Chapter 16

  Vitomir

  The trek back to the crashed airship was quiet. The usual murmurs of the other prisoners—small jokes, bitter complaints—had faded in the last day. There was a quiet resignation over many of the survivors. Sabo understood. He had always been a survivor. Eventually, it hardens a person, until they’re closed off from the world—protecting whatever may be left of them.

  Sabo walked a step ahead of Maro, his boots dragging against the uneven earth. The weight in his limbs wasn’t just exhaustion—it was the gnawing fear curling low in his gut. Let him still be there.

  The twisted wreckage of the airship jutted from the earth like the skeleton of some long-dead beast. Its hull, torn open by the crash, had become a ramshackle shelter—a place where the survivors gathered when night fell and the Maldrath prowled. Smoke drifted lazily from the center of camp, and the scent of charred wood hung heavy in the air.

  As Sabo approached, he counted. Faces. Bodies. Some familiar, some not. Too many missing. The attack by the Morduin knights had left half of them bleeding. The Maldrath finished the job. Those who survived weren’t unscathed.

  He swallowed hard, scanning the huddled figures for one in particular.

  Vitomir.

  Maro slowed behind him, his expression unreadable. “He was still holding on when we left,” he said, voice low. “You should check on him.”

  Sabo nodded and picked up his pace, weaving between the handful of prisoners that mulled about, tending to the airship-turned-campsite. His heart pounded against his ribs, a steady, heavy drumbeat.

  At the far edge of the camp, beneath the curve of broken hull plating, he found him.

  Vitomir lay on a bed of scavenged blankets, his once-broad frame wasted to a thin, fragile thing. His face—dark, sunken—tilted toward the sky, eyes half-closed. The rise and fall of his chest was shallow. Too shallow. Gods dammit, Sabo thought.

  He knelt beside the old man, his throat tight. “Vitomir,” he said softly.

  The old man didn’t stir.

  Panic crept in. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—lose him. Not now. Not after everything. Sabo reached out, his fingers trembling, and touched Vitomir’s shoulder. “Hey. You’re not done yet.”

  A long, shuddering breath answered him. Then, slowly, Vitomir’s eyes cracked open. Clouded. Weak—but still there.

  “Sabo…” His voice was a rasp, brittle as dry leaves. But he was alive.

  “I’m here,” Sabo said, forcing a smile. “You’re still too stubborn to die, I hope?”

  A faint chuckle—more breath than sound—escaped Vitomir’s lips. His hand twitched, reaching for Sabo’s wrist. “Listen . . . there isn’t much time.”

  “Don’t say that,” Sabo snapped, the words harsher than he meant. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Vitomir’s grip tightened—a flicker of the strength he used to have. “They want it. Hecate’s Tower.”

  Sabo froze. He had heard this before. In the past couple of days, when Vitomir had been at his most lucid, he used his little strength to convey the same message to Sabo.

  “The Morduin…” He coughed, the sound wet and ragged. “They want the Tower. Whatever lies at the top. They’ll stop at nothing to claim it. If Boro made his move . . . It means, they’ve moved first.”

  Confusion twisted through Sabo’s mind, but he pushed it aside. “Why? What’s so important about it?”

  Vitomir’s eyes burned with sudden intensity. “Power. Knowledge. The kind that shouldn’t belong to them—or anyone.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You… You have the power now. You can climb it. You can stop them.”

  Sabo’s stomach twisted. “Me?”

  “You’re not like them. Not like the others.” Vitomir’s breath hitched, and for a terrifying moment, Sabo thought he’d lost him—but the old man held on. “Promise me.”

  “I…” Sabo hesitated. The weight of that promise—of what it meant—settled like iron on his shoulders. “I promise.”

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  Vitomir exhaled slowly, his hand slipping away. “Good…”

  Sabo sat there, watching as the man who had raised him drifted back into unconsciousness. For now, he was still here. But how much longer?

  A rustle behind him drew his attention. He turned to find the white-haired woman—Hiwot—leaning against the hull, her strange, crimson eyes studying him.

  “You heard that?” Sabo asked quietly.

  “I did.” She stepped closer, her expression distant, thoughtful. “He’s not wrong. About the Tower.”

  Sabo frowned. “You know about it?”

  Hiwot tilted her head. “Hecate’s Tower isn’t just a place. It’s a relic from the Age of the Gods—older than the Empire. Much like the Green Sea. The Tower is a fortress of knowledge and power. It stands in Valhadryan—forty-five floors tall, each one filled with secrets no one else has ever unlocked.”

  Sabo blinked. “Forty-five?”

  “No one’s ever reached the top,” Hiwot continued. “Most can’t even breach the upper floors.”

  The two crept away from Vitomir’s resting place, towards one of the few campfires the prisoners were tending to.

  “A Tower that is so mysterious and across the entire Empire, they haven’t found anyone who is capable of climbing the entire thing?” Sabo snorted. “Why not just fly an airship to the top?”

  “No airship can approach—the aether storm surrounding the Tower tears anything that flies to pieces.” Her lips curved slightly. “It’s like the Autumn Wall that hangs over the Green Sea. Another boundary left behind by whatever came before us.”

  Sabo’s mind spun. Aether storms. Forbidden floors. Why did they care that the Morduin were so interested in this damned Tower? Power attracted power, Sabo knew. It was the same reason the Empire plunged so deep into the Green Sea, to extract its powerful, magical resources.

  And why in the gods’ names did Vitomir think he was the one who could stop them?

  “I don’t get it,” he muttered. “Why would they risk so much for this place, this Tower?”

  Hiwot’s smile faded. “Because some powers are worth any risk.” She studied him, her gaze lingering on his arm—the place where the maul had vanished after the battle against the Maldrath horde. “And because whatever’s inside the Tower . . . it might be the only thing in this world stronger than what you’re carrying.”

  Sabo’s fingers curled into a fist. Eater stirred faintly at the edge of his thoughts, amused.

  “Well,” he said, forcing the tremor from his voice. “If they want it that bad, maybe I should get there first.”

  The night crept in slow and mean, dragging the cold behind it. The kind that sank into bones and made you wonder if your blood had frozen while you weren’t paying attention.

  Sabo sat near the campfire, its pale, flickering light casting jagged shadows across the wreckage and the faces of the few who’d survived. The hares they’d caught sizzled on spits, filling the air with the greasy, burnt smell of not-quite-enough. Someone muttered a prayer under their breath. A chant that seemed oddly familiar to Sabo—from the Zircunwit faith in Olendar. Still, didn’t seem like the kind of night for gods to listen.

  Maro sat across from him, turning a thin stick between his fingers. There was always a twitchiness to him—like he was half a breath away from sprinting into the woods in search of something—but now, after everything, there was something else too. Something heavier. Hiwot perched beside him, her pale hair catching the firelight, her expression unreadable as usual.

  Sabo chewed a bite of stringy rabbit, jaw working slow. “Anyone got a clue where we are? Where we happened to crash?”

  Maro snorted. “Course I do.”

  Sabo raised a brow. “You do?”

  “Don’t let my abilities with the wind fool you. I’m a Guide.” Maro tapped his temple like that meant something. “I read aether signatures. Every place’s got a feel to it—like a taste in the air, if you know how to sense it. Might not be able to guide someone through a complex dungeon, but it’s a Talent I was born with.”

  The term stirred a distant memory. Guides—or Navigators—were rare, even among Soulsingers. Sabo had only ever known one, a grim-faced woman who worked for the local thugs that oversaw things in Solstice. She couldn’t sling wind like Maro, though. She’d been a Canary—those poor bastards the Empire used to navigate the deep dungeons that sprung up wherever miasma was highly concentrated. Sabo wasn’t aware there were some with the skill that were also capable of more versatile forms of Soulsinging.

  “You didn’t mention that before,” Sabo said.

  Maro shrugged. “Wasn’t your business. And we were a little preoccupied with survival, at the time.” He tossed his stick into the fire, where it snapped and popped. “The airship was bound for Valhadryan—the northern tip, where they keep the aether mines and refineries. But the winds shifted bad after the Morduin’s pets took a bite out of us. We’re south of that now. Closer to the coast.”

  “Serris,” Hiwot murmured, her voice light but certain.

  Maro nodded. “Aye. Smells like Serris to me. Damp, salty, and crawling with things that’d eat your face off if you blink too long.”

  Sabo stared into the fire, mind working. Serris. Border country. Too far south. Every instinct in his bones told him to head north. Straight into Valhadryan. The last thing he wanted to do was drag Vitomir deeper into danger, but—

  He had to. He owed it to the old man.

  The old man’s words still burned in his ears. The Morduin want the Tower. You can stop them.

  Sabo’s knuckles tightened around the chunk of bone he’d picked clean. He didn’t know what the hell Hecate’s Tower really was—or why everyone seemed to want whatever was at the top. But if the Morduin wanted it, then keeping it from them seemed like the kind of thing worth bleeding over.

  Maro stretched his legs out, feet scraping the soft dirt. “We should leave tomorrow. Head south. Hykaera’s a long ways off, but we’re less likely to get our throats slit or our souls eaten going that way. There’s a future there for a bunch of refugees.”

  Sabo didn’t answer. Just kept chewing slow and quiet, the taste of bitter game turning to ash in his mouth.

  He couldn’t go south. Not while Vitomir still breathed.

  A shadow moved at the edge of the fire’s glow.

  Rajka. Big man, thick shoulders, one arm wrapped in a torn strip of his own shirt. He’d volunteered to stay close to Vitomir after the crash—steady hands, quiet type. Not the sort to waste words. He had tended to the old man while Sabo was out with the hunting parties.

  When Sabo met his eyes, he knew.

  Rajka didn’t say anything at first. He just stood there, lips pressed tight together, like he wanted to swallow the words down. Keep them locked inside. But some things didn’t stay buried.

  “He’s gone,” Rajka said, his voice rough. “Vitomir . . . I’m sorry, kid. Vitomir is dead.”

  The crackle of the fire was loud in the silence that followed.