Tor looked up at her reflection. “Brand loves making Ignitus proud, and he will only consider it a victory if he kills or maims you. When you fight him, you must intend the same.”
Ash felt the world shift with Tor’s bluntness. She wasn’t a child, deserving of softened half-truths. She set her hands into fists, hoping the action hid her fear. What had she said to comfort Char?
Let me fight for you, Mama. Let me take your place.
Ash chuckled bitterly. She had gotten what she wanted after all. She would wind through Crixion in a grand parade and begin the painstaking work of murdering people for Ignitus.
To earn Ignitus’s favor, Ash reminded herself, and destroy him.
“Let’s get this over with,” Rook said as Spark put away her paints. His chest was covered in dozens of golden sunbursts. “The sooner we start this, the sooner we get back to Kula.”
“The war will last two weeks no matter what we do,” Tor said. If he meant to sound comforting, it came out short. He stood and added, “It will pass quickly. It always does.”
“And they make those clay marbles here,” Ash added. “For that game Lynx loves?”
A smile puckered Rook’s cheeks. It didn’t reach his dark eyes, rimmed with kohl and gold. “When I dropped him off at the infirmary, the nurses said he was so ill he’d have to be confined to his bed.”
Tor put his hand on Rook’s shoulder. Spark cast a sullen glance at Taro, the room sobering.
“For Lynx,” Ash whispered, dipping her gaze to the floor.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Rook’s hand rise, dabbing at his face.
For Char, Ash added to herself. For Thorn. Tor and Taro’s Undivine cousin, and his two children, also Undivine. For Wisteria. A woman who ran one of the orphanages in Kula, and had been helping Taro and Spark work to find a child. For all the other fire dancers.
A bell tolled above deck. Silently, Taro left, followed by Rook and Spark. Tor lingered.
“You look just like her,” he offered. “Her fuel and flame.”
Heat welled in Ash’s chest and tears rose, threatening to streak kohl down her cheeks.
Tor offered her his arm and led her through the ship, up into the high, burning light of day.
Crixion’s main port, Iov, was a bay with a narrow opening to the Hontori Sea. At one side of the entrance, the lighthouse rose in a jut of ivory; a military fort stood at the other.
Hilly and steep, Crixion unfurled around Iov as if for inspection. Igna’s buildings were all black, volcanic materials, but these structures were shining and white. Old trees had made themselves comfortable among the buildings instead of being burned to the roots. The air was rank with city grime and body odor and the salt of the sea, but not with charcoal or sulfur.
Geoxus was a warmongering god, but he wasn’t petty. He rationed his resources and engaged in fights without draining his country. This was what Kula could look like if Ignitus made decisions for the good of his people instead of his own pride.
Ignitus had chosen to complete the final stretch of the journey to Crixion on his ships instead of by materializing there in his fiery form. A physical arrival was more impactful to the Deimans, to make them arrange the necessary welcome throughout the city.
The ships docked in the shadows of the Port of Iov temple, a marble building with an exact likeness of the earth god in rose quartz on its steps. Couuntless Deimans stood in front of it, stretching in long lines into the city, highlighting the parade route that the waiting carriages would follow to the grandest arena in the city center.
Holding back the crowd—though no one fought to press closer—were two unbroken lines of Deiman centurions in pleated leather skirts and polished breastplates, gray-silver capes pinned to their shoulders and helmets glinting in the afternoon sun. Each one had their left hand extended, palm up, spinning a small funnel of stones with geoeia. Not throwing them, not shouting threats; just reminding the crowd and the Kulans that they were trained in using earth energy.
The sheer number of geoeia-wielding centurions made Ash’s mouth go dry as the ship’s gangplank lowered. Geoxus wanted to intimidate Ignitus and his champions.
It was working.
Ignitus was already descending the long wooden gangplank of his lead ship. He wore scarlet robes and orange glass beads that glinted even from this distance.