Worth the risk…
He slowly began to understand. Delia’s mood was more than just dread at the reunion of father and daughter. The risk she spoke of went even beyond bringing the Godsword so near the godling child, Dart.
No, it went even deeper.
Tylar stared out at the towers of Tashijan. Lights glowed from its thousand windows. How could he have been so blind? He reached a hand to her knee.
She seemed oblivious to his touch-then her hand drifted to his. Their fingers intertwined. He squeezed his reassurance.
“Kathryn is my past,” he mumbled ever so softly.
“Is she?”
“Delia…”
She refused to face him. Over the past year, they had become more than lord and handservant. But how much more? During the long stretch of winter, they’d shared more and more time together. Each found easy companionship with the other, even solace. And as the nights lengthened, quiet times slowly stretched to moments of tentative intimacy: a lingering touch, a glance held too long in silence, a moment of shared breaths when leaning together over some trivial matter. Then their first kiss, a brush of lips, only a fortnight ago. They’d barely had a moment to truly discuss what it meant. Only a quiet admission that both wished to explore it further.
But how much further were they willing to explore?
They’d certainly never shared a bed. In fact, Tylar feared bedding any woman since receiving Meeryn’s gift. With the Grace that now laced his seed, he did not know what horrors might arise from any chance dalliance. Still, his reluctance with Delia was not so much a matter of Grace as his own heart.
Another tremble shook the flippercraft, more abrupt and sharp this time, hard enough to dislodge their fingers.
Delia sat straighter, glancing over to him. The last shake was no mere correction, of course. The craft quaked again.
Tylar gained his feet. “Something’s wrong.”
He crossed to the cabin door and opened it. He found Eylan and Sergeant Kyllan looking equally concerned. A few other doors opened along the central hallway.
“Keep everyone in their cabins,” Tylar ordered Kyllan. “I’m going to check with the captain.”
He headed off, drawing Eylan and Delia behind him.
They strode toward the bow, where the door to the pilot’s compartment stood closed. A crewman noted his approach with a nervous squint to his eye.
“I would speak with Captain Horas,” Tylar said.
“Certainly, my lord.”
But before he could open the door, it popped wide on its own. Captain Horas blocked the way. He came close to colliding with Tylar. He was a tall fellow, uniformed in yellow and white, hair as black as oiled pitch and a beard clipped into two horns at his throat.
The captain stepped back, startled.
“Ser, I was just coming to inform you. No need for fear. The shakes are just the black-cursed storm biting at our tail.”
“I thought we were well ahead of the blizzard.” Tylar noted how the captain avoided his eyes.
“Ah, the skies are like the seas, my lord. Storms never like to blow as one expects. Winds shifted during the past bell. The storm’s been chasing after us ever since.”
“Will we reach Tashijan before its full brunt?”
“Oh, most certainly. I’ve stoked the mekanicals to full roil. We’ll be docking soon. But perhaps it would be best if you all returned to your cabins until we’re landed and moored tight.”
Tylar finally caught the captain’s eye. “I think I’d prefer to watch the docking from the pilot’s compartment.”
“Ser…” A slight warning tone entered the captain’s voice.
Tylar strode toward the door, leaving the man little choice: Step aside or grab ahold of the regent of Chrismferry. Captain Horas was no fool.
Tylar entered the compartment with the captain at his elbow. The space ahead filled the nose of the flippercraft. It was divided into two levels. Here at the top, the ship’s crew manned the controls that wielded the mekanicals along with the outer paddles that balanced the flight. Tylar smelled the scent of burning blood as the ship’s mekanicals consumed the air alchemies that kept the great wooden whale aloft.
He stepped deeper inside. The control level overlooked a gigantic curve of blessed glass, the ship’s Eye, through which the pilot could study the world below and guide his ship.
From the weight of the crew’s concentration and the waver in the pilot’s barked orders, he could tell something was amiss.
Captain Horas finally explained. “We must’ve pushed the ship too hard for too long. The mekanicals are strained. Or perhaps the alchemies are not as richly Graced as we were promised. Either way, the ship is hobbled.”
The ship shook again, canting to port and dropping its nose. Tylar caught himself, grabbing the shoulder of the ship’s boatswain. A rally of commands quickly evened the ship’s keel. The pilot was plainly keeping the flippercraft aloft more with his skill than any with Grace of air.
“We’ll make it,” the captain assured him. Then in a lower voice, “If it weren’t for this twice-cursed storm…”
Tylar stared out the Eye. Tashijan rose ahead. Its highest tower-Stormwatch-glowed like a lighthouse along a rocky coast. But closer still, the sky around the flippercraft swirled with eddies of snow. With every breath, it fell harder. They had lost the race.
The storm had caught them.
Kathryn knew something was wrong as she neared her hermitage. The door was cracked open, and her maid Penni waited in the hall. The young girl stood tugging at a brown curl that had escaped her white bonnet. She startled when Kathryn neared, finally realizing the shadowknight approaching her in full cloak was indeed the castellan.
The maid jumped, offered a fast curtsy, then began to stammer, with a glance toward the open door. “I-I-I couldn’t-I didn’t know-”
“Calm yourself, Penni.”
Kathryn allowed the shadows to shed from her cloth, revealing herself fully. She had climbed the tower in a hurry, cloaked in Grace, seeking to avoid recognition. It seemed every other person sought some boon from her: shadowknights, handservants, or underfolk. She was just returning from her most recent duty, greeting the last of the retinues to arrive-from Oldenbrook-making sure the party was settled and formally welcoming them. They seemed very excited to present some special gift to Argent and Tylar at the morning’s ceremony.
But Kathryn hadn’t inquired further.
She had already been late.
Tylar’s flippercraft was due to dock in less than a bell. The warden had prepared an elaborate welcome, including drums and trumpets. She was expected to attend-and in more than a worn shadowcloak.
Now some new trouble waited to be addressed.
“Take a breath and tell me what’s wrong,” she said to Penni.
The maid had served the hermitage for longer than Kathryn had worn the diadem of her station. Penni had been servant to the former castellan, the elderly Mirra, long vanished and surely dead.
“I thought he was a knight,” Penni said. “What with there being so many strangers, coming and going.”
Kathryn understood the maid’s consternation. Tashijan’s knightly residents had tripled in number, gathering from near and fear, a mad rabble of ravens come to witness the momentous event.
“He claimed to be your friend,” Penni continued in a rush. “Come on urgent matters, he says, so I let him into your rooms.” The maid lowered her voice to a whisper. “But then he let his masklin drop. It were no knight.”
Kathryn relaxed.
There was only one person that would be so bold as to masquerade himself as a shadowknight within the very fold of the Order. Rogger. She had not heard a single word since the thief had vanished into the throngs below. He must have donned such a disguise so he might attend Tylar’s welcome. It would be good to hear what tidings Rogger had gleaned from listening to the low whispers and the ale-addled braggings, words that seldom reached as high as her hermitage.