That was new, and Ramson had no indication of their meaning other than rankings to the Navy that had been added after his departure. He kept his eye on them as he settled in the back, leaning against one of the masts. Linn perched against the edge of the ship and gazed out, seemingly oblivious to Kaïs as he stopped by her side. Ana stood rod-straight, her knuckles white as she gripped the railing of the ship.
With a slow-grinding creak, they began to move. The barge glided forward in silence but for the lap of waves against its sides. The alleyways faded into tall stone walls that loomed into the sky on either side. The waters undulated black beneath them, and when Ramson looked hard enough, he could make out shapes skimming through the darkness of the depths.
Linn leaned over the railing, watching them with quiet interest.
“Wassengost,” Ramson offered. When both she and Ana looked at him, he jerked his chin to the shapes in the water. “Water spirits.”
Linn’s mouth formed a soft O. “Like ice spirits?”
“I suppose. Ours are quite harmless.” He pitched his tone toward skepticism. “Legends say they’re the last remnants of magic that the gods left in this world.”
As Linn turned back to play with the wassengost, sending small gusts of wind toward the surface of the water, Ana turned to Ramson. Her gaze was hard and piercing. “Can you tell me more about your father?”
He could see other questions in her eyes, words unspoken lingering in the air between them; this question was clinical, cold, and carefully chosen. Not for the first time, he wondered what it would take for the trust between them to be broken beyond repair.
“My father?” he repeated, turning to look at the water. Cold glances and cruel smiles. Smashed mugs, red blood, the shadow of someone whom he’d spent his lifetime chasing. “He’s an asshole.”
She focused a glare on him.
“I’m sure you’ll have no trouble with him,” Ramson continued. Already, he could feel his voice tightening almost as a bodily reaction, coldness clamping on his chest, and his face shuttering by instinct. “You’ve spent several moons dealing withme,after all.”
He could sense her anger rising like a tide, but to his surprise, she only folded her arms and reined in her expression. “Tell me something that will help me win him over.” Her tone was cool, controlled.
He’d been baiting her, and a part of him even wished for her fury at this moment. He would rather have her anger than nothing at all.
He turned away, mulling the question over. How would one negotiate with his father?
The answer was right in front of him. He simply hadn’t wanted to see it.
“He’s just like me,” Ramson said quietly. The words tasted like ash in his mouth. “He won’t give anything for nothing. Everything is a negotiation to him, a game of politics. And he doesn’t waste his time with people who he thinks have nothing to offer him.”Like my mother,he thought. “To win, you have to make him an offer he can’t resist. Something he wouldn’t find anywhere else.”
Ana opened her mouth, but they were interrupted by a gasp from Linn. “Look!”
The fog was beginning to clear, and Ramson saw what Linn was so excited about. The waterway had turned into a river, flowing between high cliffs that knifed to the sky on either side of them. Ahead, it pooled into a lagoon, extending in a wide circle as far as the eye could see. Estuaries and streams flowed into the main waterway from all directions before plunging into the sea from the cliffs at the end of the river. And in the center, the live, beating heart of it all, was the Blue Fort.
Tucked into an outcrop of rock at the base of where the cliffs met the sea, its sharp towers rose almost as high as those of the Salskoff Palace, made of a glistening sea-blue material that wove and wended like waves, winking in the sudden sunlight.
“It looks as if it is made of water,” Linn breathed.
“That’s searock,” Ramson said. “Ranks among the strongest materials in the world. Our myths say it has magical properties.” It was also one of the few resources that Bregon refused to trade.
His attention caught on something else. Beyond the searock structure of the fortress itself stood a new, second ring of crenellated walls. This set loomed tall enough that ships docked at the quays beyond it were cast in its shadow; it was made of a dark gray material that looked to be part stone, part metal.
Ironore—the heaviest and most expensive alloy, supposedly created by magen for defensive weapons.
Ramson could only imagine what an entire wall made of ironore would have cost.
There was silence but for the sound of their ship sluicing through the water. As they sailed beneath the shadows of the walls, Ramson saw that they approached a massive set of gates, shimmering in the gray-metallic hue of ironore. In the center of each gate was a massive metal branding, almost as large as their entire barge. On the left gate, an eagle, its talons outstretched as it soared in the skies. On the right, a stallion, mane flowing as it reared on its hind legs.
And, in the center, the head of a roaring seadragon, connected to the other two carvings through a triangular marking that adjoined all three.
In his years spent in Bregon, he had never seen anything like this.
On either side of the boat, the water seemed to rush by faster, swirls forming in their depths. A cry came from the head of the barge. “Helmesgatten!”
The three light-cloaked guards took positions at the prow. In perfect synchrony, they swept their hands up, and as a strange, humming energy filled the air, Ramson realized what they were.
Magen. Affinites.
