“And Jai Daishou opened one?” Lindon asked.

“Desperate men cannot see beyond their own desperation,” Eithan said, with the air of a man quoting. “There was an entrance to the labyrinth in his territory. He would have kept the door open for less than a day. A minor risk, he must have thought, though a risk to the entire Empire. When he brought out the Archstone, Naru Gwei and I knew what he had done. We knew that he had risked bringing the Dreadgods down on us once again.”

A wisp of Lindon's anger rose up again. “You pushed him to it.”

Eithan held up a finger. “I closed off his options to push him to do something foolish. Otherwise, I'd have been leaving my reputation entirely on the outcome of a single fight. I don't prefer to gamble without an overwhelming advantage.”

“But you knew exactly what he had. You knew it was a hidden weapon, you weren't guessing.”

“Yes, well, I was watching when he opened the door. I was shocked he would go so far as to risk the wrath of the Dreadgods, but there it is. That was my plan: to get him to incriminate himself in front of the Skysworn. Even if he had survived, with Jai Long victorious, his reputation—and that of the Jai clan—would never recover. They are the lowest-ranked of the great clans, and the Arelius are ranked number one among the major families. They will lose their spot in the Empire, and we will take it.”

He grimaced, looking uncertain for just a moment. “I am...sorry that you lost what you did. Only know that you were a part of something greater. The Arelius family will rise because of you, and you can only benefit from that.”

Lindon nodded, but his gut was still a little twisted. He shouldn't be complaining about a lost arm. Back in Sacred Valley, if Eithan had offered to raise him to Gold in exchange for a lost arm, he would have handed the man a saw himself.

But this didn't feel like he'd sacrificed something for a greater goal. It felt like he had been a pawn in the plans of the powerful.

“The Dreadgods,” Lindon said at last, trying to change the subject. “Are they coming for us?”

“Most likely not,” Eithan said. “But just in case, the Emperor is gathering his Underlords to him.”

“Will you fight them?”

Eithan let out a bark of a laugh. “As an Underlord? No, they could evaporate my blood from a hundred miles away. We'll be working to keep the populace under control in a state of emergency, should we see signs of a Dreadgod's approach. And we'll be messengers to the people that might actually help.”

Before Lindon could ask who, Eithan explained.

“The Monarchs. They're the most powerful individuals in our world, though the best they could hope for would be a stalemate. None could win a fight against a Dreadgod alone. Not Seshethkunaaz, not Akura Malice, not the Eight-Man Empire or the entire Ninecloud Court.”

Lindon's breath caught. He remembered two of those names, but he had never expected to hear them from Eithan.

How much did Eithan know about them? Monarchs, he'd said. Lindon had never heard the term applied to sacred arts. It sounded like there was a whole group of people at that stage, not just the three examples Suriel had shown him.

He took the thought to its natural conclusion, and a fist seemed to squeeze his lungs. Suriel had given him the names of three people with the power to save Sacred Valley: Sha Miara the Queen of the Ninecloud Court, Northstrider the dragon-eater, and the Eight-Man Empire.

If those were the most powerful people in the world, that meant whatever was approaching Sacred Valley was even more horrifying than he had imagined.

It might not be one of these Dreadgods, but it would be something equally destructive. He couldn't even imagine it.

“I've heard of them before,” Lindon said.

“I would imagine so. They're very famous.”

“No, in a vision. Suriel showed me. She said...they were the ones that could save my homeland.”

Eithan nodded slowly. Over the months, he had scraped most of the details of Suriel's visit from Lindon. All without giving up the details of his own vision. But Lindon had never been specific enough to name the individuals Suriel had shown him.

But that brought up another point, and Lindon could sense an opportunity. He seized it.

“Speaking of visions...” he began, and Eithan's back straightened.

“Later,” Eithan promised.

“I lost an arm for your plans,” Lindon said, the heat of Blackflame leaking into his voice. “I have earned your trust.”

It was perhaps the most firmly Lindon had ever spoken to Eithan, and a trembling part of Lindon's mind—the part that still remembered being Unsouled—begged him to apologize. But Lindon kept staring into Eithan's blue eyes.

“I owe you a full explanation,” Eithan said. “And I will give you one. The more you grow, the more I can share with you. For now, I beg you to trust me.”

That was an irritating non-answer, but Eithan spoke more earnestly and openly than he almost ever did.

Reluctantly, Lindon nodded.

“That's good,” Eithan said, and his grin returned. “Cassias will be here in Sky's Mercy to retrieve you any day now. Rest. Fisher Gesha was right; you've trained like a madman for a year, but that's no way to live forever. There will be plenty of time to advance when I return.”

“When will that be?” Lindon asked. The idea of staying in bed for months horrified him. What if he fell behind his advancement?

“That depends,” Eithan said, “on whether or not there's a Dreadgod coming to kill us all.”

Chapter 8

Sky's Mercy was a cloudship maintained by the Arelius family: a large blue cloud with a house in the center, flying through the air. Yerin had seen stranger things before—stranger cloudships, too—but there was something about a floating house that especially knocked her off-kilter.

There used to be a second building on the cloud, and Yerin missed the barn. She had more room. Instead, she and Cassias were inside a single bedroom-sized cultivation room, surrounded by wooden walls that had been reinforced by scripts so they didn't fall apart with every flying Striker technique.

He was showing her what it took to be the second-ranked Highgold in the Empire.

She kicked off from the wall, slashing the air in a Rippling Sword technique: a wave of silver madra that sliced through the air like an extension of her sword.

Cassias stood before her, back straight, one hand on his thin saber. He looked like Eithan's more serious younger brother: his golden hair was curly and short, his blue eyes calm, and he wore no smile.

He sidestepped her technique, raising his weapon to return a strike. But she had counted on that. She'd gathered enough aura around her sword, and she struck that aura with her madra as hard as she could.

Her sword rang like a bell.

A ripple ran through the sword aura in the room, exciting it, causing invisible cuts to appear on her robes...and then the wave of aura reached Cassias.

When it hit his sword, the weapon should have burst into a wave of slicing sword-energy that cut him to pieces, but instead he gathered aura himself as he pulled his saber back. The aura she'd affected with the Endless Sword was drawn in like straw into a cyclone, and it swirled around his sword in a silver cloud visible to her Copper sight.