Lightbringer

Navi smiled and blinked her eyes dry. “Very well. Somehow I will restrain myself.”

“Excellent, my lady.”

“But I will tell you this: I know you grieve what you have lost. I grieve as well. I think we will grieve for the rest of our lives. With every step we take away from our home, grief braids itself more tightly into the fabric of our deepest selves. And just as I cannot pry my grief from me, discard it, and move on without it, I also cannot let go of my hope.”

Navi placed her hands on Ruusa’s. The two other rowers in their boat slowed their oars to listen. One was Taya, one of Navi’s guards, and the other was Edran, another stray that had joined their humble ranks on the coast of the Narrow Sea. Like their other new recruits, he couldn’t understand Astavari, but he watched Navi with wide, adoring eyes.

“I must believe that Eliana is the Sun Queen for whom we have prayed all our lives,” Navi said, willing Ruusa to see in her eyes only her conviction and none of her fear. “I must believe she has the strength to withstand every bit of cunning and cruelty the Emperor will use against her. Please understand that when I speak of her in this way, it is not to dismiss your anger or your sorrow, but rather to express my belief—for myself, and for everyone trusting us with their lives. My belief is my hope, and hope is the light that shines even on the darkest night.”

Ruusa was silent, her gaze steely. Miro watched their exchange with breathless attention, his oar forgotten.

At last, Ruusa’s expression softened so subtly that Navi knew the others would not notice.

“I understand, my lady,” said Ruusa, “and I forgive you.”

Navi squeezed her hands in thanks.

Then, as she reached for Miro and his oar, the swamp shuddered.

It was more than a simple tremor, which could have been explained away in this volatile part of the world. It rumbled on, unending, and when Navi tried to call out, she found that something had stolen her voice.

She gripped the sides of the boat, struggling to breathe, her mind racing.

Volcanoes and quakes were ordinary occurrences. New islands formed, and old islands split into pieces. The Vesperian people—thousands of sprawling families, hundreds of cultures, united by the love of their late queen, who had been murdered during the Empire’s invasion—depended on reports from the Saterketa, scholars who specialized in reading and predicting changes in the earth.

Their guide, Bazko, had told them this on their first day in the bog, when spirits had still been high and Bazko himself had been bursting with conversation. He was loyal to Red Crown and would help them safely navigate the Kavalian Bog, famous for the sheer number of travelers who had met gruesome ends in its waters.

Over the past six days, Navi—eager to trust, desperate for help—had nevertheless grown skeptical. The first time Bazko had told them that they would soon be leaving the bog for cleaner waters had been two days ago.

And now the swamp was quaking, no end to it in sight, and there was a high-pitched whine ringing in Navi’s ears that she couldn’t shake. Higher and higher it climbed. One glance at Ruusa told her she wasn’t the only one to hear it.

Bazko sat dumbfounded in the prow of their lead boat, clutching his seat and looking about wildly. He pressed his left ear to his left shoulder and raised his right fist in the air: a command to stop.

The rowers of the other four boats in their party pulled up their oars. Navi searched through the yellow-gray shadows for Malik, her brother, who sat tensely in the boat to her left. The eerie swamp light painted his golden-brown skin with shadows. Then she looked to the right; in that boat sat Hob, broad-shouldered, his skin a dark, rich brown. Navi often turned to these men for comfort. One she had loved all her life; the other she had come to love over the past few months.

But now, they looked as frightened as she did, and a cold terror gripped her heart as she wondered if they would die here, if the swamp would open up and swallow them.

The shudder continued, and Navi counted through it. The putrid water rippled, rocking their boats. Insects and snakes dropped from their branches into the water. Long-legged birds flew off in droves.

Then, silence. Absolute and sudden. Navi’s ears rang, but the awful whining noise was gone.

“What was that?” Miro whispered after a moment. He started to stand, clutching his oar like a weapon. “What’s happening?”

Ruusa pulled him back into his seat. “Hush, boy.”

Navi waited for their guide to call out a signal, some sign that he knew what that quake had been, but Bazko said nothing. He slowly lowered his fist, looking around at the others like a child desperate for guidance, and it occurred to Navi how small they were, how insignificant in the grand, unknowable scheme of the world.

How many strays had they recruited? Wiping away the sweat dripping down her brow, she counted quickly to make sure they were all still safely in their boats. Thirty-one. She, Malik, Hob, Ruusa, her three other living guards, and thirty-one people who were either so desperate to escape their loneliness or so obsessively hungry for revenge against the Empire that they had agreed to brave the Vesperian wilderness with a young woman who spoke of legends as if they were real, who could promise nothing except the hope of a distant fight. A journey to the Emperor’s city. An assault on the place he called home.

The rescue of a princess who would save them all, if only they could reach her in time.

Navi swallowed against the sour taste in her mouth. What was she thinking? How could she and this tiny army she had made possibly mount any sort of offensive against inexhaustible imperial troops?

She was wrong to hope, foolish to even try. Her home was lost. Her world was lost. And scrabbling for survival like this, clinging to wild imaginings of victory, was not only an undignified way to pass what would doubtless be her final days but also a great unkindness to those who followed her. These rootless people, so desperate for even the smallest glimmer of salvation.

She closed her eyes, her palms clammy with dread. What had she done? Where was she leading them, and what lies had she tricked herself into believing?

“All is well,” Bazko called out. His laughter was unconvincing. “Quite the quake, wasn’t it? Not to worry. They don’t call the Vespers the Ever-Shifting Lands for nothing.”

Ruusa touched Navi’s elbow. “Jatana, here, drink some water. Hold on to me.”

But when Navi opened her eyes to accept Ruusa’s canteen, something distracted her—a strange, jagged, flickering darkness, as if a seam had been ripped open in the air. No, not flickering. Shifting. Like a light seen through calm waters, only it was hovering atop the water perhaps forty yards away. Threaded with shades of gold, violet, and the plum-blue of a bruise, it hovered, waiting.

And something about it—the faint sheen of gold, the particular quality of its rippling movement, its very existence, like something from an Old World tale—reminded Navi, for reasons she could not articulate, of her lost friend.