The Regent watched her for another beat.
“You don’t look like you know enough math to calculate air density and cloud configuration.”
Risa frowned at that. “Nowthatdoesn’t sound right.”
“Frankly, I don’t see how you managed to build a new airship.”
But Risa was too tired to play games. She was dying from Brunhilda’s spell; Javi and Amina were surely captured somewhere, being tortured all thanks to her bad luck; and Brunie wasn’t helping at all.
“And I don’t see how you’ve managed to keep General Sur’s curse from affecting San Cirilo.”
At this, the Regent finally looked interested. Her eyebrows—dark like Javi’s but tamed into perfect arches—climbed up her forehead. “My chief officer was right. Youdoknow about the curse. We haven’t met anyone from below who does.”
Risa bit the inside of her cheek as she tried to take a deep, steadying breath. Things would be easier if she simply told the Regent the truth and avoided any misunderstanding, but an inkling ofsuspicion traveled down her spine. It was like a loud warning blaring in her head. Could the Regent be playing for the other side?
“I do,” Risa said. She let out a breathless fake laugh. “Though I’m unsure how you’ve kept the curse at bay with so many visitors and your own denizens leaving.”
“Oh.” The Regent guffawed, her laugh resembling a honk, eyes alight with surprise. “That’s why we have the immigration lines in the docks. Those without Cirilian papers can only visit certain parts of the city; it’s easier for the curse to keep its hold on people already affected by it. And returning citizens are befuddled for a while, but we reintroduce information through our officers. Easier to snap out of it once youknow.”
Risa gnawed on her bottom lip. That was a lot of work for the Regent; she couldn’t imagine the amount of sweat the general and his witch would have to put into such a behemoth of a curse only to have some upstart like the Regent render it useless. Was that what made the general target San Cirilo? Was the general so power hungry he couldn’t stand to see someone outside his influence of power resist?
“Seems like a ton of effort for some small, autonomous region. Why does General Sur hate you so much?”
The Regent stared at her. “Besides being an independent sovereign who bows down to no king and managed to use my genius to create a machine that could be used for great good or great evil?”
“Yes,” Risa said, unable to hide the annoyance in her voice. Were all Kheadon royalty afflicted with vanity? No wonder Javi was a lost cause. “Besides all of that.”
“I would think it’s obvious,” the Regent said, crossing her arms over her ample chest. “The general hates witches,” she explained.She swept a hand over herself, sleeve trailing over the couch. “And I am a witch.”
Risa supposed she should have seen that coming.
The airship was a marriage between science and magic—and the only beings that could control magic, besides otherworldly gods and nature itself, were witches. Risa had assumed, like most foolish mortals, that the engineering genius of the Regent had found a way to siphon magic from the air through some elaborate machine to create flight. She’d never thought that it was because theRegentwas magical.
Unless… Risa bit down on her lip further.
It was no question that the airship was a marvel that required great power. Vast amounts of it. And the curse that had ensnared Madros, Kheadon, even Amina herself required vast amounts of power, too.
Maybe Risa’s suspicions were right. Perhaps the real culprit was the Regent after all.
Risa couldn’t tell the Regent that Javi was in San Cirilo and within her grasp. Not until she knew for certain that the Regent could be trusted.
“Now the real question,” the Regent said, rising from her perch with great aplomb to stomp behind her desk. She sank into the large, ornate chair, its filigreed back resembling a throne.
The way she settled—slightly askew with an insouciant lean—was so familiar that Risa was taken aback, her breath faltering.
“What are you really doing here? There is no way a child—witch or not—in the company of two other children could have developed a better airship. It took me decades.”
“Maybe I’m just smarter than you.”
The Regent barked a laugh. “No, that’s not it.”
Risa hurried out of her own seat, intent on not giving the Regent the opportunity to stab her in the back. “I don’t have a better airship. I have information,” she ground out.
“By all means, then, let’s hear it.”
She scanned the Regent’s face, attempting to divine more information from the folds of her wrinkles or the set of her jaw. But the woman kept her face steeled for such attack; there was no way to discern anything from those pursed red lips, arched brows, impassive eyes. If she had placed the curse on Madros and most of Kheadon, she wasn’t going to reveal it to some insipid teenager like Risa.
The Regent did not flaunt her power, unlike Brunhilda and Linda. She didn’t glow, unless the glinting jewels at her neck and hands counted. She didn’t glide or float like Linda, or stalk around like old Brunhilda. There was an almost unfathomable ordinariness to her that contradicted her larger-than-life figure.
