Page 45 of Under the Iron Sky

Black gossamer drapes bearing Ramapheal’s bleeding crescent moon seal hung from the high ceiling. The wall sconces that used to look like glass tulips had been smashed to pieces in favor of flaming torches, and all Vordellian furniture had been cleared away to make room for the massive round table that swallowed up most of the room.

Ikarus took the empty seat to the left of Ramapheal. The Ancient One sat on the largest of the nine chairs around the table, wearing his usual headpiece and a long-sleeved dark leather tunic.

Morana sat to his right, Mortis to her right, then the Ethereal twins Kaladin and Kaeler. Even Agantha, the new head of the Arakna armies, had deigned to crawl out of her cave to be here—although no chair could accommodate the large spider lower half of her body, the sharp points of her eight legs hiking up over her shoulders like glittering spears. Ikarus guessed it would be only a few minutes before either she or her cousin Aleron began fighting for space. Or was it her brother that she’d married and was now her second-in-command? The half-spiders bred so quickly and without care of familial bonds, keeping track of who was related to whom was as impossible as remembering who was fucking whom.

The entire inner circle were here. Almost.

“Ikarus,” Ramapheal greeted coolly. His hands were hidden beneath the table, but Ikarus didn’t need to see them to know he was wearing those iron talons, ready to slice at a moment’s notice. “So glad you’ve finally arrived. Is your second not joining us today?” He raised a dark brow at the seat beside Ikarus, the only one around the table still vacant.

“My apologies, Ancient One,” Ikarus replied obediently. “Malakai is currently on assignment for me above, and there were some unexpected issues at the raid today, hence my lateness.”

Ramapheal didn’t seem to spot the lie, though he did cock his head, the spiders in his hair shifting as though itching for a bite of anyone who dared to get close. When he was a boy, they’d made Ikarus cringe. He hardly noticed them anymore. “No apology needed. Assuming the mission was a success?”

A simple question, but it hung there in the quiet room, swinging like a blade-tipped pendulum. Answer it wrong, and Ikarus would no doubt be shoved in its path, most likely to the delight of almost every creature in this room.

As much as it’d pissed him off, the God Killer wasn’t far off with her “prized dog” comment. Only instead of a new collar, everyone was after the horns on Ikarus’s head.

Horns he grasped now to remove his helmet and lay it on the table. “As successful as it could’ve been. We took the base with little effort, but it was almost completely abandoned.”

Ramapheal turned to the fairy on his other side, his eyes narrowing in that way that had her giant, moth-like gray wings tucking away in complete obedience. “The information your boy gathered was wrong?”

Morana submitted so completely that Ikarus was surprised she didn’t whack her head against the edge of the table. “Apologies, Ancient One. Maerus has never failed me before. He assured me the humans he interrogated said they were using those islands to store the majority of their arsenal—that they’d been there themselves only days ago and it’d been filled to the brim.”

“Well, it’s not anymore.”

Morana’s burning eyes snapped to Ikarus. And just because he didn’t like the way she was opening and closing her wings at him in silent challenge, the yellow markings on them glaring at him like a second pair of eyes, he added, “Got your information a bit muddled up, did you? Well, we’re not all up for bleeding secrets out of people. Probably better to leave it to the best next time.”

Morana’s lip twitched. She’d never been a fairy who liked to be challenged, even before Ramapheal had named her leader of her kind’s military divison. Her sharp features twisted, canines flashing as she braced her hands on the table and—

Mortis caught her arm. “Easy, darling.” He gently brushed a matching wing down the side of hers in what Ikarus assumed was supposed to be a loving gesture. “I’m sure Ikarus didn’t mean anything by it.”

Oh, Ikarus absolutely did, and he let the smirk on his face say just that.

Morana shot to her feet, reaching for the long, thorny vine looped around her hips that she used as a whip.

“Enough.” That one word from the Ancient One had everyone stilling. Silence fell over the table, the room, the entire world beneath. “As much as I enjoy both my Demons gnawing at each other, there is a reason I called you all here today.”

One flick of his fingers was enough to send his ancient power rippling through the air, cold enough to make Ikarus fight to suppress his shiver, even after all these years down here.

The curtains snapped shut, and the room was eclipsed in complete blackness for a heartbeat before the red crystals beneath the table pulsed with light to illuminate the map of Belvador that was carved into the stone.

The Ancient One tipped a hand, and the table suddenly flipped, rotating like a hog roasting over a fire until the map of Vordell that was carved into the other side was now on top.

Ramapheal studied the islands of the Anabarian coast. “That base would’ve been a tremendous win for us. It was completely empty?”

Ikarus nodded, sliding both gauntlets off his hands and laying them on the table beside his helmet. “Some stayed to defend—I assume as a diversion so any last stragglers could escape—but from what I detected, they’d been gone for hours before we arrived.”

“They evacuated beforehand, then?”

“It would appear that way, yes.”

The sigh that loosened from Ramapheal’s lips might as well have been a blade to Ikarus’s throat. His master’s head tipped toward the ceiling, iron talons suddenly drumming against the table in a way that had Ikarus’s spine stiffening. “Was there a problem with the base? Any structural damage? Floods they couldn’t repair?” Anything that would lead them to flee suddenly, was what he was asking.

Ikarus answered, “As far as I could see, everything was in order.”

“Then it is just as I feared,” Ramapheal said. “The spy is still at large.”

The table erupted.