The port unfurled around the next corner: a scene of chaos in the impending tempest. Ramson led them to the edge of the water, where waves lashed at the stone quays, threatening to overturn ships and boats of all shapes and sizes. Abandoned fishing nets were strewn about the docks, wooden crates of the morning’s catch splayed on the ground. People ran to and fro on the docks, crying and calling out to each other. Fishermen herded their families into their barges while those without boats stood on the jetties, begging for passage.
“Wait for me here,” Ramson said, and turned and ran down the length of the jetty to a large black boat anchored at the end.
The sound of a horn rippled through the air. Ana’s blood chilled as people streamed out from the streets facing the port, shouting and stumbling in their panic. From behind, herding them like a flock of sheep, emerged the Imperial Patrols.
They made a formidable line: steel-gray helmets and tomb-white cloaks, advancing with machinelike uniformity. And, in the midst of them all, their empress, sitting tall astride her valkryf, her face carved of stone as she watched atrocities unfold before her at the hands of her army.
A father, begging as they hauled away his wife and children, as they forced him to his knees on the dust-covered cobblestones and raised a sword to his neck.
The wife’s howls, cut short as they plunged blades through her chest.
Fire, roaring to life at the coaxing of a Whitecloak’s hands, licking up the wood-paneled walls of the house and consuming it in a roaring inferno.
“Ana!” A voice cried to her from several jetties down. Linn ran to her, weaving through the masses of people. Behind her, Kaïs followed, his double swords drawn. “Ana, we go!”
But Ana couldn’t move. The screams of her people pulled her back, back, begging her to stay, to help. The winds were picking up speed, and the clouds churning across the sky, the air trembling with the promise of violence. She couldn’t leave, not now, not when the townspeople of Goldwater Port—herpeople—were being slaughtered like cattle.
This couldn’t be the right choice.
“Ana, please.” Linn slowed as she approached, reaching out for Ana. Her hands caught Ana’s wrists, grounding her. “You cannot win today. Live today, so that you may fight tomorrow.”
Ana looked into her friend’s face. She thought of Novo Mynsk, of the fire that had raged both outside and within her, of her certainty that fighting for her people’s lives had been the right choice, right there, and right then.
Leaving now meant abandoning people who needed her help.
Leaving now meant returning to fight another day, to fight when she was more certain to win. It was the strategic choice. The choice of a leader.
“Ana,” came another shout. Ramson stood at the end of the quay, motioning frantically at her. “This way!”
Ana gritted her teeth. Forced her feet to move. Then she was running with Linn and the yaeger at her back, the end of the wharf in sight, and Ramson was ushering them up a gangplank onto a ship.
“What in Amara’s name are you doing?” shouted the sailor as they stormed past her. “You boughtoneticket—”
“I’ll pay you the rest later!” Ramson yelled. “Haul anchor and set sail, or we all die!”
Another explosion stained the clouds orange, as though they were swollen with blood. The sailor spewed a few profanities as the ship tilted hard under wind-tossed waves, the sails ballooning. The air filled with the sound of shattering glassware as bottles of liquor slid off the bar table in the center. “All right!” the sailor—presumably the ship’s captain—yelled, slapping her hand on the wheel. “Haul anchor! And hang on to your hats!”
Ana threw herself against the wheel of the anchor windlass. Together, she, Ramson, and the yaeger turned it, and bit by bit, with great screeching sounds, the anchor chain rose.
“Anchor’s up!” Ramson shouted. He ran to the captain’s side, where she struggled against the wheel. With a grunt, he grasped it, and the ship began to move. “Linn, a little help, if you will!”
Linn stood, balancing easily on the rocking ship. A powerful gale rose, pushing against their sails in the direction of the open ocean.
The ship lurched forward like a fish plunging through waves. The ocean battered it, and Ana clung tightly to the mast as the deck tilted beneath her. Several times, the ship groaned so loudly that Ana thought it would splinter right beneath their feet.
And then, slowly, the rocking calmed. The winds began to die down, and soon, Goldwater Port was behind them, shrouded in the shadow of the looming storm.
The ship’s captain slumped to the deck. “Amara’s flames,” she muttered, wiping her brow.
Ramson leaned against the wheel, breathing hard. Linn sat beneath the sails, stonelike but for the winds that stirred her hair and clothes. The yaeger stood by her side.
They all looked behind them at Goldwater Port, the city they had left to die. The docks grew smaller, and the once-colorful houses had drained gray in the storm and soot. Fires raged farther within the city, reflected red upon a sky that seemed to weep blood.
The books Ana had read in her childhood, of the greatest rulers of history and legends, were all tales of warriors and heroines who fought against evil and triumphed.
None of the stories, she realized, sang of empresses who ran from their falling kingdoms. Who chose to leave behind a world of bloodshed to survive.
Some rulers’ reigns were forged with steel, some with gold, and some with might.
