Chapter 3 | Alexei

3 

ALEXEI

─── ❖ ───

The frost on my knuckles is slick with rain, and the raging winds taste like salt on my lips, throwing a fleeting melody past my ears whenever I turn my head. At this time of dawn—with the city and everything in it below me—Voorin unfolds like a map, its wrinkles and creases sharpened by the rolling shadows of the land.

I glance up to see a stratus cloud ahead of us, so stark-white against the sky that I barely have to squint to see it. The thermal pads strapped to my riding boots are failing and my hands went numb hours ago—I can’t stand more of this cold. 

Digging my knees into Ryn’s sides to steady myself, I tilt to the right, signaling for her to swerve.  I can practically hear her grumbling—for some reason, she likes to pass through clouds—but she obeys, changing course at the last second to avoid flying through the freezing stratus. Her satin-black scales flash briefly as we pass beneath a cloudless patch of sun.

The khalhystra’s wings obscure most of the sights on either side of me, but what little I can see beyond the morning fog is growing larger as we near the imperial district of the city. I exhale, letting the fresh air whistle through my teeth and rush past me in waves. Riding always clears my head, no matter what’s in it beforehand. Andraeya likes to call my long absences from court “thinking days,” since whenever I take to the sky, I usually return with a solution to whatever problem I left behind at the palace. There’s something about the elements of flying that I prefer to the narrow imperial halls and meeting tables; I function better in the air than on ground.

The sight of Ryn abruptly perking up draws me back to reality. Her muscles tauten beneath me, her head lifting a few inches. My gaze flickers, looking for what set her on edge: I don’t have to wait long.

I swivel my head to see a galamé and its rider falling into flight beside us, the former’s body a bolt of gilded red. For a moment one gleaming, golden eye is trained on me, then the galamé shoots off, hot winds scalding the side of my face as it whips away.

Oh no you don’t.

I flick my gaze up and shout, “Sitoalkis!”

Ryn speeds up before I even speak the command: a tempest challenging another tempest is a dangerous thing, and this one never takes a challenge for granted. She roars, the sound coursing through me like a drumbeat, and buffets her massive wings. I lean forward as she dips her head and charges, frost gathering on my face as she gains speed.

 Surprisingly, it doesn’t take her long to catch up with the galamé. Then I realize that it’s deliberately falling back—yet as another taunt, or because of something else? The galamé tempests are the smallest but fastest breed; this one could just as easily leave Ryn and me in the dust, but instead it’s choosing to slow down?

 Irritated but also curious, I lean forward, spurring Ryn on until she and the other tempest are neck-and-neck. The wind rips my hood off my head. The galamé rider lowers his. I glimpse auburn eyes and a thin face framed by dark tangly hair.

“Alexei?” 

“Saki?”

“What are you doing here?”

My shoulders fall; I can feel relief emanating off Ryn at the same time it rushes through me. “I could ask you the same thing,” I say.

“I thought you were an official or something—”

“—And I thought you were a messenger.” I cut off, squinting to see ahead, then signal a two-fingered salute and nod toward the fortress. The gesture is simple: Land first, talk later. Saki looks like he wants to say more, but he settles for a nod of acknowledgement. We both turn our gazes back to the sky at the same time.

The adrenaline of the chase wears off like melting ice. I didn’t enjoy it, but . . . something about it woke me up. We ride in silence the rest of the way, our tempests a wingspan apart. At this air level, snow flurries around us, the white flakes brushing my nose like pieces torn from the sky.

The palace comes into view in sharp cuts of obsidian and stained glass—if you can call it a palace. From afar, it’s a castle wedged between a pair of skyscrapers with a number of sharp spires and winding paths hidden behind them. Supposedly, the builders weren’t sure how to fit extra rooms and landing areas in the original castle without ruining its traditional design, so they simply built around it. The effect is oddly satisfying.

I steer Ryn toward the leftmost skyscraper, its glass windows flashing black and white. As the landing pad atop it clears through the fog, I lean back and yell, “Kyadek!”

My tempest follows the command almost instantly, clearly relieved to do so. With a flourish, her wings snap taut against her body, and she dips down into a dive. She stretches her limbs and skids onto the landing pad in the same stroke of motion, that impenetrable calm radiating off her once more as she lands—and off of me. I will never tire of that one single moment of release, when the sky is falling above and the ground is rising below, and the world consists only of wings and scales and everything in between.

My eyes find two wingkeepers hovering beside the stairwell, their silhouettes stark against the blue backdrop. Out of respect, they snap off the symbol of the Seven—two fingers pressed over a fist—when they see me looking. I nod in acknowledgment and turn my gaze back to the sky.

Saki and the galamé land soon after, the ground trembling as they descend. The second we’re on solid ground, Saki digs through his pockets, brings out a heat cell, snaps it open, and sets it on high pressure mode. The hot air blowing from its square-shaped mouth to dry his face drowns his sigh of contentment.

“Ahh, that’s better,” he says comfortably, his voice distorted. “That’s much better.”

I stare at him.

“What? You want one, too?”

In the few weeks he was gone, I’d forgotten how much of a smart mouth he has. “I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.” He smirks. “If you wanna freeze your backside off for the sake of looking like you just stepped out of an iceberg, I have no objections.”

I pull a steamer remote from off my belt, point it outward, and click it. As a glass dome big enough to house both our tempests closes over us in a triangular arc, I click the remote again, and small fissures in the glass pour hot air into the general area. I wipe moisture from the back of my neck and raise an eyebrow.

“You were saying?”

Saki shuts his heat cell and mutters, “Show-off.”

I smile and click the remote again, causing the dome to recede.

The wingkeeper standing beside the stairwell chooses that moment to approach me. He is short and sturdy, with a weathered face. “Shall we take them back to the caves, sire?”

“Thank you, Elymas,” I say, dismounting.

He nods and calls for his companion. Ryn looks at them both like she’ll gut them if they try anything, but she lets the stout one gear up and mount her.

After the other wingkeeper has settled the galamé, they set off into the sky once more, the clouds swallowing them in seconds. I lean against the railing to watch them, though they’ve already disappeared.

“What were you doing on a galamé, anyway?” I ask Saki without looking away from the sky. “You’re Bonded to a taikaelys.”

He joins me at the railing, his arms crossed over the bars. His expression has morphed from annoying to somber so smoothly that I didn’t notice the change. “Your mother wanted me to leave fast and return fast, so I took the fastest breed. She thought Tzunbi would draw too much attention.”

I eye his stance and the set of his jaw.

“I take it your mission didn’t fare too well.”

“None of the other ambassadors’ did,” he says grimly. “You should’ve seen them at the meeting. Most of them had burns on their faces—from the fires,” he adds at my questioning look. “Kkhepit and Storvyn Port are both ash.”

The words sink into me like stones in water. Two ports, gone in one day. My mother sent six of the ambassadors to Isoeki and Valdrin, and six to the neighboring countries to see if the same things have happened there. Maybe she hoped their news would prove the rumors wrong; maybe she wanted to find truth to them. She’s soon to get her answers either way, whether or not she likes them.

“And you’re the last to return,” I say, but it sounds more like a statement than a question.

“The second. Vixyn got back yesterday but crashed for the night as soon as she got back. She’s probably being chewed out by your mother as we speak.”

Vixyn; the other Mizogan ambassador. She was one of the six to be sent overseas; seeing as she left at the start of spring, I didn’t think she’d be back for a few days.

“And we have no idea who started the fires?”

Saki looks straight at me, and I’m surprised to see the barest hint of a smile playing around his mouth. “Funny you should ask.” 

─── ❖ ───

“You can’t be serious.”

I stand before the map-strewn table, the frostflare chandelier above us dying the room a sickly blue. One hand pins down the eastern chunk of land marked Yatahama, while the other traces the western empire titled Geujun—the Six Nations. The paper bleeds red in the places where Kkhepit and Storvyn Port are marked, the line connecting them to Yatahama a harsh slash that covers half of the map.

Across from me, Saki paces the length of the room, tossing a lighter between his hands. He stops pacing on the third catch, lights the cigar dangling from his mouth with a loud sizzle, and then turns to face me with an amused expression.

“That’s what I said, and the other ambassadors looked at me like I was crazy,” he replies. He takes a drag from the cigar and scatters the smoke billowing from its end before continuing, “The people don’t wanna point fingers until Ukavya has all the input she can get, but Yatahama’s the only neighboring country we aren’t on good terms with.”

 I finish, the pieces coming together in my mind. “So do they actually think the Yatahamans did it, or do they just want someone to blame?”

“As of now? I’d say both. It’s unlikely, but . . .” He shrugs and trails off, the unasked question hanging in the air: But who else can we blame?

I don’t hate the Yatahamans. I have no reason to hate them other than that I should, and I never wanted to, but I do. I am bonded to them in hatred, just as I am bonded to the Geujinese in kinship. Long before I tasted my first glimpse of court life, my mother told me who the Sorans are and how to talk like them, and I stored her words in my mind for safekeeping, just in case I needed to put them into place. Just in case I needed to learn how to accuse a people I didn’t even hate.

This is one of those cases. 

Saki takes one last puff from his cigar before crushing it to a stump between his fingers. He quirks his eyebrows and nods to the door. “Bet you ten nvahkâ your mother calls us both in first.”

“I don’t gamble.” 

I receive an innocent blink in return. “Five nvahkâ?”

I sigh and push away from the table, realizing he isn’t going to concede. “Fifteen.”

Saki grins, the idiot. 

As if on cue, the door slides open; our heads snap toward it at the same time. A tall young girl stands in the doorway, her elaborate white locks pinned back with a blade. She’s dressed in silver and white from waist to heel, her shoulders adorned with a black pelt that unfolds like a cut of the night.

My older sister smiles, but it doesn’t reach her steel-colored eyes. “Mother wants to see you two.”

Saki opens his mouth to say something, only for it to fall closed again. It’s clear he’s been smitten by Andraeya since he laid eyes on her, but the infatuation isn’t returned. Right now my sister is interested a dark-haired boy—a son of the viscount, I think—with a dagger tattooed beneath his eye; that boy is not Saki.

When he finds his voice again, all he asks is, “Why are you wearing that?”

“It’s the first day of Haedith.” Andraeya raises a pale eyebrow and smirks, amused by his attention. “Don’t tell me you forgot, Jaeyoung?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Saki flushes at the sound of his real name. “Of course I didn’t forget.”

Well, I certainly did, I think. The Geujinese have so many things to celebrate that the mere thought of keeping track of them all makes me lean against the wall for support. It’s tradition to don pale colors during the first half of Haedith as a farewell to sprin, as a sign that all it means—and what it carries with it—will be back sooner or later. Most people do it as an excuse to show off new attire and drink honeyed wine and eat plate after heaping plate of daebakki and do whatever it is that royals do during festivals. Last year is a blur I can’t pick out of the mess of stupid, forgettable stuff I did in the past nigh-decade, and that includes how our family celebrates tradition.

Or desecrates it.

“Haedith. Right.” The sound of my own voice pulls me away from my thoughts. I straighten and start folding the map, not looking up as I ask, “Drahvonné isn’t showing up, then?”

The sound of our cousin’s name makes Andraeya’s rouge-stained mouth twist in a moue of derision. “Of course she is,” she replies bitterly, “she’s leading the procession. Which reminds me—Mother wants us to skip the festivities this year. She has other things for us to do.”

I flick my eyes up. “‘Other things?’”

Andraeya raises her eyebrows. “Let’s just say that I’d rather listen to a drunk Drahvonné singing ‘Snegurochken, Esthteka’ off-key at the top of her lungs than be in your current position.” She smiles sweetly and adds, “Don’t keep her waiting, haedzun.”

Then she strides out the room, the gossamer tail of her gown trailing her heels as she whips out of sight. We stare after her for a long moment.

“I believe we had a bet,” Saki quips into the silence.

“Shut up, Jaeyoung,” I say.