There weren’t many of them. Three hundred, Vivia estimated, and they were woefully underarmed and underarmored. She still had time, though, to find more fighters and equip them as best she could. The Royal Navy and Soil-Bound forces her father had sent north would slow the Raider King, even if Vivia did not believe they could stop him.

Noden curse her, she’d thought her list of tasks long yesterday. Now it ran for two pages, scribbled quickly onto a paper taken from her office overhead, and as she scanned the main room, she continued scrawling more. No real order to the list; simply what came to her as she assessed readiness. Whetstones. Fletching. Lanolin. Boots. Painstones. Gauze. On and on and on.

Once she had finished her furious writing, she stepped off the stool to hand the list to Vizer Sotar’s head guard, an older woman with a sharp chin and sharper eyes.

Except before she could touch down, the earth jolted. A hard heaving that shuddered through the Keep, through Vivia’s knees. Her arms windmilled. She fell toward the shaking wall—and a second judder hit. Then a third and fourth, closer together until everything simply shook.

Then as fast as the quake had come, it quelled. A slow dissolution of movement that eventually ended in calm. Not without damage, though. Already, Vivia heard shouts from the Skulks. Shouts from the cellar of Pin’s Keep.

And for half a breath, all Vivia wanted to do was scream. Did she not have enough to do? Had Noden and his Hagfishes not already dragged her people far enough beneath the waves?

Then Vizer Sotar’s head guard was there, helping Vivia to rise. Dust coated the woman’s face. The whole room had clouded to gray. “The under-city,” Vivia said. “We must check the under-city.” She did not wait for an acknowledgment before turning toward the next person within reach—Vizer Sotar himself. “The streets,” she barked at him. “Get people into the city to check for damage—”

“Sir!” A voice slashed through the room, high-pitched and strained. Then louder, “SIR.”

Vivia turned, terrified by what such urgent shouts might mean. Terrified what damage this person would report to her. What she found, though, was a boy staggering her way. Familiar and young with dark eyes bulging and dappled brown skin flushed to russet.

She knew him … She knew him, but Noden save her, she couldn’t recall from where.

“Sir,” the boy repeated once, stumbling right up to Vivia. He was covered in white dust, as if he’d just come from the underground mid-quake—and he was unconcerned by the guards moving to stop him.

“Sir,” he said once more, and this time, he doubled over.

Vivia lurched forward and caught him before he could collapse. His skin was damp and chalky.

“First … Mate,” he panted, dragging up his gaze to meet Vivia’s. Even his lashes were thick with dust. “I mean, Captain Sotar … sent me.”

Stix. Vivia’s breath hitched. Cold doused her. “What is it? Where is Stix?”

But the boy only shook his head, a desperate movement. “It’s the … the raiders, sir.” He coughed, one hand clutching tighter and tighter onto Vivia’s arm.

And distantly, she realized the whole room had fallen silent again. It was as still as the open sea before a storm.

“The raiders … are coming,” the boy finished at last.

“I know,” Vivia tried to say, but the boy shook his head harder.

“And they’re coming through the under-city. Soon, sir. So you gotta … you gotta empty it. And then you gotta defend … the door.”

Now it was Vivia’s turn to shake her head. The boy made no sense. Where had he even come from? “What door?” she asked. “And where is Stix?”

“The door,” the boy insisted, voice pitching higher. “Underground, sir. I’ll … I’ll show you.” He pulled away, already rising and turning, as if to race for the cellar.

And that was when Vivia noticed the bloodied bandage on the boy’s left hand. That was why she knew him. He had been with Merik in the under-city. Cam, Merik had called the boy—though Vivia had foolishly mistaken him for a girl two weeks ago.

Yet that didn’t explain how Cam had ended up with Stix. Nor where Stix was now—nor what any of what the boy was saying actually meant.

Before she could press him or even stand to follow, he added, voice low and private, “I was supposed to tell you somethin’ else, sir. Something to make you believe Captain Sotar really sent me and that raiders are really coming. She said, ‘Noden and the Hagfishes ought to bend to a woman’s rule.’”

At those words, a dullness settled over Vivia. An icy, seeping weight that numbed her limbs and brain. So this is what drowning feels like, she thought, and now she knew that she’d reached the last of the sunlight, the last of her air.

FIFTY-TWO

Merik’s body was pummeled, his mind stretched long, his magic shrunk down to a pinprick yet somehow inflated to enormity at the same time.

Then he returned to himself and burst into a new world. Underwater, dark and cold. No chance to summon winds here, only swimming, aiming for a surface he hoped he would find.

Four kicks became ten before his head finally broke free. He gasped and spluttered, spinning around to search for the Northman in this dim world lit only by blue light off the door.

Water swept against Merik’s legs, and three rough breaths later, the Northman splashed up beside him.

“Where?” the Northman coughed.

“I do not know,” Merik replied, and it was mostly true. Hye, he knew he was inside of a mountain with magic doorways that somehow connected to the mythological Sightwitch Sister Convent. But this explanation was far beyond his ability to articulate in Svodish.

Hell-waters, it was beyond his ability to articulate in Nubrevnan.

In fact, his mind couldn’t seem to pin down the layers of it all. He might have heard about it from Esme and the Fury, but he had not truly believed such a thing existed until right now, when he was actually there.

And even right now, with a blue door glowing at the bottom of a pool, he still wasn’t sure he believed it. But as Evrane used to say, The shark will eat you whether you acknowledge it or not. And if Merik were facing a shark right now, his aim would be trying to escape it.

No Cleaved might be coming through the door yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. And there was still the issue of the Fury and the Raider King finding these doors soon.

Merik swam toward a hazy ledge five strokes away. After hauling himself out, he pulled the Northman up beside him. Already, he shook from the cold and the Northman’s furs dripped and splattered—but that was a remote distraction. What mattered was what lay beyond: a cavern, large enough to hold the city of Lovats.

It was large enough to hold the entire plateau actually, and somehow this basin of water was nothing more than a shelf hugging the cavern wall. Merik inched closer to the edge, peered down …

And for the first time in his life, vertigo engulfed him.

Ever since his witchery had awoken in him as a child, heights had never bothered him. But this was no mere drop-off. This was staring into another universe. Into the very heart of Noden’s court.

Merik sucked in a long, girding breath before pulling his gaze back up—and then up and up and up. Lights flickered across the cave, as well as other blue glows. And then, high at the top of it all, was a stretch of ice, almost like a bridge.

“Up,” Merik said, pointing toward the nearest ledge. One of the other blue glows had to be the door Merik needed to reach Lovats, and the only option before him was to try every one and see where they took him—and then, of course, pray to Noden that it didn’t eject him somewhere worse than Poznin with the Puppeteer.

At the Northman’s nod, Merik closed his eyes and called his magic to him.

He expected resistance. Underground, there was little air and no winds. And underground, there could be dangerous consequences if one tried to manipulate the air too much. Air currents led to storms, and storms in small spaces were never good.

Merik’s winds came easily, though. A huge rush that punched into him and the Northman. They both toppled backward, but before they could fall into the water, Merik swirled his winds behind them. Beneath them.

Power, power, power.

Merik and the Northman flew. It was as natural as breathing—Merik couldn’t believe how easily the power came to him. And it wasn’t the Fury’s magic channeling over their bond either. Those winds were cold and vengeful. These winds sparkled.

It was the only word he could find to describe the feeling. This sense that the glimmering galaxy below somehow fed his lungs and carried him faster, higher, stronger than he had ever managed on his own.

They reached the first ledge, where a second blue door glowed. It was identical to what he’d seen submerged in Poznin. “Wait,” he told the Northman, and he moved toward it.

But the Northman did not like that command. He shook his head and hurried after Merik. Two bracing breaths for each of them. Then together they stepped through, and like before, Merik felt compressed and elongated, paused yet pushed along. Then he and the Northman were out the other side.