downpour heavier than Mia could ever recall. Jonnen was huddled beside her, shivering in his boots. The wind was a monster, clawing and howling, tearing their hoods from their heads and reaching beneath their sodden clothes with frozen hands. Mia found it hard to remember the sweltering heat of the arena just a few weeks back, tucking her hands into her armpits to warm them.
“This is horseshit!” Bryn roared, hauling out her bow and firing off an arrow at the clouds above. “BITCH!”
Sidonius squinted in the downpour, scanning the countryside around them.
“We could knock at one of these farmhouses,” Wavewaker shouted, tapping his soldier’s breastplate and the three suns embossed on it. “Declare official business and wait out the worst of it by a nice, cozy hearth.”
“What about him?” Bladesinger called, motioning to Tric. “Any addle-witted peasant worth his pitchfork would be trying to burn him on a stake in a heartbeat!”
“He looks a little more lively of late,” Butcher said, peering at the boy. “A bit more color to him, maybe? Or is it me?”
“There!” Sid called.
Mia looked in the direction the man was pointing. Through the blinding rain, she could see a ruin atop a distant foothill. It was a garrison tower, crumbling crenellated walls and a broken drawbridge, its stonework crushed under the hands of time. It looked like it’d been built during the Itreyan occupation, when the Great Unifier, Francisco I, first marched his armies into Liis and challenged the might of the Magus Kings. A tumbled relic of a world once at war.
“Good view of the countryside!” Sid cried. “With any luck, cellar’s still dry!”
“The horses could use a rest,” Bryn shouted. “This mud’s hard work for them.”
Mia looked at the road ahead, into the gray skies above.
“All right, then,” she nodded. “Let’s take a peek.”
* * *
The tower was three stories of broken stone, crowning a spur of sharp limestone.
Long ago, Mia imagined it might’ve been peopled by hardened legionaries. Men who’d come across the waves under the banner of three suns with conquest in their hearts and blood on their hands. But now, centuries after the legions and the king who commanded them had crumbled to dust, the tower was finally crumbling, too. The hillside would’ve been cleared back in the time it’d been built, but now, nature had reclaimed the ascent and was infiltrating the building itself, prying apart stonework and tumbling walls like no warrior of the Magus Kings ever could.
It stood about sixty feet across. The wall on one side had collapsed, open to the rain and wind. But fully half the stonework was still solid, broad arches on the ground floor supporting the levels above, crumbling stairwells leading up to the reaches and down to an overgrown and, sadly, flooded cellar. An old stone cooking pit sat in the center of the floor, filled with moldering leaves.
The group huddled together on the ground floor, relatively shielded from the tempest, the horses tied up outside with the wagon. The sky was gray as lead, the sunslight dimmed, and Mia could feel the power inside her stirring a little—like her blood after too many cigarillos. Tingling at her fingertips. Numbing the tip of her tongue. She wondered what it might feel like when the two remaining suns were gone from the sky.
What she might become.
“I’LL SCOUT THE SURROUNDS,” Tric declared.
“Aye,” Sidonius nodded. “’Waker, go keep an eye topside.”
“Two eyes,” the big man nodded. “Wide open.”
“I’ll come with you,” Bryn offered, picking up her bow.
Bladesinger glanced at Mia and Ashlinn, and the trio shared a knowing smile. They set about unpacking their gear, getting the feed someplace dry while Butcher and Sidonius searched the tower for something to burn. The timbers had rotted away long ago, but by the time the wagon was unloaded, the pair had managed to drag enough scraps and dead leaves together to fuel a small blaze in the cooking pit.
“Right,” Sidonius said. “Let’s see if I remember how to do this.”
The Itreyan drew the sunsteel blade taken from the Luminatii centurion Mia had killed aboard the Maid. He held the blade in both hands, closed his eyes, muttered a prayer to the Everseeing under his breath. Mia heard a short sharp sound, like an intake of breath, and Sid’s blade abruptly burst into flame.
“’Byss and blood,” Butcher said, squinting against the light.*
“Impressive,”’Singer smiled. “Keep forgetting you were bona fide Luminatii, Sid.”
“Not that impressive,” Sid said, thrusting the sword into the kindling they’d gathered. “Saves fuel from the