“What was that?” Miro whispered after a moment. He started to stand, clutching his oar like a weapon. “What’s happening?”
Ruusa pulled him back into his seat. “Hush, boy.”
Navi waited for their guide to call out a signal, some sign that he knew what that quake had been, but Bazko said nothing. He slowly lowered his fist, looking around at the others like a child desperate for guidance, and it occurred to Navi how small they were, how insignificant in the grand, unknowable scheme of the world.
How many strays had they recruited? Wiping away the sweat dripping down her brow, she counted quickly to make sure they were all still safely in their boats. Thirty-one. She, Malik, Hob, Ruusa, her three other living guards, and thirty-one people who were either so desperate to escape their loneliness or so obsessively hungry for revenge against the Empire that they had agreed to brave the Vesperian wilderness with a young woman who spoke of legends as if they were real, who could promise nothing except the hope of a distant fight. A journey to the Emperor’s city. An assault on the place he called home.
The rescue of a princess who would save them all, if only they could reach her in time.
Navi swallowed against the sour taste in her mouth. What was she thinking? How could she and this tiny army she had made possibly mount any sort of offensive against inexhaustible imperial troops?
She was wrong to hope, foolish to even try. Her home was lost. Her world was lost. And scrabbling for survival like this, clinging to wild imaginings of victory, was not only an undignified way to pass what would doubtless be her final days but also a great unkindness to those who followed her. These rootless people, so desperate for even the smallest glimmer of salvation.
She closed her eyes, her palms clammy with dread. What had she done? Where was she leading them, and what lies had she tricked herself into believing?
“All is well,” Bazko called out. His laughter was unconvincing. “Quite the quake, wasn’t it? Not to worry. They don’t call the Vespers the Ever-Shifting Lands for nothing.”
Ruusa touched Navi’s elbow. “Jatana, here, drink some water. Hold on to me.”
But when Navi opened her eyes to accept Ruusa’s canteen, something distracted her—a strange, jagged, flickering darkness, as if a seam had been ripped open in the air. No, not flickering. Shifting. Like a light seen through calm waters, only it was hovering atop the water perhaps forty yards away. Threaded with shades of gold, violet, and the plum-blue of a bruise, it hovered, waiting.
And something about it—the faint sheen of gold, the particular quality of its rippling movement, its very existence, like something from an Old World tale—reminded Navi, for reasons she could not articulate, of her lost friend.
Eliana.
A chill kissed her neck. She stood slowly, ignoring Ruusa. Splinters of darkness branched off the shape in the air like cracks in glass. She watched them grow, holding her breath, listening to the others cry out in wonder.
Then, the splinters stopped. A hundred spider legs of darkness hung suspended in the air and grew no more.
A feeling tugged at Navi’s breastbone, urging her toward something, or perhaps away. She did not understand what it meant, but the longer she stared at this hovering shape, the sicker she felt.
But she had to look at it. She had to move closer. Something had happened, something to do with the empirium, and this was proof of it. The quake, and now this. Navi had to know what it was. Was Eliana hurt? Had she been killed, and now the world was breaking?
“There.” She pointed. “Do you see that?”
“I see it!” Miro scrambled to crouch beside her, rocking the boat and making Ruusa curse. “Is it a fire?”
Navi retrieved Miro’s oar. “We must go to it, quickly.”
Ruusa did not move. “Whatever that is, we should stay far away from it.”
Navi’s patience had vanished, replaced by a frantic need to see this thing, to touch it. A wild thought came to her that Eliana could be on the other side of it.
“You will pick up your oar,” she said to Ruusa, her voice calm but sharp-edged, “and help me get to that thing before it disappears, or you will condemn yourself to being forever a disappointment in my eyes.”
It was a harsh thing to say, and Navi hated saying it, but soon they were moving, Ruusa rowing in abashed silence.