The smoke from the burning hulks drifted out toward the open sea, carried by an offshore breeze that smelled of crushed salt and spent powder.
In the harbor basin of Val-Khor, thirty-two captured ironclads lay anchored beneath the rebuilt batteries of the Bull-Horn Redoubt. Their black skull-standards had been cut down and dragged through the bilge; in their place, the white silk banners of the Seven-Pointed Crown snapped proudly from their armored funnels.
Along the stone wharves of the lower city, ten thousand citizens pressed against the iron railings, cheering with hoarse, tear-streaked voices as longboats ferried the wounded Vanguard veterans ashore.
Aurelia stood upon the command balcony of the Citadel of the Dawn, looking down upon the transformed harbor.
She had shed her blood-spattered star metal plate for a gown of deep violet wool, trimmed with silver fox-fur against the crisp evening draft. Around her throat, resting visible above her low-cut neckline, was the Ring of the Primordial Vessel—the Eight Spheres pulsing in a slow, tranquil rhythm that filled her with a steady, bottomless warmth.
Dennis, Lord Warden of the Western Marches, stood three paces behind her, leaning heavily upon a cane of polished ash-wood, his arm bound in a clean linen sling from a shell-splinter he had taken during the early bombardment.
"If you had returned three hours later, Your Grace," Dennis said, his voice shaking with the memory of the iron storm, "the lower gates would have fallen. Their thirty-pound shells were cracking our six-foot granite footings like dried river-clay. We had nothing that could pierce their armor."
"You held the high ground, Dennis," Aurelia replied, turning to smile softly at her loyal commander. "You gave us the hours we needed to collapse the slipstream. That is all an empress can ask of her wardens."
"And now we have their fleet," Dennis murmured, staring out at the captured ironclads with an engineer's wide-eyed wonder. "Thirty-two ships of four-inch rolled plate, four hundred steam-driven guns, and their coal-bunkers are two-thirds full of refined anthracite. Theron’s apprentices are already down in the engine rooms, taking rubbings of their pneumatic boilers."
"They won't be using their boilers as they are," a low, gravelly voice rumbled from the arched doorway.
Malakor stepped onto the terrace.
He had washed the black oil and dried blood from his skin, though the faint burn-mark on his left cheek from Vorenus’s steam-pipe stood out raw and pink against his dark stubble. He wore a heavy tunic of black wolf-hide, unlaced at the throat to reveal the corded muscle of his chest, his great sword freshly oiled and resting in its sheath across his broad back.
Dennis bowed his head with deep, solemn respect to the warlord, stepping back into the shadow of the gallery to grant them privacy.
Malakor walked to the marble balustrade, resting his heavy forearms upon the stone beside Aurelia.
He didn't look at the city; he looked at her. His amber eyes traced the slope of her bare neck, lingering on the Eight Spheres glowing against her skin, before meeting her silver-violet gaze with that unvarnished, predatory intensity that always made the air feel thin.
"Theron says the captured crews are talking," Malakor said, his voice dropping into that private, intimate rasp meant only for her ears. "Their emperor—Zarek the Eclipse King—has his main forges on the central island of the Obsidian Caldera. He has eighty more ironclads in his dry-docks, including three 'Sky-Dreadnoughts' that fly on pneumatic hot-air chambers."
"Flying warships?" Aurelia tilted her head, her brow furrowing slightly.
"Warships in the clouds," Malakor confirmed, a dangerous, hungry smirk curving his lips. "Fitted with iron-clad gondolas and bomb-racks that can drop five-hundred-pound incendiaries straight down into a city's center without ever coming within range of a ballista."
He stepped closer, closing the distance until his hip brushed against hers, his heavy hand coming down to rest on the small of her back, his thumb rubbing with slow, possessive circles through the soft wool of her gown.
"He thinks he is a god in the clouds, Aurelia," Malakor murmured, his breath brushing her ear, sending a delicious, molten shiver racing straight to the soles of her feet. "He thinks mortal men can't touch him once he clears the mast-tops."
Aurelia turned in the circle of his arm, resting her hands against the hard, unyielding plate of his chest, her eyes looking up into the scarred, beautiful face of her butcher.
"And what do you think, Malakor?" she whispered, her lips parting, her fingers curling into the fur of his vest.
Malakor leaned down, his mouth hovering a fraction of an inch above hers, his eyes burning with an untamed, glorious madness.
"I think," Malakor rasped against her lips, "we are going to take our new ironclads, fit them with the Keepers' aether-cannons, sail straight into his volcanic caldera, and drag that little emperor out of his clouds by his throat."
He captured her lips in a deep, searing kiss that silenced the cheers of the city below, sealing the fate of the Eclipse Dynasty in the heat of a single breath.