Breon watched as the empress strode up and down the quarterdeck, her hair seething in the wind, barking orders at the helmsman and the first mate, muttering curses at someone named Latham Strangward. It was as if she were in a personal grudge fight against the sea.
She knew what she was doing—that was clear enough. Her crew clung to every order like it was a lifeline that would pull them out of the storm and into the blue.
Her Highness was clinging to the rail, eyes closed as if she could pretend she was somewhere else. Breon leaned close, shouting to be heard over the wind and waves. “If she goes down, let go and jump as far as you can so you don’t get pulled under. Then swim like the Breaker’s on your tail so you won’t get tangled in the lines.”
She nodded, so he knew she’d heard him, but said nothing. That was when he remembered that Her Highness couldn’t swim.
All right, then.
“Hold my hand,” he said, prying one of her hands loose from the rail and gripping it. “Don’t let go. When I jump, jump with me.”
She gave him that look of hers and said, “Save yourself, busker. I would prefer not to be responsible for your drowning.”
“If I drown, nobody will miss me,” he said. It was true, now that Aubrey was gone. “In your case, the fate of the realms hangs in the balance.”
That wrung a damp smile from her. “If I die here, busker, write me a song. Legends live longer than actual people.”
Moments later, they were crushed to the deck as if the air were a lead weight pressing down on them. Just as Breon began to worry that he might suffocate, the pressure was gone. They seemed to pop through an invisible wall, leaving the howl of the wind and the crash of the waves on the other side.
The winds that had been filling the sails and straining the lines to the breaking point died away. The Siren glided forward in the sudden silence over a moonlit sea toward an island shrouded in mist and cloud. Overhead, the stars seemed impossibly bright after so many days of gray. Weeping Sister—it must be.
It was not their day to die after all. Maybe. There was a saying Whacks liked to use—“out of the frying pan and into the fire.” Breon wondered if it might apply in this case.
The princess opened her eyes. They looked at each other, rendered speechless, which was rare for him, personally.
As they drew closer, Breon saw the source of the mist: multiple waterfalls cascaded from the cliffs, sending up clouds of steam when they hit the cold ocean. Fumes erupted from fissures, and the mountainsides were lit with sullen orange wherever lava leaked through. The Weeping Sister wept scalding tears.
Three tall ships were moored in the harbor, sails rolled and bound to the masts. Warehouses newly built of raw wood squatted in concentric circles around the quay. Surrounding those was what appeared to be a newborn city, devoted to military and marine purposes—barracks and stables and paddocks, a sprinkling of small stone houses in a uniform gray color.
Beyond the warehouses and stretching up the slope were the ruins of a once-great city, built of timber and stone. Now the roofs had rotted through, the walls had caved in, and stone pillars—monuments to the old gods—had toppled and broken.
And, there, overlooking the harbor, extending higher than anything else on the shore, was a marble palace, apparently still under construction. It seemed to glow in the moonlight, as if the walls couldn’t contain the light within. The center part looked finished, frosted with elaborate carvings of dragons and sea serpents and sirens. Two wings were like broken-off teeth, still ragged at the top, swarming with workers who resembled insects at that distance. Working through the night.
Breon had an affinity for the music of harbor towns—for the discordant clamor of the flotsam and jetsam that accumulate wherever seafarers come ashore to do business and forget their troubles. They were places where ugly rubbed shoulders with uglier, where utility outranked beauty, where new elbowed forward, embarrassed by the old. It was a place for living and dying and making bad decisions of all kinds.
This looked like no harbor town Breon had ever seen. It was as if it had no soul, no memory, no history, no music at its heart. It told no stories. Breon didn’t like it one bit.
On the other hand, Her Highness looked cheerier than she had in days. She was probably encouraged by the prospect of stepping onto solid ground again. She stood, chin up, shoulders back, drinking in the view, as if storing it away for future use.
The helmsman shouted orders to the rowers as the Siren made a graceful turn, coming up alongside the largest of the docks, which was emblazoned with the siren emblem Breon had come to associate with the empress.
The empress descended from the quarterdeck and strode toward them, smiling. “Welcome to Celesgarde,” she said. “You’ll be housed in the palace as my honored guests.” Her purple eyes flicked over them. “I am not surprised that you have an affinity for the sea,” she said to Breon. “You have . . . so many gifts.” Impulsively, she drew him into her arms, so that his face was pressed into her leathers while her other hand toyed with his hair, raising gooseflesh across his back and shoulders. “I have waited so long for this day,” she murmured. “We will be so great together, I promise you.”
What did she mean by that? Was she speaking of some sort of . . . relationship?
Breon’s heart slammed around in his chest, as if it might break through skin and bone. Fear and revulsion shuddered through him by turns, and his magemark seethed and burned. He steeled himself, focused, reaching out, listening for any whisper of song.
When it came, it was hauntingly familiar, as if it was already embedded
