By the time they reached the safe room, Quil had shaken Arelia and Sufiyan off, limping but able to walk, astonished, in a way, that he could do so. That his body still functioned as if the world around him wasn’t falling to ruins.

  A phalanx of Masks barred the door but, upon seeing Quil and Rallius, moved out of the way. The prince entered to find a crowd of generals bleating at each other about the defense of the city. Runners dropped missives with breathless panic, each one convinced that their message was the most urgent.

  One look at his aunt told Quil that she was on the verge of lopping off heads.

  “Nephew.” She nodded when he entered, but if she was relieved to see him, she didn’t show it. Instead, she looked over his shoulder, where Musa had followed him in, blood running down his cheek. Quil caught a flash of something iridescent moving near the man’s head. The wings of a wight—tiny humanoid creatures who were notoriously mistrusting and shy, except with Musa. They’d spied for him in the war on the Karkauns twenty years ago. He’d used them only in emergencies since. But their presence explained why he’d returned so quickly. They must have brought him news.

  Musa glanced pointedly at the Paters.

  “Everyone out,” Helene said. “Rallius, get the generals to safe houses outside the city. Take the tunnels. The Fourth Legion is stationed to the north. Its sole purpose is to get our government to safety. See it done.”

  The Maters and Paters began protesting, but Rallius nodded to his guards, who, after bodily dragging out a few of the Paters, persuaded the rest into docility. Rallius was about to herd Quil, Suf, and Arelia out when Musa spoke up.

  “Wait,” Musa said. “Sufiyan, Arelia, stay. Quil, you need to hear this.”

  “He does not,” the Empress snapped at Musa. “He—”

  “—is heir to a throne you’re about to lose,” Musa said.

  Aunt Helene looked away from Musa to Rallius, who was staring at them, jaw agape, probably wondering the same thing Quil was: why the Empress hadn’t taken Musa to task for saying something so treasonous.

  “Rallius, go. Don’t”—she shook her head when he began to protest—“worry about me. I’ll find you, after.”

  As soon as Rallius closed the door behind him, Musa spoke.

  “The Kegari force numbers above thirty thousand—”

  “Kegari?” Quil said. “But the marriage—”

  Aunt Hel held up a hand and Quil fell silent.

  “They flew those infernal Sails here,” Musa said, and Quil attempted to remember what Arelia had said about the Kegari transport, other than that it was airborne. “The wights say they’ve split their forces. A third for Navium. The rest divided throughout the Empire. They’re outside the city.”

  “Thirty thousand isn’t nothing, but our army is several times that,” Quil said. He didn’t understand why they hadn’t engaged the Kegari already. “We have two legions in Navium, a hundred Masks—”

  But Musa kept his gaze fixed on the Empress. “They have two hundred Battle Sails.”

  Aunt Hel’s face drained of blood.

  “Two—two hundred—”

  “That’s for Navium,” Musa continued. “They’ve sent at least a hundred to Silas and Serra. Two hundred more to Antium. That the wights could spot, anyway. Each can carry a significant payload. They know your cities, Empress. Better than they should.”

  “They went from fifty to five hundred in a few months,” Aunt Helene said. “And our scatter spear defenses aren’t complete. We didn’t get the firepowder shipment.”

  “You knew?” Quil stepped in front of his aunt so she had to look at him. “About this attack?”

  “Not for certain,” Aunt Hel said. “We’d heard rumors. I— Tas spent nearly a year trying to learn more, ever since…” She trailed off, and Quil wanted to scream at all the things she wouldn’t say.

  “You knew,” Quil said, “and you still tried to arrange a marriage—”

  “The marriage wasn’t real. There was a spy in our ranks.” His aunt lowered her voice and Quil could barely hear her. “There is a spy. Someone telling the Kegari everything about us, our defenses, our cities. Tas suggested we announce a marriage to draw the bastard out, but—” She waved Quil away. “Musa, can the wights tell us anything about the Kegari reserve troops? If we’re forced into an insurgency, we need to know what we’re dealing with long-term.”

  Quil exchanged a glance with Arelia. An insurgency meant that the Martials would be rebels in their own Empire. Which meant the Empress was entertaining the possibility that this attack would succeed. The Empire had stood for more than five hundred years. The prince couldn’t fathom that it would collapse in a matter of hours.

  “I don’t know yet where their primary camps are,” Musa said. “But there are reserves to the southwest, in Jibaut. How many is unclear.”

  Aunt Helene laughed bitterly. “They promised those pirates first crack at our coastal cities, no doubt. How fast can the wights get us more information?”

  “Weeks, at the soonest. I haven’t asked for their aid in years.”

  “Empress!” The door burst open and a runner entered, guards flanking her. “It’s urgent.” Aunt Helene tore the missive open once the girl was gone. She handed it to Quil.

  Eastern and northern reach drummers slaughtered. Eastern wall breached. Send aid.

  “Aid,” the Empress said. “We have no aid to give.”

  “You have a plan.” Musa squeezed Aunt Hel’s shoulder. “It’s better than nothing.”

  “How—” Aunt Hel shook her head. “I let this happen. For five centuries we have weathered every tempest from within and without. And I’m the one watching as we fall.”

  The palace shuddered, and screams echoed from beyond the safe room. The roof cracked.

  Musa glanced up. “You might want to move before that comes down. Ridiculous way for an empress to die, getting crushed by her own palace.”

  The ground trembled, and a crack shot up one of the walls. The Empress threw herself at her nephew, knocking him to his back as the wall smashed down. Most of the lamps in the room shattered on the floor, and the sudden darkness was suffocating. Quil coughed as Aunt Hel pulled him up.

  She turned to Musa, who relit one of the lamps. “Tell me true,” she said. “Without the scatter spears, can we hold?”

  Musa shook his head and Quil didn’t think he’d forget his aunt’s face then, a detached sort of calm taking over as her hope leached away, as her world—their world—crumbled into heaps of rubble.

  But Aunt Helene had survived the death of her mother. Her father. Her middle sister. Her youngest sister. The love of her life. Her comrades in arms. One after the other, taken from her. She’d seen her capital city fall, her people decimated. She’d clawed it back. She would again. He was certain of it. She’d give some order to turn all this around.

  The Empress turned to Quil. “You need to get out of the city, Quil. Leave the Empire. I need you to—”

  “Aunt Hel, you can’t send me away while our city burns with no explanation.”

  “The Kegari will be after me, nephew. Take Sufiyan and Arelia. They’ll be safer with you, and skies know I don’t want to face Elias and Laia if anything should happen to their boy.”

  Quil shook his head, glancing up at the ceiling. It wouldn’t hold for much longer. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I’m not going if he’s not,” Sufiyan said, the first time he’d spoken loud enough for anyone but Quil to hear.

  The prince glanced at Arelia, who was peeling her curls off her face. “Me neither.”

  But Aunt Hel didn’t look at them. Instead, she met Quil’s eyes with the same sadness as when Quil was returning to the Tribal Lands and she was saying goodbye. For a moment, he saw everything she’d been hiding. The well of feeling that drove her from city to city, that left her in deep silences—sometimes for days.

  “I will fight,” she said to him. “Skies know I will. But, nephew, if I fall—”

  “You won’t—”

  “If I fall, you will be Emperor. It is your destiny. You must survive.”

  “I—I don’t—” I don’t want it. Quil felt the words clawing up his throat, but he could not say them, not when his aunt was so clearly willing to die for the Empire and the people in it. To die for him.

  A shrill shriek and another detonation. The roof above began to crumble. Aunt Hel reached over her shoulder, unbuckling the strap across her back. The blade that came free had a distinctive hilt made by only one blacksmith in the Empire.

  “It’s a Teluman scim.” She shoved it into Quil’s hands. “One of Elias’s. I asked for it—for your coronation.”

  At any other time, he’d have marveled at such a gift. The scim was a work of art, and Elias’s twin swords had been with him for twenty years.

  “Empress!” Musa called. “There’s no time!”

  “Save us, Quil.” Helene dragged him toward her so only he could hear, and now her voice was ragged. Panicked. “Save the Empire. Find out as much as you can about our enemies. But most importantly—” She looked around, as if she feared being overheard. “Bring—bring it back. It’s the only thing that will destroy them.”

  “Bring what—”

  “Tas!” she hissed. “He’s with the Ankanese. Find him. You know where he’ll be. He has it. Bring it back. As much as you can. I cannot say more. This is why you must leave. I trust no one else with this task.”

  “Let me stay with you. Send the Blood Shrike—send Tas a message—”

  “I dare not. The spy could be anyone and we cannot risk a message to Tas being intercepted. The survival of the Empire depends on you, Quil. Do not fail our people. We are Gens Aquilla. We are—”

  “Loyal,” he said. “To the end.”

  She touched her hand to his brow. “My boy. My heir. My blood. You are the best parts of me. I know you will not fail.”

  The earth shook so violently that Quil’s bones rattled. Sufiyan steadied him as Arelia charged ahead, picking the safest way through the rubble. Quil stumbled after, turning back once. But the Empress and Musa had disappeared into the wreckage of the falling palace.

  12

  Sirsha

  Sirsha lay atop a tree branch, gazing at the wide blue sky through the canopy. Her mother stared down, stern as ever. But her face held none of the hatred Sirsha remembered from the day she was cast out of her Kin.

  Come back to me, little one, her mother whispered. I miss you.

  Sirsha tried to move her mouth. Tried to say I miss you too, Ma. But a rushing filled her ears, like an immense cataract, only distorted somehow. She grasped her head, staring dully as her mother waited for her response. “Sirsha,” her mother said. “Wake up.”

  Sirsha opened her eyes to a sky set aflame. Her ears rang with the screams of injured people, and her clothes were stained with blood—her own, she realized with a wince. A glass shard the size of her thumb was embedded into the soft flesh above her hip. Shaking, she tore off a strip of her cloak and yanked out the glass, not bothering to muffle her scream.

  She bound the wound quickly and rolled to her side, growling as the debris that littered the street cut into her arm, gawping at the catastrophe before her.

  Navium collapsed before her eyes. The docks were a solid wall of flame. If the wind hadn’t warned Sirsha when it did, she’d have been roasting on a mass funeral pyre with hundreds of others.

  All those families. Joyful only a minute ago.

  Something heavy and dark swooped overhead, illuminated for a moment. A Kegari Sail. She’d seen one before, long ago, when she was still tracking for her Kin. Magic keeps them aloft, her mother had told her. Wind magic.

  She’d later puzzle over why the Kegari were dropping bombs on an empire thousands of miles from their homeland. The knowledge of what that thing above her was, of what it could do, brought her staggering to her feet. She stumbled through streets carved in new, deadly ways by Kegari missiles, stepping over dolls and dancing shoes, food that would never be eaten, skin that would never be warm.

  She ran until the merchant harbor was well behind her. A telltale whoosh of a Sail flying overhead, the buzz of a missile falling, and Sirsha knew she had to get out of Navium—out of the Empire. Whenever and wherever the Kegari attacked, they left only death in their wake.

  Think! An overland path out of here would leave her in a countryside swarming with refugees and Kegari troops within days if not hours. Besides which, the killer’s trail led to the sea. Going overland would delay her mission by months if the Kegari seized the nearby ports.

  Even considering an impediment to her mission made her oath coin itch. She had to follow the killer.

  She needed a ship small and fast enough that it wouldn’t be noticed by Kegari air patrols, but strong enough to handle a sea voyage.

  Of course, those thieving bastards had bombed the military and merchant docks first. They weren’t stupid. Judging from the flames rising in the south, the Kegari had destroyed the docks where the pleasure boats were moored too.

  They couldn’t have gotten every vessel in the port. There were too many docks. Fishing boats, smuggling ships, a moldering log. There had to be something she could steal.

  A memory surfaced: the city of Sadh more than a year ago. Shut down, just like Navium was, because the Martial Empress was visiting. Sirsha had wanted to go to her favorite fishy, but the Masks at the dock sent everyone packing. The ship they were guarding had no flag. No markings at all, other than a screaming bird as its figurehead.

  Now that Sirsha considered, she realized what that boat must have been. A safeguard. An exit in case the Empress needed to scarper and couldn’t get out by land.

  If she had a boat in Sadh, she’d have one here. Probably in an unusual place. A smaller but well-guarded dock.

  Like the one she’d seen near her inn, where a couple of Masks had been loitering.

  The wind shoved her south, as if to say: Finally, you figured it out. Halfwit.

  Of course, she still had to steal the damned thing. From a pair of Masks, no less. And that’s if the boat was still there.

  Ah well, she’d figure it out as she went. Like usual. At least she’d grabbed her pack.

  The pitted cobbles smoothed out, and warehouses gave way to fountains and wide boulevards, still intact.

  “Run!” Sirsha shouted as residents tumbled from their homes, bleary-eyed and confused. “Flee the city! It’s under attack!”

  The fire at the cothon was so enormous that despite the cold, sweat poured down Sirsha’s back. Finally, when she thought her lungs would burst, she caught the glimmer of ocean ahead. It glowed like lava, reflecting the massive fire at the pleasure boat docks. The smoke was so thick that Sirsha had to crouch beneath the fug to keep from choking to death.

  She really did pick the most skies-forsaken jobs.

  When she broke free of Navium’s buildings, she headed for the small dock she’d seen earlier. Both Masks guarding it were dead, their faces torn to shreds. The air around felt strange and warped, but Sirsha ignored it; she hadn’t been hired to avenge the Masks. She raced up the dock, heedless of anything but getting to the vessel, cursing in relief when the two-sailed shabka came into view. EF II was emblazoned on the side.

  The captain appeared too, a broad-shouldered man who looked like he could knock Sirsha over with one swipe of his massive paw. He lumbered to the edge of the gangplank, eyes wild, a scim in one hand and a wet handkerchief in the other to protect him from the billowing smoke.

  “Who the bleeding hells are you?”

  “Ah,” Sirsha rasped, coughing. “I’ve come from—from the palace.” Guilt nibbled at her, but she needed out of here. The Empress probably had a million paths to escape. Besides, if she was running from the Empire at the first sign of trouble, she wasn’t much of a ruler. “I’ve an—urgent mission. The Empress said you must take me.”

  As far as lies went, it wasn’t one of her stronger ones. Still, the captain nodded. “Show me the order and we’ll be on our way.” He put out his hand expectantly.

  “You think she had time to write me an order in this chaos? Just take me on the fastest route out of here or else—or else all is lost.”

  The captain peered at her. “You don’t even know where we’re going?”

  Sirsha scoffed. “I couldn’t possibly tell you until after we left, in case there are spies among your crew.”

  “Crew?” The captain narrowed his eyes and nodded to the aft of the shabka. “This ship is powered by a Mehbahnese ore engine. It doesn’t need a crew. Who—”

  He went suddenly, deathly quiet. A second later, blood poured from his mouth. Sirsha saw the thin blade embedded in his throat just in time to duck as another passed over her shoulder and into the captain’s heart. He toppled forward off the gangplank and dropped like a stone into the shallow waters of the Southern Sea.

  “Dilitali unsiva va tuus!”

  Kegari. When Sirsha’s mother had her track a Kegari magicsmither years ago, she’d spent weeks in the mountains at the arse-end of the Southern Continent. Sirsha recognized the language, though she couldn’t decipher the meaning.

  But as both raiders were running at her in full armor with teeth bared and swords flashing, she didn’t exactly need a translation.

  “Va tuus, beh!”

  Sirsha ducked below the ship’s rail and crab-walked toward one of the masts. She could take on a Martial soldier or three, and Roost rats were nothing. But she knew little about Kegari fighting tactics. Judging by the skin-curdling screams coming from the city, she’d rather not find out.