Across the ocean, lunging like daggers across the bone-pale waves, were hundreds of ships. Their sails spread out like fans, like wings, hulls rearing round as they plunged through the waves.
Airborne above them were small shapes that Linn at first mistook for a flock of birds. As they drew closer, the wind rose to a sharp shriek, and storm clouds began to form over clear air.
Linn’s heart began to race as the squad of Kemeiran windsailers alighted on the sands of the beach. Even through the mist of her pain, she found her gaze catching on the leader as he stepped forward.
She knew him. Had heard his voice through countless dreams and nightmares.
Fly, Ko Linnet.
“Shi’sen,” she whispered.Master.
As the Kemeiran ships pulled to shore, the windsailers drew their daggers and charged into the fray of the battle. Only theWind Master remained, looking at Linn as hundreds of Kemeiran wielders began to disembark from their ships.
In her eight years away from Kemeira, her first Wind Master had aged. White now flecked his once-gray hair like the first falls of snow upon a thatched rooftop. Wrinkles lined his face, winding like rivers between jagged mountains. But his eyes were obsidian steel. With every step he took, the wind seemed to part before him, the waves shrinking behind his heels.
He approached, followed by another wielder. Their shifts were thin, billowing in the wind, and unsuitable for the cold this far north, but they both moved as though through a blossoming garden in the spring.
“Child,” Fong shi’sen said.
Linn had imagined this moment hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of times. Now that it had arrived, she was at a loss for what to do. The only thing she knew was fear; life had taught her to expect little, and brace for disappointment. She clung tightly to Ramson, her head spinning—whether from the blood loss, or the sight before her, she didn’t know.
The Wind Master gestured to Ramson. “Leave her to us.”
Ramson gave him a blank look; this small, familiar moment broke Linn from her reverie. He did not understand the Kemeiran language nor the Kemeiran ways. And she did not need him here.
“Go,” she said, patting his back. “Sail straight north. It leads to the Heart. To her.”
Ramson hesitated. His eyes lifted to the shores, to where the faint silhouette of the abandoned port lay in the watery predawn light. He squeezed her shoulder and drew back. “Be safe. I’ll see you on the other side.”
Holding her abdomen, Linn watched him leave before she turned to her Wind Master. He regarded her impassively. “Yirenn,” he said to the wielder behind him. “Heal her wound, please.”
The wielder Yirenn only inclined his head, but Linn felt a warmth in her side. Through the gash in her shirt, she watched the bleeding slow to a trickle, then dull and harden as the flesh around it began to heal. Within breaths, the wound was gone, and all that was left was the memory of pain across her midriff.
Fong shi’sen turned his palms skyward. “Stand, child,” he said, and she did as she was told. “The Temple Masters of Bei’kin sent word that valuable artifacts had been stolen from the great Bei’kin Bookhouse. They reached an agreement with our emperor. He called for a group of Temple Masters to investigate andretrieve the artifacts…and to defend our land, and our world, from evil.”
Linn’s heartbeat rushed in her ears. She remained silent, hardly daring to believe. Around them, ships were continuing to anchor, Kemeiran soldiers rushing to shore, their boots splashing in the roiling waves.
“In particular, the Diviner Master spoke to me,” Fong shi’sen continued, giving her a piercing look, “about a little bird who had arrived to warn them of the Cyrilian attack, which was the only reason the damage to our sacred Temple and bookhouse was so limited. Originally, the Emperor had decided against our participation in this war. But it seems that one sparrow’s wingbeat can cause a storm.”
Of everything she had expected after she’d broken into the Temple of the Skies and faced such heavy rebuke for overstepping her role, it was not this. She’d waited for a reprimand for herfoolishness in going after Enn, cold rejection from her people for what the traffickers had done to her and made her do in her years under their servitude. But then, Fong shi’sen’s face broke into a rare smile, and hope spread its wings in her heart.
“Shi’sen…” Her voice cracked.
“We need every windsailer we have to fight this battle.” As her Wind Master spoke, he reached into the folds of his robes. “Little Bird, I have brought back your wings.”
The chi glimmered like it held stardust as he unfurled it. It was brand-new, fashioned in the exact same way as the one Linn had owned: translucent, the material a cross between water and silk yet surprisingly resilient and warm.
It felt like a dream to take it between her fingers, to slip it over her shoulders and fasten the straps to her wrists.
“Ko Linnet,” said her teacher, and she was suddenly plunged back to the earliest days of her lessons, when she’d leapt off a cliff with nothing but her courage and the winds at her back. Fong shi’sen had unfurled his own chi and was facing her, his robes billowing around him. “Fly.”
Linn’s heart soared. The waves roared in triumph behind her back as she turned, calling on her winds.
Linn began to run. Her daggers appeared in her hands, glinting wickedly like teeth.
Two, three steps.
The winds around her rose from uneven gusts into screaminggales.
