Syla gripped her stomach, gulped in air that she wished were fresher, and managed to continue on. When they entered her old bedroom, it was almost laughable how undamaged it was. Maybe because she hadn’t lived there for years, no enemy had thought to target it.
Though she’d rarely spent time in the room the past ten years, she knew it well enough to find her way around without a guide. The ornaments and tools of her various childhood collections hadn’t even been knocked off the shelves.
“I’ll find a lantern,” Fel said.
Outside, full darkness had fallen, but Syla didn’t have trouble locating the cabinet where she’d tucked her old pairs of spectacles.
“There’s one on that shelf by the door.” Syla trusted her family hadn’t come into the room and moved things around in her absence.
“Found it. I’ll only put up a small light.” Fel covered the window before doing so, maybe worried about the wyverns. Or… whoever or whatever he’d glimpsed earlier, when the shadows had been stirring.
Syla found her spectacles and, despite Fel’s suggestion that the gods had been sparing her from the details of the carnage by removing her eyesight, put them on with vast relief. Not being able to see, especially when she was in such a vulnerable position, was awful.
Her room and Fel became clear with only a slight blur to thehallway behind him. He had set the lantern on the desk and stood in the doorway, keeping an eye on that hallway.
“Thank you for your help, Sergeant.” Syla waved to indicate she meant for everything.
Fel nodded solemnly at her. His stomach rumbled, reminding her of the dinner hour they’d missed.
Thanks to her queasiness, she had no desire to eat, but with all the rubble piles blocking routes, it might take hours to reach and then study the shielder. And if it was destroyed and they had to go to another island to find another? Syla shook her head, hoping the rest of the kingdom had been spared, that this hadn’t been a concerted attack with multiple sky shields failing at once.
“Let me grab a few things.” Syla plucked a bag out of one of the armoires. “Then we’ll see if we can find some food to take, and I’ll be ready to go.”
“From the outside, the kitchen looked badly damaged. Part of the roof came down. At the least, the doors are blocked.”
“Oh.”
Fel waved toward the courtyard, the wyverns. “Once we’re somewhere safe, I’ll find provisions.”
Somewhere safe. Where on Castle Island would that be?
As she packed, her scattered mind thinking it practical to tuck in such items as an antique venom extractor and hernia tool, Syla shared her thoughts about checking the farm outside the capital where her aunt lived and worked.
“Your aunt?” Fel asked, as if he were trying to place her.
“Yes. She looks like me except older.” Syla pointed at her spectacles. “She’s moon-marked but uses her power as an engineer. She’ll be perfect to help with the shielder.”
“I’ve seen her around the castle, but doesn’t she build… tractors?”
“Her specialty is agricultural engineering, yes, but she went toschool and apprenticed for years, studying widely before going to work on the royal farm.”
“So… yes to tractors?”
“Magicaltractors, Sergeant. Supernaturally sturdy.”
Judging by the twist to Fel’s lips, he didn’t think the maker of such implements would be useful in their quest. That was only because he didn’t know Tibby well. She was versatile.
The challenge would be to get to her.
Syla glanced toward the shuttered window. Would they be able to escape through the courtyard past the wyverns? Or—her gut clenched—would they need to wait until the creatures feasted their fill and left? The idea of having to walk past the half-eaten bodies of people she’d known threatened to make her throw up again.
“We’ll check the shielder first,” she decided.
If all they had to do was flip a switch to turn it back on, they wouldn’t need Aunt Tibby.
While packing, Syla found two more old pairs of spectacles and tucked them away. Her corrections hadn’t needed to be as strong back then, so there would be more blurriness, but anything was better than her horrible vision of minutes before. On a whim, she tucked a couple of treasures into the pack, including her favorite book on the history of the kingdom and how it had been established. Unlike the things she read as an adult, it had beautiful painted pictures and maps of current places and those that had once been. Even though she largely had the information memorized, she’d always loved that book.
Maybe it was silly to take so much with her—since the riders had achieved their objective, they wouldn’t likely return to further raze the castle—but who knew what other scavengers would come along before order could be established?Ifthere was anyone left to establish order. She couldn’t help but wonder since they hadn’t encountered anyone from the fleet or Royal Protectors yet. Ofcourse, if the wyverns had been circling all along, she could hardly blame the military for waiting.
