Up here, with fire reflected in her eyes and warm light threaded through her hair, Meredy steals another piece of my heart with a simple gesture—pulling me back from the edge of the basket, into her embrace, the moment I start to shiver. I just hope my trust isn’t misplaced. That by leaning into her, I’m not letting her steer us—and more importantly, her health—into disaster.
“Devran?” Valoria breaks away from us at last to touch his arm.
Stiffly, he turns to her, his expression stony.
“Well?” she prompts, spreading her arms to indicate the stunning scenery. “What do you think?”
He takes a deep breath. “It’s incredible. Forgive my not saying so until now, but I’ve been too busy trying to get my body to catch up with my brain and stop craving solid ground.”
I think the poor man just wants to sit down until his knees quit shaking, but Valoria has a certain spark in her eyes now: She’s encouraged. “Imagine what we could do with more of these! Imagine not being bound by the limits of what ground a horse can cover in a day! Imagine no seasickness. I mean...” She leans closer, peering up at him through her glasses. “You have to admit, this is pretty fun.”
Devran shakes his head, and I tense. Once again, he’s too close to Valoria.
“I don’t know about fun,” he says at last. “But fascinating.”
“It could change people’s lives,” she adds proudly. “Andnotfor the worse.”
“Perhaps,” he says slowly, finally yielding to the desire to sit in the cramped bottom of the basket, “you could.”
Valoria’s cheeks glow pink as she hands us her spyglass to passaround. It’s not one of her inventions, but one she made from an old book she found at the school.
Devran clears his throat. “I’ve been thinking about what you proposed, and I’d like to offer this—if you’ll allow us to elect ten citizens to your council, one for each noble, and hold off on bringing any more inventions into the city”—he pauses, warily eyeing the flickering flame that powers the air balloon—“until our council members have been installed, we’ll cease all protests. What do you say? Of course, we expect you to start raising the Dead again, too.” He extends a hand.
Valoria’s face is a mask, revealing nothing of her thoughts as she gazes at Devran’s outstretched hand.
He sighs and finally drops his hand, apparently sensing that Valoria isn’t about to budge on that issue. “Don’t you have someone you miss, too? The palace used to be twice as full!”
“They’re always with me,” Valoria says firmly.
Devran lapses into silence.
After that, Valoria turns her attention to guiding us along Grenwyr’s coast as Meredy, Karston, and I comment on the sights. Even the Ashes look beautiful from up here, somehow softened by the dying light, the old buildings there made new from our incredible viewing spot. When it’s my turn again, I look along a path that brings me out of the Ashes and through Market Square, taking in the shadows of trees and the glow of fires—like tiny embers from here—flickering in the homes of those who must be busy preparing supper.
“So, what do you think, Sparrow?” Valoria asks as I twist the spyglass. “This,” she adds, spreading her arms to encompass the balloon and the view, “is the future I want to give our people. If they want to fly, I want the wings—or rather, basket—to be there for them.”
“It’s certainly not your worst invention,” I grudgingly admit. Sheasks me something else, but I’m distracted by what I see through the glass—what starts as a small fire, growing bigger by the moment. A fire coming from the Temple of Change.
The school is ablaze.
The flames dance and multiply in the reflection of Valoria’s glasses as her eyes widen and all the warmth and excitement of our ride drains from her face. She seems to be fighting back tears, perhaps unwilling to cry or shout in front of her esteemed guest.
Unlike her, I don’t care about niceties.
“Did your people do this?” I demand of Devran, rounding on him.
He stares through the spyglass, his lips a thin line. “Honestly, I don’t know. If they did, it wasn’t on my orders.”
“Yeah?” Karston asks, crossing his arms. “We’ll see soon enough.”
It seems to take an agonizingly long time for Valoria to steer the air balloon over the temple. Before we’ve even reached a landing spot, though, we see that the fire isn’t coming from the building itself, but from the gardens behind it. Still, it’ll reach the school soon if we don’t act quickly.
Mouth dry, heart racing, I’m half-tempted to jump the rest of the way to the ground so I can help the students, Simeon, and Jax as they rush to throw buckets of water on the flames. It seems no one among them is a weather mage.
But I’ve got Devran to worry about, so I stay put. After exchanging a glance with Karston, I keep my gaze trained on the rebel leader as our basket finally touches down, ready to tackle Devran to the ground. If he really did plan this, and he’s about to do something stupid to make the situation worse, Karston and I will be on him like a Shade on raw meat.
As we leap from the basket, someone cries out. I follow the sound to a large old tree, one that must have been weakened before the fire.The way it’s leaning, it’s going to fall any moment—right on top of the school.
Before I can think of what to do—before we’ve done more than start to run toward our friends, Devran on our heels—the tree groans, pulling itself upright. It crumbles in on itself as the flames eat away at its core, sparks flying in every direction, but it doesn’t hit anything.
