“You’re pregnant,” Wesley repeated weakly before snapping out of his daze.
His joy seemed real when he got up from his seat and came around the table to pull Eimarille into his arms and spin her around. His laughter made her smile, because new life was always something to be celebrated in a place where poison always sought to encroach on cleansed land.
“A toast to the future,” Bernard called out from his seat at the head of the table, wineglass in hand and eyes on Eimarille.
“Yes, a toast,” Wesley said, still holding Eimarille close.
Terilyn said nothing, but her eyes shone with a fierceness for Eimarille alone.
The formal announcement of her pregnancy would come later, but that night they raised their glasses to a future each saw differently. In the end, only one road would hold true, and Eimarille had plans in place to ensure it would be hers.
Four
SOREN
The Celestine Lake was freezing during Second Month, though it carried no ice in its waters. Soren had done his fair share of winter training in its cold, sometimes poisonous depths over the years, and wasn’t looking forward to more. Returning to the Warden’s Island wasn’t ever truly a respite.
Access to the island was restricted by a single port of call allowed along the lake’s outer shoreline. The boathouse there was manned by a warden year-round, tending to the dock that anchored the steamboat that ferried wardens across four times a day depending on the weather.
Soren wasn’t the only one returning that day, but none of the wardens around him were up for conversation, and neither was he. With their velocycles secured in the lower deck, a handful of wardens had claimed the benches in the cabin to nap their way across the choppy waters.
Soren woke when the ferry bumped up against its destination. He could hear the ferry captain and whoever was assigned to the pier calling out to each other. Soren ignored their conversation and rolled to his feet, cracking his neck, before filing belowdecks with the other wardens.
One of the crew members stabilized the ramp a dockworker had directed into place. Once everything was secured, Soren rolled his velocycle off the ferry along with the other wardens. Waiting for them on the dock was a familiar face.
Viktor was a grizzled warden who’d walked away from a lifetime in the poison fields with too many scars and a mechanical leg. The clockwork gears were well maintained, shining in the weak winter sunlight. The amputation didn’t impede Viktor from chasing tithes around the training yard. His job was to teach tithes how to survive in the poison fields, not greet returning wardens, so it was strange to see him on the dock.
Viktor’s flinty-eyed gaze settled on Soren. “The governor wants to see you.”
Soren bit back a wince. “Can I at least stow my gear?”
“I’ll handle that. Head up to the fort. You don’t want to keep her waiting.”
Soren wasn’t going to argue an order like that, so he handed off his velocycle with all its attached gear, but he kept his pistols and poison sword. Unencumbered by the vehicle, it was an easy hike up the winding dirt road that led to the fort. The land around the imposing defensive wall was winter-bare, and he could see several automatons trundling about, their Zip guns trained on the water.
The gates were open for the day, with a warden on duty to guard the entrance. Revenants weren’t as active in the wintertime, but one could never be too cautious. Soren had spent the last year on the road in western Solaria, and the uptick in revenants—both human and animal—was worrisome.
The fort was a mix of buildings from different eras, sections torn down and rebuilt depending on age and upkeep. It was a functioning mini-city that had wardens passing through its walls every day of the year. The island had no viable room for farmland, not with how they worked with poisons, so food was delivered along with tithes from the countries bound by the Poison Accords.
Everything about the place was familiar to Soren. From the barracks to the alchemy labs, he could find his way through the fort blind. Getting from the gate to the governor’s office took some time as he followed paths past various buildings.
The governor’s office was located in a low, squat building made to cater to the administrative side of the fort. Cramped offices filled nearly every floor, occupied by wardens who’d survived to old age and had no place else to call home.
The fort had never been home, for all that Soren had grown up there. It had housed him, though, and turned him from a tithe into a warden. If he ignored what burned in his soul, if he ignored the disjointed memories that refused to fade with every year that passed, perhaps he could pretend this was all he was.
But he’d seen what was denied him in Bellingham last year, walking in Vanya’s shadow. Some part of him wanted that, and he thought he always would.
Soren climbed the stairs to the third floor, making his way to the governor’s office. The position wasn’t a blooded title how it sometimes was in other countries. Her door was always open, and he was expected. Soren paused in the entranceway and cleared his throat. “You wanted to see me, Governor?”
Delani raised her head, only one of her eyes focusing on him. The other was made of glass, pitch-black with gold flecks like the night sky in it. The contrast was always jarring, made more so by the monocle goggle she wore over her good eye to help with her depth perception. The leather straps keeping it in place were pulled tight over her skull, flattening her short, dark hair in those areas.
In her midforties, Delani had left the poison fields after losing her eye to revenants, along with pieces of her arm. The limb in question was scarred over and weak, making it impossible for her to safely wield a weapon. She’d spent some years teaching in the training yard before being voted into the governorship and had held that post ever since.
Delani was fair where it mattered and dug in her heels when she had to. Soren remembered the bark of her voice while standing at the range years ago, calling out minute corrections in their stances. The roughness of her voice hadn’t faded, remnants of a time when she’d breathed a poisonous mist one year that not even a warden could walk away from unscathed.
Delani waved a hand at him, shoving aside a mess of papers with the other. “Come in. Sit.”
Wardens didn’t stand on ceremony, and Soren did as ordered. He was aware of the grit and grime clinging to his uniform, but at least none of it was blood. “I didn’t think I’d be summoned so soon.”
