He’s heading for Hale. For home.
“The Air Shard is on Eitherwift Mountain, north of the Caldris border,” Henry called over to her. “Only one way up – a staircase carved into the rock. Guarded at the top.”
“You think he’ll go straight for it?” she asked.
“We’ve no reason to think he’ll delay.”
They rode in tense silence after that, until the road narrowed to a shaded, root-tangled track – the way ahead covered with downed trees, some splintered, others torn up entirely, roots jutting out from the earth.
Damn it.
“The diversion sent us through southern Durent territory, didn’t it?” Kara asked.
Henry slowed his valmare, scanning the mess. “They’ve been having earthquakes.”
“We’ll have to go on foot,” she said.
They dismounted and began the awkward clamber between fallen trees, branches snagging at their cloaks, every step arduous and likely to break an ankle. All the while, Kara’s thoughts refused to settle. What she’d seen at Saltmoor was burned into her.
The mothers clutching their children.
The sunken ship.
The grief.
Henry must have been thinking of it too. “He knew, Kara. He knew that wave would kill people.”
She took a breath. “He warned them. Most got clear.”
“Don’t fool yourself. The chaos made his job easier. You’re mistaking calculation for mercy.”
“No, that’s not what–”
“If he wanted them to survive, he would have waited until the ship came back to shore,” Henry interrupted. “He didn’t.”
That’s not fair. He told them to come in.
Kara hesitated, then said, “I don’t think he was trying to kill them. But I wish he’d waited.”
“Well, he didn’t. He’s not here to make you feel better, Kara,” Henry snapped. “Shouldn’t you wish he hadn’t taken the Shard at all?”
“I do,” she said vehemently, tugging Whisper onward harder than necessary. The mare nickered in protest, and Kara murmured an apology under her breath.
Unbidden, her mind conjured up the image of Sebastian in the water, crimson magic flaring as he fought the current, just as she’d seen him do before. Surely, if all he’d cared about was the Shard, he’d have let that little boy drown – vanished before the wave struck again? Instead, he’d stayed and rescued him. Risked being caught. The same man who had stood unmoving in fire for her, as though her life outweighed his pain, had unleashed a wave that drowned strangers. Ripped sons from mothers. Husbands from wives. Both truths pushed down on her – impossible to reconcile. She was fiercely grateful that Henry wouldn’t read her thoughts without permission – he wouldn’t like what he found.
Henry urged his valmare over the last fallen branch. “Come on, we’ve lost enough time.”
It had cost them another hour.
They slept little, driving their valmares with hours of punishing riding, but it wasn’t until late the next afternoon that the mountains of the Caldris border came into view. Henry slowed their pace, scanning the terrain the way only someone from the land would, until he finally nodded towards a rise sheltered on three sides by rock.
“This will do,” he said, swinging down from the saddle.
Kara followed suit, grateful to stretch her aching legs – they’d hardly stopped riding for two days. They made camp in exhausted silence – hitching the valmares, gathering kindling, lighting the small fire. She sank onto a flat stone near the flames. Only when they’d eaten a fewmouthfuls of bread and dried meat did Henry speak again, his gaze fixed on the fire.
“We should make it there by tomorrow,” he said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “I know quicker ways through this land than he does.”
Kara nodded. They had to get there first. “If we make it in time, I’ll go to the top. Be waiting for him.”
