own volition. That his oath was given freely, without fear. She was glad for Nisthala, but she was also glad for him. Had he declined, she doubted he would have survived the dawn. The emperor had no use for him.

She glanced down at the guests milling in the gardens below. “I must go. Please stay here with Nisthala, until I return. No matter what happens, do not leave these rooms. Let no one in. No one. This is for your protection.”

Shal’s dark brows lifted. “Mine?”

She left him, and headed back inside. Picking up a floating, silver-grey scarf, she wrapped it around her neck.

Nisthala lifted her nose out of her book to admire her mother. “He said yes?”

“He did. I won’t be long. An hour, at most.”

They looked at each other. Seven years of pain and patience, almost at an end. Nisthala got to her feet and gave her mother a deep, supportive hug.

Yasila kissed her daughter’s head, smoothed her grey hair. This one. This one I have saved.