“That was my sister’s problem. She understood dragons and plants and ledgers, but she didn’t understand people. That is why she is dead. I won’t repeat her mistake. Instead, I’ll build a base of power and control from within the government, and then I will use it to remove Actus Thorn myself.”
Vera glanced at Osyrus Ward, then back at Kira.
“Don’t worry about Osyrus. He wants the same thing that we do.”
“Why is that, exactly?”
The old man began twisting two strands of his greasy beard together, forming a glistening rope of dirty hair.
“I spent many years enjoying the fruits of a mutually beneficial arrangement with Mercer Domitian. I created the tools he needed to rule his empire, and in return he provided me with unlimited access to the materials I required to conduct my experiments.”
Vera didn’t like the ways in which Thorn had described Osyrus Ward’s laboratory. And she didn’t like how vague the old man was about his work.
“Materials. Define those.”
“Oh, dragon oil, for one. Precious minerals from the kilns. Exotic imports from beyond Taggarstan—rare insects and birds and such.” He paused. Smiled. “You can never have too many specimens, Vera. Never.”
He released his beard. Blew out a sigh.
“Sadly, I do not enjoy the same relationship with Actus Thorn. He has taken my armada, which is expected. But he gives nothing back to me in return. And when I do inevitably provide him this new engine, I have no confidence that he will suddenly become more generous. He is a taker. He knows no other way to behave. I would prefer a different arrangement with the ruler of Balaria. And I know that Kira will remember who her friends are once she has achieved her goal.”
“This amounts to treason,” Vera said. “We could all be put to death because of this conversation alone.”
“True.” Kira shrugged. “But if it goes to shit, you and I will simply fly away on the skyship that Actus Thorn just gave us permission to build.”
“What?”
“Of course, I plan to use my skyship for joy rides once the people of Balaria are fed and Actus Thorn is dealt with, but if the presence of an escape craft will stop you from being such a pest while I work, then I embrace the dual purpose.”
“How will we fly away on a ship with no engine?”
Osyrus swatted the question away. “We’ll use the new engine I plan to build. For all of Thorn’s irritations, he was correct. We cannot rely on dragon oil alone to power the skyships. We need a new type of Kor—one that is more compact and powerful than the massive Cog in the middle of the city. The research that has come back from Almira has given me what I need to build one. The only uncertainty is time, but I expect it will take no more than a … moon’s turn.” His Almiran accent was perfect. “The new engine will be far more efficient, especially on the smaller ship I am building for the empress.”
Vera narrowed her eyes. “You said the prototype engine would go to Almira.”
“One of them will. I have the resources to build two. I didn’t feel it necessary to share this information with Thorn, of course.”
“What about fuel?”
“Do not worry. Not only will Kira’s skyship be a spectacle to behold, but in comparison to the oil-hungry engines of the current fleet, it will require mere sips of the substance to stay in the air.”
“And in smaller amounts, dragon oil can be acquired in many ways,” Kira added. She turned to Osyrus Ward. “Tell Vera about the black markets of Burz-al-dun that we were discussing the other day.”
Vera tightened her grip on her dagger. She did not like the idea of Kira and Osyrus meeting alone to collaborate—especially when they were exploring criminal ways to undermine one of the most merciless and jingoistic military leaders in the realm of Terra.
Osyrus Ward stirred from the corner, moving to the main table. Vera moved as well, so that she could nick the old man’s jugular with a flick of a wrist if he attempted to touch Kira.
“Nobody in the energy ministry likes to admit this fact,” Osyrus Ward explained, “but the Kor Cog’s monthly output of refined dragon oil is not always consistent with expected yields. For example, last month, the Kor’s output was one point two percent less than projected. The month before, it was point seven percent lower. Emperor Mercer attributed these discrepancies to mechanical inefficiencies of the machine because the alternative—that small amounts of oil are being systematically skimmed and smuggled out of Balaria—would have meant his supposedly perfect checkpoint system was imperfect. The man was a visionary, but arrogance was his critical flaw. It clouded his vision. Now that he is gone, the problem remains because Actus is too preoccupied with the Lysterian rebellion to care about a little oil missing from the ledgers.”
“One point two percent,” Vera repeated. “How many barrels is that?”
“About three hundred. And, as requested, I’m building Kira’s ship to be an explorer’s vessel. Extremely lightweight when compared to the hulking monstrosities that Actus Thorn is taking to war. Fifty barrels will be enough fuel to keep her in the air for weeks.”
“See?” Kira turned to Vera. “All we need to do is rob some criminals and we’ll have all the dragon oil that we need for you to stop acting like a scared mother hen.”
“Why rob anyone? If we need oil, surely we can purchase it legally through back channels of some kind.”
“Not anymore, I’m afraid.” Ward massaged his knuckles. “Actus Thorn is stockpiling every documented barrel of oil for the skyships. The night lanterns have been running on pine-scented tubes of goat fat for weeks now. For appearances. But I assure you, the only way to acquire the amount of dragon oil that the ship requires is to steal it from someone who has already stolen it.”
He turned to Kira.
“I must warn you, Empress, that procuring oil from the criminal underbelly of Balaria will not be easy. We cannot use customs agents—many of them are working for one of the crime syndicates of Taggarstan. And if we used soldiers from the regular army, Actus Thorn would simply take whatever we found for himself.”
Kira frowned.
“But do not lose heart,” Osyrus continued. “I have recently been informed that a local merchant of fine silks is one of the principal procurers of contraband dragon oil in Burz-al-dun. And he is preparing to send a rather large shipment to Taggarstan on the next full moon.”
“Why the full moon?” Vera asked.
“That is typically the best time for the ships to navigate the Bay of Broken Clocks,” Osyrus said. “I am told he has overextended himself quite a bit with the size of this shipment, and can only afford a comparatively light crew of hired killers guarding it.” Osyrus smiled. Turned to Vera. “If a certain highly trained and capable individual were to lend her assistance, I believe we can take this oil for ourselves.”
“Highly trained individual,” Kira repeated. “Vera, yes. That’s perfect. What does she need to do?”
“The first step is finding out exactly who this silk merchant is. Thus far, he has been able to conceal his identity, despite my inquiries. In time, I am sure I could discover him, but if we wait too long, we’ll lose our chance to steal this month’s shipment. I am told that he has been using a tavern in the fourth district called Aeternita’s Grace to run his expanding black-market operations. If Vera were to visit this tavern and … compel a name from one of the patrons, that is all I will need to suss out the location of his oil stockpile.”
“What does a name get you that you don’t already have?”
“Names are powerful tools in Burz-al-dun. They appear on property records. Land deeds. Dock leases. And the seal system makes it difficult to use a fake name for anything meaningful. This explains why this smuggler values his anonymity so highly.”
Vera chewed on that. The logic made sense, but somehow that made her more uneasy. Osyrus Ward had plotted all of this far in advance. Vera got the feeling that she and Kira were both cogs in whatever larger machine he was buildi
ng. And now they were beginning to spin. She did not like it.
“Kira. Robbing from oil smugglers is not the type of work that—”
“This is an excellent plan,” Kira said, interrupting her. “Vera will retrieve the name tonight. That will be all, Osyrus. We’ll speak more later.”
The royal engineer stood. “Finding smugglers and depriving them of oil is relatively straightforward, Empress. But your part in this coup is mired in the swamp of Balarian politics. If you’d like, I can arrange to have a number of salient tomes brought to your chambers that might provide some insight and … inspiration as to how Actus Thorn might be removed.”
“That will not be necessary.”
Ward frowned. “We have no army. Toppling a military dictator like Actus Thorn through political maneuvers alone will be a complicated endeavor.”
“Politics are complicated. People are simple. Do not worry, Osyrus. I know what I’m doing.”
Osyrus bowed. “Very good, Empress.”
Kira waited until Osyrus was gone before speaking again. “Please don’t give me another lecture about what a widow does and doesn’t do.”
“If I felt you understood the scope of my duties, I wouldn’t keep explaining them to you,” said Vera. “I am here to protect you, not serve as your personal enforcer.”
“Oh, please. My Papyrian aunt is infamous for using her widows as assassins. Don’t pretend it’s not true. I’ve heard the same stories about Shoshone Kalara Sun that you have.”
“I am not Shoshone. And you don’t need to follow in your aunt’s bloody footsteps.”
“Yes, I do.” Kira’s face turned serious. “Look, Vera, a bodyguard may have been all that I needed in Almira, safe behind the walls of Castle Malgrave, doing nothing but feasting and drinking and screwing third-born sons of minor small lords. But things are different here. I want to do more than just … exist.”
“You can’t do more than exist if you’re killed while I am stealing dragon oil, and unable to protect you.”
“I don’t need more protection,” Kira continued. “There are a hundred Horellian guards in this palace alone who are dedicated to keeping me alive.”
“They’re men,” Vera said. “That means they can’t be trusted.”
“You trusted Silas Bershad.”
Vera scowled. Kira wasn’t entirely right about that, but she wasn’t wrong either.
“I needed his help to get to you,” she said. “And speaking of Silas, he murdered eight Horellian guards before killing Mercer. They’re hardly invincible.”
“And you would have stopped him, I suppose?”
“If protecting Mercer had been my responsibility, I would have avoided the situation entirely.”
“Listen, Vera. I appreciate your perspective and your advice. You should always feel free to bring your misgivings to me. But I did not escape from Almira just to be shoved into another silk prison by Actus Thorn. I am going to take control of my life, one way or another. You can disagree with me, but you cannot talk me out of it. I know there are risks, but I am going to take them.”
Vera gave her a resigned look.
“You’re disappointed in me,” Kira said.
“I want you safe, Ki. What you’re planning. What you’re doing. It is the opposite.”
“Would you rather I go back to all the drinking and screwing? Become the perfect partner to Ganon and his life of debauchery, then die a couple of decades from now in a puddle of my own juniper-liquor-soaked vomit?”
“There is a middle ground between drinking yourself to death slowly, and getting yourself executed tomorrow for treason.”
“There is no middle ground for what I’m trying to accomplish.”
“What is that, exactly? You say that you want more power for yourself. But what will you do with it once it’s yours?”
Assuming we don’t get killed in the process, Vera thought to herself.
Kira stared at Vera with her icy turquoise eyes. Her face turned serious.
“I thought Almira was a broken country,” she said. “A bunch of muddy roads doing a shit job of connecting a bunch of savage warlords who brutalize commoners in order to finance the next raid on their neighbor’s land so they can afford more debauched orgies inside their decrepit castles. Meanwhile, the commoners hunker down, praying to forest gods and poorly made mud totems to grant them one more day of survival in their dragon-surrounded hovels. Of course I led a miserable existence. How could anyone be happy in that kind of place? In my heart, I believed Balaria would be better.”
She sighed.
“But now that I’m here—surrounded by running water and ticking clocks and flying ships—I’ve realized that this place is no better. The only difference between a Balarian minister and an Almiran warlord is that Balarians wash their hair more frequently and they bend the wills of their subjects with taxes instead of swords. Almira isn’t broken. The entirety of Terra is broken. And I am going to fix it.”
“Fix every country in Terra?” Vera asked. “How?”
“One step at a time.”
“That is not an answer.”
Kira turned back to the Kor Cog. “I know what I’m doing, and removing Actus Thorn from power is the first step. But look, if you don’t want to get the fuel, don’t. I’m more than happy to proceed with my current resources. You’re the one who’s so concerned about the consequences.”
Vera let out a long, slow breath. Recognized in Kira’s tone that she wouldn’t be able to talk her out of this. And she had made the mistake of positioning herself as a source of discipline once before—all it had accomplished was a missing princess and a murderous trek across Terra. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. They were in this together, no matter what.
But beyond her widow’s duty and her loyalty, Vera had never heard Kira talk this way. And in all her years perched in the hallways and chambers of kings and queens and emperors and lords, Vera had never heard any of them point out the flaws of a system that benefited them. Even her sister, Ashlyn, had been focused on using the Almiran government—fractured and corrupt as it was—to further her own goals. She had no desire to change the system. Maybe Kira was different. Better.
“I will help you, Ki.”
“Good.” Kira stood up. “You should leave soon—the checkpoints to District Four take forever.”
5
JOLAN
Almira, Dainwood Province
“Where you from, boy?” Willem asked, stuffing a wad of the chicken into his mouth. They’d had chicken for breakfast each morning, three days running.
Jolan struggled to swallow the meat in his mouth, which was so dry it might as well have been wood. Sten—the group’s cook—was not very good at his job.
“My name’s Jolan,” he said, after finally getting the bite down his throat.
“Jolan. Boy. Whatever. Where are you from?”
“Otter Rock.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s a village on the Atlas Coast,” Oromir said. Somehow, he’d already managed to finish his portion of the scorched chicken. Jolan suspected that he might have hidden it somewhere out of sight. That was the only explanation for how quickly he consumed the awful food. “About two days west of Black Pine, at the fork of the Atlas’s northern tributary.”
“That’s right,” Jolan said, surprised.
“How the fuck do you know some tiny village that far up north by name?” Willem asked.
Oromir shrugged. “I like maps.”
“Likes maps,” Willem repeated. “You’re an odd one, Oromir.”
“I know.”
“My father died at Black Pine,” Cumberland said, eyes on the embers of the fire.
“Mine, too,” said Sten, who was busy making a totem out of clovers and leftover chicken bones. “Along with all my uncles. Cedar Wallace got the glory and the stories about his vanguard charge. Nobody mentions the Dainwood wardens who spent all night crawling through the woods on the Balarian’s flank so they
could launch an attack at the same time he charged.”
“That was important for the battle?” Jolan asked.
Morgan had made him study the histories of Almira—and the realm of Terra—but he’d glossed over the logistics and details of military strategy. They were irrelevant to an alchemist’s work.
“Hitting their flank split their forces. Turned the battle. But afterward, the Dainwood men were cut off from the main army.” Cumberland dug into his own totem pouch. Handed Sten a small, blue rock. “Every warden with a jaguar mask who fought that day got shoved down the river by the clock-worshippers.”
“Cedar’s charge at Black Pine will probably get mentioned less and less now,” Jolan said without really thinking. Everyone turned to him. “After Floodhaven and all.”
“Yeah,” Cumberland said. “Getting toasted by a witch queen tends to take precedence when it comes to fireside stories.”
Jolan was still trying to puzzle out what truly happened at Floodhaven. None of Cumberland’s men had been there, but they all seemed to agree that Ashlyn Malgrave had killed Cedar Wallace during a duel by expelling lightning from her hands. Afterward, she’d massacred his army with sorcery. That was obviously inaccurate—Almirans labeled anything they didn’t understand as sorcery, including the work of alchemists. But Jolan couldn’t figure out what natural phenomenon was at the core of the story. A man getting struck by lightning in the middle of a duel seemed statistically unlikely to the point of being impossible. And even if there had been a lightning strike—or, somehow, multiple strikes within a short time—that still didn’t explain the decimated army. So, what happened?
Given the available information, there was no way to know. The farther Jolan traveled looking for answers, the more questions he seemed to find.
“Back to Umbrik’s Glade today, then?” Willem asked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “There’s a baker there named Elandra with some very pretty freckles, and I owe her a visit. Now that Jolan’s taken care of my, uh, situation, we’ll have lots to do together.”
“We’re not going directly,” Cumberland said. “Need to stop at a mill to the east, first.”
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