Restless mist blanketed Sibíko. Moisture slicked spiral-streets reaching from the grass to the highest levels of the àlvar city. On a clearer Night, the reflection of lamps would have glimmered on golden wood, but fog swallowed everything.

  Servants running errands left mistless wakes that yawned with brief darkness until the fog eased back. A black carriage cut a much larger wake from the western gates to the Taffeta District. The fog hesitated to refill the space. Deeper silence followed the passage of its rattling chains, creaking wood, and huffing elk.

  The black carriage stopped outside a weaver’s shop.

  Esor an Amen saw its arrival from a window above. He pushed up on his knees to look through warped glass. The carriage’s lead elk groaned impatiently. Its white head tossed in the shadow, nostrils wide with exertion.

  “They’re here,” he said softly, surprised.

  He darted to his feet, swept papers into his briefcase, and buttoned his shirt. He had been translating another old letter. His hands were covered with ink. Esor scrubbed his hands in a basin, but the cracks remained black.

  Esor met his mother in the lobby with his hands stuffed in his pockets and a jacket hiding the stains on his shirt.

  Tasero an Amen’s excellent posture gave length to her neck which her ears lacked. Her hair was piled under a beaded snood coordinated to the delicate blue lacework of her bodice, which flowed into unfussy linen suitable for singing at the loom. “Esor, this is Dak, footman to Great House Kovenor. He will take you to ?elasdur.”

  It had only been a handful of Lights since Esor replied to a query from the palace of ?elasdur—a xilcadis so distant it didn’t appear on his mother’s wall map. Esor had penciled the name upon the border where it would have appeared.

  “I’ve promised to porter fabric to the palace this entire week,” Esor said.

  “Your obligations here have ended,” said the footman.

  Esor bowed. “Then I will prepare to leave.”

  Upon accepting the job, he had shipped his personal library ahead. That left only his wardrobe to transfer, but the wardrobe of a weaver’s son was daunting. Tasero pulled apprentices from the choir to fill suitcases and carry them outside. It was still an hour before Esor was saying goodbye to his parents on the doorstep.

  Tasero drew him aside. His mother spoke with unfamiliar urgency in her voice and a lantern reflecting dully in her eyes. “You must take this with you.” She folded a small hard box into Esor’s hand.

  “A present, Mother?”

  “A puzzle. Don’t lose it. Don’t let anyone take it. Solve it. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” said Esor, though he did not.

  “Write to me.” She tucked a coil of hair behind his ear, lightly pinching the point as she had when he was new. “Send me your poems. I love you, my son, my Esor.”

  He climbed into the velvet embrace of the carriage to leave Sibíko. It took a full day of fidgeting with the stiff clasp on the box before Esor managed to lift its lid, underneath which he found a strange-shaped lock, like a heart shattered to pieces.

  ~

  When the carriage arrived in ?elasdur, the sky wept rain over his waiting palace. A Herald sprinted through the entryway’s pillars to speak with a guard, who gestured to a kerotera, who leaped up the staircase three steps at a time. An usher returned via the same path moments later. Ladies in the grand foyer forgot their game of hopping millers as whispers swept over them like fresh rainfall.

  Wind ripped the front door from the usher’s hand and flung it wide.

  Esor an Amen stumbled over the threshold, shoved by an invisible fist of air. Guards battled the door closed again. Leaves swirled to stillness at his feet. His cheeks were flushed to the same vivid-pink as the tip of his wind-scalded nose.

  The ladies stopped whispering. They looked boredly at nothing.

  Collectively, the servants stared at their feet.

  The lord of ?elasdur, Patrician Malor, and his wife Lady Kit?anve observed Esor’s tempestuous arrival from a balcony above. “So there it is,” Patrician Malor said.

  Esor an Amen must have been an adult to take the teaching job, but he was young enough that his boyish features lacked the agelessness of mature àlvar. His eyes were too large and his skin too dewy. He wore celestial blue robes over tunic and breeches, with fabric as fine as the cut was simple, and his cravat was frothy as sea foam. He clutched a briefcase threatening to spill books.

  “A pretty thing.” Kit?anve spoke in the High Tongue and imbued the melody with added meaning. ?Many of our daughters are older than this pitiful creature.?

  “He is not pretty. He is Dokàlvar,” Malor replied. ?You’re just feeling maternal.? His wife was heavy with child, in the later years of gestation, and her sentiments grew softer as her belly grew larger.

  Esor an Amen fluttered across the foyer, arm gripped by Dak as the footman hurried upstairs.

  “Notify Lord Mayor Corvin,” said Malor.

  Lady Kit?anve curtsied and left, followed by keroterase armed with pikes.

  Patrician Malor embarked for ?elasdur’s highest tower. He knew paths where even the servants could not find him. It required climbing a dozen stairs and unlocking a dozen doors. His knees hurt by the end of it, and he would have fallen if not for the support of his stave.

  Malor finally entered a wind-battered rookery. The windows were taller than the average High àlvar from pinnae to heels, and the floor was scattered in sticky droppings that had fallen from suspended cages. Malor tucked a note into a capsule hanging from a vosaik’s leg. When he released his courier, the beast erupted into the sky, screaming a warning that was silenced by the clash of thunder.

  The doors on Bine Hall swung open. The hem of Esor’s overrobe and heels of his boots were still caked in mud, and Dak’s grip was so firm that Esor felt the lingering imprints long after he shook free. He brushed a hand through unruly hair in a failed attempt to tame it.

  “Presenting Esor an Amen of Sibíko, son of master weaver Tasero an Amen and master steward Amen Nikow?, first of his line born unbonded,” Dak announced. “You stand before Corvin of Great House Kovenor, Patrician of Set, Lord Mayor of Ildòrian, eldest son of Magistrate Amalen.”

  Esor swept a straight-backed bow. “May Nam? bless his name.”

  Nobody else said it with him. Silence smothered the others: the footman, the steward in the corner, the guards who stood between Esor and his liege.

  Wind rose to toss the veils hanging between lord and servant. Beyond, Corvin sat motionless upon the throne: a twisted thing of branches with a back twice as high as Esor was tall. Morone muslin draped over the Lord Mayor’s intimidating form.

  When nobody spoke, Esor awkwardly said, “I am honored to serve you.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “You’ll be serving my sister, Lady Ilare.” The enthroned figure’s voice was deep and resonant. “Numerous references cite you as the finest tutor in County Mid.” ?Either that speaks highly of you, or it speaks little of Mid.?

  Esor’s youthful skin could still blush, taking on the color of springtime blossoms. His fingers fumbled over his robe to straighten the collar, emulating the primmer style of the household staff. “I’m honored to have earned a reputation.”

  “Yes. Quite the reputation. You will give my sister the tools she requires to enter the College of Ralen.”

  It was not the first time Esor had provided such services, so he was eager to assent. The contract would, after all, keep him occupied for a veton. Two years away from his parents. A fine start to adulthood independence.

  Lingering reluctance dogged Esor. The wind bit colder and wetter by the moment. The palace stood atop a tor, so Esor could see spans of ghost forest filling the valley through the window. The landscape was painted in steely grays by storm light. Blossom season would soon begin in Sibíko. The air would be fragrant, the city colorful, the forest singing.

  “You will be paid a sum of three hundred gold and fifty talons each year,” said the Lord Mayor. “The same again as bonus if Lady Ilare successfully enters the alchemy program.”

  That was enough money for Esor to rent an apartment in Ralen while seeking work in academia. It was more than enough for him to steel himself against the bluster of wind and nod. “I will uphold your needs as though they are—ah, my own.”

  He stumbled over the end of the sentence. Esor had begun a traditional oath performed by Low for the High who employed them. I will uphold your needs as if they are the needs of Nam? herself.

  At a clap of Corvin’s hands, the steward brought forth a small desk and contract; Esor seated himself upon a bench to read the text.

  “This specifies that my duties are ‘as seen fit’ and will include non-educational matters,” said Esor.

  “Yes, it does,” said the Lord Mayor. Harmonies blossomed, echoed, and trailed away from those three words, a choir unto himself.

  Esor needed no contract for any High àlvar to command him as desired, much less Ildòrian’s ruler. The verbiage as written meant nothing.

  The edge of the page flapped in the wind. He smoothed it with his hand, his thumb tracing the etching of a familiar crest atop the page. “Do you originate from County Ralen, my liege? Your accent is familiar.”

  “I am from places here and there, and where you might least expect it,” said Corvin. “Some of us are incapable of finding a home.”

  Esor startled at the nearness of his voice. The Lord Mayor had risen noiselessly from his throne to stand over Esor, and now there were no veils to obscure the details of the eldest Kovenor son. His ears were longer than his hands. His eyes were an impossible shade of mauveine.

  A pair of velvety antlers thrust from Corvin’s scalp.

  The lessons Amen taught Esor about conduct were forgotten while entrapped by Corvin’s gaze. Staring too long at the wrong L?sàlvar is an invitation to violence, Amen once said, yet Esor stared, the way he would have stared if Nam? herself had appeared.

  Antlers.

  “Is there a problem with the contract, Master Esor?” asked Lord Mayor Corvin.

  Esor fumbled the pen, leaving a black smear on his fingers and an imprint of a thumb on the contract. “Forgive me,” he murmured. In his embarrassment, he signed without a single thought further.

  ~

  A FREIGHTER FLOATED serenely outside the mouth of Dolik?n Bay. Admiral Geldur rechecked his position, anxiously ensuring the kavel was anchored beyond the boundary of buoys. Within that line, smaller swoops and trawlers traveled safely; beyond that line, the churn of Chaos threatened their keel. Geldur treaded the dangerous edge of that boundary. It would have been more dangerous to move nearer.

  Through Geldur’s enchanted spyglass, xilcadis ?elasdur was an indistinct blotch of black against the mountains. He had avoided the palace complex for years, but Geldur still recalled the sight of it: the tower inhabiting a dead world-tree, with a city coiled tightly against its trunk, and the mud pit of its village sliding into the harbor. Brine and Chaos had killed the forest. Sprawling fields of grapes climbed otherwise barren mountains sloping gray behind them.

  “To the aft! In the clouds!” A crewmate tangled high in the masts had spotted an incoming figure.

  Geldur swung up the ropes to a crow’s nest. From there, he saw the beast too: a thrashing thing that navigated churning winds clumsily. In the wild, vosaik were graceful. This one was weighed down by a chain affixed to its leg.

  It caught itself on the brass bar rimming the crow’s nest. Claws squealed against metal. Chain slapped against the platform.

  “Taint, I forget how big you bastards are,” Geldur said. A vosaik was big as a Man before accounting for the wings, which could have knocked heads off from across a courtyard. “Stay calm—nice and easy—hey!”

  He darted forward to seize the end of the chain. The vosaik snapped its razor-edged beak, but he leaped out of the way in time to avoid injury.

  “Greedy prick.” Geldur lobbed a chunk of dried meat at the vosaik. Appeased, it lifted off, tilting its wings against the wind to heave toward its next task. Geldur only realized he had not escaped unscathed when he struggled to open the message capsule. His hand was slick with blood.

  “You all right?” A lookout dropped onto the platform.

  Geldur’s palm was gashed open to the bone. “Don’t you worry about that. Hurry, open the message for me. Read it.”

  The crewmate needed a moment to interpret the letters, shaping them soundlessly with his lips. “The letter says ‘it is here.’ What is here? Is it on the swoop?”

  “It’s here,” Geldur simply said, turning to take in the coast. Beyond Se Strait was Dolik?n Bay, beyond the bay was xilcadis ?elasdur, and within those teetering walls was it. “We must go.”

  It was time to leave—long past time. Geldur slicked his bloody palm over the main mast. The same power flowing through his veins infused every joint and nail in the kavel. Geldur turned the vessel toward the most dreadful waters they could sustain.

  “What nonsense is this?” the lookout asked, swaying in time with the swoop. “You’re going the wrong way for the Maid!”

  “I’m going the right way to make sure nobody dares hunt us,” Geldur said. None were mad enough to follow them into the edges of Chaos.

  They could waste no time getting to Black River Grotto. The àlvare had been caught in their sins at last, and Geldur’s blood would be far from the last to spill.

  ~

  THE TAVERN IN BLACK River Grotto stopped serving at sunrise, but sunlight pierced the filmy windows to shine upon one remaining patron. His head was pressed into his arms. The ruddy tangles of his hair were caked to the table with old beer. A cape covered his body like a blanket so only the gleam of his boot’s golden toe stuck out the bottom hem. That was how Opel identified her commander from the tavern door.

  A barmaid attempted to prevent Opel’s entrance. “Our taps are shut ‘til midday,” said the barmaid.

  “I’m not here to be fed and watered.” Opel pushed into the tavern. She was Dwarrow, sturdy as the iron bottom of a cauldron. A wyvern couldn’t have kept her from descending upon the sole occupied table. Opel stepped through a mound of food waste and clapped her hand upon his shoulder. “Mishu—wake up!”

  He jerked upright. Her arm was waiting to deflect the clumsy slash of his dagger. Its cutting edge sparked off her vambrace.

  “Butcher! Begone!” he roared through the mess of his hair.

  She raised her arm to deflect a second blow, which did not come. He regained his senses quickly, such as they were after single-handedly draining a keg of beer in one night.

  He sat back. The cape fell away to expose a golden chest plate. “What is it, lieutenant?”

  “Urgent news,” Opel said. “Geldur arrived in the harbor as if chased by Lorkullen himself. They found the Heart of Tephra where we expected.”

  He rose to his full height. Every ballad describing the Warlord compared his stature to that of a mountain, and indeed his presence loomed over the bar. The fellstar hammer swinging at his belt was stained with blood from his last fight. He had removed one gauntlet to eat, and now he combed scarred fingers through his beard, sobering as Opel’s words sank in.

  “The Heart of Tephra...with Corvin?” he asked. “Again?”

  “Yes.”

  He gripped his fellstar and swung it in a wide arc over his head, shouting his rage. The hammer struck the table and turned it to splinters. He punched a hole in the floor bigger than his fist.

  Even Opel, accustomed to outbursts, leaped back when he rounded on her. “Where?” snarled the Warlord, cludgeon still swinging from his fist.

  “?elasdur,” she said.

  ~

  ESOR COULD NOT SLEEP on his first Night in ?elasdur, so he sat among the crates piled in his bedroom with the strange little box his mother gave as parting gift. It must have demanded an equally strange little key. He prodded inside the lock with a pin but quickly met obstruction. There was no hinge to dismantle besides the lid; the metal was otherwise smooth and seamless.

  “Surely there is an inner hinge and the lock itself will swing open, like a second lid,” Esor reasoned. He could not fathom the weight of what he held, sitting in his modest chambers behind the scullery. His mother wanted him to open the box, and open it he would.

  Esor put it onto his necklace chain beside the Eternal Cross, ensuring servants wouldn’t make off with the pretty trinket while tidying his chambers. “It may be optimistic to expect my chambers tidied,” he said aloud. He’d found a dead toad while searching for spare linens. The little animal was black and red, unlike any he had seen before. Esor feared it had been rotting in his chambers for weeks.

  His new bedroom was cramped by its bed, wardrobe, and writing desk. The leaking window left everything damp. He whispered a silent apology to his mother and hung a beautiful blanket—one of her many parting gifts—over the window to shelter the desk. There, he placed his personal altar: an image of Nam?, an Eternal Cross as big as his hand, and a copper censer.

  Esor initially left the silver puzzle on the altar, where it glistened in his lantern’s light. Yet when he tried to sleep, he felt as though something terrible lurked outside his shrouded window, waiting to steal his mother’s gift.

  He fetched the box and drifted to sleep with its weight on his heart.

  It was the last Night he rested well in ?elasdur.