Ramson made the most use of his daytime hours reading copies of reports that the scholars of the siphon task force had put together, which Narron had obtained for him back at the Blue Fort prior to their escape. There wasn’t much in them that he didn’t already know: A siphon could accumulate a number ofmageks—Affinities—within it, allowing the wearer to wield as many as it held. The mageks remained in the siphon even after its bearer died.
Until, he knew, the siphon was destroyed.
The question as tohowremained. Ardonn’s health continued to deteriorate with every passing day. Iversha’s balms and concoctions restored some semblance of life to Ardonn’s cheeks, but the man had sunk into a half-comatose state, breaths rattling each time Ramson went to visit him in his stale-smelling quarters. Any attempts at extricating information about the siphons and theories to their destruction was only met with delirious mutterings.
As they drew closer to their destination, Ramson found that instead of the dozens of plans he typically thought out, this time, he had only one, and it was woefully simple. Reach Olyusha, cure Ardonn, find Ana.
Destroy the siphons.
He’d never been on a mission with so little information and so many unknowns. Whether Olyusha had received his seadove. Whether she would meet him at Leydvolnya, whether she would have the antidote. Whether Ardonn would be able to find a way to reverse the siphons’ effects. Whether they would even find the siphons in time to save Ana.
One morning, Ardonn coughed out blood. Ramson knew from Iversha’s look that the man had barely days left to live.
They were running out of time.
—
“Land!”
The cry came on the fourteenth day, at the cusp of twilight, from the crow’s nest. Ramson had been leaning against the mast,sharpening his misericord; at the call, he straightened, running to the prow. His crew crowded around him, peering over the railings, anxiety and anticipation thick in the evening air. They’d donned their new blackstone-infused armor and strapped blackstone broadswords to themselves, having spent the past fortnight practicing with the new weapons to acquaint themselves with the different weight and texture.
The moments trickled by between held breaths. Then, in the falling darkness of night, they heard a sound, drifting to them from the silent stretch of sea beyond. At first, Ramson thought it was the howl of the wind. Narron stiffened by his side.
Ramson frowned. “You hear that, too?”
It sounded like a widow’s lament, rising and falling over the sound of the waves, eerie yet haunting. Almost like a song, only sharper, more ancient, and more ethereal.
More voices rose, and the keening grew into a chorus, a wild melody with no tune but that somehow made sense.
And then Ramson saw the lights.
He’d seen the Deities’ Lights in Cyrilia, shimmering over the Syvern Taiga; he’d encountered syvint’sya snow spirits in the deepest parts of the forests. But he’d never seen them this close. They danced over the ocean just beyond the horizon, soft ephemeral blues that sifted like sand in a slow, sensual spiral. They crested and dipped, sometimes falling so close to the water that they disappeared from view for several moments.
In the ocean, something, too, was stirring. Ghostly gleams at first, growing brighter until the entire sea around them was alight in an unending ripple of blues and phantom silvers. The lights flickered with shapes that swam alongside their ship like fish.
Only…they weren’t.
“Sirens,” Narron breathed, leaning over the railing. “I thought they were old legends.”
“Old legends tend to surface in these parts of the world,” a more seasoned soldier chimed in. He gave them a significant look. “Near the Silent Sea, that is.”
Ramson had only heard of the Silent Sea in myths. Bregonians thought it to be a place where the magek of the world gathered—gossenwal, spirits, wassengost, and the souls of their dead before Sommesreven, the Bregonian Night of Souls—but barely anyone who visited had lived to tell the tale of it. Kerlan had once bought a piece of shimmering, iridescent rock rumored to be from the depths of the Silent Sea, small enough to fit in the center of his palm yet expensive enough that its price might have fed a midsized Bregonian city.
He straightened. Magek or not, they were nearing Leydvolnya, and they would need to navigate the waters with all the skill of a dozen Bregonian Royal Navy sailors combined.
“Focus,” he instructed his crew, though he, too, felt gooseflesh rising on his arms at the sound of that eerie, bodiless chorus.
They anchored quietly beneath a set of cliffs out of the vantage point of any passersby. A soldier remained on deck to watch the ship; the rest of them descended from the gangplank.
The shores of Leydvolnya were black, the sand coarse and rough, sticking to them like ash. The Whitewaves lunged mercilessly upward, surging onto the cliffs and sending spray into the air. Pale waters raked against black sand, turning a deep shade of gray. Nicknamed the Ice Port, Leydvolnya had once been Cyrilia’s northernmost port. Over time, the vicious weather and superstitions had driven residents away, leaving it abandoned—and a haven for smuggling.
The moon was but a ghostly smudge at the edge of the sky as they set out. The cold of the great Northern Empire pierced like ice in his lungs; he’d forgotten just how unforgiving this land could be.
They moved on foot, the new, heavier blackstone livery sinking into knee-deep snow. The fire magen in their squad, Torron, kept by Ramson’s side, the light from the flames in his palm lancing over the trees and throwing jagged silhouettes. Narron and the rest of the squad carried Ardonn on a stretcher. The scholar was swathed in thick furs and blankets, his head lolling from side to side. In the lowlight, the man resembled no more than a skeleton.
Ramson kept silent, holding his compass tightly in his hands; only he knew the way to their destination. He’d asked Olyusha to meet him at an old Order of the Lily hideout in the vicinity. It would serve as a temporary base for his squad.
He slowed suddenly, pulled from his thoughts by what seemed like movement up front, between two tall conifers. He heard the crunching steps of his men fade, the intakes of breath; sensed the tightening of muscles as their hands strayed to their weapons.
