“I’m needed here.”
“Then appoint another to either handle the coordination effort or the recovery efforts, but you need to split your forces.”
Delani stared past where Raziel knelt, into the dark that hid the damage and death of all she knew. “When the communications tower is back up and running, I’ll send out a notice to all the resupply stations.”
“About the attack?”
“No. About pulling out of Daijal.”
Honovi’s eyes widened slightly, though the wardens guarding Raziel didn’t seem surprised. “You’d leave a country to fend for itself against revenants and spores?”
“The Poison Accords allow for sanctions. Until new rulership heads Daijal, I won’t risk my wardens’ lives. Queen Eimarille is already spreading false rumors about wardens in the western provinces of Ashion. That was her justification for crossing the border.”
“She’ll take your decision as a further excuse to advance.”
Delani smiled, wide and vicious. “She won’t have much of a country in even half a generation if we leave Daijal and stay gone. We wardens know the poison history of every country. We keep border reports for a reason. We know what to look for in the poison fields and how to fix it. Spores travel, bogs fill, and without alchemist intervention, the land dies.”
“You’d damn even those who had no say in the attack against the island?”
“Eimarille damned them with her actions today.” Delani finally turned to look at him, real and glass eye glittering in the gas lamp light. “I have tithes to burn.”
She walked away, shoulders straight, head held high, to go deal with the living and the dead. Honovi turned his attention back to Raziel, the warden’s gaze still empty of anything but pain. He dragged a hand down his face, wanting desperately to take the map, get on theCelestial Sprite, and fly after Blaine.
But he couldn’t leave the wardens unguarded. He didn’t know if Eimarille would send anyone else to attack again. The wardens needed support while they recovered, and E’ridia could provide that with their air force. He needed to facilitate that first because if they lost the wardens and all their knowledge, no one on Maricol would be safe.
Then he could go after Blaine with more than a single airship.
“Find her some clothes and keep her alive. I’ll be sending her back to E’ridia under guard,” Honovi said. Raziel wasn’t going anywhere at the moment, and there was plenty that Honovi could do to help. He needed to dosomethingto take his mind off Blaine.
He made his way back to theCelestial Sprite, the airship’s rope ladders still hanging over the side. Honovi hauled himself up to the decking and found Caoimhe waiting for him, something sorrowful in her gaze as she looked at him.
“We heard what happened to Blaine,” she said. “Your orders,jarl?”
Not captain, not for this. “Delani has agreed that the warden who betrayed us and her brethren will be extradited to E’ridia to face charges there. Caris and Nathaniel are working to get the communications tower back up and running, but that’s going to take time. TheComhairle nan Cinnidheanneeds to be warned.”
“We can’t get a clear connection to Glencoe from here.”
“If there are passing airships, we might be able to reach them. The likelihood of them being war airships is slim, but whoever hears would be able to at least help transport the wounded and relay a message back home.”
Caoimhe nodded. “We’ll start the outreach. What will your message be?”
“Tell them…” He paused, thinking about Delani’s words and all that they implied. “Tell them Daijal has broken the Poison Accords and acted against the wardens in a direct attack. Tell them E’ridia stands with the wardens and all airships who can provide aid are asked to make their way here.”
“I’ll assign shifts for the calls.” She hesitated a moment before continuing with “What will you do?”
Honovi turned his head to stare at the scattered points of light throughout the fort, knowing there were so many wardens in the dark trying to save their livelihood. “Put myself to work.”
Those who survived the attack worked through the night, and Honovi joined them during those long hours. Wardens tended to the wounded, gathered their dead, and took stock of the damage left behind. Caris, Nathaniel, and other wardens worked nonstop to get the communications tower up and running again.
It had been an easy target, being one of the tallest buildings within the fort, meant to act as a relay to the ones scattered over the Eastern Spine to reach E’ridia and all across the rest of the continent. It was integral to the functionality of the wardens in the poison fields. Now, it tilted dangerously, wires severed and clarion crystals shattered. A bomb had taken out a nearby building, the subsequent collapse damaging the top of the communications tower and one of the support beams. A sentinel-class automaton was being used to help shore it up.
Caris was in the midst of that organized chaos, in charge of cutting clarion crystals while Nathaniel helped wardens assess the engine that powered the communications tower. Thankfully, the large underground generator had escaped damage by virtue of its location. It was everything else that needed work. Caris and Nathaniel were Ashion-trained engineers, but machines didn’t run based on cultural mores. It was math and science and a little bit of magic drawn from the aether when steam engines weren’t in the mix.
It was everything Blaine would’ve known how to help with, and Honovi didn’t. He flew airships; he didn’t fix and maintain the engines that gave them flight.
The moon tracked across the sky for hours, and the recovery efforts never waned. When the deep black of a starry night sky began to fade to gray in the east, then to the pink hues of dawn, the gas lamps began to slowly turn off as daylight approached. Mist had crept over the Celestine Lake sometime during the night. The wardens had tested the air for poison and found it within acceptable parameters for non-wardens to breathe. Tithes who hadn’t yet built up their resistance to all of Maricol’s poison, as well as Honovi’s crew, didn’t need to wear their gas masks.
Honovi had spent the two hours before sunrise helping wardens sift through the rubble of destroyed buildings, looking for survivors. He hadn’t slept, eyes gritty behind the goggles he wore to protect them from dust, and his focus was dialed into the task at hand so deeply so as to not think about Blaine. It took two shouts of his name before the voice finally penetrated. Honovi looked up from the section of building he was working on with several other wardens, frowning at the crew member racing toward him.
