“Draw a card for you?” Ryber’s voice trilled through the breeze as she offered her deck to the Hammer.
His nose wrinkled. “I do not play games.”
“Not a game.” Ryber feigned offense. Her braid sprang free. “I dabble in fortune-telling from time to time. Look.” She flipped over a card: the Moon. “You come from the Fareastern continent.”
Somehow, the Hammer’s nose wrinkled even more. “You could tell that by looking at my face and hair tails.”
Ryber cracked a smile and dealt another card. The nine of foxes. “You come from the southwesternmost tip, from an island that has mostly managed to evade the wars of the mainland.”
Now the Hammer looked impressed—and even Stix was impressed too. She knew Ryber and the cards were clever, but she’d never seen Ryber play this sort of trick before.
The Hammer’s fingers tapped faster against his knee. Outside, the wheels’ refrain shifted from a soil-soft creak to a stone-echoed clack. Then shadows fell, the breeze vanished, and they were moving beneath the Ring.
Ryber flipped over two more cards. “Lady Fate’s Knife, and … Ah, the Lovers.” She held them up for Stix and the Hammer to see. “You came to Saldonica by sea because your Heart-Thread came here. They were…” She drew a third card, but she didn’t show it. Instead, her eyebrows slanted first into confusion. Then a deeper slope of sadness. “Oh,” she sighed. “I’m sorry. I see your Heart-Thread was—”
“Enough.” The Hammer’s fingers went still, and for the first time since meeting him, Stix spotted a blistering mark around his own thumb. “That is enough.” He shoved from the carriage before it had fully stopped. In seconds, he was gone, vanished into the limestone labyrinth of the Ring.
“What happened to his Heart-Thread?” Stix asked once she and Ryber were out of the carriage as well. “He has a mark on his thumb like mine.”
“Hye,” Ryber sighed as she offered Stix the final card. It was the Paladin of Hawks: a spiral of flames encircling a sword. “His Heart-Thread was taken by raiders, and then Kahina sold them into the Ring. I fear he’s only fighting so he can earn their freedom.”
Stix’s fingers tightened around the card. She scarcely noticed when Ryber pried it from her grasp. “But now I’m going to free them. He should be happy, no?”
Ryber’s lips pursed. “Or maybe you just made it harder for him to fulfill his own bargain, whatever that might be.”
* * *
Vivia and the Empress returned to the road sooner than Vivia had intended. She’d gotten turned around in the forest and veered a little too sharply south. She would have returned immediately to the safety of the trees, if not for the cannons.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, venturing onto the road. Midday sun washed over the coastline, making everything overbright. Even with the new growth here, there were still too many bone-bleached trees, too many stretches of dead shoreline.
“The Dalmottis attack,” Vaness said simply.
Vivia withdrew her spyglass and squinted north, toward the Well and Noden’s Gift. But they were too far; she saw nothing beyond gray ocean and white chop. She kept searching anyway. She had to know if she had done this. If, by running, she had consigned all the people of Noden’s Gift to vicious death.
“It might not be an attack,” Vaness murmured. “Perhaps the Nubrevnan navy engages—”
“They wouldn’t.” Vivia snapped down the glass. “As much as my father wishes to destroy the empires, even he is not so foolish as to face them head-on. He boasts, but he doesn’t act.”
A pause. Then Vaness said, “You cannot go back, Vivia.”
Vivia squeezed the spyglass like a breaking spine. It was easy for Vaness to stay away, because these were not her people. Noden’s Gift and the Well were not her home. There were no words to describe the rightness she’d felt at the sight of the forest. No words to explain her ancient, visceral connection to the river that flowed through.
She should never have left. How could she have left? No queen deserted her people.
She gripped the spyglass tighter. Below, the incoming tide kicked higher, and in the distance, cannon fire still boomed.
“You cannot go back,” Vaness repeated, and this time she reached for Vivia.
Vivia jerked aside. “I have to.” She shoved the spyglass into her pocket and turned north. She would follow the road directly. She would run the entire way if she had to.
“And what will you do?” Vaness called, striding after. Loud, angry footsteps that gritted on the sand.
“I will turn myself in to the Doge.”
“Do not be absurd!” Vaness kicked into a jog. “What good would such a sacrifice do?”
Vivia rounded on her. “My sacrifice will save hundreds of innocent lives.” She bore down on Vaness. Tiny. Feminine. Everything Vivia could never be. Vaness’s black hair whipped across her face; her red lips were pressed into pale displeasure.
And at Vivia’s approach, she thrust out her chin. “If you give yourself to the Doge, you will lose far more than Noden’s Gift. Do you not see? We are important. So important that it was worth sending a navy after us.”
“We don’t know why the Doge hunts us.”
“Because we are royalty! That is reason enough.”
“And so, because of that, our lives are worth more than the people of the Gift?”
“Exactly.”
For half a crashing wave, Vivia thought she’d misheard. But the Empress’s eyes said everything: she did believe her life worth more.
Vivia’s fingers curled into knuckle-breaking fists. The wild ocean called to her for use. “You,” she said, “are a disappointment.”
“And you,” Vaness replied, “are naive.” She shoved up her arms, bringing her wrists between them. Her iron shackles gleamed in Vivia’s face. “Do you think I wanted to leave Marstok? Do you think I fled with glee? No.” She rattled the iron. “I was forced to leave everyone I cared about—forced to run like a coward from the people who needed me most because in the end, I am the only one who can protect them. I am the Well Chosen, Vivia. Has it never occurred to you that you are too?”
Vivia’s nose wrinkled. “What does that phrase even mean, Empress? Well Chosen.” She thickened the title with disgust. “It’s nonsense. A label old rulers used so no one would question their right. But anyone who thinks they deserve a crown does not, in fact, deserve it. Just look at my father—look at what he has done.”
“I never said I deserved it.” Vaness matched Vivia, her arms casting wide. “Hye, the world has told me I was Well Chosen since the day I was born, but I have also questioned it every moment since. Why was I born with a crown? Why was I given so much power?
“But the answer does not matter in the end. What matters is that I was given a title, a throne, and an empire. What matters is that I choose to use them to help Marstok. That is all I care about: giving myself to the people.” She thrust her shackled wrists in Vivia’s face. “You are the same. I see it in you every day, and that is what makes you special. That is what makes you Well Chosen. I am certain of it.”