It was as if, after thirteen years, she had finally come home.
* * *
Noden’s Gift was not what Vivia had expected, despite Cam having described it to her several weeks before. She’d imagined ramshackle, beaten-down buildings like the Skulks in Lovats. She’d expected hollow eyes and begging hands.
Instead, she’d passed tiny farms and tinier stone huts, all of them bustling with life. Chickens that needed feeding, sheep that needed grazing, and even cows that needed milking. Noden’s Gift was a village—a true village clustered beside a river that traced through the forest toward the Well.
Here, where the river’s path was narrow and the earth hard, there were small rapids and chops. Ferns clustered against the shore, thick and tendriling on a morning breeze.
Vivia had never seen ferns in Nihar. Just as she’d never seen water that anyone dared fish, yet already pole fishers clustered along the banks. Meanwhile net fishers carried small boats to a landing beside a crude bridge. If any of them thought it odd that Yoris marched prisoners past, they gave no indication beyond a few curious glances.
Vivia smiled at them. Even nodded, and a few nodded back. She didn’t think they recognized her, and she certainly didn’t know them, but she felt … something. A kinship that made no sense. A familiarity that had no actual grounding.
Perhaps it was the river. Perhaps it was her magic. A whole night and morning of walking with no access to tides, and now these fresh, wild waters. They were skipping, trilling, calling for her to use them.
She ignored. The risk to Cam was too great, even with fishers watching. Plus, her crew must be so near. The Empress must be so near. Vivia had to see that they were safe—had to know where they were before she made any aggressive move.
They reached the center of the village, and Vivia almost laughed at the sight of a Dalmotti trade galleon, upside down and converted into a building. Again, it was so much more than what she’d imagined. For one, it seemed enormous with the hull exposed and curving upward. For two, it had been finely maintained: no old barnacles in sight, no storm damage, no grime.
Yoris and his hunters kept it spotless, and Vivia had to admit she was impressed at his ability to not only run a militia, but to have won such loyalty from them.
Yoris strutted into a gap that cut through the ship’s center. On one side was the quarterdeck. On the other, a new structure had been wedged beneath the forecastle to hold the ship flat. He aimed for the new structure, where an archway had been cut into pine planks and double doors opened wide.
They led to a jail dug into the ground. Crammed into the mud walls and six wooden paddocks was Vivia’s crew. Some sat against the walls, eyes closed, but most stood. Most huddled. Most whispered.
Until they heard Yoris arrive—and spotted Vivia behind him. Then they rushed to the wooden walls bars. “Captain,” they murmured. Or, “Thank Noden.” Or, “Thank the saints.” Several even spat curses at Yoris as he hobbled by.
And there it was again: that elation in Vivia’s chest. That strange, illogical certainty that this was right. That here was right, even as she was being marched along in ropes.
She said nothing to her crew. Gave them nods—Sonja, Ginna, and there was Sotar too. All of them grave, even as their eyes shone at the sight of her. I will get us out of here, she thought at each face. I will fix this, I swear.
At the end of the dug-out hall, where lantern light scarcely reached and roots poked down from the ceiling, Yoris paused before a final cell. The smallest of them all.
“The royal chambers,” he said, and his hunters, still marching behind Cam, gave obligatory chuckles. “You’ll be the third royal in here, Princess.” He pulled a key from his belt and with flourishing, ridiculous movements, he unlatched the door and opened it wide. “We had a Cartorran prince here two months ago. Now you and that Marstoki bitch. Enjoy.”
He kicked Vivia; she toppled through the door into darkness. Her knees hit soil. The door thwacked shut behind her, and five sets of laughter drifted away.
Vivia did not move for several minutes. She breathed musky, cold air and waited for panic to lay claim. She listened as they put Cam in a different cell. And she kept listening as voices reached her from other cells. Promises to kill Yoris. Promises to break free. Apologies for failure.
As much as she wanted to answer, as much as she wanted to offer a pretty speech to bolster morale and show them how sorry she was, now was not the time.
Breathe in. Breathe out. No regrets, keep moving.
She pushed to her feet. Her eyes opened. And that was when she finally spotted Vaness stretched across the mud. Vivia lunged for her and groped for the Empress’s neck. There was her pulse, weak but present. She was ice to the touch, though, and she did not respond to Vivia’s fingers or a whispered “Wake up, Vaness. Wake up.”
Then Vivia found the marks upon her neck, near the spine. Three fat punctures, the scabs fresh. The Empress had been drugged, just as Yoris had threatened he would do. It must have been the only way to neutralize her magic.
“Noden drown me,” Vivia whispered to the mud. She slid to a seat beside the Empress. Then she repeated to no one, “Noden drown me.” For there was no water down here for her to use.
And because, for the first time since Yoris had captured her, she felt genuine fear unwinding inside her. Icy and heavy, a little fox lost. A little fox run into her hole with nowhere else to hide.
TWENTY-TWO
Safi sensed Zander was running. She felt the Loom moving away, stretching her out like a hide drying upon the rack. Cold splintered in, and with it came pain. Shadows too that coursed within her, poking and pulling and ripping her to shreds.
She thought she might be screaming. She was certain she must be moaning. Somehow, that one sensation—of air pushing over vocal cords—still cut through the weight of dying.
She did not have much time, and there was nothing she could do about it. She was a corpse unspooling in Zander’s arms. Her life and what remained of her soul were entirely in his hands.
She could not sense when Zander reached the healer’s room again, nor when he dropped her on the cot or even when the noose was replaced around her neck and her own hands were forced upward to fuse the separate pieces together.
One moment, she was death. The next, she was life. Whole again, with a firm mattress beneath her. But she was seizing. Great convulsions of every muscle she possessed, from toes to thighs to biceps to tongue. The cold and the shadows were gone—only echoes remained, memories that could never be erased, permanent marks upon her bones.
“What is happening to her?” Henrick’s voice punched into her awareness. Furious and frothing. “You were meant to heal her.”
“We are, Your Imperial Majesty,” came from Zander. And from the healer, “There were complications—” The healer’s voice broke off, replaced by a choke. A cough. A low, garbled groan.
“Stop.” Safi did not know how she got that word out when everything within her rattled and something was stuck between her teeth. But she did squeeze it out, just as she also turned her head long enough to look at Henrick’s squat form wavering before her. “Stop.”
A familiar smirk spread over his lips, recognizable even when his face blurred and buzzed. “So you are healed.”