M any Wielders assisted us on our journey—including Tisaanah—which allowed us to move very quickly across the sea, making a weeks-long
trip in mere days. I spent most of it hanging over the rail, vomiting. Three trips over this very ocean, and one would think it wouldn’t be so bad anymore, but alas, no such luck.
Sammerin was clearly pleased to return to Ara—he had been homesick for months. Even Brayan seemed uncharacteristically chipper, though maybe that was because he was just very passionate about this “throne stealing” idea. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Ishqa would remain in Threll for the next several days, but would be joining us in Ara when it was time to make our move.
It was a foggy afternoon, the sky grey and soupy, when we arrived in Ara. The Towers came into view first. When Tisaanah called Sammerin and I over, shouting that the Towers were visible, I expected to see those two imposing streaks of silver and gold looming over us.
What I saw instead made the words die in my throat.
The Towers were shattered. They still stood, and still managed to look defiantly majestic, as if gouging their form into the sky. But where they had once been unbreakable columns tall enough to disappear into the clouds, now they ended in jagged spears, fraying like torn fabric.
Somberness fell over all of us. Sammerin’s obvious pleasure at the thought of returning to Ara became quiet concern. Brayan’s boastful confidence dampened to solemn sadness. All of us had known, logically, that we were headed to another war zone. But the shattered Towers served
as an unexpectedly vivid reminder that things here had been even worse than we had imagined.
When we docked, Iya was waiting. The docks were quiet, too—yes, fishing boats and transport ships and military vessels all went about their business, but people were hushed and focused. No one even cast a second glance at Iya, standing there like a monument in the mist, his white hair and white skin and white robes cutting through the dusk. He lifted a hand to us in greeting as we left the ship.
“Maxantarius. Tisaanah. Sammerin.” His accent plucked at our names like strings. “And… my, is that Brayan Farlione? Welcome home. I hope you’ve all had a safe and blissfully uneventful journey.”
The idea of describing anything that was happening now as “blissfully uneventful” was incomprehensible. Instead, I grasped Iya’s outstretched hand, gave him a smile that felt manic but I hoped looked reasonably calm, and said, “Thank you, councilor. Now, where’s the coup?”
 |
“Where’s the coup?” Tisaanah hissed in my ear, barely holding back her laughter.
I shrugged defensively. “What else was I supposed to say? Don’t answer that,” I added, when her lips opened. “We all already knew I have poor social graces. If that’s disqualifying for this entire thing, then we’re in trouble from the start.”
Tisaanah rolled her eyes, and Sammerin let out a scoff that sounded a bit too much like agreement for my tastes.
Still, I clung to that one little sound of almost-amusement, because we needed it as Iya led us through the streets of the Capital.
I had never thought of myself as a particularly patriotic person—I had witnessed too many times what such attitudes cost—but seeing Ara in this state left me nauseous. I had seen some of the damage when Nura would pull me out of Ilyzath, but what had been hairline fractures then had now become massive rifts. Entire districts of the city were dark—Iya told us it was because certain areas were hit hard by attacks from the Fey’s creatures, and residents were afraid to return—and we passed many buildings with shattered windows or crumbling walls, claw marks gouging them like
curtains shredded by a house cat. Mourning flowers were pinned on most doors, intended to mark households that lost soldier relatives—sometimes the red of a lost husband or father, the white of a lost friend, and too many of them, the black of a lost child.
We were solemn as we walked through the streets. Iya glanced back at us. Our expressions must have said what our silence didn’t.
“It has been a long few months,” he said.
“I want a briefing on this,” I said, gesturing to—well, all of it. “I need to know the context of everything that’s happening.”
“Already arranged.”
Iya, to my surprise, led us to the foot of the Towers. Up close, their state was much better than it had appeared from a distance. The entrance and the first twenty floors or so seemed to be perfectly intact, albeit far quieter than I was used to seeing them. The few people who were present in the Towers’ lobby stopped and looked at me as soon as we entered, which, on instinct, made me seize up.
“What?” Iya sounded amused. “Do you expect to be apprehended?” I had to admit that a part of me did.
“This is the Orders,” he said, quietly. “These are your people.”
Now that was a sentence that, two years ago, would have made me burst out laughing. The idea that the Orders would ever be “my” people again had been incomprehensible.
“Surely at least some of them are Nura’s people.”
Iya’s expression hardened. “Not many. Not anymore.” He led us through the familiar hallways of the Tower of Midnight, bringing us to the platform and bringing us down, to the archives and libraries below the lobby.
My body tensed as the platform lowered. The last time I had been here, it was to be subjected to hours of torture that nearly killed me. I was stiff as we walked through the halls. I didn’t quite expect the bolt of irrational panic that shot through me as Iya started to open the door.
“Wait.” I grabbed his shoulder, too abruptly. “Vardir. Is he here?”
Iya’s mouth thinned in disapproval. “No, thankfully. Nura started to get more paranoid over these last months. She moved her more… controversial projects outside of the Towers.”
“Where?”
“Even the Council doesn’t know. I suspect no one does, except her and Vardir.”
“And the people she has locked up there,” Tisaanah murmured. I felt ill at the thought of it.
“We’ll take care of that,” I muttered, and Tisaanah nodded and squeezed my hand.
The door that Iya opened had never been one of Nura’s labs, anyway. This one I had been in before, long ago, when I was competing for Arch Commandant the first time—it was an archive room, one of the largest, with hundreds or perhaps even thousands of shelves of books and records lining the walls and packed into narrow aisles.
Iya gestured to the closest bookcase, and the only one that was partially empty.
“Records,” he said. “Detailing military operations, casualties, forms of attack, preparations, results… anything and everything that was considered worth writing around the conflicts with the Fey. If you wanted to read before the briefing tomorrow.”
I felt dizzy just looking at it. “Thank you. That will be helpful.”
Brayan looked up and down the rows. “This is like the military archives.”
“Yes,” Iya said. “It’s the same concept.”
“So why are these records here, instead of there?”
“If the subject has strong Orders participation or impact, the records go here. The military archives are largely centered upon non-Wielder experiences.”
“Hm.” Brayan looked around the room, intrigued. “I’ll go through these,” I said. “Thank you.”
“And after that?” Tisaanah asked Iya. She already had that look in her eye—that “Let’s-make-a-plan” look. “What happens next? We have limited time.”
“I have already called the Council together. They are arriving in the morning. At which point… we’ll make the formal bid for Maxantarius to supplant Nura as Arch Commandant, and all the power that entails at this strange time in history.”
I let out a long breath that trembled a little despite by best efforts. “Alright.”
Iya gave me an encouraging smile. “Get some rest until then. Read.
Think. Go see the city. Just be careful after nightfall.”
