Knight Redeemed: The Shackled Verities (Book Two) Read online

  In the middle of the night, the walk to the docks was uneventful. The Dyrrak soldiers still stood as sentries along the streets, keeping those curious enough to brave a look tucked away in their homes and the Knights’ procession unhindered. The whole of Aster Keep’s upper courtyard overlooking the city was ablaze with light. They were watching, of course, witnessing the humbling of their once great city. Eisa could feel Beatte’s hostility like a toxic fume all the way to the sea.

  The Dyrrakium flagship, the Gildr, was far too big to bring into the narrow harbor that served as Asteryss City’s main port. The main deck itself was at least as broad and long as Vigil Tower’s main hall. The Knights, Ulfric, and the Himmingazians were taken to it onboard smaller ten-person crafts, one Knight staying with the separated groups of Himmingazians for their protection. Eisa noted, however, that the Dyrraks paid very little attention to the foreigners, good or bad.

  Once all were aboard the Gildr, it promptly drew anchor and set off under the light of the stars. The darkness of the Verring Sea’s horizon swallowed them almost immediately, leaving the backlit silhouettes of the smaller Dyrrakium ships against the remaining lights of Asteryss to slip behind them.

  Until the night was shattered by the brilliance of an explosion.

  Eisa and the Knights rushed to the deck rails and peered toward the bedlam. Several more explosions followed, and off the stern of the Gildr, they saw the docks of Asteryss’s ports aflame with huge fires that burned as tall as houses. Along the coastline, to the north and south, more explosions followed.

  “Verities fury…” Roi whispered. “They’re destroying Asteryss’s ports, their ships… Ivoryss will be completely defenseless, cut off.”

  Eisa looked at Ulfric, whose hands were clenched around the railing so tightly his knuckle bones looked ready to burst through his skin. “I told the Ecclesium this wasn’t to be. I’ve got to stop this.” He was about to stride off when Roi grabbed him by the arm.

  “No, Ulfric. You can’t confront him.” Ulfric turned back sharply as if to berate Roi, but the Yorish Knight continued. “Think about it. Why would Vaka Aster ask the Dyrraks to do anything, when Vaka Aster could simply make her, your, will so? Ulfric, what do you think will happen when they realize what you’ve done?”

  And here it was, the secret she knew they were keeping from her. She took a step in front of Ulfric, blocking him, and planted her feet.

  “And what exactly have you done, Stallari?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ulfric faced Eisa. The fires behind them, reflected in her silvery eyes and illuminating the hard lines of her face and black hair that seemed to blend into the night surrounding her, reddened her sepia skin further. The effect made her appear uncannily dragørlike. For a moment, Ulfric had the impression he was facing a creature from the Howling Weald rather than his old friend and compatriot.

  The two stared at each other a moment, eyes locked. He now read Eisa in new ways, saw her actions of the past through a new light. After what he’d read in Lífs’s Scrylle—Himmingaze’s fate that Griggory had recorded, fate sealed by Eisa herself—he no longer felt he understood his old friend the way he once had.

  The other three Knights stood next to him, facing Eisa. After a moment, Safran sent through the Mentalios link, trying to placate Eisa’s clear edginess, Eisa, just take a moment. Listen to—

  “I’m done waiting, Stallari,” Eisa cut in. “You need to explain what’s happening now, explain what…you’ve done.”

  “Am I interrupting?” The Domine Ecclesium materialized from the foredeck as if he’d been blown in like smoke. None had heard him come.

  Ulfric glanced at the man. How much had he heard?

  Shooting Eisa a final This will wait glance, he stepped in front of the Dyrrak leader. “Ecclesium, explain your actions here. Why have you ordered this attack?”

  The moment Ulfric looked at him, the Ecclesium had dipped his head and dropped his eyes. At Ulfric’s confrontation, his eyes rose, slowly, almost questioningly. “Creator, what better way to ensure Dyrrakium’s haven remains safe from intruders than to hobble them?” His eyes wandered to the fiery horizon, then back to Ulfric’s chin. “I assumed you knew our plans, Maker, as you know all that we do and intend. I could only think you’d have told me if you’d not wanted me to give the order.”

  Oh, the man was shrewd, very shrewd. Ulfric was perilously close to giving himself away. How much would the Ecclesium understand? Could he even conceive of a Verity being, as he’d put it, “hobbled” the way Ulfric’s actions had hobbled Vaka Aster?

  Mallich’s warning was correct. In the eyes of the Dyrraks, what Ulfric had done, even if unintentionally, would be seen as the worst apostasy. Shackling one’s own Verity, one’s celestial maker—they would see it as depraved. Ulfric was certain he could best any Dyrrak who tried to retaliate against him for what he’d done. Yet…he’d been removed from their kingdom for so long. How could he know what they were capable of? Without Vaka Aster’s intervention, he was still only a man, and any man could be brought low with enough force. And if Vaka Aster felt a threat and stepped to the fore again to protect him, protect Vinnr—

  No, he didn’t want that, not yet. He was unwilling to risk not being his own master if she chose not to retreat once more. Ah, but he was not his own master, was he? Not while his fate was in the hands of the Domine Ecclesium.

  Ulfric looked away from the Dyrrak leader and pointed a finger to Eisa. “Knight Nazaria, from this moment forward, you will be my representative among the Dyrrak people. Domine Ecclesium, if you wish to see me, speak to me, or relay information to me, Knight Nazaria will act as your voice.”

  “My Maker, if I have offended you—”

  Farther along the deck, the Himmingazian group milled among the few possessions they’d brought from Vigil Tower, mostly food and clothing. Jaemus was with them, his limitless energy now being put to the task of making them as comfortable as he could. Ulfric went on before the Ecclesium could finish. “Now, see to the Himmingazians. Ensure their quarters are as comfortable as can be.”

  His tone was dismissive, and the Dyrrak leader understood. Ulfric caught the scowl that washed over his face as Ulfric turned away. He was a man of power who’d reigned unchallenged in his own empire for many turns. A man now usurped by his own faith. A man who represented a new danger, if Ulfric’s guess was right.

  To his back, the Ecclesium said, “It is done, Creator.”

  He heard nothing as the Dyrrak left. He only knew he was gone when Safran visibly relaxed beside him.

  Jaemus, Ulfric sent, the Dyrrak leader will be sending someone to help the Himmingazians get settled. Would you join the rest of us here?

  Mind if I just—

  They’ll be safe, I promise. They must be tired. Let them rest.

  It must have taken effort to channel the sound of a disgruntled sigh through the Mentalios, but Jaemus managed to do it. A natural to the Order, indeed.

  Eisa, quiet during the Ecclesium’s visit, didn’t hold back any longer. “Ulfric—”

  He held up a hand. “It’s time you know the full story.”

  “It’s time she finishes explaining why she betrayed her own oath,” Stave interjected.

  “We’ll get to that,” Ulfric said.

  Jaemus arrived, rather hurriedly, and cut in as if no one else had been speaking. “Look, sorry to break up this lovely deck party, but we need to chat, Ulfric. Cote, and the rest of the ’Nauts are getting sicker. We need to get them back to Himmingaze, even if I’m going to stay.”

  Surprising Ulfric, it was Eisa who spoke. “There’s no Himmingaze to go back to.” Jaemus looked at her incredulously, and she went on. “Or there won’t be for much longer.”

  “Speak plainly, Eisa,” Mallich said, not unkindly.

  Her gaze moved over those gathered, seeming to assess who was a foe and who was still a friend, then said, “A few days ago, after we collected Vaka Aster’s previous vessel and brought it aboard
the Vigilance, I discovered Vaka Aster had abandoned it—and us as well, it seemed at the time. We didn’t yet know what had become of you, Ulfric. So I went to Himmingaze to speak to…” She hesitated, uncharacteristically. “Griggory.”

  Griggory Dondrin? Safran sent, though the question was in each of their eyes. The one they used to call the Dragør Tamer? But he disappeared a long time ago.

  “Aye,” Eisa said. “Ulfric and Roi knew him. He’s been in Lífs’s realm since the Cataclysm. It was Griggory and I who discovered the cause of Himmingaze’s ruin, this Glister Cloud. When the Yor rebels attempted their coup—”

  “Yor rebels?” Stave interrupted. “It was the Dyrraks who tried to overtake Yor and started the coup, it was.”

  Eisa shifted position, widening her feet a fraction as if preparing for a fight. “That’s the common history, Stave. And since neither you nor Safran was even born yet, you know little of the true history of Vinnr.”

  Before Stave could respond, Mallich pressed, “Go on, Eisa.”

  A beat passed, then she did. “After Lillias Grannd of Yor betrayed her kingdom, Griggory and I traveled to Himmingaze together. The turbulence of the coup, the fights it caused throughout the realm, the exile of Dyrrakium—I was a novice enough Knight then that my faith…wavered. Griggory, though, is and has always been peerless, and he took it upon himself to help me forge a stronger faith by proposing we widen our knowledge of the Cosmos together. To better serve Vaka Aster, he promised. He said Himmingaze was a quiet realm, one of peace and unique people. He’d been there before, you see. You remember his wandering ways, don’t you, Roi?”

  Mallich nodded, and she continued. “I agreed to go with him. It seemed…a good way to put the three kingdoms’ troubles behind.”

  She went silent a moment, her eyes far away with memories of a long-ago time. Ulfric knew the pain she hid and suspected Mallich did as well. They’d known Eisa’s love for Lillias, the noblewoman from the Conservatum who would have been the next Arch Keeper of Yor—if she hadn’t succumbed to her own greed and desire for power. Eisa’s wrath at learning of Lillias’s plot had made her wild, for a time, unpredictable. Griggory, the only Knight whose authority Eisa had never questioned, must have taken her to Himmingaze for her own good, maybe even for Vinnr’s good. But his plans had gone awry. Ulfric had read in Lífs’s Scrylle what she’d done there, how her rage had been inconsolable. How she’d killed their Mystae upon learning of the sacrilege they’d committed. He wondered if she’d confess to that now.

  “There, we met Lífs’s Mystae and discovered what they’d done—their execration of their Verity,” she went on. “They had discovered some kind of banishment curse. I don’t know how. It allowed them to fracture Lífs’s vessel, and upon this sundering, the vessel became the Cloud that now surrounds the world. It acts as some kind of veil, hiding the world from Lífs’s celestial sight, exiling her from her own realm. Through some wystic power we don’t know, Himmingaze itself remained intact.” She looked to Bardgrim, whose own face was slack with disbelief. “But not for much longer.”

  The Knights took this story in. It might have seemed unimaginable, but, then, so had caging a Verity only days ago.

  Safran asked, But why would Lífs’s Mystae do this?

  “Simple. The same urge that drives unworthies like Lillias drove those blackguardly Mystae. They wanted to rule, uninterrupted, with allegiance to nothing.” Her voice creaked like breaking ice. “They desecrated everything sacred and dishonored themselves and their oaths. Griggory has remained there ever since, seeking to undo their sacrilege. And because of this, after Ulfric disappeared, I went to find out if Griggory had learned the secret of their banishment curse. I reasoned that if we had it, we could use it against Balavad.”

  “And did he?” asked Stave.

  She shook her head. “No, the secret is lost, along with their Scrylle. And with each moment that passes, the Glister Cloud, Lífs vessel, disintegrates more. As it fails, so does Himmingaze. It will be undone within a thirty-night, maybe mere days.”

  Jaemus had been growing paler and paler as Eisa spoke. At her last statement, he made a choking noise. They glanced at him.

  “Bit queasy,” he muttered, then asked, “And the Scrylle, does it show how to fix things, glue the vessel back together, as it were? Can Himmingaze be saved?”

  “Griggory tried. He searched for all these turns for the celestial artifacts. When at last he did find them, the Scrylle was stolen.” Ulfric almost pitied Jaemus for the way her gaze cut right into him. “As you know, Bardgrim.”

  “And they were lost when Balavad’s warship was destroyed,” Ulfric stated, knowing they’d been aboard the Bounding Skate, which was now destroyed as well. “Eisa, is Griggory still there now?”

  She nodded. “Griggory has…chosen to remain in Himmingaze.”

  “Why? Why didn’t he return with you?”

  “You’d have to ask him.” A troubled look passed over her face before she went on. “So you see, my actions were, as always, in service to Vaka Aster. I knew we as Knights could not defeat Balavad, not with Vaka Aster still absent, but I also knew the Himmingazians had found a way to at least misdirect a Verity. I just didn’t know how, but I was sure Griggory did. There was neither time nor need to explain myself. I had to act for the vessel’s sake. And Vinnr’s.”

  And what about Mylla? Safran said.

  “I sent her to Himmingaze because I was trying to save her. The novice was going to attack Balavad’s ship after you all were taken. She’d have died if she did, so I stopped her to save her from her own foolhardiness.”

  “And now she’s dead, anyway, she is,” Stave growled.

  “That isn’t my fault. She hadn’t the strength to win her final battle.”

  Ulfric grimaced. “She had more strength than you know, Eisa. She fought Balavad single-handedly, to her last breath.”

  “Then she did her duty.”

  “You wretched—” Fists clenched, Stave started toward Eisa, who squared her shoulders to face him. Safran grasped his arm.

  No, she sent. This isn’t our way. Knights, we are in this together. Our fate and our faith depend as much on our loyalty to each other as to Vaka Aster. Eisa’s actions, though rash, were no less necessary than ours. She’s right. Vaka Aster and the vessel are what we swore our lives to protect. You two must put aside this endless, pointless squabble and remember the oaths you’ve taken to Vaka Aster—and your loyalty to each other as Knights, for Verities’ sakes.

  Both Stave and Eisa backed off, their loathing for each other at least temporarily corked.

  Ulfric approached Jaemus, his lined face set in an expression of deep sympathy. He touched his chin with one hand, then held it palm forward in a gesture Jaemus was now familiar with. “Bardgrim, I promise, we will find a way to help your people. I don’t yet know how, but we have Vaka Aster’s Scrylle once more. I will scour it for the answers to preserving your realm. If there’s a way, we’ll find it.”

  Jaemus, silent for once, could only nod his thanks.

  “But first,” Ulfric continued, dropping his hand and looking at Eisa. “You and I need to speak alone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  With a measure of reluctance, the four Knights went in search of Chancellor Aoggvír, who’d been tasked with seeing to them and the Himmingazians. Safran had to give Jaemus a tug on the wrist to get him moving. He seemed frozen to the spot at the news of his realm’s imminent demise. Eisa had little trouble imagining how he felt. Vinnr had so recently been facing the same sort of threat.

  But no longer. And despite the fact that she’d chosen to pursue a different avenue for attempting to constrain the tyranny of Balavad—and had, in the end, been ineffective—Eisa would not stand to be accused, if that was what Ulfric had in mind.

  Thus, she attacked him first.

  Facing him rigidly, she demanded, “What heretical thing have you done, Ulfric? Have you spit on everything you swore to defend?”

 
Her tone was blazing; he met it not with his own fury but with a reserved coolness Eisa wasn’t prepared for. Slowly, he spun away from her and walked to the railing, gripping it roughly as if to keep himself from jumping over the side. When he turned again to face her, he spoke in a voice gritty with regret.

  “I never in a million turns, a million lifetimes, would have chosen this, Eisa. What did I ever do to turn your opinion of me so bleak?”

  He wasn’t accusing her of anything, yet she couldn’t have been caught more off guard. His blatant sorrow—about her deeds? about his own?—had an edge to it that cut deep. And there was more, a depth of compassion that reminded her of the Stallari in his prime just after he’d met Symvalline. He’d become a changed man then, a man of level-headed, reserved judgment, giving all commoners and even the occasional wayward Knight the benefit of a doubt before accusing them of misdeeds. Eisa would have, and had, followed that man to the ends of Vinnr. Until Lillias had ripped the last shred of any compassion, any love, she’d had straight not from her chest but from her very spirit.

  As Ulfric waited for her to respond, a crack of lightning flashed across the sky and rain began to fall. For some reason, Eisa’s thoughts remained on the Yorwoman, and the searing crack of lightning mimicked the pain that seared her own spirit still.

  “Eisa?”

  She pushed the thoughts away with an effort and brought that old bitterness to bear on something present—the Stallari. “You lost your faith, Ulfric, you and Symvalline both, and intended to forsake your oaths, leave your companions, and quit the Knights.” She eyed him, taking in the shields he now wore over his eyes, the way he faced her but hid at the same time. “Instead, you—”

  “You don’t know what I did.”

  The level statement stopped her. Here she stood, accusing him, yet she hadn’t been there. She was the one who left her companions. He said he hadn’t chosen this. Should she believe him? Shouldn’t she, at least, hear his full story and how Vaka Aster came to choose him to be the vessel?