Ysabet’s smug expression faltered. “You’re crying. Are they good tears or bad?”
Navi shook her head and rushed at her, and they crashed together as if they had been on that course all their lives. She found Ysabet’s grinning mouth with her own, wrapped her arms around Ysabet’s shoulders.
“Thank God,” Ysabet murmured against Navi’s lips, her hands at her waist, and then there was no air left to speak. Ysabet kissed like she did everything else: with an easy confidence that turned Navi’s knees to liquid. Tender at first, teasing nibbles that left Navi’s lips swollen and buzzing. And then, with a quick heated glance, Ysabet slid her hand around to cup the back of Navi’s head, and Navi stretched up on her toes to meet her, and this was deeper, this was fevered. Navi’s hands clutched at Ysabet’s sleeves, and Ysabet’s tongue teased Navi’s lips until they opened.
With a groan, Ysabet directed her gently toward the small stack of crates in the corner of the tent, and Navi scrambled atop them as if it were the most natural thing in the world. At once, she hooked her legs around Ysabet’s thighs, pulled her close. The heat of her, the strong, warm lines of her body. Ysabet seized Navi’s hips and tugged them closer. Navi let her head fall back as Ysabet’s mouth traveled her throat. She threaded her fingers through Ysabet’s hair, delighted by its softness. She wished to bury her face in it.
The sleeve of her tunic had slipped. Ysabet kissed her bare shoulder.
“I didn’t name her that only to get in your bed,” Ysabet mumbled against her skin.
Navi smiled, her eyes fluttering shut. “I have no bed.”
“I do, on my ship.” Ysabet lifted her face, her eyes full of stars. “It’s big. Captain’s quarters and all that.”
Then Ysabet’s face sobered. She leaned her forehead against Navi’s as they found their breath again, and tenderly brushed Navi’s silky black hair away from her cheek. Months after her abduction by Fidelia, her hair had finally reached her shoulders.
“I don’t only want to lie with you, Navi,” Ysabet whispered. “It isn’t only about that.”
Navi feathered soft kisses across Ysabet’s cheeks, her heart aching when Ysabet turned up her face, eyes closed, like a bloom seeking the sun.
“I know,” said Navi quietly. “It’s the same for me.” She shuddered as Ysabet brushed against the hem of her tunic, fingers teasing her naked waist. “Only long ago, when I was quite young, have I been touched like this by someone I wanted. I’d forgotten it could be so nice.”
Ysabet paused, then pulled back from her. Her eyes were grave. “So many stories we have yet to tell each other.”
Navi touched her face with a soft smile. “We will have much time to tell stories as we speed across the ocean in your beautiful ship.”
“Say that again.”
Navi’s smile grew. “Your beautiful ship.”
Ysabet sighed. “I love hearing you say those wonderful words.”
A shout pierced the air, followed by another. Navi locked eyes with Ysabet for an instant, and then they hurried from the tent. Outside, their crews grabbed weapons, scrambled to hide supplies. Malik drew his sword, his expression grim. Hob readied his revolver.
Navi squinted into the swamp’s gloom, Ysabet just behind her. It was evening; what light passed through the thick net of branches overhead was thin and yellow. Navi glanced at the fissure, but it looked the same as ever—a thin black eye streaked with shifting light, hovering quietly several hundred yards away.
A boat approached, far enough from the fissure that Navi thought the passengers might not even have seen it. Someone stood inside the boat, pushing the vessel forward through the murky water with a long oar.
Navi tensed. Was it only one person, one boat? Or the first of many? Human or angel?
Then the air shifted as if from a breeze. Framed by the still swamp, the disturbance caught Navi’s eye at once. Her breath hitched, for she knew that distortion, that faint smudge in the air that flitted and shifted, ever-changing.
Your Highness. Zahra’s voice brimmed with relief. At last.
Navi surged forward with a sharp cry. “Don’t shoot! Lower your weapons!”
Malik looked back at her, frowning, his sword still raised.
Navi pushed past him, laughter bursting from her throat, and waved her arms in greeting. She heard the moment when Hob recognized the oarsman—a short, trim man, pale-skinned, with shaggy copper hair. A choked cry, and then Hob joined Navi at the shore, plunged into the sludge uncaring. He grabbed the boat and dragged it the rest of the way to land.
Patrik’s grin was like the sun rising. He tossed his oar to the muddy bank, an unfamiliar scar stretching across his cheek. Navi clasped her hands at her mouth, smiling through her tears. Patrik was much changed since that day months ago when she had met him in the Red Crown hideout called Crown’s Hollow. He wore a frayed black eye patch, and he was too thin, his body marked with fresh scars. But he was whole and alive.
Hob cupped Patrik’s face in his trembling dark hands, and then, tenderly, as if afraid doing so would end the dream, gathered him close, folding him into his arms. Hob buried his face in Patrik’s wild hair, clutched the tattered folds of his shirt. Hob was a man of quiet, but his loud sobs were unfettered, cracking with incredulous laughter.
Patrik pressed his face against Hob’s shoulder, his eye closed. He was muttering something barely audible beneath the sound of Hob’s relief. His fingers stroked the back of Hob’s neck. Navi could barely see him over the great rise of Hob’s shoulder, but she managed to catch his eye.
She turned to the others, who were all watching. Malik was beaming, his sword forgotten.
“Go on,” she mouthed, gesturing for everyone to move away. “Give them a moment.”
Immediately, her little army of strays obeyed, returning to their tasks with Ysabet’s crew—except for Ysabet herself, who was glaring sharply up at the trees.
“Something’s here,” she muttered, hand resting on her sword hilt. “Something angelic.”
Navi touched her arm. “Yes, but she’s a friend. A wraith named Zahra. She saved me once, and Eliana more times than that.”
Then Navi turned to face Zahra—a soft blur in the air, faceless and formless. Unlike Eliana, Navi could not see the echo of Zahra’s true form. But inside her mind, Zahra was clear as the cloudless sky.
“Before I tell you how happy I am to see you at last,” Zahra said, not in mind-speak but aloud, her deep, smooth voice rich with joy, “and before I tell you where we have been and what we have seen, I must share news with you, Your Highness.”
Ysabet let out a low curse. Wide-eyed, she stepped back from where Zahra drifted, though her gaze did not quite land on her.
“I don’t understand,” Ysabet muttered. “I’ve never heard an angel speak without a body.”
“The mind can accomplish much, if you have the will for it,” Zahra said primly. “What you are hearing is an approximation and projection of the voice I once possessed, amplified and unscrambled by your own mind. While not all wraiths can recreate such things, my mind, happily, is strong enough for it.”
Ysabet blinked at her, then looked at Navi with an expression so flummoxed that Navi had to stifle a laugh.
“We’ll talk more about that later,” Navi assured her, gently touching her arm.
“Now. My news.” The shape of Zahra in the air, vague as it was, seemed to straighten. “I bring word from the Prophet. Eliana still lives. She fights the Emperor. With the Prophet’s guidance, she is learning to use her power covertly. She is working to open a massive fissure between Avitas and the Deep and will soon unleash hordes of cruciata upon Elysium.”
A ripple of excitement swept through those who had gathered to listen.
Navi felt wild with happiness. She put her hand to her throat, tears rising fast. “Oh, Zahra. Thank God. Eliana lives. She lives, oh, sw
eet saints. What else did the Prophet say? And who is the Prophet? Do you know?”
“I do,” Zahra replied, but said no more.
Navi didn’t care; her body was bursting with light. “You must tell us everything you know. Where you and Patrik have been, what you have seen. How we can help Eliana. We have a ship, and she’s fast. We have dozens of soldiers ready to fight.” She spun around, found Ysabet’s hands, and squeezed them, grinning. “Eliana is alive. She’s fighting. I knew she would, and she is. The empirium is guiding her, and…”
When Navi’s voice broke and she could no longer speak, Ysabet touched her face, smiling softly. “And now the Queen’s light will guide us to her.”
• • •
Navi was not sorry to leave the Kavalian Bog behind, even though it meant living on a ship that was apparently determined to kill her.
Mouth sour from the draught Ysabet had given her, Navi tried at last to move. For the first two days after disembarking, she had not been able to leave her bed and the pail sitting beside it.
But the draught seemed to have settled her stomach, and she left her cabin for the deck. Their winds had been lucky so far, carrying them away from the Vespers at a speed that left Ysabet ecstatic. Navi stood at the door of the main hold, eyes closed. The fresh air washed over her, bringing with it the smells of salt and the thick, oily resin Ysabet’s crew used to polish the deck.
Navi opened her eyes, watched her people work. Their people. Ysabet’s crew of sixty, and her own army of forty-seven. One hundred and seven humans and a single wraith against the ocean, the imperial fleet, and whatever horrors awaited them in Elysium.
She moved past the dark images her worries summoned and walked the deck, learning its steps and curves, admiring the smooth gleam of its railings. The industrious chatter of the crew followed her patrol. She was glad to hear some cheer in their voices now that the Vespers were no longer visible on the horizon. No imperial ships were hunting them; no danger nipped at their heels.
Not yet.
Then Navi glanced at the ship’s prow and the elaborate carved figurehead that Ysabet’s harried carpenters had been ordered to craft with very little warning: a woman, face uplifted, arms outstretched, reaching for the sky. Her hair fell in waves and curls to her waist, and around her head sat a crown of broad rays.
Beside the figurehead, the air shifted strangely.
Navi paused for a moment. The wraith had told her everything that had happened in the months since they had last seen each other, and Navi was still trying to absorb it all. Zahra, trapped for a time in a blightblade until Eliana had brought Remy back from death and freed Zahra in the process. A reunion with Patrik, and Red Crown spies in the city of Festival. The night of the Admiral’s Jubilee, when Festival had fallen to an angelic force intent upon finding Eliana at last and bringing her to the Emperor.
And now, long weeks later, Zahra and Patrik, the only survivors of that awful day, had come at last to rejoin their friends.
Navi only wished they could have been spared everything that had happened in the meantime.
She joined Zahra, standing in silence beside her as she found her bearings at the ship’s bobbing bow. She longed to see something more of the wraith than this faint wash of air.
Zahra’s voice came wistfully. “I long for that as well, Your Highness.”
Sea spray crashed up from the waves below, kissing Navi’s face with cold mist. She gripped the railing, her body zipping tight with tension.
“You don’t have to stand here with me,” said Zahra. “Lie down, if you wish.”
“Ysabet gave me a draught to settle me until I find my sea legs,” said Navi wearily. “I’d never heard of sea legs before. The term evokes amusing imagery. I’m not sure what I would have. Flippers, perhaps, or fins like a sea maiden.” She wrinkled her nose. “Hopefully not tentacles.”
Zahra gave a half-hearted laugh, then fell silent once more. So many dark feelings brewed around her that even Navi, inexperienced as she was when it came to deciphering the feelings of angels, could feel the force of them.
She glanced at the wraith, hesitated, then reached out, palm to the sky. “May I, Zahra?”
A pause, and then Zahra said thickly, “Please.”
Navi moved her fingers through the air where Zahra’s echo drifted. Into her tired mind, she placed the image of what she knew Zahra to look like, as Eliana had described from her visions. She imagined a tall angel with rich brown skin and flowing white hair, brilliant flaring wings, and then imagined drawing that angel into a warm embrace. She would kiss Zahra’s cheek, if she could. She would stroke her arms until she slept.
Navi shivered, her skin prickling from Zahra’s chill. Touching her felt like drawing her fingers through icy water, velvety and supple.
Zahra’s voice rasped with emotion. “Thank you, Navi. That was a dear kindness. And I saw it vividly. You may not be accustomed to speaking to me in that way, but your mind is sharp and clear. With practice, you would excel, I think.”
“You have my permission to speak to my mind directly, Zahra,” Navi offered. “It must be more tiring for you to speak like this.”
“Tiring, yes, but I enjoy being able to project at least some of myself back into the physical world. Besides that, it is more respectful, I think, to preserve that distance. Especially since so many of my kind do not.”
“Very well.” Navi watched the water, carefully choosing her words. “You can leave, if you want. You can travel faster than we can. You ache to see her, I know.”
Zahra’s laugh was bitter. “Ache? A small word for what I feel. A girl I love as I would my own daughter was wrenched away from me before my very eyes. I watched them take her on that beach in Festival. I watched the admiral’s ship sail away from me and could do nothing. The Emperor kept me from her. I railed against him. I howled for her. It did nothing. I have failed her.”
“Oh, Zahra, you haven’t—”
“No. Do not comfort me in this.”
Navi waited a moment. “I mean what I say. Go to her, if it will help you.”
“I cannot. The Prophet forbids it.”
This surprised Navi. She frowned up at the place where she imagined Zahra’s face would be. “Why?”
“I am to stay with you,” Zahra said flatly, “and keep your ship hidden, then help you navigate the Sea of Silarra, which will be choked with imperial ships. It will take great effort to achieve this, but I must do it nevertheless. Eliana does not have friends in Elysium. There is no Red Crown, no one who loves her. She cannot do what must be done alone. You and Ysabet, your crew, your army of strays, Patrik and Hob… She will need all of you, when the time comes. We cannot give her the army she deserves, but we can give her ourselves. And so I will remain here and hide you from searching black eyes.”
A moment passed as Navi digested this. “Can you do that? Hide an entire ship?”
“It is what I was born to do. Not to take vengeance upon humans or serve a mad emperor. I was born to serve her, to love her. This is what I believe. I will bear you to the Sun Queen so you may fight alongside her and help her win this war at last. That is the great culmination of all my long years, the reward for that endless age in the Deep. To serve the world’s great hope and guard her friends with all the strength granted by what power I have left.”
Navi looked at her hands through a sheen of tears. Humbled, she found her voice slowly. “You are very brave, Zahra. And if you argue with me, I’ll get angry.”
Zahra laughed. A tender coolness brushed Navi’s arm.
In silence, they watched the waves darken as behind them the sun joined the horizon. While the light dimmed, Navi fixed an image in her mind and sent it clumsily in Zahra’s direction: Herself, and Zahra as she once was, standing beside her. Navi’s head resting against her arm, their fingers bound in friendship, their twin devoted hearts yearning east
.
• • •
The night was deep in darkness when Navi at last felt well enough to visit the captain’s quarters. The night was quiet. Crew members were at their assigned posts, the waves steady as they crashed and curled.
Navi wished her own heart were as steady. How it fluttered, how it tightened her chest and throat. She touched the latch on Ysabet’s door. Wandering the deck after leaving Zahra, she had let her mind ask its questions, imagining every probable doom and possible triumph. She had thought of everything that had happened and everything that would. Zahra had told her of Harkan, how he had died under her care. How Simon had stood cold-eyed at the pier and slain their friends and allies. A pet of the Emperor, declaring devotion even as he plotted betrayal.
Navi could not think too closely of that. She knew of Eliana’s feelings for Simon. The death on the beach would have been awful to witness, the realization of her failure a gut punch—but to watch Simon kill their friends, to understand who truly had his loyalty, would have been the most vicious devastation. It was a rare thing, to find someone to trust, someone to receive your love and protect it. Navi knew that truth all too well. And then to have that trust broken, that love proven to be a lie…
Navi would reject violence altogether if she could. But if she met Simon again, she would kill him.
She knocked on Ysabet’s door and stepped inside.
Ysabet sat at her desk, its surface strewn with food inventories, weapons registers, maps of the sea and stars.
She turned from her work with a broad smile. “There you are. How do you feel? Would you like more of my wondrous tea?”
Navi pushed on before she could lose her nerve. A rare thing indeed, to find someone she could trust. Someone who would, perhaps, receive her love and protect it.
“What I would like,” she said, her voice shaking only a little, “is to do something I fear may come across as presumptuous.”
At once, the room changed, the air between them pulling tight. A gilded string, taut and singing.
Lightbringer Page 34
