A smile ghosted across Charity’s face. “There is a larger competition coming. One with far more at stake than this one. I suspect we are all here for the same reason: to catch a glimpse of our opponents and stop them from stealing a march on us.”
“A larger competition?”
The Sage of the Silver Heart reached out. She didn’t seem to move quickly, but she had a finger on Yerin’s forehead before Yerin could react. Suddenly, Yerin knew the way out as though she’d walked the path a thousand times.
“A tournament,” Charity answered, and turned back to her statues.
When Yerin returned to the beach, she found Mercy sitting on a picnic blanket eating noodles from a bowl. The noodles were hot. Where had that come from?
Mercy scrambled up, setting her bowl aside and almost spilling it. “Yerin! I thought you might not...well, I was going to give you another hour, and then I was coming in.”
Yerin didn’t see a Lowgold forcing her way in anywhere that an Overlord and a Sage didn’t want her, even if they didn’t use direct force. “Lindon’s still alive,” Yerin reported.
Mercy let out a long breath. “And the others too?”
“I...didn’t think about them,” she admitted.
“Well, the others are stronger than he is. If he’s all right, I’m sure they are too.”
“She said her grand-nephew was in there. Someone you know?”
Mercy scratched her head, looking away. “Probably, yes. She has more than one grand-nephew, but uh...it’s a good bet that she’s talking about Harmony.”
“Your cousin?”
“No, no, we were from entirely different branches.” She twirled hair around one finger, still looking away. “He was my fiancé.”
Yerin’s eyebrows raised. She had hoped that Mercy might recall some little bits and pieces about her distant cousin. She hadn’t thought she’d hook a shark on the first cast.
“It ended before I left the family, though,” she added.
“You called it off?”
“He did. He’s very competitive, and he doesn’t take losing well.”
That could be bad, if he saw Lindon as a competitor. But he was supposed to be a Truegold. And if the Akura chose him to represent them here, he’d be one of their best. “Losing...to you?”
Mercy winced. “When I was younger, I didn’t hold back very well.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have to worry about that now. You’re still a Lowgold.”
She shrugged, leaning her staff against her shoulder. “Depends on the competition.”
While Yerin was still thinking that through, Mercy continued. “I don’t think he would even notice Lindon was there. Orthos and Renfei maybe, but only if they bothered him.”
That only increased Yerin’s worries. If Lindon stumbled on whatever prizes the Truegolds were searching for, he might not fight for them, but he’d try to snatch them somehow. Sure as the sun rose.
Yerin set off for the woods, marching through the sand.
“Where’s Bai Rou?” Mercy asked.
Turning, Yerin glanced from side to side. “I don’t see him, and I don’t see anybody who cares. The Sage said there’s another way into Ghostwater somewhere on this island, so I’m finding it. The Akura aren’t the only ones out here.”
She continued into the forest.
After another few breaths, Mercy followed.
Lightning flashed and thunder rolled, and Eithan leaned over the deck of the cloudship to watch. There was something endlessly fascinating about watching a storm beneath him.
Naru Saeya, the Blackflame Emperor’s little sister, gripped the railing next to him. Her wings—the Goldsign of the Path of Grasping Sky—glittered like emeralds in the lightning flashes. They were smaller and sleeker than most on her Path, and she was correspondingly faster.
She shouted to be heard over the thunder. “I’m going in myself,” she bellowed. “He’ll die!”
“No, he won’t,” Eithan said, watching the lightning roll behind him.
Of course, he was also watching everything else.
He and Saeya were not the only Underlords present. Chon Ma, the top-ranked Underlord in the Blackflame Empire, did battle in the sky all around them. He was a bear of a man, and he raged like the storm, carrying a black one-handed hammer in each hand. Black clouds appeared beneath his feet with each step, so he ran through the air, another black cloud hanging over his head like a picture of dread.
He bounded in three long steps over to his opponent, pulling one weapon back. It drew dark gray Cloud Hammer madra with it, until it was shrouded in a dense fog.
The Blood Shadow raised one arm to meet the blow.
The hit cracked as loud as thunder, blasting the Shadow to liquid madra. It splattered away, losing its wings and falling through the air.
Chon Ma had overextended himself for that strike, and the Blood Shadow’s host wasn’t about to let that opportunity pass him by.
He was a serpentine man, tall as though he’d been stretched, wearing the black-and-red robes of Redmoon Hall. He raised a sword, so thin it was almost a needle, and gathered razor-sharp aura at its point. His strike was as swift and precise as one would expect from an Underlord, driving at Chon Ma at the exact moment he was distracted by the Blood Shadow.
But the head of the Cloud Hammer school was not the first-ranked Underlord for his beard. He continued his blow, letting the momentum spin him around, his second hammer meeting the sword-strike instantly.
Eithan was always impressed with such predictions. Those born without the ability to see behind them certainly learned to adapt.
Both hits crashed against each other, sending the two men flying backwards. Clouds formed under Chon Ma’s feet, and he stayed hovering in the air, while his opponent landed on the flat side of a flying sword.
Eithan couldn’t remember the Redmoon Hall man’s name. Gergen? he wondered. Gergich. Gargol. It doesn’t matter; I won’t need to remember it for long.
The peacock feathers that Naru Saeya wore behind her ear were sodden with the rain they’d flown through to get here, but she looked as though the heat of her fury would dry them in an instant. “Get out of my way.”
Her wings swept back, pushing him aside, and she gathered up wind aura. As she was about to launch herself into the air, she froze. Then she spun around.
“See?” Eithan said, staring into the storm.
Saeya’s senses were almost as honed as someone from the Arelius family. Her attunement to wind aura was truly impressive, and she could sense movements in the air from miles away. This storm would strengthen her Ruler techniques and aid her cycling, but it would also interfere with her senses. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have noticed so much later than he did.
“What are you saying?” she spat. “Now we’re all going to die!”
A red Thousand-Mile Cloud rose up the side of their ship like a shark breaking the waves. He looked like he was in the middle of his twenties, his pale face framed by black hair that fell to his waist. He wore a dark, shapeless coat that covered him from shoulders to feet, and a blood-red hook dropped from one loose sleeve.
Longhook, Underlord emissary of Redmoon Hall.
Eithan’s shoulder throbbed as he looked at that hook. It had been restored by the greatest healer in the Blackflame Empire, so he wondered if it was still wounded, or if it was just the shame of losing blood. He tried not to be embarrassed about taking a blow from a man named Longhook, but it was hard to restrain his shame.
When the Bleeding Phoenix vanished, the emissaries of Redmoon Hall had been caught even more off-guard than everyone else. They were deep in enemy territory, surrounded, and their master’s departure left them purposeless.