CHAPTER THIRTY Maren 
Do you… want to talk about it?” Efren said after a while.
We had been walking in silence for about an hour. We hadn’t been able to come up with disguises—in the end, I had finger-combed and rebraided my hair, and put on a light hood that shaded my face. After walking, I smelled more like the road than I did dragons—at least enough to fool any humans we met. There was no perfect substitute for an actual bath, but it was better than nothing. If we came across a stream, I’d have the opportunity to wash my face, too.
“I really don’t,” I said.
She snickered, just barely.
“What?” I snapped.
“I’m sorry. It’s nothing.” She pulled her expression into a passing semblance of solemnity.
I sighed. The road ahead was long, and if there was joviality to be had, I could use some. Besides, now I was curious. “It clearly isn’t nothing, so you might as well tell me.”
She pursed her lips as though she was weighing her options. “All right. If you really want to know…”
“I do!”
“All right, all right. Well, I know there’s a lot at stake here. And I have the utmost respect for you—and Kaia. But there’s just something a little funny about the dragon mistress having issues with her girlfriend. I used to think of kings and queens and those sorts of people as being above such common problems.” She looked at me, clearly unsure of how I might react.
I was taken aback. Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t that. And yet she was right. When put like that, it was ridiculous. I smiled, and then chuckled. Soon enough tears of mirth were spilling down my face as I laughed helplessly, Efren laughing at my side.
After a while we calmed down again. “You’re right,” I said. “But I’m hardly as lofty a figure as a king.”
Efren smirked. “I suspect there are a lot of people in Zefed who would disagree. But… are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” When I didn’t respond, she cleared her throat. “If I may…”
I looked at her and sighed, inclining my head to let her know I was listening.
“You’ve been together for a long time, I think.”
“Years,” I said. “How did you know?”
At this Efren smiled. “First love is easy to spot. And first love is precious. But that doesn’t mean it’s meant to be your only love, or that it’s worth your misery. Sometimes people fight because they’re looking for a reason to leave. And the truth is, if something isn’t right? You don’t need another reason.”
Tangled emotions roiled through me, and my eyes brimmed with tears. I felt embarrassed that an almost-stranger had seen such things in my relationship. Angry that she’d dare say as much to me. And afraid—that she was right. Because she’d managed to articulate things that I hadn’t dared to voice myself. The future I’d always envisioned with Kaia was still there, but it had turned hazy and difficult to reach. I didn’t know what I could possibly reach for instead—but more and more, I wasn’t certain that this was the path I wanted.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
Efren cleared her throat and squinted up at the sky. “We’d best move faster.”
We’d covered a good amount of ground on our way toward the eastern edge of Gedarin, and the ocean. The air smelled of salt, and it occurred to me that there was a persistent sound in the air—something that lulled rhythmically back and forth. The sound woke something in me—somehow, it felt both foreign and familiar at the same time. Soon the forest thinned, and grassy hills spread before us. The grass was short and flaxen, and the wind blowing through it made little shushing sounds as it moved.
It would have been an idyllic scene, were it not for what awaited us ahead. The land had been completely razed of trees, leaving only stumps behind. The wind changed, and I caught the scent of dead wood drying under the sun.
“What happened here?”
“What else? The emperor needed to build his warships.”
“Hasn’t he destroyed enough?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Efren didn’t take it as such. “To some, one can never have enough money or power. He wants the Seda Serat, so he must have it, at any cost.”
I didn’t want to walk through this graveyard, but there was no other way. I counted hundreds of stumps before I forced myself to focus instead on the horizon, trying not to think about what had stood here—what was gone. It took too long, but eventually we were through and climbing a small hill. And as we reached the top, my breath caught in my chest.
The ocean.
It was more beautiful than I had ever imagined, and more impressive. My brother Tovin had explained it to me in a letter—a body of water so much larger than the lake in Ilvera that you could not see its end. A body of water that was indeed so large that no one in Ilvera even knew if it had an end. Perhaps it kept flowing into eternity. Tovin had always dreamed of discovering the answer to that question.
And now the ocean was before me, blue and endless under a cloudless sky.
I knew that we were exposed here. Anyone could see us from overhead. But I didn’t care. I stopped and stared.
“You’ve never been to the ocean before?” Efren said quietly.
I shook my head. “Isn’t it magnificent?”
She smiled and nodded. “Let’s go. There’s so much ocean that soon you’ll be sick of it.”
I highly doubted that, but we did need to keep moving. I tore my eyes from the horizon and looked down. We were at the top of a cliff. At its base was a set of rocky beaches that spread up and down the coast. To our left, in the distance, was Irrad. Sev.
We were so close. I had done more, and given more, than I had ever thought possible, and I was finally almost there.
It was slow going, picking our way down the cliff to the beach. Part of the problem was that there was no actual path—only small hints of trails created by goats or deer. But we managed, slipping and shuffling down the unsteady incline. The wind was in my hair, blowing strands against my lips so that every time I opened my mouth, I tasted salt. Gulls flew above us, and below I saw the glimmers of fish under the surface of the water. I was close enough now that occasionally the salt spray blew up to us. That was what made it seem finally real.
At last we reached the rocky beach at the bottom of the cliff. Closer to the water’s edge the rocks grew smaller until they were almost gravel, but here the rocks were the size of my palms or larger. I bent and picked one up, turning it over in my hand. The wash of waves had erased any hard edges over the years, leaving the stone completely smooth. I put it into my pocket and looked out across the water.
I had often stood on the Verran mountain and looked out across the horizon and made believe I could see the ocean. On a clear day I could see it in truth, a line across the edge of the world that had always seemed more hypothetical than real, a wish more than a plan.
And now I, Maren ben Gao Vilna, daughter of the Verran mountain, was standing with my feet at the edge of the unending ocean.
Kaia would love this. Maybe I had done the wrong thing by insisting she stay behind. After this all ended, I would make it up to her a thousand times.
Soon enough Efren called to me, and we continued up the beach toward Irrad.
We had prepared for security checks, considered what we would say if someone asked what our business was in Irrad—but instead of facing resistance, we walked until the beach ended, waded until we got to the docks, and climbed up into a scene of chaos.
In the distance were the charred skeletons of what had until recently been buildings. Somewhere ahead of us was an angry crowd—I could hear the shouts in the distance. Efren and I exchanged a glance.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. “At least it doesn’t seem like this is good for the emperor in any way.”
“Well, let’s just keep our heads down and see how far we get.” At the very least, it looked like the Talons—of which there were several circling overhead—had their hands full today. We shook the sand off our clothes and left the docks behind, heading directly into the streets of Irrad.
Now that we were here, I had to confess to myself that I had only ever pictured the emperor’s palace, not the surrounding city. Irrad was closer in style to Deletev than Belat, which made sense, considering the security requirements. But it was a port city, which meant that the streets connecting the docks to the rest of the city were wide and well trafficked. A few carts rolled by as we passed, but mostly we walked among people on foot, some of whom were wearing masks made of black cloth that obscured their features. The shouting grew louder.
Efren leaned toward me and put a hand over her mouth as she whispered. “I think whatever’s happening is taking place near the palace.”
“Wouldn’t that be good for us? We’ll blend in with a crowd.”
“Sure, as long as the crowd doesn’t get arrested or burned out by the Talons.”
Oh. I stopped, considering our surroundings. “Is there somewhere else we might be able to get a good look from?”
We glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be many options—most of the buildings in Irrad were equipped with hooks and platforms designed to make it easy for Talons to land their dragons, and we certainly didn’t want to use one of those.
My gaze suddenly snagged on a lantern hanging on the other side of the street. The lantern itself was unremarkable, but the intricately woven rope that was hanging from it… “That’s a Verran knot,” I said.
“What does it mean?” Efren said, her hand straying close to her knife.
“They can stand for many things.” I looked up and down the street before approaching the lantern. “This one is a herald’s knot. Usually this would be a call for a community meeting—because of an incident, or a messenger has arrived in town, something like that.”
“A call for a meeting,” Efren repeated. “How many Verrans live in Irrad?”
I shrugged. “Not many.”
“We should move,” Efren said. “We’ve lingered here too long.”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
But there was a knot on the next lantern we passed, and the next. They formed a trail on the left side of the street, one that clearly led somewhere. Our time was limited—Aurati and soldiers were patrolling the streets—and we still needed to get to the palace. But I was distracted by the knots. I wanted to know who had gone to the trouble of putting them up, and why.
“I want to follow them,” I told Efren.
“We don’t have time,” she said. It was nearly midday now. If we meant to get out of the city and back to our camp before dark, we couldn’t afford a detour.
I grimaced. “I know. I can’t explain it, but I think this is the right thing to do.”
She pursed her lips. “You know we might not have another chance at this.”
“I know.”
She nodded slowly. “Well, this is your operation.” An agreement, if not a ringing endorsement.
We followed the knots along the outer edge of the city until we arrived at a side street with canopies hanging overhead that blocked us from the view of the Talons. There was a tavern on the right side of the street. Its sign had been eroded by time and weather—the words were unrecognizable. What was recognizable, though, was the knot hanging below it. I knew it immediately.
“That’s my family’s knot,” I said. Anyone familiar with Verran customs might have learned a herald’s knot. But only those in my immediate family knew this one. Hope and dread mingled in my stomach. I went to the tavern door and pushed it open.
The tavern was empty—in fact, it looked as though it had been abandoned except for two people, a man and a woman, sitting at the far table. They stood as we entered the room, and there was something about the way he moved that reminded me of—
“Maren?” said the man.
My eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the tavern, but I still could not make sense of what I was seeing.
“Tovin?” I said hesitantly.
“It is you.” He crossed the tavern in a few great strides and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into a long hug. After a moment of surprise, I hugged him back. My brother was taller, I thought. And a little sturdier, and his skin was definitely sun browned. But it was still him.
Family. Everyone deserved one, whether they were born into one or made it themselves. Despite our years of separation, Tovin was still as familiar to me as the mountain. Did he feel the same? He’d known the person I had been before I had stood atop the Verran mountain and vowed to bring Kaia home. And that person was so different from the person I had become.
Finally, we broke the embrace. “What are you doing here?” I said in Verran. “Did you set out the knots?”
“Mother and Father wrote me. I’ve heard you’ve been busy, Little Sister.”
Mother and Father. My eyebrows furrowed. “They knew I’d be here? How? I don’t understand.”
The woman at the table behind us cleared her throat, and Tovin jumped a little. “Come, come,” he said. “We have much to discuss.”