“Yemaya, fall back,” Nova said in a commanding voice.
Yemi gave Nova a look she didn’t see because she was focused on Van, who bent to search the pockets of the dead and came up with a pistol.
Yemi rushed forward upon seeing the weapon. Nova cut her off, placing herself between the two of them.
“Nova, who is this?” Yemi tried. Nova ignored her and placed herself more firmly in the line of fire.
“Van, look at me.” Nova carefully lifted one of the farmers’ hunting blades from the dirt and adjusted the grip in her hand. She racked her mind for anything in her training, in the lore of the Kept that taught her how to break the Obé’s hold on someone she’d “blessed,” but there was nothing. She could defend instead of attack—a single fan was good as half a shield—maybe rush past them, but if the gun went off, who knew how many others it would summon to this spot.
Van’s dead eyes remained fixed on some invisible point between them.
“Van…” Nova managed a single step toward them, and then a delayed, croaking “Ple—” before Van raised the gun and Nova was off with impossible speed, closing the distance between them and sinking the blade into their chest in the same instant Van fired off a flare.
It exploded in the clearing fog, illuminating them all in hot red light. Nova, horrified as Van slumped against her, held them upright as their legs crumpled beneath them.
“I’m sorry. Van, I’m so sorry. I would take it back. Please let metake it back,” Nova sobbed. She kissed their face and pulled back far enough to see that their eyes were clear, glassy, and human.
“I would die for…” The words bubbled from their lips with deep-red blood, not black. They swallowed one final time and uttered, “Nov—,” holding Nova’s gaze until their body failed and the two of them slumped together in the dirt.
Nova wanted to scream, but the sound wouldn’t come. The queensguard in her knew they’d already drawn too much attention. Barely a moment later, the ground began to rumble in the rapid staccato of galloping horses, accompanied by heavy mechanical clunking and white headlamps bouncing through the stalks.
Nova dragged herself upright just as Yemi reached her and pulled her by the arm. A trawler rounded the corner, and its spindly, articulated legs stepped over Van and scrabbled toward the two of them. Yemi’s touch seemed to shake her from a daze.
“Run!” she screamed, her voice competing with the thumps and violent hydraulic hisses of the ambler. The driver appeared to have a human gaze and let out whooping cries to alert whatever backup was in the area as he raced toward them.
The lane seemed to stretch on forever ahead, and at the end of it was a wall of rock the trawlers had been built to climb. They would be dead or trampled between here and there. Her chest was already tight, and her lungs burned.
“Dive left!” Yemi called.
“What?”
“Now!”
Yemi activated her spear again and stepped wide to the right, just beyond the gait of the trawler. As the driver turned his attention to Nova diving into the arundo grass, Yemi paused and then swung her spear, slicing through the metal housing of the vehicle’s front-right leg and sending it skidding through the hemp. Smoke rose over the tops of the plants, and sounds of other trawlers were distant but growing closer. Nova gestured aggressively from among the tall grasses forYemi to join her, and they made their way much more carefully to the edge of town, staying hidden among it.
• YEMI •
The Hot Gates were a narrow corridor between salt cliffs tiered with steaming hot springs and lined by fallen colossal monuments to the pantheon of Old Gods. The route and the city beyond had been famously abandoned as Ixia grew into nationhood and thus relied more on the land on this side of the gates than the sea surrounding it. The less they relied on the sea, the less reverence the sea gods received. It had been those monuments that crumbled first, an omen that the gods would abandon Men before Men could abandon them.
Yemi found herself leading, though she didn’t mind it. Nova was slower now, uncharacteristically unsettled, her gaze on some middle distance between her head and the ground while Yemi looked forward and upward. For better or worse, she was endeared to the idea that she was as much Nova’s protector as her charge. Ixia’s royals were called a Light and a Shield. This was the first time she’d ever really felt like the latter.
“You notice they ignored you? Those farmers,” Nova said once.
“Yes. It was strange,” Yemi replied.
“It’s a trap, Yemi. She needs me gone for her plan for you to work.”
It didn’t come out as forcefully as her other warnings. These were more thoughts she was putting into the air to distract herself. Yemi palmed the side of her face and kissed her lips. They were drying and beginning to chap.
“Then don’t go anywhere, guardian,” she said.
Yemi thought it best to leave Nova to her thoughts for most of the two-hour trek, but the appearance of gulls high overhead suggested they were near the sea again.
She slowed to allow Nova to catch up.
“What’s wrong?” Nova asked, as if suddenly alarmed that she hadn’t been paying much attention to dangers that could be surrounding them. “You alright?”
Yemi gave her a small smile and the waterskin and wiped the sweat and salt from her face.
