Slowly, Alie lowered herself to the floor along with the rest of the nobles. Olivier’s blood trickled down her cheekbone. She wiped it away.
Jax was the last to take to his knees. He stared at Apollius, fury in his face.
Apollius looked at him and smiled.
“Alie.”
Barely sound—in the rising cacophony, she could hardly hear it. Alie turned, looked to Alexis.
The Presque Mort jerked their head eastward, toward the Citadel Wall dividing them from the Northeast Ward.Tomorrow, Alexis mouthed.
Alie nodded. Then she stared at the floor, at the pool of Olivier’s blood just beginning to drip from the dais, as all around her the courtiers prayed to their god in His newfound flesh.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LORE
When it rains in the Sapphire Sea, it feels like the world has turned upside down. I’ve never seen so much damn water.
—From the diary of a Myroshan pirate, 56 BGF
It didn’t rain near the Isles often. But when it did, it was the kind that scoured and flooded.
The storm broke seemingly out of nowhere. Clouds gathered in the sky thick and dark as vultures on a new kill, erupting into pounding rain in seconds.
“Huh.” Sersha didn’t seem fazed, even as she quickened her pace, headed toward the edge of the forest. “That’s odd.”
The scrubby trees did little to block the rain, but it stopped within moments of them crossing the tree line. The clouds cleared, as much as Lore could tell behind the ash. The rain was gone as abruptly as it had come, leaving no trace but a few puddles on the ground.
“Very odd,” Sersha said. Her accent was broad; she sounded Caldienan, though in order to be on the Isles, she had to have been arrested in Auverraine.
The rain seemed more than just odd to Lore. It seemedportentous. A frisson of energy ribboned in the air, the same feeling she got standing close to someone channeling.
Though that might not have anything to do with the storm. The whole island felt infected with magic, strands of it churning in the air.
The piece of the Fount was somewhere on the Burnt Isles. It could be here. Lore was fairly certain she wouldn’t have time to search the whole island, especially not while keeping Dani in the dark, but she’d have to at least try.
Sersha led them through the trees, following a well-worn path in the sandy dirt. “You two are from the Second Isle, right? Raihan’s contact said there was a guard shortage. He’d been watching the lines out there for a while, saw the repair docks abandoned.”
Raihan must be the Ferryman, but Lore couldn’t make sense of the phrasewatching the lines. As far as she knew, there were no steel cables connecting the rest of the archipelago like there were between Auverraine and the first two Isles. “What does that mean?”
“The lines?” Sersha snorted. “Your guess is as good as mine, girl. All I know is they’re how he manages to navigate the sea. Something to do with all those silver doodads he has, how they interact with magic from the Golden Mount and what’s left over from the Godsfall. They work as well as a compass to lead you through the ash.” She shook her head. “He tried to explain it to me once. Was a scientist before he came here. But I was just a thief, and all of it went straight over my head.”
Dani whipped around to look at Lore. Her hand arched toward the pocket where she’d kept the balance she’d given Raihan—the Ferryman—clearly regretting handing it over. If those silver instruments could guide them through the ash, they’d need one to sail to the Mount.
Up ahead, the charred trees parted, revealing a town.
Well.Townwas overselling it. But it was certainly more civilization than Lore expected. Thatch-roofed huts ringed whatlooked almost like a Ward square, a patch of browning grass holding a few market stalls that actually seemed rather sturdy. Buildings made of rough-hewn timber marched up and down dirt roads, the bark still on their beams, and behind them, Lore could see well-tended garden patches, though there weren’t any livestock to speak of. The gardens were full of low-growing plants, root vegetables and mushrooms, things that could thrive even in these conditions. The ash here was somewhat thinner than on the Second Isle, but still enough to make the air taste burnt.
People of every color, gender, and nationality ranged about on their business, speaking to one another in a jumble of languages, all wearing clothes of the same undyed linen as Sersha. A few wore face coverings, but most of them seemed used to the ash. There were even children playing on the green, moving wooden pieces around a painted board in some game Lore had never seen before, not that she spent much time with children.
The kids were what finally drove home what the kind-of town meant, the permanence of it. “You’ve been here awhile.”
“Some of us.” Sersha, she was learning, was not loquacious. “A few of the buildings have been standing near forever, though. Might even be pre-Godsfall.”
The memories she’d seen of Nyxara’s life as a living goddess, the ships full of pilgrims coming to dwell within the pantheon’s light. Lore remembered the cities she’d seen them build on the Golden Mount, the houses and towers, gilt-painted with the gods’ names. She supposed it stood to reason that some of the penitents might build on other islands, though it looked like whoever had settled here hadn’t been nearly as wealthy as those on the Mount.
Some things always stayed the same.
