Lala did not answer, for she never spoke. Grandmother stroked her damp hair. “It will be worth it,” she said. “This journey, even Regin’s passing. He died for a just cause. We shall awaken the Sleepers as God instructed, and they will be the weapon that allows Second Empire to rise up and claim what is ours. Our legacy.”

Yes, the time had come. Colonel Birch would be organizing their people on the other side of the wall, building their army, while she raised a weapon that would shatter the Eletians and terrorize all of Second Empire’s enemies.

The incessant drizzle, the damp cold, the sacrifice of her people, all would be worth the fall of Eletia and Sacoridia.

HOMECOMING

The house strained against the onslaught of the gale, its timbers groaning and windows rattling. The wind sheared some shingles off the roof and they whirled away, vanishing into the maelstrom of blinding snow squalls. Winter was reluctant to loosen its grip on the world this year.

The house, fortunately, was sturdily built with its coastal location in mind by one who understood the sea in all its fickle and hazardous moods. Stevic G’ladheon, the foremost merchant of Sacoridia, also possessed a fortune that ensured his house was built with the very best materials by the very best carpenters—shipwrights, mostly.

A cold draft seeped through the room where he sat reading. He shivered and turned up the flame in his oil lamp, welcoming the extra illumination and warmth it emitted. A robust fire burned on the hearth, and he wore layers of woolens and a scarf, but he still couldn’t keep warm enough.

He had sensed the storm building all day, saw the leaden sky fill with heavy clouds and spit fitful flurries. He smelled the damp of the sea mixed with the bite of the cold, and he knew they were in for a real blow.

Sure enough, the storm shrieked up the coast with a banshee’s fury. If he chose to part the drapes from his window and peer through the frosted glass, he’d see only a wall of white.

He could, he supposed, abandon his icy office for the kitchen, the warmest room in the house, but his sisters were in there, and the servants, too. All that female energy crammed into one room was more than he thought he could bear.

He hunkered more deeply into his armchair and glared at Brandt’s Treatise of Commerce. It was impossibly dry, and Brandt such a self-absorbed egoist that Stevic considered throwing the volume on the fire more than once. But books were precious, and he’d as soon burn one as he would his own house. He could always set it aside, but he was far too obstinate to give up on it now. He’d read the entire thing even if it killed him.

He gazed into the golden flames on the hearth and thought of the Cloud Islands, and of how easily he could have assigned himself to this winter’s trading mission there, but he’d sent Sevano instead. His old cargo master deserved the voyage to the tropics.

Stevic sighed, thinking of the glorious sunshine rippling across azure waves, waves that rolled onto fine sand beaches; of luscious, sweet fruits always in season. He missed his good friend, Olni-olo, who welcomed him into his home—really a hut on stilts situated on a tranquil cove—as one of his family, a family that consisted of five wives and dozens of children. He remembered all those children charging across the sand toward him because they knew he brought candy, and there were the hugs and the laughter. All beneath the tropical sun.

Aaaah, the sunshine ...

Someone pounded on the front door, jarring Stevic from his reverie of balmy island days. What fool is out in this storm? he wondered, and he rose from his chair and left his office for the entry hall to find out. His butler, the ever efficient Artos, swept by him and yanked the door open.

Snow rushed inward with a bitter gust and a figure of white, like a frost wraith of myth, emerged from the tempest and stepped across the threshold. Stevic helped Artos heave the heavy door closed against the wind.

Whew, he thought when that was accomplished. He turned to their visitor who set a pair of saddlebags on the floor and commenced brushing snow off him- or herself. Quite a lot of snow, actually, but it did not take long for Stevic to discern Rider green beneath.

“Karigan?”

The figure turned to him and tossed back her hood. “Father!” She started toward him, pausing only to slip out of her snowy, dripping greatcoat and hand it to Artos. Even as Stevic held her in his arms, he couldn’t believe she was there.

“What are you—” he began, but just then all four of his sisters spilled into the hall, their voices raised in astonishment, happiness, and consternation, and asking a flurry of questions Karigan had no hope of answering. Just as suddenly as she had come into his arms, she was gone, embracing her aunts and kissing their cheeks.

“Artos!” Stace snapped. “For heavens’ sake, man, don’t just stand there gawping. Go tell Elaine to ready a bath for Karigan. She’s an icicle!”

Artos obeyed immediately.

“What on Earth were you doing out in this storm, girl?” Gretta demanded.

“I thought I could outride it.” Karigan’s reply was met by tsking from all her aunts.

“You’re as daft as your father,” Tory said.

“Now wait a—” Stevic began.

“I shall have Cook stuff a goose,” Brini announced, and she bustled back toward the kitchen.

Stevic watched helplessly as Stace, Gretta, and Tory commandeered Karigan and urged her toward the stairs.

“You need dry clothes, girl,” Gretta said.

“And slippers,” Tory added.

Stevic scratched his head in bemusement as his daughter and sisters disappeared up the stairs. “Breyan’s gold,” he muttered.