Stormcaster (Shattered Realms #3)(74)

“Sasha will come,” Lyss said, without a shred of doubt, remembering the look on the Gray Wolf’s face the night of the failed escape. “She will come, if she’s still alive.”

“I think you’re right,” Breon said. “She’s . . . formidable.” He sighed. “Will they even know where to look?”

“I tried to leave a message on the beach,” Lyss said. “I hope they can figure it out.”

“I hope they hurry,” Breon said. “I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.”

“For what it’s worth,” Lyss said, “I misjudged you, and I’m sorry.”

“No,” Breon said. “You didn’t misjudge me. All those bad things you thought—they were true. I could justify anything, as long as it led to another hit. I lied to everyone—myself most of all.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Lyss said. It was odd to be in the position of consoling someone who’d led her into an ambush. “If I were picking villains in this, you wouldn’t be high on the list.”

“I’d be on it, though. You were the one who forced me to get off the leaf. I never could’ve done it on my own. I don’t know how much time I have left, but I’m glad to be clean, and I hope I can make you glad that you saved me.”

Lyss felt her cheeks heating. “I’m already glad, Breon. Since we’re in this together, I hope we can be friends.” She extended her hand, and Breon took it.





30


IN THE WAKE OF THE EMPRESS


Cas slowly circled over the city of Chalk Cliffs, losing altitude with each circle he made. The air was still thick with smoke—thick, acrid fumes that burned Jenna’s eyes and made her cough.

Bad air, Cas said. Stinks.

“I know. At least it might make us harder to see.”

Cas and Jenna would be hard to see if we fly to the mountains.

Cas disapproved of Jenna’s interest in this broken, fuming city. He was happy that the big guns on shore had quieted, at least.

“That’s low enough, I think. Just keep circling a minute.”

The ships that had been lying out of sight of land had come in now, and were unloading soldiers and horses onto the shore. The city was a charred ruin, but the harbor was a hive of activity. The warning they’d delivered had been too little, too late.

Why horse people want to live in burned city?

“I don’t think they plan to stay long,” Jenna said. Leaning down over Cas’s shoulder, she studied the ships anchored in the harbor, looking for the three-masted ship with the siren figurehead.

Jenna’s eyesight was sharper by far than that of anyone else of her species, but not nearly as sharp as a dragon’s.

“Do you see the ship that chased the ship we burned?”

Cas swept back and forth, twice, then made a larger circle, soaring past the white cliffs with the now-silent guns and out over the ocean beyond the bay.

There.

“Are you sure?”

Cas snorted flame and smoke, vexed that she would ask that question. As they drew closer, Jenna could see that the dragon had called it right.

While the other ships were dropping anchor in the harbor, this one was sailing east under full sail.

“That’s interesting,” Jenna said. “The armies are staying, but this ship seems to be going back home. Go high, but keep them in sight, all right?”

With a few lazy wingbeats, Cas gained altitude so that the ship below, on the dark water, resembled a tiny toy boat trailing a threadlike white wake.

Jenna debated what to do. It was unlikely that a girl and a dragon could drive an army from Chalk Cliffs, though they could do plenty of damage.

They could fly back west, over the backbone of mountains, and try to find the capital in the north and warn the northerners. But if Jenna lost sight of the ship, she might never find it again. If she meant to make good on her promise to seek vengeance on the empress who had taken so much from her, now would be the time to do it. A ship at sea is highly vulnerable to an aerial assault, particularly a sneak attack.

If only they knew for sure that the empress was aboard, they could reduce it to a smear of ash on the waves.

Yet she and Cas had been training for months so they would be ready to cross the Indio and confront the empress in her lair. As Cas put it: Burn the nest, kill the hatchlings, claim the hoard.

Jenna had studied the map she’d stolen from the temple library at Fortress Rocks, tracing a path from shore to shore, past the script that said Here there be dragons. There weren’t any resting points for a dragon between the Seven Realms and the shoreline of Carthis. It would be a challenge, even though Cas used very little energy when they were soaring.

“What do you think, Cas?” she said. “Are we ready for this? Do you want to follow them home?”

Fish in the ocean?

“Yes,” she said, resting her cheek against his hot shoulder. “We can fish in the ocean.”

Without replying, the dragon turned northeast and put on speed, following the wake of the empress’s flagship across the dark northern sea.





31


GOING FOR BROKE


To Hal’s surprise, their quarters in Newgate Prison were reasonably comfortable, at the top of one of the towers of the palace’s perimeter wall. Even more surprising, he and Robert were housed together, when common practice was to isolate the subjects of interrogation to make them more pliable and to prevent them from comparing notes and working up a story.