Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,136

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, sweet 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