He had spent too long at court, growing soft, playing politics, dealing with his…feelings.
Mere physical pain was far more familiar and welcome. Normal. Like slipping back into an old skin.
The army moved in steady formation behind him, boots thudding against the frozen ground. Horses snorted clouds of white into the brisk air. Armor clinked. Men muttered. It was the songof war—one he had lived with for so long that he no longer needed to think to move in time with it.
Riding at the front with Sir Easome and his Sons, Aldric let the familiar weight of his old life settle onto him again: steel, leather, purpose. He focused on the road, on the horizon, on the stench of men and horse—anything but the memory of Sera’s lips crushing against his own.
War was simpler. Cleaner.
At least out here, he knew from which direction the blade would come.
A sharp screech jerked his attention upward, to where Soot winged in tight circles, swooping up, down, and all around. Like some sort of demented buzzard.
The usuru had been acting strange all morning.
Leif clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. In Kunishi, he muttered,“Bird-snake upset. Bad omen.”
Aldric snorted.“Snake-bird,”he corrected his Son’s poor translation for usuru.“And you are being superstitious and paranoid.”
Leif squinted and switched back to the common tongue. “I didn’t catch that last bit, but it sure sounded like an insult.”
Aldric shook his head, turning his attention away from the older man. His gaze locked on Sir Easome instead. “When will we reach the front?”
The Lord Constable pursed his lips. “A week? Less, if we push hard.”
The road angled gradually southward, cutting through withered fields and rolling hills before disappearing into dense woodland.Just up ahead, though, the earth rose into a gentle ridge. From the crest of it, Goldreach peeked out on the horizon—a scattering of rooftops and spires now softened by distance, glinting faintly beneath the pale sun.
They had only been marching a single day, and yet the city already looked so far away.
Aldric dragged his gaze away from the shrinking silhouette of his kirei’s capital, only for something else to catch his eye.
Movement.
Out where the Straight met the harbor mouth, the water churned. A wall of white sails billowed into view, gliding across the glittering expanse. Not one ship. Not two.
A fleet.
Dozens of vessels cut through the icy waters, their banners snapping in the wind. Banners he couldn’t make out from that distance.
Sir Easome saw it the same moment he did. “By the Lord…what is that?”
“Calix,” Aldric barked. “Spyglass.”
The moment his second-in-command shoved the Lothmeeran contraption into his hand, he urged Mourn toward the ridge, extended the spyglass, and lifted it to his eye. The ships crystallized into sharper focus—sharp enough for him to see that their banners were blue. Not de la Croix blue. Lighter.
They didn’t bear the symbol of his wife’s stag either.
“Easome,” he growled out of the corner of his mouth, “who flies a heron?”
The Lord Constable huffed, sounding relieved. “The Baron of Crestley. That must be the ships from the Beaumont Trading Company. Her Majesty will be relieved.”
Tiberius’s ships.
A thought nagged at the back of his mind as he watched the ships sliding into the harbor. Some detail seemed out of place. Wrong.
His blood ran cold when he finally realized what it was.
The baron’s ships were sailing into Goldreach from the wrong direction—from the north rather than the south, as his kirei had expected.
