“A simplePraesidium?”
“No, sir. I, um…”
He waited.
“APraesidium Lumiere, sir.”
He arched a brow.
“I—I made it up.”
“Enhanced with chimeric?”
“Aye, sir. I thought they were going to shoot Mr. Fahr.”
“That was quick on your feet,” he said, and he blinked slowly like a cat. “Sit.”
Sit? Only days ago, I’d wanted to kill him. Now, I was being offered a chair in the cabin of aRhi’Ahrcaptain. Suns, how my life had changed.
But I wasn’t a fool. I sat.
“This does present a new set of problems,” he said, and he glanced down at a map spread out on his desk, tracing the outline of the Dreadwall with one finger. “For the last few years, theRhi’Ahrhave gained the tactical advantage by dusting their cannonshot with chimeric, but if a bluemage, Navy trained, could do the same, it could turn the tide of the war.”
I swallowed hard, conflicted to my bones.
He looked up again.
“And the harpy said they had a ‘soul aboard’?”
“That’s what he said, sir. But surely, you’re not thinking Kit?”
“Not Kit. Never Kit.”
A soul aboard. What would a traitor look like aboard a ship where an enemy was captain?
“Who is this boy?” I asked. “And why would they think he was on theTouchstone?”
He sighed.
“That is a story that finds its beginning a thousand years ago,” he began. “With the order of the Priestlords and the casting of the Dreadwall. But that’s too long a story for you now and only has some bearing on the boy.”
“I’ve no pressing engagements,” I said with a smirk, and I swore his lips twitched.
I marveled that, despite hisRhi’Ahraccent, his words were so formal, so precise. He spoke Overland fluently, and I wondered how long he’d been speaking it. It was like he’d learned in a library or from scholars and scribes and more bookish folk. But more importantly, I wondered how on erthe he’d come to serve aboard an Oversea ship with a Letter of Marque from our king.
“Very well,” he said. “What do you know of the Priestlords, Ensign?”
I bit my lip, tried to remember. Everything I knew came from my mother, so I hadn’t really cared.
“House WoodRaven,” I began, searching my memory. “They were an ancient order responsible for guarding the Dreadwall. Allisar Brontari was their founder, and they lived and studied on the Cloudgate, the floating island within the Dreadwall.”
Everyone knew the stories of the mythical island. A channel led through the impassible curtain of water on either side of the Cloudgate, which was the only way to sail from Oversea to Nethersea. It sounded marvelous. A place dedicated to study and rune, far removed from the mundane, bruising struggles of life.
“Indeed,” he said. “The Cloudgate, orLindurithainas it is named inRhi’Ahr.And while they practiced, there was peace. The Dreadwall served both nations well, keeping conflict and raids to a minimum. The RuneTree kept the Dreadwall, and the Priestlords served the Tree.”
“The RuneTree,” I said, my heart kicking over at the name.
“The RuneTree, Goddess ofLindurithain, keeper of the chimeric, worshipped by theRhi’Ahrfor centuries,” he said.
