The silence in the subterranean vault was broken only by the ragged wheezing of Governor Marcus, clutching his bruised throat on the basalt floor.
Malakor’s amber eyes hardened to solid granite.
He didn't swear; he didn't kick the iron chest in frustration. A terrifying, predatory stillness descended over his features—the cold, calculating focus of a wolf realizing his den was being stalked while his pack was away.
"Val-Khor has six garrison cohorts and thirty shore batteries," Malakor said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register that filled the damp room. "The new walls along the Bull-Horn Redoubt are solid granite, but they were built to hold against galleys and mountain tribes. Not forty-eight capital ironclads throwing thirty-pound shells."
"And Dennis’s levies have only just begun their drill under Vanguard officers," Aurelia added, rolling the vellum cipher tightly and thrusting it into her belt. "The city cannot withstand a protracted siege from a fleet that size. If Vorenus establishes a blockade across the harbor mouth, he will starve thirty thousand souls before the spring thaw."
"How far ahead of us are they?" Malakor turned on Governor Marcus, grabbing the trembling bureaucrat by his silk lapels and hoisting him half off the floor. "Speak, rat. How many days?"
"Three... three days on the northern trade-currents!" Marcus stammered, his yellow eyes wide with sheer terror. "Vorenus’s flagship, the Dread Sovereign, is fitted with triple-expansion pneumatic engines! They run with the black wind behind them! They will sight the coastal bluffs of your western continent by the fourth dawn!"
Malakor shoved the governor back into the dust, turning on his heel to face Aurelia.
"Four days," Malakor muttered, his thumb tracing the pommel of his sword. "Even with the new jade-plating on our hulls, the Black Leviathan cannot cross the Shattered Expanse and the Void-Curtain in four days against the prevailing winds. We would arrive to find the citadel in ruins and the harbor choked with corpses."
"A conventional fleet cannot cross in time," Aurelia agreed, stepping past him toward the shattered doorway, her silver-violet eyes flaring with divine resolve. "But we are not sailing by conventional wind."
She looked at the fifty mountain veterans standing guard along the threshold.
"Sergeant!" she commanded. "Bind the governor and his officers. Strip the armory of every keg of refined alchemical powder and haul it to the Black Leviathan. We abandon the redoubt within the hour."
"By your command, Empress!" the sergeant saluted, his men moving instantly to secure the prisoners.
Aurelia and Malakor ascended the spiral stairs at a dead run, returning to the wind-blasted parapet of the fortress.
Below in the sheltered bay, Lady Vespera had already brought the Black Leviathan and twenty Vanguard galleys through the sea-tunnel, their boarding parties securing the smoking hulks of the two surviving ironclads.
Aurelia stepped to the edge of the parapet, looking back toward the churning wall of the Void-Curtain that separated the eastern ocean from their homeland.
Around her neck, the Ring of the Primordial Vessel hummed with an urgent, rising frequency. The Eight Spheres pulsed in a tight, synchronous rhythm beneath her collarbone, vibrating in harmony with the ancient ley-lines that coursed through the seabed far below.
"You have a plan, Aurelia," Malakor said, coming up behind her, his hand settling firmly over hers on the cold iron rail. "And it's going to hurt."
"The Void-Curtain was not a barrier of stone, Malakor," she said softly, turning her head to meet his intense gaze. "It was an ancient highway of concentrated aether, twisted into a knot by the cataclysm. If I channel the Eighth Relic to unravel the knot instead of merely piercing it... we can open a localized slipstream through the deep current."
"A slipstream?" Malakor’s brow furrowed. "Aurelia, the pressure of uncoiling a dormant cosmic rift will pull directly through your marrow. It nearly shattered you when we bound the Seven Shards."
"I am not holding seven loose shards anymore, my warlord," she whispered, her lips parting, a fierce, sovereign certainty burning in her eyes. She reached up, placing her hand over his rough, scarred fingers. "I have the Ring. I have the Eight Spheres. And I have you to keep my feet on the deck."
Malakor stared at her for a long, heavy heartbeat, the conflict in his amber eyes burning hot before giving way to that boundless, terrifying devotion that had carried them across five kingdoms.
He leaned down, his mouth crashing against hers in a fierce, bruising kiss that tasted of iron, sea-wind, and desperation.
"Then open the gates of hell, empress," he growled against her lips as he pulled away, his great sword drawn in his right hand, his left arm locking around her waist. "And we will ride the fire straight into their teeth."
Aurelia raised her ancestral blade toward the churning purple clouds of the tempest.
"Vespera!" Aurelia’s voice thundered across the bay, magnified by the Eight Spheres until the cliffs themselves trembled. "All ships into line astern! Lash yourselves to the flagship’s hull! We are taking the deep highway!"
And as the Vanguard lashed their galleys to the Black Leviathan, the Empress of the Veil drove her blade into the void.