Slowing again, Safire looked from one painting to the next. The first depicted a ship in the distance. In the next, it was joined by several others. Then a whole fleet. And leading them all, standing at the helm, was a younger empress. Her cheeks red with windburn, her hair tangled by wind and salt.
The paintings showed her mooring on the Star Isles, climbing the rocky gray cliffs, traversing dark boreal forests and mossy meadows, then finally arriving at a tower with a thousand steps. And all the while, the shadow on the horizon grew bigger and more ominous.
“I have a solution to your problem,” the empress said.
At the very top of those thousand steps, sitting at a loom, was another woman. A crown of seven stars rested atop her head, and her hand held a spindle.
Skyweaver.
It was a near-identical image from the tapestry hanging in Safire’s office. The one Asha gave her. The one Eris stole.
“What is this?” said Roa, at which point, Safire looked to find the empress lifting a silver chain over her head. Instead of a pendant, a small egg-shaped capsule hung down.
“My gift to you,” Leandra said, letting it drop into Roa’s cupped hand. “The reason I invited you here.”
Safire tore herself away from the paintings and came toward them, staring as the empress clicked the capsule open and a tiny seed fell out and onto Roa’s palm.
“Salvation for your people.” She studied Roa as she said this. “It’s impervious to the blight. I have several granaries full of that same seed. Before you leave, I’ll have my soldiers fill up your ship.”
Roa’s fingers trembled as they curled closed around the seed, holding it tight. As she looked up into the empress’s face, her eyes glimmered with tears.
“You don’t know what this means to us. Tome.”
The empress smiled kindly back. “I think I do.”
“There must be something we can give you in exchange,” Dax said, his arm curling gently around Roa’s waist. To a stranger, he would seem calm and composed. But Safire heard the smallest tremor in his voice. “To show our deep gratitude.”
Ever since the news arrived of Roa’s father, of Lirabel and her baby, Safire had watched Dax retreat inside himself. He wasn’t just failing the scrublands, he was failing his wife—who’d stopped eating due to grief. Before the empress’s invitation arrived, Dax could hardly look Roa in the eye.
Now, as Safire watched the horrible weight of the blight lift from her cousin’s shoulders, as Roa’s face shone with hope, Safire knew whom she believed. And it wasn’t Eris.
As the empress refused any kind of payment for her gift, Safire returned to the last portrait hanging in this hall. It showed Skyweaver descending the steps of her tower to meet the young empress. This time her hand gripped not a spindle but a knife, curved like a slivered moon.
As Safire’s gazed traced the blade, her thoughts were on Asha, who was carrying a similar-looking knife at this verymoment, trying to locate its maker here in the Star Isles.
It’s only a matter of time before Eris finds her, thought Safire.
She needed to get to her cousin first, then bring her here to safety. Because if there was anywhere Eris would never set foot, Safire was certain, it was inside the citadel of the enemy she’d spent seven years running from.
Safire didn’t go to dinner. The empress had no sooner escorted them to their rooms when Safire knocked on Dax’s door and told him she was leaving to find Asha. Still overjoyed with Leandra’s generous gift, Dax was eager to put the issue of Eris behind them and forgive Safire’s mistake. More than this, he wanted Asha safe as much as Safire did, so he gave her the letter Torwin sent him, along with a map of the Star Isles, showing her the small village on the southern tip of Axis Isle, where the letter said they were heading. Dax told her to take Spark—his golden dragon—with her.
One of the conditions of Dax and Roa traveling with dragons was that they had to be stabled inside the citadel for the duration of the visit, ensuring they wouldn’t be flying over the city and scaring the people of Axis, who were not familiar with the massive monsters. Permission therefore needed to be granted from the empress for a rider to fly a dragon into and out of the citadel.
But when Safire arrived at the covered courtyard where the dragons were kept, she found them not stabled, but muzzled and chained to the floor.
She nearly dropped her letter of permission.
Surely Dax didn’t agree to this,she thought, looking aroundher. The five dragons who’d traveled with the king and queen’s ship all lifted their heads at the sight of her. Bands of metal encircled each dragon’s jaws and hind legs, and the iron chains rooting them to the ground were so short, they could barely stand, never mind walk.
All at once, the dragons stood up, stretching their wings as if to sayAre we leaving now?
As Safire looked from one to the next, she noticed one dragon was missing.
Sorrow.
He must have panicked at the sight of Axis. Sorrow abhorred cities. He probably flew off long before the others were quarantined. The thought made her glad. Being chained and muzzled like this would have done irrevocable damage to a dragon like Sorrow.
A soldier approached, interrupting her thoughts.
