“Of course.” Lance answered without a heartbeat’s pause, then painted the kingdom’s virtues like banners in the wind, and her irreplaceable edge among the four human vassals.
For such a perfunctory reply, the Celestial Race girl before him—who called herself imperial-born—didn’t scold him; she only let the moment drift like a feather.
“What if Doran is a country fated to fall, once the Empire puts its hand on the scales?” She changed the question, like turning a blade to catch the light.
“Uh…” Lance’s mind snagged like a hook in cloth, and words stalled on his tongue.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t answer, but that the asker’s eyes pressed like a storm front.
“Doran will shake off that doom,” Lance said at last, voice steady as a spear, “thanks to the resolve and clear head of the next king.”
“No.” She shook her head, a willow in a quiet wind, pity soft in her gaze. “Doran can’t escape.”
“Why?”
“Issuing more fiat coin, stacking war taxes like stones, more frequent demands to supply the front, and compulsory drafts that ship our soldiers and knights to the lines without a word…” She counted off the Empire’s new policies toward the rear-line human states one by one, each like a drumbeat. Doran would take the first blow. As to why, she gave a thin smile. “If the Empire keeps this up, it never has to fear a human state growing too strong to steer.”
“I see…” Lance let silence pool, like dark water.
“Mm. Exactly.” She restated it, firm as a bell toll.
“Right. I get it—”
“Great, then… hey! What are you doing?” The Celestial girl’s title was still on her lips when Lance scooped her up like a cat from a table, set her outside the cabin hatch, and swung the door shut.
“Hey, what are you doing?!” Thump-thump—her knocking rattled the metal like hail on a tin roof. She planted herself outside, sulking like a cloud that refused to move, refusing to accept being shown out.
“Why put me out here?!”
Lance yielded a hair, but not the whole rope. He cracked the door and leaned out. “It’s late. Run along, kid—bed.”
Seeing the hatch about to close, she jammed half her body into the narrowing gap like a wedge, voice rising in heated complaint. “Blazing Fire Knight, did you even hear me just now?!”
“You said Doran will topple. Of course I know.” Lance’s tone was lazy as drifting smoke. “Life has an edge, lifespans have length, and a nation’s fortune ebbs and floods. If Doran must reach her end, then instead of thrashing in a snare, isn’t it better to face that death with open eyes?”
“You—you, you—ugh…” The Celestial girl suddenly felt that talking to this young knight was like climbing sand—exhausting with every step.
“But you’re Doran’s knight—the Blazing Fire Knight of rumor. You never thought about saving your homeland? My name is Violette Anjou. Don’t be fooled by being the Emperor’s thirty-first child; I sit on the Council of Princes. You beat the Thunderlight Knight. If you’ll help me, I can sway the Council, jam the Imperial Parliament’s bills, and keep Doran from becoming the Empire’s balancing sacrifice. We could cut a different path.”
Lance stared at the girl a few seconds, caught like a deer in lanternlight. Then he turned and refused again. “Spare me. I’ve no taste for grand designs. I don’t want to be slaughtered on the altar of mad politics. Let me be a small knight who goes with the current.”
“How can you—?!” Even as Violette sputtered, Lance didn’t so much as twitch an ear, and the hatch shut with a quiet click, like a lid on a pot.
The next day, it was time for the “Verdant Sky” to head home.
When the mast cast no shadow across the deck, the giant hull exhaled a gale that parted the sea like a comb through silk.
Rumble—after a rolling thunder of engines, the “Verdant Sky” lifted off the water, rising into open air like a gull finding a thermal.
Up there, the sea’s swells blurred; no surf beat reached the ear. The raging blue below smoothed into a mirror lake, and everything small as pebbles; for a breath, the world’s clamor fell away.
“As long as we get these Celestial Spirits back to the Empire, our job’s done, right?”
“Right. Even if you didn’t flush out the Dark Spirit—or maybe it was never aboard—you still did plenty. You’ll get every coin promised.”
But Crick barely tasted the word “pay.” He didn’t answer Lance. His gaze stretched toward the horizon like a taut bowstring.
Lance followed it, then pulled out a creased map, gripping it so the wind couldn’t snatch it like a kite. “That way lies the Republic—your homeland. This big girl can’t cross the Desolation Range, so we’ll pass through the Republic and enter the Empire from the Western Basin.”
Crick studied Lance’s profile, as if the cold-edged youth overlapped some other figure in memory. “No wonder you’re the Steelheart Knight’s kid.”
Lance folded the map away. “Is that… a compliment?”
“No—when a knight throws a— I mean—” He didn’t finish. The hull bucked like it took a punch.
“What’s going on?!” Crick shouted.
After the violent jolt, a ground-born roar rode the wind up to them, and everyone knew at once what it meant.
“Artillery! We’re taking fire from the ground!!” a soldier bellowed, voice cutting like a trumpet.
“What do we do?” The Celestial Spirits went pale as ash, and even the pilots looked frozen, hands hovering like birds afraid to land.
“Damn it!” Feeling the hull tilt like a leaning tree, Lance spat the curse, hot as a coal.
Curses didn’t patch holes. With the deck boiling into chaos, Lance stepped into the storm.
“Force a landing! Now!”
In the cockpit, the captains stared, then sagged with helplessness. “This is Republic waters. We can’t set down here.”
Lance drew the Sirius Sword; its edge flashed like ice, ticking from face to face. “If you don’t want this ship in splinters, put her down. Now.”
They obeyed. Steam hissed and black smoke poured from the wound like a bleeding smokestack. After a hard, shuddering drop, the “Verdant Sky” slammed onto the strange sea. What came next proved Lance right—
That first salvo had been a ranging shot. The instant it hit—and the instant the “Verdant Sky” splashed down—the sky she’d just vacated was shredded by a tight web of fire, a kill-net that would’ve torn her to ribbons.
They slipped the noose of the flak, but fell straight into the hunter’s plan.
More than a dozen warships—smaller than the “Verdant Sky,” but giants beside common craft—closed in from all points, forming a ring like wolves around a stag. The “Verdant Sky,” too slow to lift again, was sealed in tight.
Before she could answer, one vessel came alongside and slammed hull to hull.
Boarders swarmed up. Their leader raised a sword that leaked an ominous glow like swampfire, and barked to his men, voice a whip crack: “Search! Round up every White Spirit on this ship!”
