Soren didn’t make it to Glencoe until the beginning of Twelfth Month, taking the long way east through back roads. He saw the Leviathan constellation spin low as the Eagle constellation arced high in the night sky, bringing with it the autumn season. He spent those days driving toward Seaville trying to settle his head and mend his heart, to no avail.
Everything just—ached.
By the time he boarded an E’ridian airship out of that city’s airfield—the captain kindly offering free passage in deference to what had happened to his people—Soren was about ready to vibrate out of his skin, a mess in more ways than one. He spent the better part of the flight north to E’ridia hunkered down in the crew bunks belowdecks, staring at the wooden planks of the bunk over his and not seeing anything but Vanya’s face.
The crew fed him, left him alone after the first few attempts at conversation in the trade tongue came to nothing. Soren stayed out of their way and kept to himself and tried not to feel as if his entire world hadn’t been upended when it had.
Lying to himself had never been a game he was capable of winning.
When the airship finally landed in Glencoe, Soren thanked the captain and rolled his velocycle out of the cargo hold and onto the pier. He’d never been to E’ridia before, and the Sunrise Valley where Glencoe was located was a vast green space bracketed by the Eastern Spine to the west of them and rolling coastal hills to the east.
The elevation made his ears pop even when he had boots on the ground, and Soren sniffed hard to try to clear them. The air was colder here than it had been in Solaria. He missed the heat of that country already. He wished he had a heavier coat or one that was fur-lined like the aeronauts wore. Glencoe would have a resupply station he could get cold-weather gear from, but it would have to wait until he figured out just where the governor was.
Once he left the airfield behind, got inside the city gates, Soren became absolutely lost. He’d grown up speaking the trade tongue, was mostly fluent in Solarian, but he’d had no need to learn E’ridian. The flow and sound of the language was different from Solarian, and it buzzed in his ears, impossible to tune out. The street signs were unreadable to him. Soren huffed out a frustrated breath, grip tightening on his handlebars as he maneuvered the velocycle out of the way of the departure tunnel.
As a warden, he didn’t need to go through customs, but the customs officers probably had a better idea of where the wardens evacuated from the Warden’s Island had been sent. The maps in Soren’s travel compartments were for Solaria, not E’ridia, and he’d need directions. He kicked the stand down and made his way to the building, searching out someone in uniform who might have some answers.
“The wounded are being cared for in a few different hospitals. TheComhairle nan Cinnidheangave all the others use of several clan homes in the center of the city,” the E’ridian said in the trade tongue. Her natural accent came through thick, and Soren had to concentrate to understand her.
He frowned. “You got a map I can see?”
She blinked at him in surprise. “You don’t have one?”
“My borders are in Solaria.”
At least, they were. He shoved down the ache at the thought of how he’d failed to do his duty and what that would mean when he reported to the governor. He wondered if she’d reassign him somewhere else in Maricol, some other country, where he’d never see Vanya and Raiah again.
The thought made him want to scream.
“Ah.” The E’ridian waved him toward a door that had a sign nailed to it that readCustoms Only. “Come with me, and I’ll get you on your way.”
They had some maps in the back that they couldn’t give him, but Soren had no problem memorizing the route she showed him when it came to street names and wall gates. The main avenues and boulevards gave him the most direct route to the city center, and Soren thanked her before going on his way.
They’d landed in the afternoon, and the sun was skirting the mountain peaks when he finally pulled in front of a sprawling estate the E’ridians called a clan home. The gates were open, and a dozen velocycles were parked in the drive. Soren added his to the group, staring up at the building’s façade as he mechanically withdrew what he needed from the travel compartments.
He’d left Calhames without that country’s border reports. They’d been lost to starfire, for the Chief Minister’s office had been within the palace. Caelum had survived, having been away from the palace, dealing with diplomatic issues at the time of the attack. The older records were stored offsite, but Soren knew they were transferred every decade. If the records on the island had been destroyed, recreating the data from the poison fields would be a huge undertaking.
Soren shouldered his rucksack and walked up the drive, boots crunching over gravel. The door was unlocked when he tried the knob. He pushed it open, stepping inside and looking around, seeing no signs of servants or anyone else.
“Hello?” he called out.
Someone shouted from down the hall, and a head poked itself out of a room. “What border did you come from?”
Soren headed toward them. “Solaria. I handled the one in Calhames.”
Another voice called out a greeting as he drew close, Delani sounding as brusque as ever. “Is that you, Soren?”
He swallowed thickly, stomach hollowing out in relief at the sound of her voice. It was one thing to be told of her survival, quite another to witness it in person. The other warden slipped back inside the room once Soren made it to the doorway. It looked as if the space had been converted from a parlor into a meeting room.
The long table in the rectangular room dominated the area, all the chairs around it taken. Two desks were pushed into the far corners, the typewriter and telegraph machines there manned by two wardens who didn’t look up at his entrance.
Delani sat at the far end of the table, surrounded by stacks of folios. The chairs closest to her were filled by wardens, while the ones closest to Soren were taken up by E’ridians. A map of Maricol was unrolled down the center of the table, with individual country maps layered over it. Voices chattering in a mix of trade tongue and E’ridian created a buzz of sound that abruptly cut off when Delani banged her hand on the table.
The wardens’ governor stared at Soren with her one good eye, the glass one looking a little worse for wear. He didn’t know what to make of the expression on her face—calculating and just a bit surprised, as if some puzzle piece had finally snapped into place.
Soren met Delani’s gaze across the room. “Reporting back with news from Calhames and Solaria, governor.”
“So you didn’t die in that mess we’ve heard about,” Delani said.
