Chapter 2

Terilyn wedged herself in the corner behind the captain's seat, squinting at the murky, silt-filled water of the swampy wetland that lapped against the front viewport. They'd left the main tract of the river behind yesterday, the Urovan fleet of submersibles pressing ever northwest toward their target. The swamp waters here in this part of Solaria were deep enough to allow for submersibles to travel through the waterways beneath trees whose branches hung low overhead, blocking out the sky and keeping them hidden.

The Urovans hadn't sent an icebreaker ship south—there'd been no need for such a powerful vessel in open waters—but they'd reworked the engineering on the submersibles' prows to cut through overgrowth rather than ice for this endeavor. The water was trending more shallow with every hour they put behind them, and she thought the trees and low-lying plants were starting to thin out.

"Maybe another hour before we hit the shallows, according to the maps," the captain said in Urovan as he pulled on a lever and flicked a toggle with his other hand.

Terilyn pulled her pocket watch free and lifted the lid with her thumbnail to check the time. This far south in Solaria, the sun set faster than it did in Daijal, but they'd reach solid land before sunset truly started, and that was all that mattered. It would be light enough still for the Urovans to execute Eimarille's orders. By Terilyn's calculations, the submersibles tasked with traversing E'ridia's rivers should have already finished their attack. Terilyn would have no way to tell until she reached a city and could pick up a broadsheet.

Eimarille and Terilyn had planned the two-pronged attack during the latter half of this past winter, when it became apparent that Ashion would not stop requesting aid from other countries. They'd picked apart every possible detail with Kote until they had a solid plan in place to head off what support E'ridia and Solaria could provide Ashion.

It meant targeting E'ridia's airfields and repair yards while targeting something else in Solaria altogether. Solaria's Legion was next to impossible to fully cripple, but its forces could be split. One just needed to find the right leverage.

She tucked her pocket watch away and shifted on her feet, arching her back a little to crack it. She'd shed the heavy jacket she'd worn for most of the travel south, the inside of the submersible quickly becoming warmer than was comfortable. It was built to stay insulated in icy-cold seas, not in the middle of a swampy wetland. Someone had popped the hatch after they'd breached the water, and Terilyn tilted her head around the edge of the entryway, hoping to feel a hint of breeze to cool the sweat on her skin.

"How has the artillery fared?" she asked in her native language. Terilyn had gained a faint accent from all her years spent in Daijal, but she'd never lost her proficiency in her mother tongue.

The captain didn't look away from the waterway beyond the large glass panes of the front viewport. "Dry and ready to launch, according to the ordnance officer."

She nodded to herself, watching as the shoreline twisted up ahead, a breeze gently making the branches and vines sway above the submersible. Those on watch hadn't sounded any warnings for revenants, but that didn't mean the dead weren't out there. The water wasn't cleansed the way the lakes and rivers were tended to in the north with filtration machines, the wetlands too vast to easily fix. Whatever poison was embedded in the Wastelands had encroached in the land out here, spreading spores and poison in this area of Solaria. Frontier towns existed in the wetlands, but no city had ever called it home.

The closest one had ever gotten to the shallows was Rixham.

Eventually, the trees of the swampy wetlands thinned enough to see the horizon through the trees and the convoy that awaited them at the rendezvous point. The distance between Rixham and the wetlands was beyond the capabilities of a submersible to travel without a waterway. They were met instead at the shoreline by trucks that had risked the long trek south from the House of Kimathi's vasilyet through dangerous back roads and survived, courtesy of their guide.

The Klovod was a man Terilyn knew well after so many years of him orbiting her queen. The former warden had the training and the wherewithal to move the disguised Daijalan troops through Joelle's porous northern border of her vasilyet and past the Legion's ever-shifting front lines. He'd been sent to oversee the death-defying machine at Daijal's southern border, bringing with him prisoners of war to turn into revenants, and from there, his orders had sent him deep into Solaria.

Terilyn studied the Klovod through the front viewport, the man dressed as the warden he'd long since ceased to be. She shifted on her feet, moving with the motion of the submersible as the captain angled it close to shore. She gave her thanks for a smooth sail after the long days spent together before slipping out of the cramped quarters and through the short, narrow corridor for the ladder leading to the hatch.

She climbed it swiftly, nodding her thanks to the Urovan soldier already outside, who offered his hand to her. She took it, letting him smoothly guide her from submersible to shore. Her feet slid a bit in the muddy banks, but she pitched herself onto dry land for the first time in nearly two weeks, breathing fresh air that didn't leave an aftertaste of metal in the back of her throat.

"Did you encounter any trouble?" Terilyn asked in Daijalan.

"Not when everyone thought we were wardens heading to the Wastelands for border duty," the Klovod said, bite scar on his cheek pulling a bit as he spoke.

These days, most of the wardens were in Ashion, removed from Daijal and Urova, a troubling issue that meant more revenants walking the poison fields of their country than Eimarille preferred. But despite the betrayal Solaria's major Houses had adhered to over the Ages with their royal dead, the wardens hadn't pulled out of that country and continued to back Ashion.

And now Solaria had agreed to an alliance with the false queen.

Eimarille had expected such a problem, planned for it, which was why Terilyn had traveled far. The House of Sa'Liandel had cracks in the loyalties owed to it, even with the Dawn Star's blessing. Some of those cracks had spread for years, and Terilyn was here, behind enemy lines, to ruin a country for her queen.

"The ornithopter is on standby for after. It will take us north, to an abandoned way station between here and Calhames, where an airship is waiting. It'll be a night flight the rest of the way to Daijal," the Klovod said.

Terilyn nodded. "Then let's make this transfer quick."

The soldiers who had followed the Klovod south had been busy while they waited for the Urovan submersibles to arrive. Trees had been cut down to clear space, metal ramps laid down over soft ground, and the trucks lined up with engines running were ready to receive the long-range grenade launchers Urova had transported for them.

It took time, with the sun sliding ever west in the sky, but Terilyn wasn't willing to rush the unloading. The ordnance that had already leveled E'ridian airfields would now be put to the test against a dead city.

Automatons helped with the unloading of weaponry from the submersibles onto transport trucks, while soldiers worked tirelessly to bolt and weld them into place. The grenade launchers would have received far too much attention to smuggle them through Solaria, especially with the security checks the emperor had initiated. Coordinating this meet-up had taken both time and luck, but when they finally parted ways, they were only a few hours out from the attack on E'ridia when the city walls of Rixham came into view.

Terilyn knew it had been a city holding hundreds of thousands of revenants inside its barricaded walls for going on two decades. It had stood for years as a monument to a mother's grief and a House's folly.

It would fall in the shadow of the emperor's mistakes.

The Klovod knew of its defenses from a fellow warden whose duties had always been to guard it. The clockwork cat he'd created for his warden friend years ago had learned the habits, codes, and spells used to keep the barricades around Rixham in place. He'd retrieved such information during the times they'd both leave the poison fields behind in favor of the Warden's Island.

Terilyn wondered if the Klovod had meant to betray the wardens for years before the Midnight Star had found him and taught him how to create rionetkas. She'd never asked why he harbored such hatred of the people who had made him, but therein, perhaps, was her answer. Tithes were payment and had no rights once given up. All they had was the wardens and the alchemy that would change them or kill them. The wardens could not be surprised some held such bitterness in their hearts.

The sun had touched the horizon when the soldiers and magicians under the Klovod's command got in position on the southeast side of the city. Magicians cast magic from their wands to make everyone appear as part of the topography while soldiers extended the support struts that would stabilize the trucks when the long-distance grenade launchers fired at the high walls in the distance.

The Klovod supervised several soldiers as they removed the tarp that kept the ornithopter hidden from view, the blades that helped give it flight rotating idly from the jostling. Satisfied with the preparation efforts going on around her, she made her way to the ornithopter and eyed the two seats inside it.

The soldiers had their own escape avenues, though they were all aware that this could very well be a suicide mission. But they were dedicated to their queen, hand-picked because of their belief in Daijal's right to rule Maricol.

The Klovod glanced at her, his face impassive in the dying light. "I had a soldier drop it off here last night. He stayed under cover until we arrived and will be departing with his squad. It's fueled up and ready for us."

"Good," Terilyn said. "Let's see this done."

The wardens had never had any cause to be concerned that the walls around Rixham wouldn't hold. They had spent two decades guarding the walking dead massed inside an abandoned city's streets. Terilyn knew there would be no survivors inside Rixham, only a horde of revenants of a size not seen before in history.

Solaria would bear witness to it now.

The first volley of grenades launched before the light in the west faded, hitting their target dead-on, destroying the thick outer wall of Rixham one explosion at a time. The soldiers knew they'd have a limited amount of time to press the attack before the wardens on duty at the watchtower and the sentinel-class automatons came to defend it.

By then, it was too late.

Terilyn hauled herself up into the passenger seat of the ornithopter, the hair on the back of her neck prickling as a sound rent the air between the booming noise of explosions. It rose like a storm wind, raspy and animalistic, tens of thousands of the walking dead screaming for a release they couldn't comprehend, driven onward by the spores ravaging their desiccated flesh.

For all that she was a Blade, Terilyn was no warden, and the bone-deep fear of revenants almost everyone on Maricol grew up with made her want to run.

The volley stopped minutes later, engines thrumming as the soldiers frantically undid the support struts to quickly turn the trucks south. Their evacuation route was in the wetlands, where the Urovan submersibles waited to ferry them out of danger.

The Klovod appeared on the other side of the ornithopter so suddenly that Terilyn was half drawing a stiletto from the sheath in her boot before she recognized him. He smirked at her, as if he knew how tightly wound her nerves were. "Your queen will be pleased."

"Just get us in the air," Terilyn said coolly.

The sooner they left the land behind, the better.

The Klovod did as ordered, deftly getting the engine up and running, the blades spinning with a speed that vibrated through the framework of the ornithopter. Soon enough, they were in the air, the thrum of the engine making her teeth ache.

Terilyn leaned to the side and craned her head to peer down at the rapidly distancing earth below them. In the last vestiges of the fading sun, she could see a darkness spilling out of the shattered walls surrounding Rixham, spreading ever outward.

Solaria would learn the lesson of burning their dead instead of burying them far too late.