Chapter 9

Caris smoothed her hands over the broadsheet on the table, fingertips lingering over the blurred faces of her parents. The photograph had been taken from a distance, both her parents standing in front of a civic building in Amari, their hands shackled together in front of them. Their clothes, while neat and not of a prison set, hung on their frames in a way she wasn't familiar with. The shadows edging their cheeks were concerning, but she was half a country away from them, in no position to question after their health. She knew anyway that Eimarille wouldn't have been kind to them.

She couldn't even be sure they were alive, despite the article taking up the top front page. Caris was well aware of how manipulative Eimarille was, and planting a story to entice Caris out of Cosian was something she had tried before. Threatening a trial and execution of her parents had surprised no one. Knowing she could not act just yet left Caris aching with regret.

But they had a chance now, she knew, to take back Ashion. She lifted her gaze from the table, glancing down its crowded length in both directions. Officers from the Ashion army, several from the Solarian Legion, and those of the E'ridian air force had gathered in Cosian for a critical alliance meeting. Now that the E'ridian treaty had been signed and their air force committed, Ashion had a chance at surviving—if they could take their capital back.

"A head-on push to Amari will tip our hand well before we make that city's walls," the Imperial General Yiannis Diomandis, of no House, said in heavily accented Ashionen. "Retaking the city is important, but all of Daijal's forces have come to bear in the eastern provinces of your country. Breaking that line will take time, but it won't be quick enough to save who you wish."

Yiannis' face was weathered from years spent beneath the desert sun, his red-and-white checkered effiyeh perfectly set on his head, the bulk of the fabric falling to one side. His tan uniform held an assortment of ranking pins, medals, and braid, making him look stiff with the weight of it, but he'd been kind when he greeted Caris with the salute of his people. His expression was still kind but tempered with something like regret as he looked back at her.

"I am aware that Eimarille is prepared to judge my parents guilty well before the ground offensive can get underway, but they would be the first to say that Ashion comes first," Caris said quietly. Which was true, but it didn't lessen her heartache any. Her parents had been cogs in the Clockwork Brigade, a road that had helped lead Caris to this very table. "Ashion must come first if we are to keep Daijal from gaining any more ground. I know the plans must change due to the attacks that occurred within your own borders, but the way forward, as General Votil has explained it to me, remains the same. We must retake Amari."

She looked at the maps spread out across the table, battle plans inked into the paper with notes from more than a dozen hands. Caris had gotten better at learning military shorthand and understood the gist of what her generals had planned. Even with the aid of half the Solarian Legion and the squadrons of war airships from E'ridia's air force, pushing Daijal back all the way to Amari would be a huge undertaking.

"To do that, we need a distraction," General Clarence Votil said, glancing at Caris. "Our queen made a suggestion weeks ago that I've had our best strategists working on. With the addition of our allies, it could prove fruitful. We need to split Daijal's focus to break their front lines."

Admiral Eirik nodded in agreement, lifting a hand to stroke his neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. The plaid sections on his shirt tied him to Clan Lightning. "We're all in agreement about the offensive push needed to reach Amari, but it's the distraction we've not decided upon. The Daijal army is entrenched in the provinces, and the revenants are many. What is your plan?"

"New Haven," Caris said. "We need to attack New Haven."

All eyes returned to her, and she lifted her chin beneath their scrutiny. She might not be adept at military strategy, but she knew what a capital city meant to its people. Two could play the game Eimarille had set upon this board when it came down to it.

"The Daijal navy has their port cities and the river mouth sealed off with their ships. We can assume Urova's submersible fleet has some presence in the Gulf of Helia as well," Clarence said.

"The Tovanians can counter that with depth charges and sea mines. They did so around our borders, though not before the Urovans had slipped past the patrols into the wetlands," Yiannis said.

Caris blinked at him. "Your treaty with the Tovanians still stands?"

"It does. We believe the Urovans were already lying in wait within our wetlands to target Rixham before the Tovanian patrols reached the eastern shores of our country. We do not blame them for failing to stop the attack when none of us thought Daijal would ever cross the line as they have."

"If it's a pitched sea battle between Tovanian ship-cities against Daijal's navy and Urova's submersibles, I'll pick the Tovanians. They know the open seas better than anyone." Clarence looked at Caris, using his stick to tap at the small marking on the map that indicated Oeiras on the west of Solaria. "With your approval, Ashion can send another envoy to the Tovan Isles and ask for an alliance."

Caris nodded slowly. "The Imperial emperor agreed to provide an introduction to their ambassador in Oeiras. The sooner we send an envoy south again, the better."

"If we can convince the Tovanians to lend aid with their ship-cities for us to target New Haven, Eimarille will be forced to split her forces and pull some back to her capital. Such an effort will be the crack in their wall we need," Yiannis said.

The officers devolved into a conversation about logistics of pulling off such a feat, something that Caris followed along as best she could before she decided she wasn't needed for this part. Clearing her throat, she stood, causing everyone to stop speaking and rise to their own feet to salute her out of the room after she said her goodbyes.

Maurus waited for her in the hall, the captain of her Royal Guard ever at attention. He and several others escorted her out of the building that had become the command headquarters for the war, the streets surrounding it filled with people in uniform. Those who saw her as she exited the building came to strict attention and saluted. Maurus helped her into the back seat of the motor carriage before climbing behind the steering wheel himself. Their small convoy of vehicles drove away from the civilian-turned-military-occupied buildings in favor of home.

Caris rolled down the window, allowing for a sluggishly warm breeze to blow over her face as they drove. The temperature today was hot, summer in Eighth Month always a ruthless season in the Eastern Basin. She'd grown up with the heat and didn't mind it as much as Meleri or Dureau did. Lore had tolerated it better, and Caris tried not to think too much on what had become of her friend.

Caris stared out the window at the damaged and undamaged streets they passed on the drive back home. Nathaniel was there to greet her when they arrived, opening the door to offer her his hand, as he always did. Whether it was for dancing or a walk or an escort, he thought nothing of being by her side, providing support she desperately needed as she pretended all the while she knew what she was doing.

He lifted his other hand to her face, brushing his knuckles over the arch of her cheekbone. Despite the heat of the day, his shirt was done up to the collar, cravat knotted tight around his throat. "Would you like tea brought to you in your laboratory?"

It was a wonder how he knew what she always needed when sometimes even she didn't know. "Please."

"I'll bring it to you."

Clearing her mind was easier to do when she had something to occupy her hands. Nathaniel saw her to her small laboratory in the rear garden before excusing himself to return to the main house and prepare a tea tray for her. Caris set about opening the windows and turning on all the mechanical fans for better airflow, then tied up her hair and pulled a large folio off the shelf. She set it on her worktable and opened it, peering down at the sketched-out designs for attaching a pistol's barrel to Blaine's mechanical prosthetic.

The sound of the door opening made her hum. "That was quick."

"I suppose twenty-one years is quick for me."

The voice didn't belong to Nathaniel. Caris' head jerked up, mouth opening to call for help even as starfire sparked at her fingertips, when the words strangled themselves in her throat.

The woman standing before her wore neat trousers and a white blouse whose short sleeves allowed her to show off the constellation tattoo on her right arm. Caris tracked the lines and starbursts of the Wolf constellation on the North Star's arm, the gold an impossible color in her skin. But then, star gods were the stuff of dreams and prayers, if their history was anything to go by.

Caris shoved away from the worktable and hastily sank down into a curtsy. Her parents had drilled into her a respect for their country's guiding star that had never left her, even if her mother and father had.

"My lady," she croaked out, clenching her hands into fists so they would hopefully stop trembling. She didn't know what had drawn the North Star here, but Caris rather hoped that Aaralyn wouldn't condemn her for the choices she'd made on behalf of Ashion.

"You have grown," Aaralyn said, her voice a rich cadence in Caris' ears.

Caris rose out of her curtsy and dared to lift her head to meet the North Star's gaze. "I haven't a memory of you."

Aaralyn smiled slightly as she stepped closer, the air in the laboratory becoming stifling with her presence. "Not with this face, no."

She reached the worktable, and her features shimmered as if she was pulling on a veil, and Caris' eyes widened at the face revealed to her for a handful of seconds before Aaralyn's natural features returned. "You taught me to control my magic?"

For a moment, Aaralyn had stood before Caris as the star priestess who'd taught her in secret when the clarion crystals' songs became too loud for her to resist as a child. Later, it had been that same star priestess who had warned of the dangers of revealing the starfire that burned in her soul. Caris had held those teachings close when she'd left Cosian for Amari several years ago. She'd followed the rules set down for her right up until the riot in Amari, when to keep that secret meant damning her people to die.

"I have been your guiding star since Ophelia prayed for me to save you," Aaralyn said, hazel eyes never blinking.

Caris thought about the beginning of her road that Blaine had told her about and all that came after. She'd wondered but daren't ask her parents, whose road she had overtaken when she was barely hours old. "You gave me away. You bade the Dusk Star to flee with me."

"You have never regretted that."

Caris flinched. "Haven't I, my lady?"

Aaralyn tipped her head to the side, studying Caris with a gravity to her gaze that burned like starfire. Her attention was anything but easy. "You don't, for if you did, you would protest the crown others have given you."

It was a rank in name only, for all the jewels meant for the starfire throne had been destroyed during the Inferno, and the ones Eimarille claimed as hers were Daijal-made. Caris was queen, made that way by everyone's belief, not a crown that had never rested on her head. But it was something Eimarille coveted and which Soren flatly refused the same way he refused his name. Unlike Soren, Caris couldn't bring herself to walk away from what it meant to be of the Rourke bloodline and all it entailed.

"My name isn't even written down in the royal genealogies."

"That was done to protect you. If you'd been in the records, my husband's Blades would have found you."

Caris crossed her arms over her chest, shoulders hunching forward a little. "If you could save me, why couldn't you save Eimarille? Or Soren, who I don't even know is still alive?"

Aaralyn shrugged. "I gave your brother to the Dawn Star and the Eclipse Star to make him a warden."

"And Eimarille?"

Aaralyn stepped closer, resting the fingertips of both hands on the worktable. "I let my husband take her."

"I fail to see how that decision saved her if it brought the world to war."

"Oh, child. It was never about saving one person, or even three, but about ensuring the future of Maricol remains firmly planted here and not in the stars."

Caris gave her an odd look. "Maricol is our home. The stars take our ashes when we die. Where else would we go?"

"Where else indeed." Aaralyn smiled slightly, looking both ancient and young but, above all, wholly something else in that moment. "Eimarille's road was always meant to cross yours."

"I'd rather it didn't." But that confrontation was barreling toward Caris like a steam train with no switch light to stop it.

"I've given you a long road to walk, but it must be walked." Aaralyn lifted her hand and reached across the worktable for Caris, fingers brushing across her forehead with a searing touch that had her jerking back, turning her head aside. "Trust your heart, for it will never betray you."

When she looked back, Aaralyn was gone, and Caris wasn't quite certain if it hadn't been a fever dream brought about by the summer heat.

She swallowed, rubbing at her forehead, and tensed when the door opened again. Only this time, it wasn't a star god sweeping in with no apologies, but Nathaniel, who she was always glad to see. Nathaniel frowned at her as he nudged the door shut behind him with his foot. "What's wrong?"

Caris shook her head, wondering if she looked as rattled as she felt. "Nothing. I could use some tea."

"Well then. Let's pour you some."

She drank it plain and hot, needing the bitterness to clear her mind. Nathaniel drank with her, a quiet presence that she leaned against, her shoulder pressed to his arm. If she concentrated, she could hear the sound of his clockwork metal heart and the faint song from the clarion crystals that helped power it. She thought about Aaralyn's words and everything stretching out beyond her on a road that got harder and harder to walk with every dawn she woke up to.

"We're sending a diplomatic envoy to Oeiras to open talks with the Tovan Isles to ally with us and join the war effort. We need their ship-cities to break through the blockade in the Gulf of Helia guarding the way to New Haven," Caris said quietly.

Nathaniel stiffened beside her. "Should you be telling me this?"

She turned her head to look at him, the clarion crystal shard hanging around her neck with the ring he'd given her warm against her skin. "You would never betray me."

"Not of my own free will."

They'd carved it back out of him when it mattered, and he'd never embodied the chains of rionetka since. But there was always that fear, she knew, that the Klovod's control could return. "We are not married, but I would have you go to Oeiras on my behalf and plead our country's case."

Nathaniel carefully set his teacup down on the worktable, freeing his hand so he could turn to face her and gently touch her cheek. "I am a living risk to everything you are fighting for, my darling."

She curled her fingers around his wrist, thinking of Aaralyn's words and all the times Nathaniel had held her and shored her up and helped to carry her forward. "If we take no risks, then we won't win."

Caris knew from Vanya that the Tovanians had uncovered rionetkas in Port Avi. Whether dead or alive, none would be able to articulate what it was like to be so changed. Nathaniel would encompass all the horrors that Eimarille represented and be a warning as well as a plea.

"Do you not want me here?" Nathaniel asked, voice quiet, almost small.

Caris blinked back the sudden tears that came to her eyes. "I want you with me always."

But there was a war being fought and a throne to be won and a country to ensure it stayed a country. None of it a road she had ever wanted to walk, but walk it she must.

And Nathaniel understood that, judging by the slow nod he gave her, a bittersweet smile coming to his lips. "If that is your will, then I will do as my queen commands."

She knew no one would be pleased with her orders, but Caris didn't care. Nathaniel would be her voice, out there in the Gulf of Helia, and if it kept him off the land and out of reach of Eimarille and the Klovod and their deadly schemes, so much the better.

"I love you," she said, meaning it with all she was worth.

"And I you."

He kissed her softly, tea a bitter taste on both their tongues. Caris would always want him like this, even if she wanted nothing more in terms of touch. And no matter where Nathaniel went, Caris would know where he stood on a spelled-ink map, could follow and find him anywhere.

His heart would always belong to her, and she vowed never to break it.