Empire of Storms

by Sarah J. Maas

  Aedion said, “I would have shot you and your runt of a wyvern clean out of the sky if given my way. Be grateful my queen finds you more useful alive.”

  Then he was gone.

  Dorian set the tray within Manon’s reach and watched her sniff at it. She took a slow, cautious bite—as if letting it slide into her healing belly and seeing how it settled there. As if indeed testing it for poison. While she waited, Manon said, “You don’t give orders on this ship?”

  It was a focused effort not to bristle. “You know my circumstances. I am now at the mercy of my friends.”

  “And the Queen of Terrasen is your friend?”

  “There is no one else I’d want guarding my back.” Other than Chaol, but … it was no use even thinking about him, missing him.

  Manon at last took another bite of her fish stew. Then another. And another.

  And he realized she was avoiding speaking to him. Enough so that he asked, “It was your grandmother who did that to you, wasn’t it?”

  Her spoon stilled in the chipped wooden bowl. Slowly, she turned her face toward him. Unreadable, a face crafted of nightmares and midnight fantasies.

  “I’m sorry,” he admitted, “if the cost of saving me that day in Rifthold was … was this.”

  “Find out if my Thirteen are alive, princeling. Do that, and I am yours to command.”

  “Where did you last see them?”

  Nothing. She swallowed another spoonful.

  He pushed, “Were they present when your grandmother did that to you?”

  Her shoulders curved a bit, and she scooped another spoonful of cloudy liquid but didn’t sip. “The cost of Rifthold was the life of my Second. I refused to pay it. So I bought my Thirteen time to run. The moment I swung my sword at my grandmother, my title, my legion, was forfeit. I lost the Thirteen while I fled. I do not know if they are alive, or if they have been hunted down.” Her eyes snapped to his, bright from more than the steam of her stew. “Find them for me. Learn if they live or if they have returned to the Darkness.”

  “We’re in the middle of the ocean. There won’t be news of anything for a while.”

  She went back to eating. “They are all I have left.”

  “Then I suppose you and I are both heirs without crowns.”

  A humorless snort. Her white hair shifted in the sea breeze.

  Dorian rose and walked to the door. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “And—Elide.”

  Again, that name. “Who is she?”

  But Manon was back at her stew. “Just tell Aelin Galathynius that Elide Lochan is alive—and looking for her.”

  The conversation with the king took everything out of her. Once that food was in her belly, once she’d downed more water, Manon lay back in bed and slept.

  And slept.

  And slept.

  The door banged open at one point, and she had the vague recollection of the Queen of Terrasen, then her general-prince, demanding answers about something. Elide, perhaps.

  But Manon had lain there, half awake, unwilling to think or speak. She wondered if she would have stopped bothering to breathe, if her body hadn’t done it all on its own.

  She had not realized how impossible the survival of the Thirteen might indeed have been until she was practically begging Dorian Havilliard to find them for her. Until she had found herself desperate enough to sell her sword for any news of them.

  If they even wanted to serve her after everything. A Blackbeak—and a Crochan.

  And her parents … murdered by her grandmother. They had promised the world a child of peace. And she had let her grandmother hone her into a child of war.

  The thoughts swirled and eddied, sapping her strength, muting colors and sounds. She awoke and saw to her needs when necessary, ate when food was left, but she let that heavy, meaningless sleep take hold.

  Sometimes, Manon dreamed that she was in that room in the Omega, her half sister’s blood on her hands and in her mouth. Sometimes, she stood beside her grandmother, a witch fully grown and not the witchling she’d been at the time, and helped the Matron carve up a handsome, bearded man who begged for her life—his offspring’s life. Sometimes, she flew over a lush green land, the song of a western wind singing her home.

  Often, the dream was that a great cat, pale and speckled like old snow on granite, sat in the cabin with her, its long tail slashing back and forth when it noticed her glazed attention. Sometimes, it was a grinning white wolf. Or a calm-eyed golden mountain lion.

  Manon wished they’d put their jaws around her throat and crunch down.

  They never did.

  So Manon Blackbeak slept. And so she dreamed.

  43

  Lorcan was still wondering what the hell he was doing three days later. They’d left that plains town far behind them, but the terror of that night lay draped over the carnival caravan like a heavy blanket with each mile the wagons hurried down the roads.

  The others hadn’t wised up to how, exactly, they’d survived the ilken—hadn’t realized the ilken were near-impossible to kill, and no mere mortal could have slain one, let alone four. Nik and Ombriel gave him and Elide a wide berth—and only catching their wary, examining stares at the dinner campfire every night revealed they were still piecing together who and what he was.

  Elide kept well away from him, too. They hadn’t had a chance to set up their usual tents thanks to fleeing so quickly, but tonight, safely within the walls of a small plains town, they’d have to share a room at the cheap inn Molly had begrudgingly paid for.

  It was hard not to watch Elide as she took in the town, then the inn—the keen-eyed observation, the hint of surprise and confusion that sometimes crossed her face.

  He used a tendril of his magic to keep her foot stabilized. She never commented on it. And sometimes that dark, fell magic of his would brush up against whatever it was she carried—the gift from a dying woman to a hotheaded assassin—and recoil.

  Lorcan hadn’t pushed to see it since that night, though he’d spent a great deal of time contemplating what might have come out of Morath. Collars and rings were likely the start of it.

  Whitethorn and the bitch-queen had no idea about the ilken—perhaps about the majority of horrors Elide had shared with him. He wondered what a wall of wildfire would do to the creatures—wondered if the ilken were somehow training against Aelin Galathynius’s arsenal. If Erawan was smart, he’d have something in mind.

  While the others trudged into the ramshackle inn in search of food and rest, Elide informed Molly that she was going on a walk along the river, and headed into the cobblestone streets. And though his stomach was grumbling, Lorcan trailed her, ever the husband wishing to guard his beautiful wife in a town that had seen better days—decades. No doubt caused by Adarlan’s relentless road-building across the continent and the fact that this town had been left far from any artery through the land.

  The thunderstorm he’d scented building on the horizon lumbered toward the stone-wrought town, the light shifting from gold to silver. Within minutes, the thick humidity was washed away by a sweep of welcome coolness. Lorcan gave Elide all of three blocks before he fell into step beside her and said, “It’s going to rain.”

  She slid a flat glance at him. “I do know what thunder means.”

  The walled town had been built on either side of a small, half-forgotten river—two large water gates on either end demanding tolls to enter the city and tracking the goods that passed through. Old water, fish, and rotting wood reached him before the sight of the muddy, calm waters did, and it was precisely at the edge of the river docks that Elide paused.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked at last, an eye on the darkening skies. The dockworkers, sailors, and merchants monitored the clouds, too, as they scurried about. Some lingered to tie up the long, flat-bellied barges and latch down the smooth poles they used to navigate the river. He’d seen a kingdom, perhaps three hundred years ago, that relied on barges to sail its goods from one en
d to another. Its name eluded him, lost to the catacombs of his memory. Lorcan wondered if it still existed, tucked away between two mountain ranges on the other side of the world.

  Elide’s bright eyes tracked a group of well-dressed men heading into what looked to be a tavern. “Storms mean looking for shelter,” she murmured. “Shelter means being stuck inside with nothing to do but gossip. Gossip means news from merchants and sailors about the rest of the land.” Those eyes cut to him, dry humor dancing there. “That is what thunder means.”

  Lorcan blinked as she followed after the men who’d entered the dockside tavern. The first fat drops of the storm plunked onto the moss-speckled cobblestones of the quay.

  Lorcan followed Elide inside the tavern, some part of him admitting that for all his five hundred years of surviving and killing and serving, he’d never quite encountered someone so … unimpressed with him. Even gods-damned Aelin had some sense of the threat he posed. Maybe living with monsters had stripped away a healthy fear of them. He wondered how Elide hadn’t become one in the process.

  Lorcan took in the details of the taproom by instinct and training, finding nothing worth a second thought. The reek of the place—unwashed bodies, piss, mold, wet wool—threatened to suffocate him. But in the span of a few moments, Elide had grabbed herself a table near a cluster of those people from the docks and ordered two tankards of ale and whatever was the lunch special.

  Lorcan slid into the ancient wooden chair beside hers, wondering if the damn thing would collapse under him as it groaned. Thunder cracked overhead, and all eyes shifted to the bay of windows overlooking the quay. Rain fell in earnest, setting the barges bobbing and swaying.

  Lunch was dropped before them, the bowls clattering and sending the goopy brown stew splashing over the chipped rims. Elide didn’t so much as look at it, or touch the ales that were plunked down with equal disinterest for a tip, as she scanned the room.

  “Drink,” Elide commanded him.

  Lorcan debated telling her not to give him orders, but … he liked seeing this small, fine-boned creature in action. Liked seeing her size up a room of strangers and select her prey. Because it was a hunt—for the best and safest source of information. The person who wouldn’t report to a town garrison still under Adarlan’s control that a dark-haired young woman was asking questions about enemy forces.

  So Lorcan drank and watched her while she watched others. So many calculating thoughts beneath that pale face, so many lies ready to spill from those rosebud lips. Part of him wondered if his own queen could find her useful—if Maeve would also pick up on the fact that it was perhaps Anneith herself who’d taught the girl to look and listen and lie.

  Part of him dreaded the thought of Elide in Maeve’s hands. What she’d become. What Maeve would ask her to do as a spy or courtier. Perhaps it was good that Elide was mortal, life span too short for Maeve to bother honing her into quite possibly her most vicious sentinel.

  He was so damn busy thinking about it that he nearly didn’t notice when Elide leaned back casually in her chair and interrupted the table of merchants and captains behind them. “What do you mean, Rifthold is gone?”

  Lorcan snapped to attention. But they’d heard the news weeks ago.

  The captain nearest them—a woman in her early thirties—sized up Elide, then Lorcan, then said, “Well, it’s not gone, but … witches now control it, on behalf of Duke Perrington. Dorian Havilliard’s been ousted.”

  Elide, the cunning little liar, looked outright shocked. “We’ve been in the deep wild for weeks. Is Dorian Havilliard dead?” She whispered the words, as if in horror … and as if to avoid being heard.

  Another person at the table—an older, bearded man—said, “They never found his body, but if the duke’s declaring him not to be king anymore, I’d assume he’s alive. No use making proclamations against a dead man.”

  Thunder rattled, almost drowning out her whisper as she said, “Would he—would he go to the North? To … her?”

  They knew precisely who Elide meant. And Lorcan knew exactly why she’d come here.

  She was going to leave. Tomorrow, whenever the carnival rolled out. She’d likely hire one of these boats to take her northward, and he … he would go south. To Morath.

  The companions swapped glances, weighing the appearance of the young woman—and then Lorcan. He attempted to smile, to look bland and unthreatening. None of them returned the look, though he must have done something right, because the bearded man said, “She’s not in the North.”

  It was Elide’s turn to go still.

  The bearded man went on, “Rumor has it, she was in Ilium, trouncing soldiers. Then they say she was in Skull’s Bay last week, raising hell. Now she’s sailing elsewhere—some say to Wendlyn, some say to Eyllwe, some say she’s fleeing to the other side of the world. But she’s not in the North. Won’t be for a while, it seems. Not wise to leave your home undefended, if you ask me. But she’s barely a woman; she can’t know much about warfare at all.”

  Lorcan doubted that, and doubted the bitch didn’t make a move without Whitethorn or Gavriel’s son weighing in. But Elide loosed a shuddering breath. “Why leave Terrasen at all?”

  “Who knows?” The woman turned back to her food and company. “Seems like the queen has a habit of showing up where she’s least expected, unleashing chaos, and vanishing again. There’s good money to be had from the betting pool about where she’ll show up next. I say Banjali, in Eyllwe—Vross here says Varese in Wendlyn.”

  “Why Eyllwe?” Elide pushed.

  “Who knows? She’d be a fool indeed to announce her plans.” The woman gave Elide a sharp look as if to say to keep quiet about it.

  Elide returned to her food and ale, the rain and thunder drowning the chatter in the room.

  Lorcan watched her drink the entire tankard in silence. And when it seemed the least suspicious, she rose and left.

  Elide went to two other taverns in the town—followed the same exact pattern. The news shifted slightly with each recounting, but the general consensus was that Aelin was on the move, perhaps south or east, and no one knew what to expect.

  Elide walked out of the third tavern, Lorcan on her heels. They hadn’t spoken once since she’d gone into that first inn. He’d been too lost in contemplating what it would be like to suddenly travel on his own again. To leave her … and never see her again.

  And now, staring up at the rain and the thunder, Elide said, “I was supposed to go north.”

  Lorcan found himself not wanting to confirm or object. Like a useless fool, he found himself … hesitating to push her toward that original path.

  She lowered her face, water and light gilding her high cheekbones. “Where do I head now? How do I find her?”

  He dared say, “What did you glean from the rumors?” He’d been analyzing each tidbit of information, but wanted to see that clever mind at work.

  And some small part of him wanted to see what she’d decide about their splitting ways, too.

  Elide said softly, “Banjali—in Eyllwe. I think she’s going to Banjali.”

  He tried not to look too relieved. He’d arrived at the same conclusion, if only because it was what Whitethorn would have done—and he’d trained the prince himself for a few decades.

  She scrubbed at her face. “How … how far is it?”

  “Far.”

  She lowered her hands, her features stark and bone white. “How do I get there? How do …” She rubbed at her chest.

  “I can get you a map,” he found himself saying. Just to see if she’d ask him to stay.

  Her throat bobbed, and she shook her head, her black hair flowing. “It’d be no use.”

  “Maps are always useful.”

  “Not if you can’t read.”

  Lorcan blinked, wondering if he’d heard her right. But color stained her pale cheeks, and that was indeed shame and despair clouding her dark eyes. “But you …” There had been no opportunity for it these weeks, he realized—no cha
nce where she might have revealed it.

  “I learned my letters, but when—when everything happened,” she said, “and I was put in that tower … My nursemaid was illiterate. So I never learned more. So I forgot what I did know.”

  He wondered if he would have ever noticed if she hadn’t told him. “You seem to have survived rather impressively without it.”

  He spoke without considering, but it seemed to be the right thing to say. The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “I suppose I have,” she mused.

  Lorcan’s magic picked up on the garrison before he heard or scented them.

  It slithered along their swords—rudimentary, half-rusted weapons—and then bathed in their rising fear, excitement, perhaps even a tinge of bloodlust.

  Not good. Not when they were headed right to them.

  Lorcan closed the distance to Elide. “It seems our friends at the carnival wanted to make an easy silver coin.”

  The helpless desperation on her face sharpened into wide-eyed alertness. “Guards are coming?”

  Lorcan nodded, the footsteps now close enough for him to count how many approached from the garrison in the heart of the town, no doubt meant to trap them between their swords and the river. If he were the betting sort, he’d gamble that the two bridges that spanned the river—ten blocks up on either side of them—were already full of guards.

  “You get a choice,” he said. “Either I can end this matter here, and we can go back to the inn to learn if Nik and Ombriel wanted to get rid of us …” Her mouth tightened, and he knew her choice before he offered, “Or we can get on one of those barges and get the hell out right now.”

  “The second,” she breathed.

  “Good,” was his only reply as he gripped her hand and tugged her forward. Even with his power supporting her leg, she was too slow—

  “Just do it,” she snapped.