“I’ll visit,” I whisper back. I remember how grim it felt to be abandoned out here.
“You’ll be far too busy killing witches.”
“Not too busy to have friends.”
I haven't told her my plan to get the Governor replaced with someone less selfish, but I'll make sure it happens.
Rancor pulls right up to the docks, steered by enchantment with the sails furled. The crystals anchored in the ship’s prow hum with such a ferocious glow it bathes us all in blue light even at the height of the day. I don’t know why they’re burning through the Enchanted here, behind the safety of the barrier. When I was still a knight, Rancor rarely left the front lines, so perhaps the sailors on board have forgotten how to power a ship with simple wind and oar. Such cruel wastefulness fills my mouth with a sour taste.
When I was younger, I longed for a peaceful end to the war. I wished the witches would agree to negotiate so we didn’t have to keep consecrating new Enchanted. But now, I’ve spent two years dreaming of revenge on the man who killed my crew and ruined my life. I'm going to end this war in blood and fury. No matter what it costs.
There’s a flurry of activity on board as the wooden gangway rolls out.
The first sailors jog down and secure the base. Then they stand at attention, forming a line at the bottom of the ramp, their black and gold uniforms crisper than mine. I straighten my shoulders and draw in a deep breath, fighting to keep my expression blank, my jaw pressed so tight it hurts. Hope and fear mix in my stomach until it’s all I can do to stay upright.
There’s a moment’s pause, and then a figure emerges at the top of the gangway.
My jaw trembles and my knees nearly buckle out from under me. A strained sob escapes my lips.
Alive.
Harfor isalive.
For two years, she’s been alive, and nobody bothered to tell me that even one person from my ship survived. How is it even possible?
The sun is glaringly bright on her chestplate. Her shoulder pauldrons are etched with decorative lines—the kind of ornamentation only knights are allowed to add. She’s chosen a pattern of fangs and blades.
Six years after she gave up, and Harfor is finally a knight, and I wasn’t there to congratulate her. It hits me suddenly that I haven’t just been miserable out here, I’ve been missing out on my own life. I watch her scan her eyes over the Bluff itself, and the group gathered at the docks. Her eyes skim past me, then back over the crowd, then past meagain, before finally settling on me. Do I look that different?
My former squire strides down the ramp and approaches. Her face is just as I remembered it, sharp-chinned with black hair in ribboned braids down to her waist. But she’s frowning, her forehead creased as she looks at me. There’s a trace of confusion in her eyes. My stomach clenches.
I snap my arm up in a salute, the movement not as crisp as I’d hoped, the muscle memory long gone. A tear wobbles in my left eye, threatening to fall, and I tilt my chin a little higher to try and stop it.
Harfor walks right past the Governor as he bows. My former squire stops five feet from me and stares, her face grim as she inspects me. I stand there like a fool with my metal arm frozen in a salute and my lips quivering.
“Greetings,” the Governor says loudly. “Your most esteemed dame, I—”
Harfor holds a hand up to silence him without even glancing the Governor's way.
This is the same woman who saw a young girl preparing for knighthood and made sure the men didn’t bother me, who stayed up late with me into the hours of the night training, and training, and training, until she’d taught me everything she knew, and then kept going until nobody could beat either of us. Who picked herself back up after every time the God-Emperor denied her knighthood. Who grinned and clapped when I, four years younger, took the dream she had, and agreed to squire for me without a second of hesitation or complaint, and then carried me all the way across Barivum city on her back when I got blind-drunk after my knighting.
But now she’s looking at me like I’m a picked-over carcass rotting in the sun. I grit my teeth tighter.
She doesn’t release me from the salute, and we stand in silence long enough that it’s clear she isn’t going to. I slowly drop my arm, conscious everybody is staring at the two of us.
“Harfor. How did you live?” I say. My throat feels tight, and I’m afraid I might cry if I don’t stand perfectly straight, my shoulders tense, the muscles of my core clenched tight just to stop myself from falling straight down into pity. “And you're a knight. I…”
“Areyou a witch?” she interrupts quietly, with no trace of her familiar smile. I shake my head no. “If you lie to me…”
“I’mnot,” I insist. Doesn’t she already know that, if she’s come all this way? “The War-Father himself said he believed me.” I clutch the necklace’s leather tube.
Harfor looks away. She runs a blue leather-gloved hand across her face for a moment, and from the familiar set of her stubborn jaw I’m pretty sure she’s trying not to cry, too. It takes a lot to get her to that point.
“I just… the thought that you were lying to me, all that time,” Harfor rasps. My throat tightens.
“No. Never.”
“I watched it happen. The fall.” One hand gestures loosely at the right side of my face and the burn scars there. “Nobody could survive that. But you did.”
