They passed the docks, and Ian took him out onto the black stone beach until they were at the edge, where the water lapped at the shore. The horizon was a flat icy blue, a sharp wind whistling off the sea. Fox shivered, the air biting through his cloak, but it would be nearly impossible for anyone to hear them out here. The cliffs that held the royal and military quarters rose into the sky to their right, their shadow stretching across the beach.
Ian leaned against a small outcrop of rocks, gaze focused on the sea.
“I’m assuming this doesn’t have to do with the chief commander.”
“Yes and no,” Fox said, looking around them. They were alone, and the wind whistling off the sea would drown their voices. “Do you know about their dragon?” he asked, not wanting to tiptoe around the issue.
“The resistance’s? Not until it showed up.”
“No,” Fox said, “Chief Commander Harlow’s dragon.”
Ian sat up, no longer pretending nonchalance. “Harlow has a gods’ damned dragon?”
“Two,” Fox said, eyes scanning the docks and city beyond, as if the chief commander might jump out at him at any moment. “An adult and her child. He’s been using the child to manipulate her, but they’re researching a way tocontrolthe dragons. Harlow thinks that’s how Sofia is getting her dragon to follow her orders.”
“Kings help us,” Ian said, leaning against the rocks, his face in his hands.
“I need you to get a message to Sofia. She needs to know about the dragons we have.”
Ian shook his head, looking at Fox with a worn expression. “Until things calm down, I don’t know how to get anything to them. The mangroves are being torn down—I don’t know if someone talked or Harlow is just guessing. Every scouting unit is out in the forest right now, trees are being burned and cut, and we don’t know where the dragon took them. The old base is under watch, so they didn’t go there. And I can’t even think about leaving. Harlow assigned me half thedamned drowned quarter to sweep, and I’m trying to get things done before the Dragonborn start starving in their homes.”
“It’s the dragons. He’s looking for their nesting grounds and a way to control them.”
“I can try to intercept anything my unit finds,” Ian said. “But there are three other units searching the other portions of the city, including where most of our people are.”
Our people. Were they Fox’s people? When had they become Ian’s?
“How long have you worked for them?” The words slipped out even as his mind screamed that he didn’t want to know. “Did you join after they killed your best friend or before?”
Ian’s gaze didn’t falter, his eyes meeting Fox’s with determination even as he didn’t answer immediately.
“When I was eighteen. Before I even joined the king’s men.”
“King’s balls,” Fox said. “Why?”
“You’ve never asked me about my family,” he said, eyes moving out to sea. “Did Leon ever tell you anything about them?”
Fox had never even thought about Ian’s family. He didn’t want to admit that out loud. He and Ian had never been close, the major bond between them Ian’s and Leon’s friendship and losing him. But he still spent time with him. Ian had helped him train for the king’s men. He was the closest thing Fox had ever had to a friend.
Ian saved him from answering. “My father was a merchant. He was rarely in Suvi, spending most of his time in Falais bartering for goods and setting up deals with the farms there. When he was here, he spent half his nights in the Drowned Gods brothel.” Ian turned, pointing somewhere east of them into the city. “It used to stand over there. It was burned down a few sun cycles back in a raid. My mom worked in that brothel.”
Fox felt his stomach drop, acid in the back of his throat. “Your?—”
“When she got pregnant, my father tried to kill her. He didn’t want a half-Dragonborn bastard son. He failed, obviously, but it didn’t matter. My mom died two sun cycles later when a king’s man killed her for daring to say no to him.” Ian’s lips quirked up briefly, his smile a bitterthing. “I hear the owner of the brothel killed the man herself before throwing his body in the ocean.”
“How did you end up in the military quarter?” Fox asked, remembering specifically that Ian had lived just south of them.
“My father’s sister found out about me. She apparently had been keeping an eye on me and Mom from afar. She swooped in and adopted me before I was thrown out onto the streets. She and my father never spoke again until the day he died. She saved me.”
“No one found out?”
He shrugged. “She told any who asked that my mother was Falain. My father wasn’t going to reveal the lie.”
“I didn’t know,” Fox said. He hadn’t felt like this since Sofia had given him her lectures. How much else would he learn about the city he’d been raised in? How many other horror stories hid in the shadowed corners of Suvi? He looked up at the city now from where they stood on the beach. The buildings sagged under the weight of sun cycles, exhausted by their own need to keep standing.
“When I finally got the chance to join the resistance, I didn’t hesitate. I don’t regret that decision.”
“And Leon? Did he know? Do you regret his dying because of your resistance?” Fox could feel his breath in his chest, heart slamming into his ribs, trying to escape.
