Voices and cheers fill the room. I stand in the center of it, the weight of it pressing in from every direction as something quiet and disorienting rises beneath it all.
And then?—
A soft laugh, inside my mind. The golden-haired cousin.
“Well, well, well,”he murmurs.“You, my cousin…”
A pause.
“…are royally fucked.”
I should respond. Ask why. Ask anything. But my mind has already gone somewhere else entirely.
He is going to be born into a war he did not start, in a country that does not know him, with a father who has never held him.
I do not know how to be a siakar. And I do not want to do any of this without you.
I close my eyes.“Find me.”
Vethara
AVANEER
The deck of theVetharasmells like a butcher's yard.
Avaneer steps off the prow onto what remains of the rail and takes a long, unhurried look at the wreckage. Splintered boards. Bodies that are either very dead or wishing they were. The particular smell of things that have been opened by force and left in salt air.
He breathes it in.
Then he turns, unhurried, and gestures once to the herald at his shoulder.
The herald, to his considerable credit, does not look at the bodies. He does not look at the undead still dragging itself in circles near the forward mast, or at the holes in the rail, or at any of the various things scattered across the deck that suggest the recent and enthusiastic end of a great many lives. He simply lifts his chin, draws a breath, and announces, in a voice that carries with the full confidence of a man who has done this in worse conditions and expects to do it in worse ones still?—
"His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Avaneer of Thrykis. Commander of the Thren Vanguard."
The words ring out across the ruined deck and die against the water.
Somewhere in the wreckage, nothing answers.
Avaneer straightens his cuffs. Satisfied, he steps forward.
Behind him, his men move in silence, which is how he prefers them. They fan out across what remains of the deck without being told, because they have done this before and they know what looking for survivors means when Teorin has been involved. It means looking carefully, and stepping over things, and not reacting to whatever they find.
Avaneer does not look for survivors. He looks for humans.
He picks a clean path between the bodies because he is wearing new boots and the blood is still wet enough to be an inconvenience, and he surveys the wreckage with the particular disappointment of a man who has arrived at a feast after the table has already been cleared. One of the undead is still moving near the forward mast, dragging itself in a slow circle that suggests something important has been removed from its lower half. He watches it with mild interest.
Nothing useful left anywhere. He can already tell.
"Teorin," he calls.
Nothing.
He steps over a section of collapsed rail, sighing through his nose. His men are efficient, he will give them that, but their efficiency had apparently cost him whatever had still beenbreathing on this ship when they came alongside, which is deeply inconsiderate of them. He makes a mental note to say so.
One of them signals from the far end of the deck.
Avaneer makes his way across, and he is perhaps halfway there, picking his path between the wreckage, when the hull beneath his feet shudders.
