Varren looked from the stone up to Lavette. He held out his hand to her—to the woman who had guided and guarded him from the first moment he had left Carsovia. Eira stepped aside, giving them space. Lavette reluctantly took his hand and helped him out of the boat.
One foot. Then two. Varren stood, staring at his feet, then back at the rowboat. As if he couldn’t believe that he had managed to do it. As if they’d moved on their own.
With a fire in his eyes, Varren turned back to them. His tone left no room for questioning. “Let’s go.”
34
Crow and Pike wished them well—a kind gesture that Eira hadn’t been expecting. It wasn’t over the top. But their well-wishes betrayed more fondness than she’d thought had been fostered with the pirates.
The eight of them—her, Cullen, Olivin, Yonlin, Noelle, Alyss, Lavette, and Varren—made their way up the columns like giant stairs. When a height difference was too steep, Alyss lent a hand with her power, giving them actual stairs to get up. At the very top, they were met by idyllic, gently sloping plains. Tall grasses wafted in the breezes, dotted with wildflowers and buzzing with brightly colored pollinators that flitted on the breezes like confetti.
Eira was the first to speak after they took in the scenery. “I’m not going to lie, I expected something a bit more…bloody, after all the talk about the ruthlessness of Carsovia.”
“It looks like the East,” Cullen whispered. His brow had relaxed, eyes distant. The East, where he’d grown up. Eira wondered if he saw the distant lands of his forefathers. Or if he saw a memory of the pain he’d caused. One he’d rather forget.
“We should keep moving.” Varren led the pack. “We’ll look suspicious all out like this.”
“No one’s around.” Noelle motioned to the general lack of anything.
“Not that we can see, for now. But there are often patrols, and I don’t know what the color is right now.”
“The color?” Alyss asked.
“In Carsovia, there are colors to define your status. Depending on where you live, the family you’re born into, what you do…it all defines your color,” Lavette explained. “There’s a hierarchy among them. Red is usually at the top.”
“Red, like blood, got it.” Noelle rolled her eyes.
“You learn quickly,” Varren appraised dryly. “But, yes, the other colors shift depending on who is in power based on the current moods of the emperor or empress. I tried to pick us clothes from the pile that were as neutral as possible—grays, black, white, cotton, tan—color voids that aren’t in the hierarchy.”
“The region with the mines should be orange, right?” Lavette asked. Varren nodded. Lavette reached into her pocket, pulling out three strips of burnt-orange fabric. “I grabbed these, just in case.”
“I didn’t see anything orange in the supplies the pirates offered us.” Varren took them.
“They were mine,” Noelle said. “Thank Eira for thinking to grab some of our clothes before we left Warich.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t actually need them.” Varren frowned and led the group.
They crossed through the empty field and down to a distant wood. It reminded Eira more of the tall pine forests at the foot of the Solaris Mountains, rather than the dense jungles of the island they’d been on the day prior. To think the terrain could change so much… Perhaps a sorcerer really did once cultivate the land by hand.
The trees were spaced out far enough that beams of light could strike through to the forest floor. It was shaded enough here that the grasses thinned, growing smaller. But there wasn’t much in the way of underbrush, which made traveling fairly easy.
At least until noon.
A distant horn had Varren dropping to the ground. The rest of them followed. The man trembled like a leaf, but he kept his head up, looking around with wide eyes.
“That’s the sound of imperial knights,” he whispered. The rest of them were looking around as well, but it was impossible to see anything among the grasses and tree trunks.
“We haven’t even seen a road,” Cullen whispered.
“Alyss, Ducot, can you sense anything that might give us a direction?” Eira asked.
“Already working on it.” Magic pulsed more rigorously from Ducot, filling the air. Alyss followed suit.
Eira waited.
“I think I have something,” Alyss murmured. “It’s faint, though.”
Narrowing her focus on Alyss, Eira pushed away her senses of all others’ magics. Where Adela’s power was like a deep, underwater chasm, boundless and ominous, Alyss’s was the valley between two mountains. Strong peaks. Impressive depth. And Eira would be the earthquake. She would rattle the foundations, creating new chasms that would allow untapped power to seep through. She would free Alyss’s bound potential.
