There’s only one way to find out. I adjust my radio, trying to pick up on another channel. “You at vector one-ten. 4,000 feet. Speak fast or we will open fire.”
I try a bunch of frequencies and get only static and jumbled conversation.
My finger flicks to the trigger.
They rise higher, faster.
“Prepare to engage,” I tell Cyar and Trigg, and we’re all ready to pounce, the beginning of a new war.
Against Landore.
But then an elegant voice fills my ear, slightly muffled. “This is the Royal Air Force, Lion’s Paw squadron. Looks like you lot need a hand. Copy?”
Ecstatic relief floods me. “Knight!”
“How now, Lieutenant?” Captain Merlant responds, sounding far too calm for the chaos on every side. “You didn’t think you could go after the Nahir without us, did you?”
“You’re already halfway across Resya,” Greycap’s familiar voice chimes in. “Took us a bit to catch up!”
An entire Landorian squadron of twelve planes approaches, and the familiar voices from Havenspur are the miraculous fuel we need to keep going.
“No time,” I say quickly. “Cover my second flight, would you? They’re getting pummeled.”
“On it, Charm,” Merlant says, and the Landorian planes swing past us, lions blazing on their flanks, olive-green wings murky in the shadows. They plunge into the maelstrom, calling out strategy to the struggling Moonstrike pilots, and I check my watch desperately.
Battling these enemy planes has cost us too much time. The regiment is probably already mobilizing, aware of our strike. We’ve lost any element of surprise.
“Fox, Thief, we’re getting the guns,” I say, “and then we’ll come back and grab whoever else we can for the regiment.”
I expect a protest. A logical one from Cyar, and a stubborn one from Trigg. But instead they both affirm quickly over the radio, willing to follow me into this hell, and something inside me, somewhere in the hollow space, feels almost good again.
I don’t deserve their loyalty.
But I love it.
Throttles opened, we careen ahead for the battery coordinates. They’re camouflaged from the air, but if Arrin’s girl is right, then we should be on top of them within a few minutes. Dropping low, it’s Trigg who spots them first. They’re exactly where they should be. Giant square shadows. One by one, we drop our bombs and the shadows explode to brilliant flaming torches in the darkness, a sign to Arrin’s divisions that we made it.
They can push out.
Finally.
My breaths come rapid from both exhaustion and thrill. In the distance, Moonstrike and Lion’s Paw pilots still battle, and we pick up a few of our Safire fighters, heading for the regiment. A Landorian chases off a Resyan trying to tail us as we locate three roads below, all funneling into one town—a town which now has tanks and anti-aircraft guns infesting it. It looms beneath our wings, hiding lethal power. One well-placed hit and any one of us could be flaming down like Ollie.
I won’t think about it. Not with Cyar and Trigg on either side of me.
Not when we’ve already come this far.
I throttle back, my gunsight aimed, cannons ready, bracing for the rattling assault on my senses. All of my leftover arsenal spent at once, wherever I can aim. Tanks. Trucks. Artillery. We have one chance to make this count and do damage, and I’m going to make it count like hell.
“When I start hammering,” I order, “you follow.”
There’s quick affirmation over the radio.
We’re flying right at the town now. The shapes of soldiers appear in the growing darkness. Flares lit. Exhaust from vehicles and idling armoured carriers. The air’s quiet around our three planes though. No whistling. No flak. Below, no tank turrets spin, training on us. It’s silent. The calm of dusk.
300 feet.
200 feet.
I open fire, my cannons bursting to life. Red trails strike the sea of metal below. They light up a tank. A truck after that, then two anti-aircraft guns. One after another in a ferocious spree of fragmenting shells and bullets. The tiny soldiers stagger, fall. They’re running everywhere, artillery bursting apart around them. Cyar and Trigg sweep to the left and right of me, the other Moonstrike pilots farther afield. The earth hurtles by and all I can do is press the trigger.
Don’t think.
It’s glorious. Pure victory, all of it licking through my veins, the acrid gunpowder like a sweet scent of revenge. Payback for days of hell, all those souls extinguished like cigarettes. It’s the rattling bite of justice.
Here.
Now.
Alive and raging and powerful.
Then it’s back up into the sky. Cyar and Trigg follow, the silence over the radio a testament to our adrenaline. Only rattling metal and propellers. We’re far from the other flight and Lion’s Paw, and it’s pitch-black out now. No landmarks to spot.
I glance down at my map.
I was never good at this part.
“Hey Charm.” It’s Cyar. “Looks like we might make it back to Army Group North after all.” When I don’t answer immediately, he says, “Remember you showed me the Fifth Army’s lines, where Lightstorm is stationed? Northeast past the regiment? You were right. We could make a run for it.”
He’s lying. I never checked the map beforehand—he did. But he’s too good for me, back there fiddling with his compass and finding the coordinates. He’s giving me a gift. A chance to look even better in front of Trigg and the Moonstrike pilots.
“Right,” I say. “Hang on.” I turn the radio, pushing it to its greatest limit. “Control, do you read? This is Moonstrike, heading vector one-three-zero at 4,000 feet. Do you have a runway for us?”
No one answers.
I try again. “Control, this is Moonstrike. Do you have a runway for us?”
It’s a long shot, but then—“Understood, Squadron Leader. Airfield will be cleared for you.”
A flare shoots up in the darkness, illuminating the sky about ten miles ahead.
We’ve done it. We’ve broken out of the encirclement and run right across the Resyan lines. Behind us, flashes of artillery brighten the sky like ghostly lightning. Arrin’s division. No heavy batteries are left to disintegrate their lines, their march made infinitely easier, and the torched Resyan guns still glow luminously in the darkness. Our victory.
Ahead, the runway is a real one, a flare path waiting. Our fighters descend, greedy for earth, for safety, and it’s not until I’ve rolled to a stop that my heart finally begins to slow its relentless gallop.
And when I step out of my cockpit, it isn’t the usual bone-weary silence that greets me. Cheers erupt on every side, from the mechanics and soldiers and officers. They’re clapping Cyar on the shoulder, Trigg, the other pilots. They’re cheering for us, because we just led the impossible charge that will save our entire advance.
We did it.
And for the first time in weeks, my headache surrenders to elation.
29
AURELIA
Madelan
The numbers from the tragedy to the north of us trickle back in defeat. Gone is the flurry of excitement when the encirclement was first announced in the papers. Gone are the bustling uniforms waving communiqués as if they’re already Savient’s white flags of surrender.
It’s the death of Rahian’s army. The heart of his best divisions sucked dry. And then the true blow arrives—the Landorians have joined the fight against Resya. They’ve betrayed their fellow king, their squadrons linking with the Safire’s, their army pushing inland from Thurn.
It’s a shock to all in the palace. A final crushing blow to morale. This entire Safire invasion was in pure defiance of the League’s ruling, and now the Landorians have taken their side? Given the necessary support for Safire victory?
I want to shatter something. In particular, this impossible Savien-Landorian alliance which has betrayed Resya entirely. But as I stand on the highest palace floor, watching
the little specks of aeroplanes above the farthest mountain range, some plummeting in smoke, I’m faced with the imminent arrival of my own personal reckoning.
I have to get back to Lark’s house. If there’s incriminating evidence left there, I need to find it before the Safire—or anyone else—beats me to it. Up until now, it was a quietly abandoned home. Forgotten. Now it has a suspicious smashed window and there’s a very real possibility that someone else might know of its existence—and relish the idea of ruining my mother in one fell swoop.
Havis was right.
The consequences of these Resyan secrets would destroy us all.
Tirza joins me as I head out into the frantic city, and I plan to press her once we’re there. She’s Nahir, and her earlier alarm said enough, the thing centering her fear on Lark’s house. I’m suddenly determined to hear if there’s a version of Mother’s story she has heard. Perhaps only in snippets. Perhaps more myth than fact. The fighter who became a queen. But I need to know, before I go to the League and make my case.
On all sides, people scramble to ready for the inevitable assault on Madelan, shouts echoing, distant heavy guns growling like endless thunder in the noon sun.
I count thirteen aeroplanes breaking north.
Tirza’s hand grips my arm, cautious, but I don’t stop, determined to get to the house. We’ve entered the congested thoroughfare and the sight that greets us is truly overwhelming, even for beleaguered Madelan. Four tanks grind up the hill as civilians dodge out of the way. Uniformed men litter the road, collapsed and wounded on the cement in crumpled defeat.
“Stars,” Tirza breathes. “The front has finally reached us!”
It’s not her words that stir my pulse. It’s the whisper of terror in her voice. We hurry down the sidewalk, the road at a complete standstill as the tattered army retreats in from the mountains. Parents shriek at children to stay close. Anti-aircraft guns lurch through market squares. Iron shoes echo as officers ride past, their exhausted horses lathered in sweat and bleeding from the bit. They’re shouting at everyone to make way, while the men on the ground holler at them to get back to the front and defend Madelan. Tempers simmer and roil. Someone’s crying, saying it’s all over, that the city will burn like the ones in the reels. No one seems to know if the war is over or if the worst is yet to come.
I try to ask a passing soldier, one who seems young enough he might consider me a friend. I say I’m from the radio program, but he only hobbles forward, his left boot blood-soaked. “I know nothing,” he says, over and over as I persist. “I have to get home. Please. Go away!”
It’s an expression of shame.
Of defeat.
“At least tell me this,” I beg urgently, “did you see atrocities at the front? We have photographs, sir. But we also need a witness statement.”
The boy stops abruptly. He looks at me fully now, and I see how young he truly is. Perhaps only a year or two older than me. Lips chapped from sun. Haunted brown eyes ringed by sleepless shadows. “What do you mean?”
“Prisoners shot in the back, tortured. Anything that would be considered illegal.”
Beside me, Tirza has her notebook and pen out, ready to record. A journalist’s quick instinct. Even my words sound too calm to my own ears. Our endless writings have removed the stomach-lurching sting of them.
The soldier swallows nervously, and at once, I realize why he’s hesitant. His side won’t be winning this war. The Safire will, and he doesn’t want to make an accusation that might easily be called a lie—and make him worthy of a noose.
“Your word will bring good,” I assure him, because it will. When I present all of this darkness before the League. Proof of what their alliance with Savient has yielded. Photographs of the faces they dismiss as mere numbers, personal stories to offset the clinical reports they view from their realm of luxurious dinner parties and peaceful, unbroken sleep.
It’s the end for the Commander. The last campaign he’ll lead. Perhaps the last Safire campaign entirely.
I’ll make sure of it.
The boy hobbles nearer, away from the tide of the city street. “The Safire had no place to hold prisoners,” he explains. “Their advance divisions were moving too fast. Easier to shoot prisoners.” He pauses, eyes darting to the road. “But they weren’t the only ones.”
Tirza’s pen halts against the paper.
“Go on,” I encourage.
“We exchanged fire with Nahir insurgents twice,” he admits under his breath. “So did my brother’s unit, in the east.”
I stare at him, confused. “Were they targeting you or the Safire?”
Tirza still isn’t writing.
I don’t dare turn to look at her.
“At first we weren’t sure,” the boy replies. “They belong to no kingdom. But then I heard … I heard they blew out the bridges. The ones that stopped the entire damn Safire advance in our favour.”
My blood turns cold. The Nahir made this decisive move to trap the Safire? That will only look worse for Rahian, defended by the revolutionaries he claims he has nothing to do with. I want to interrogate Tirza on what she knows, but first I also need to assure this boy—who looks as if Resya has fallen down at his feet, as if he’s the one to be blamed—that he’s given me something that will matter.
“Thank you,” I tell him firmly. “You’ve been brave and—”
A sudden roar cuts me off. A building far down the hill explodes, disappearing into dust. When the smoke clears, an entire corner has disintegrated away, retching its contents onto the street below—furniture, glass … bodies.
I stare in horror, sirens wailing forlornly across the city.
“Artillery,” Tirza hisses, and her steel hand grabs my arm. I have no time to say goodbye to my soldier, or even get his name, because she’s dragging me down the nearest alley, circling back for the palace. There’s no choice. She understands this danger far better than me.
We race round a bend and sprint ourselves right into an overflowing hospital. The courtyard out front—what was once a plaza and trickling fountain—is filled with cots of injured men, the rest left stranded on the cobblestone. Bodies torn in different ways. Missing limbs, missing faces. Their raw pleas are agonized, trapped outside the building, exposed and vulnerable as a wall of shellfire nears.
One soldier kneels over an injured body. “Doctor!” he shouts, his hand on a neck wound, but the doctor doesn’t appear.
Safely indoors.
Twisting on his knees, the soldier spins, searches, lands on me. “Please! Hold this!”
His distraught expression is too much. The distant propellers are a drumbeat of what’s to come, but I won’t stand by and do nothing, and this is the least I can do.
I can offer my hands.
Harnessing my fear, I drop down beside the soldier. The wounded man gasps the way Lark did, blood sputtering from his neck, forcing me to stare at my shame. He looks like my father—brown beard, refined face. I decide he is a father. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It’s true to me and I let my hand be guided to the wet bandage, feel my fingers touch the mush of skin and warmth.
I don’t allow myself to be sick.
“Hold this tight,” the soldier orders, then he’s bolting for the hospital as anti-aircraft guns stammer overhead. A few streets away, inky smoke rises.
I hold on to the bandage, terrified to even breathe, not wanting to kill another person. The man stares at the sky, not at me, and I’m glad. I don’t want him to see me, in case this doesn’t work, and I do it wrong, his blood escaping my fingers like the sea finding shore.
When the soldier appears again, he has a young nurse who’s risked venturing outside. She stabs a needle into the injured one’s arm. “What happened to him?” she asks, removing my hands from the wound, bandaging it up herself.
“Strafed by a damn Safire plane,” the soldier replies hoarsely. “We were trying to get into the city, didn’t fire a thing at them, but they still shot us up…” He tu
rns to me. “Get to safety, miss. They have no heart!”
The nurse hits her fist against the bloody concrete—her bitter frustration a mirror of my own—then she gently gathers up the wounded man by his chest, the soldier grabbing his legs, and they rush inside. I find myself kneeling alone, sticky red on my hands, reality pulsing in my palms.
Strafed by a Safire plane.
Shot while in retreat.
Tirza hauls me to my feet, and her anxious face is level with mine. “You’ve done what you can, Ali. We need to go.”
I shrug from her touch. “It’s not enough.”
Someone weeps nearby, blinded by thick bandages across his eyes. He’s trying his best to crawl for the door, no one there to help him. And what of the camp? When artillery comes for the airfield, how can it ever avoid the people there? The overwhelming sorrow in me ignites to a flame of pure temper, wicked and dark and consuming. Fury at this war the Commander began for his nation’s greed. This war Rahian prolonged for his stubborn pride, and this war the North has now condoned. I gaze up at the wide sky, and it’s like a realm I’ve never seen before—too big, too treacherous—and I hate it at once. Hate its giant power.
No one ever told me this secret thing, that to be small is not to be helpless.
It’s to be angry.
Recognition alights in Tirza’s gaze and she grips my shoulders. “Ali, I know how you feel, but we can’t do anything here. Those Safire planes won’t care who you are when they’re above our heads. They won’t care that you’re a princess.” She winces at the pop of flak, closer yet. “You have so much more to do, with the power you hold, and your uncle would kill me if I let you waste your life for a few Resyan soldiers. Not here. Not like this.”
I stare at her, confused. “Why does Uncle Tanek care?”
“Tanek?”
“My uncle.”
Tirza stares back a moment, guilt suddenly suffusing her expression. The pop-pop-pop is more insistent now, the whine of sirens spiraling across the city, everyone running for shelter. Swiftly, she hauls me onwards, down a narrow alley, the cracked walls blotting sun, our boots heavy on the stone.
Storm from the East Page 21
