Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Twenty-Four

Tali

Kaltoren, Drasken

8th of Otanus

Her slip-ups in Kennet's class and on Stromorre aside, Tali's time at Ren Câdern blurred into a mundane schedule. Her classes and lectures progressed slowly, and Erun's failure to resurface again meant she could concentrate and begin to show glimmers of her true ability. Her classmates still called her 'Blunt', both behind her back and within her hearing, but she'd purposefully closed the distance between herself and the other students, and Kennet now looked upon her with smiles and praise, as if he'd been responsible for honing her. Though careful to limit her feigned development to conceal the truth, she often found herself wishing she could unleash the tangled knot of power within herself, just to enjoy the awe on her classmates' faces.

Her lessons with the Jalin continued, with the Keizerin infrequently present. Now they knew she didn't need a Gnostic Plane for her aasiurmancy, Fell focused on the magic itself, and the best way of combatting the weakness she felt after every display. According to the Jalin and her lessons, nine overarching aasiurmantic branches existed, and they'd spent the bulk of a recent session introducing her to them all. Though she'd suspected her Valhir nature formed an open doorway to all forms of magic, she still surprised herself by being able to conjure everything Fell asked of her.

Pyromancy, as her pledged branch, had been easiest, with thundermancy a close second. Aeromancy had become a more defensive art in her mind, and she could only successfully conjure it in response to one of Fell's attacks. Aquamancy and geomancy she struggled with, able to manifest only the barest examples of each. The same applied to shadowmancy and idomancy, though she felt as if her time with Heller and Shira should've awarded her some skill, and that she disappointed them to fail at their branches. Solarmancy, the manifestation of light, was wholly foreign to her but, by picturing Kaltoren's Surrekan engines, she'd been able to create a tiny, pulsing orb of heatless, blinding luminance and maintain it for a few heartbeats.

For worldstriding, she'd opened a portal back to the rooms in the Kronhus she and Heller's cadre had inhabited before she'd come to the College. Though she'd already told Fell about her 'strides to Shaeviren and Sinnis, he'd still been impressed by how easily she'd made the leap with him in tow. Her crippling nausea after the fact had dampened her success somewhat and left her light-headed for the rest of the day. But she didn't fall unconscious, as she had those first two times. Progress, of a sort.

"In how much detail do you need to picture your destination?" he'd asked her excitedly after they'd stumbled back into his chamber in the College.

"Not much," she'd replied. "I used a vague memory from when I was last here." She didn't mention how she'd gotten herself to Shaeviren based on one of her father's mad sketches, and to Sinnis because of a panicked desire to be with her uncle in the Karhes. She suspected any larger, less defined leaps might leave her as comatose as she'd been when she'd first awoken to her strange, hybrid power.

Fell had theorised that her being her own magical source caused her weakness. If she wanted to become stronger, more resilient, she'd need to toughen up both physically and mentally. With that in mind, he'd dedicated some of their time together to exercises Tali grew to hate more than her lectures. He'd have her run up and down as many flights of stairs as she could endure, with the eventual goal of traversing the entire height of Ren Câdern without stopping. As if to annoy her further, he would worldstride along her route and appear every handful of floors to offer encouragement.

He had also taken to sparring with her in the courtyard around his chambers. She'd been surprised to find him proficient with a blade, having already judged him to be a more pacifistic, scholarly type.

"Before I became a mage, I trained with the Drakaaren family's Svædherre. I forgot most of it over the years, but some things stuck," he explained. Svædherre, she'd learned, were the personal guards of the Varkommer families, and rigorously trained. The Jalin had only halted his training when he'd met Malena, the woman he'd eventually surrender his mortality for.

Aside from her classes and lessons with Fell, she spent most of her free time with Renna. The College allowed its students and staff two out of eight days a week to themselves, and often Renna dragged Tali out into the city. With her father always absent, Renna sought company in Kaltoren's backstreets and had forged a network of friendships with young thieves and street rats. Thankfully, she steered clear of the seedier parts of the capital when Tali accompanied her, instead taking her on impromptu walks around Kaltoren's various parks or using some of her generous allowance to hire a thundership for the day.

Tali saw little of Benji. Though he still sat with her during their pyromancy classes, he barely uttered a word. She started to suspect he resented the amount of time she spent with his parents and wondered if they overlooked him. In all her time with the Jalin, he'd never once mentioned any of his children. Tali knew how it felt to be forgotten; she wanted to talk to Benji about the matter but didn't know a way of approaching it delicately.

Her nightmares had been unplagued by Erun in the past week, ever since its appearance in Kennet's class. Though she knew she should be glad the monster seemed to have taken the hint, she woke up every morning with an emptiness yawning in her chest, as if she'd shed a part of herself she wasn't entirely ready to be rid of.

She wrenched herself from one such dreamless slumber to the sound of urgent knocking at the door of her private rooms. Confused and still half-asleep, she pulled shirt and trousers on over her night clothes and stumbled to the door. Renna lurked on the other side, donned in a thick coat as if she meant to go somewhere.

"It's late," Tali said, her voice cracking with tiredness.

"I have to know," Renna replied, hopping from foot to foot. "I have to talk to my mother."

Tali had told Renna her mother remained imprisoned atop the Kronhus, following her conversation with Fell and Malena. She'd felt the girl deserved to know, and Renna's initial lack of reaction had suggested Katja meant nothing to her. It seemed Renna had instead allowed the news to stew, to eventually curdle.

In reply, Tali stepped back and ushered the other girl inside.

"I know it's stupid," Renna said as she paced. "My father didn't want to talk to me about her. But I need to know. Need to speak to her, face to face."

"I understand that," Tali replied.

"Let's go then," Renna said. She cast her eyes around the room, spotted the coat Tali had slung over her desk, and threw it at her. "While it's still dark."

Tali spluttered. "Now?"

"It's a long way to the Kronhus, and then we've got to actually find her. We have to go now."

Of all the things she might've been roused in the middle of the night for, breaking into the Drasken capital's most integral political building to speak with a notorious criminal hadn't ever occurred to her. She watched Renna for a moment, wondering if the girl would come to her senses and abandon this mad plan; instead, Tali saw the nervous energy radiating out through her friend's pacing. Whatever had driven her to this decision, it wasn't something that had eased her mind.

"Are you sure about this?"

Renna jerked her head in a nod. "I won't be able to stop thinking about it until it's done."

Tali heaved a sigh. This was her fault, in a roundabout way. After all, she'd told Renna about her mother. And before that, she'd inadvertently gotten Katja seized by Heller and returned to Kaltoren, the last place the mercenary captain wanted to be. Of course, it wasn't her fault Katja had attacked a Shifting City and kidnapped her and Shira in the direct aftermath, but she still felt somehow responsible, as if the overwhelming strength of her strange magic had drawn Katja in with irresistible force.

Besides, hadn't Katja shared with Tali the ways the Jalin had ruined her life? Didn't that forge some slim connection between them, if for no other reason than they'd both been wronged by their home nations? Didn't Katja and Renna deserve some closure regarding their long-compromised mother-daughter connection?

"I can get us there a lot quicker," Tali said at length. "But you can't tell anyone how we did it."

A fraction of Renna's nervousness seeped into a mischievous grin. "Ooh, a covert secret? I like it."

Before she could rethink her decision, Tali sank within herself and called upon that writhing knot of energy deep within her. Practicing with Fell had streamlined the process, and she no longer relied on panic and fear for fuel. Instead, she pictured Katja's face as she'd last seen the woman, held between the Jalin's red-coated guards, then grappled at the pulsing light of her power and thrust it outwards.

Nothing happened.

Her power brushed up against an invisible boundary and curled away, thwarted.

Before she thought to try again, Tali recalled a throwaway remark Fell had made during their most recent lesson, directly after he'd made her run up ten flights of stairs. She'd asked if she couldn't just picture his face and 'stride to whichever level he'd paused at, to which he'd replied, "You can't 'stride with a living being as an anchor. They're too fluid, too likely to change position and confuse your efforts. You have to picture something inanimate and static." Perhaps that had been why she'd flung herself and Shira to Sinnis when picturing Heller; her portal hadn't hinged on anything static, and so had deposited them in the Thousand Kings rather than at her uncle's side.

She couldn't imagine Katja, then. But the Drakaaren's hulking stormking she'd only seen from the outside. Unable to conjure another option, she cast a hazed memory of Risyán's exterior into her mind's eye, imagining it clinging to the Kronhus' almighty peak. Then she overlaid memories of Katja's mercenary craft, Rabid Dog, until the two ships merged and she created what she thought the stormking's deck might look like. Then she mentally delved beneath the surface, trying to envision the ship's cells.

It seemed risky, throwing herself and Renna across the city based on an empty mental sketch of their destination. Then again, had she not stumbled onto another planet altogether using a similar tactic?

Her power, when she sent it questing out, met with no resistance the second time.

Fell had described worldstriding as akin to drawing the curtains in the morning. Only the curtains were the folds of reality, and they had to be slit open and wrenched apart through sheer force of will, rather than simply pushed back. Not to mention, the morning beyond the curtains was actually the space between spaces, a dangerous and annihilating eternity. Tali vivisected the air in front of her by lashing her hands out, the resistance tugging at her with the weight of water. Rather than be consumed by the maelstrom beyond reality, as had happened the first two times she'd 'strode, she stepped back to admire her work.

"What the fuck?" Renna stared at the portal, wide-eyed like a child, then looked over at Tali. "What. The. Fuck?"

Tali held out her hand. "You can't tell anyone. Promise."

Renna hesitated, then locked grips. "I promise, as long as you promise to tell me how, exactly, you're able to worldstride."

"How? The same as any other mage, I assume," Tali answered, forcing casualness into her tone. It was one thing to secretly be a worldstrider, quite another to secretly be the child of a Novhar. She accepted the risks of sharing this aspect with her friend, but she couldn't share her Valhir nature. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if she could help it.

Renna, who'd evidently never travelled by portal before, made for a stiff and awkward passenger, dragged in Tali's wake in much the same way she'd once been dragged behind Fell as he'd sped towards the Shroud. So little time had passed since then, yet she already felt confident in her power.

She stepped out into a cramped room, presumably somewhere aboard the stormking, and Renna sprawled behind her, hands braced against her knees as she retched. "Wow," she grated out between convulsions. "That was horrible."

"I'm told it gets better the more you do it," Tali remarked with a smile. For once, she wasn't the Blunt, the student who'd fallen behind, the clueless passenger.

"I'm hoping not to have reasons to 'stride enough for it to get better."

The portal zipped shut of its own accord to their backs, plummeting the room into eerie darkness. Tali scrambled for a moment, then logic sliced through her panic. She held her palm out and again dove beneath the surface of her consciousness, swimming for the bright beacon of her powers. Fatigue deadened her body even as it leeched her mind, and she wondered what the toll of repeated use of her powers might be. Fell had told her mortal mages went mad if they conjured too often or pushed themselves past their skill levels. Their minds just snapped, or were otherwise stranded in the aether, leaving their bodies behind as empty shells. She didn't know if these same limitations applied to her.

With a small strain, a sphere of steady light snapped into place above her open palm. Renna's surprised face, when illuminated by Tali's small display of solarmancy, was almost comically exaggerated.

"Why'd you let everyone think you were shit?" Renna asked with a muffled chuckle. "The next time someone calls you 'Blunt', you've gotta shove them through a portal or smack them round the head with that orb." She fixed Tali with a sly look. "I suppose that's why you're the Jalin's little project."

Tali shrugged. "Something like that." She aimed her yellowed orb around the space, finding herself not in a room, but a corridor.

Renna tapped her foot against the floor which, rather than being of the same stone as Kaltoren's towers, was wooden. The wall to their backs was wood as well, solid planks locked together and stretching beyond her orb's weak illumination. Metal bars slashed in front of them, floor to ceiling, separating what Tali realised with a gasp were cells.

"I think we're aboard Risyán," Renna whispered.

She threw a sideways glance at Renna, again wondering at the wisdom of this clandestine trip, then scanned the nearest cells. A bolt of pride claimed her at the thought that her haphazard picturing of Risyán had been enough not only to transport them inside, but bring them straight to the cells. Perhaps the short distance between Ren Câdern and the Kronhus had eased the 'stride, and a trip further afield would be far less precise; Tali would indeed have to experiment with Fell.

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Sure enough, only one cell was currently occupied; Tali's light splashed the mercenary captain's sharp-featured visage as she approached the bars of the cell.

Katja regarded her through groggy eyes, a spark of recognition upon seeing Tali seeming to jolt her awake. "You're not here to free me, are you, girl?"

Tali shook her head and took a moment to study the woman. Katja displayed no signs of mistreatment or malnourishment, and the lack of characteristic dirt suggested her captors regularly cleaned her. Her cell was small and simple, with a cot along one side and a waste bucket pressed against the other. When her gaze returned to the woman herself, Tali saw that, rather than having her arms fastened to her chest and held there by the strange, restricting jacket she'd been donned in during her interrogation in the Kronhus, her hands were now encased in a bulky metal box.

Renna drifted warily over, and for a strained moment mother and daughter stared at one another, searching for themselves in the other's features. Tali stepped back, suddenly awkward; it had been years since these two had seen each other, and she had no idea how either would react.

Katja broke the silence. "Renna?"

"Mother."

"Why are you here?" the mercenary asked.

Renna glanced at Tali as if for support, then said, "To see you."

"You have to free me," Katja demanded. "I've been here for weeks already and I don't know if that snake plans to kill me or not."

Tali saw the weight of the confrontation press down upon Renna; whatever she'd come here for, she hadn't found it in Katja Westervelt, because she visibly recoiled from the bars as her mother stood up and pressed her forehead against them.

Perhaps seeing her daughter's disgust, Katja's eyes narrowed. "Your grandfather has poisoned you against me, hasn't he?" Katja turned her head aside and spat. "That pitiful bastard stole you from me and brought you to the fucking enemy."

Renna straightened. "Don't speak of Father like that," she hissed.

"Father?" Katja scoffed. "That emasculated wretch isn't your damn father, Renna. It's embarrassing enough that either of us have his blood, without giving him more significance."

Renna gripped the bars and bared her teeth. "He raised me, better than you or my real father ever could. He escaped from a horrible life and brought me here to give me a chance."

"He bows and scrapes to the fucking Jalin!" Katja countered. "No doubt he sucks the Varkommer's collective cock, just so he can crawl back into their good graces."

The girl winced at the crude insult. "He sacrificed everything to give me a better life. All you want to do is sabotage that." She pointedly looked up and down her mother and scowled as if finding her sorely lacking. "You're nothing but a dirty slaver, and I can't believe I ever wanted to come here."

Katja snarled, the madness Tali had seen in her before descending again. "If you willingly serve the people who destroyed our family, then you are no daughter of mine."

"That suits me fine," Renna spat, "because I have never considered you my mother."

As she turned angrily away, Katja wrestled with her restraints, the box around her hands grinding against the bars. "Wait, I didn't mean that," the mercenary said, her voice pitched high with desperation. "Being stuck here has twisted me, and I spoke without thinking. Please, just talk to me."

Tali saw a glimmer of the vulnerable woman Katja truly was, and she felt a pang of sympathy she struggled to brush aside. She had to remind herself that, as much as this woman suffered in captivity, those she'd enslaved suffered far worse.

Renna turned back, face stony. "I thought I came here to try to reconcile with you, to see if maybe my father had exaggerated your depravity," she said. "But I realise now that I actually came here to convince myself I'm not like you, and to sever myself completely from you. I want to be free of your memory, Katja. And now I can be."

Without another word, the girl swept away down the dark corridor, and her mother stared open-mouthed after her. Tali lingered, wondering if she should say something, but hurried away when the mercenary started thrashing at the bars with her shoulders. Katja's anguished bellows chased her as she fled.

She followed the sound of Renna's feet striking the wooden floor, resisting the urge to call out to her, just in case there were guards about. She wanted nothing more than to 'stride back to the College and pretend this night had never happened, but she couldn't leave Renna here, not if the girl risked being caught. Ahead, Renna mounted a set of stairs and burst out into the cold night beyond, seemingly oblivious of her surroundings. When Tali gained the steps in her wake, she found herself standing on an immense thundership deck, empty for now of crew. It was easily twice the size of Rabid Dog's deck, though the empty expanse along its centre and the small number of aasiurmantic canons at its flanks suggested it wasn't, like the mercenary craft, equipped for combat.

This was definitely Risyán, then. The Keizerin's stormking.

Renna paced across the deck, and Tali rushed to follow. Overhead, shards of moonlight cascaded like splintered waterfalls through the glass sections of the craft's canopy, though the rest of the space wallowed in darkness.

"Where are you going?" Tali risked asking as loud as she dared.

Renna faltered and slowed, then looked over her shoulder. "Don't know. Wasn't thinking."

Tali caught up with her and resisted the urge to place a consoling hand on the other girl's shoulder. "Let's get back to the College, then we can talk."

She made to carve a portal back to her room when a cry of alarm erupted behind them, in the direction Renna had been running, and two redcoats resolved from the deck's impenetrable darkness. As they approached, the guards armed themselves, the one on the right tearing free an intimidating blade, the one on the left splaying his palms to conjure. Renna leapt in front of Tali and held her hands up. "Woah, hold on a minute."

"How did you get up here?" the guard with the sword demanded, slowing his pace as he advanced.

Before Tali could reply, a voice called from behind her.

"They're with me. They're my classmates," Benji said as he materialised beside her. He flashed her a frown before turning his attention to the guards. "I was planning on having them stay the night but forgot to inform the Keizerin."

After a moment's hesitation, both guards offered the Drasken salute, snapping quickly to attention in the presence of their Keizerin's son. Benji beckoned to Tali, and with Renna behind her she followed him back towards the direction they'd come. The guards neither challenged nor attempted to escort them, a testament to Benji's influence.

"What are you doing here, kolmas?" Renna demanded as soon as they were beyond the hearing of the lingering guards. She spun on Benji, one hand grabbing his collar.

"I live here." He shoved her off and paced away.

"You live at the College," Renna said, racing after Benji to continue the argument. "We all do."

Benji didn't stop. "I come home after lessons. I haven't got much reason to stay in the tower itself, have I?"

That drew Renna up short. She knew the boy was bullied because she sometimes participated in the name-calling, but to learn he'd exiled himself to the Kronhus seemed to surprise her.

"It doesn't matter," Benji said before Renna could formulate an answer. "Why are you here? You realise you're breaking and entering." He nodded his head towards the cells. "I heard a commotion over there."

Renna glanced over her shoulder at Tali, her brows arched down. No doubt she felt the urge to share with Benji what she'd seen of Tali's worldstriding.

"We came to see Katja," Tali said hurriedly. "Renna wanted to speak with her."

"That figures," Benji scoffed. When Renna scowled, he added, "From what I've overheard of my parents' conversations, she asks for you and your father often. Like calls on like, I suppose."

"What are you suggesting?"

"That your mother is a mass-murdering slaver with a bloodthirst that puts professional cannibals to shame," Benji snapped. "That perhaps that would've been your future had your father not seen fit to come crawling back to my father. That your desire to see her now is an indicator of your mercenary origins."

Before Tali could intervene, Renna snatched at Benji with both hands, grabbing a fistful of his jacket and yanking him off balance. He chopped a hand at her forearm to dislodge her, then spun on his heel and continued along the deck. His shadow danced out around him, the heels of his boots striking the wooden floor with a rhythmic and imperious clack.

Renna hissed an insult through clenched teeth and stormed after him, and Tali was caught in the backdraft like so much dust in the wind. Renna soon caught up to her opponent in a violent flurry.

"You've no right to talk to me about my origins when you're an unwanted child," she spat. Benji halted but didn't turn on her. "You're not much better than a bastard. I bet your damn parents didn't even want you. That explains why they fucking ignore you." She gestured angrily to Tali. "Even she gets more attention than you, and she's only been in the city a few weeks!" By then Benji had turned, slowly, menacingly. "At least my father has a reason to not spend time with me. Yours just doesn't give a fuck. In fact, no one does. Why'd you think you've got no friends, poor, unwanted kolmas?"

Benji's mouth slanted into an ugly sneer. "Your mother is a mercenary whore and your real father was probably whichever random degenerate bedded her that particular night. My father may ignore me, but at least I know who he is."

"We both know who he is, kolmas," Renna retorted. "He's a murdering heap of shit. Call my mother bloodthirsty, do you? D'you forget it was your glorious fucking father who slaughtered my family in cold blood. He probably got off on it, the depraved bastard. I'd rather a random merc as my sire over that any day." She drew up before him, mere inches apart. The air around them shimmered with their mutual hatred.

A fight to the death between her uncle's cadre and the Novhar would've made for more comfortable viewing than this. Tali wavered, unsure whether to place herself between the two youths, wondering which of them would deliver the first, inevitable punch. If they fell to brawling, what was she supposed to do? Stand and watch and hope they didn't bloody themselves too much? Try and pull them apart? Run for help?

The decision was made for her when one of the guards, having overheard the argument, stomped up behind her. She turned, ready to explain, when her eyes met his.

Not a guard. Not at all.

The blazing eyes of the Novhar, set above his distinctive hawk nose, regarded her with an anger that threatened to incinerate her with its intensity. He loomed over her in his natural form, his wings folded tight against his back, his fists clenched so hard the armour plates on his hands ground together. Intact, unburned hands, she noticed. Surely the damage she'd done to him hadn't healed so quickly? That strange, organic armour encased the entirety of him, padding out his already considerable form, turning the ten-foot behemoth into a primordial mountain of immortal majesty. It halted just under his chin, leaving bare a face uncannily human in design. She noticed, for the first time, that he wore his shockingly blonde hair swept back away from his patrician features, and that very human-like stubble speckled his chin, affording him a rough, almost tired aspect.

Had he been lured here by her worldstriding, perhaps? It was the first time she'd utilised her magic outside the Jalin's influence, and it seemed too coincidental for the Novhar to have appeared not five minutes after she'd catapulted herself and Renna aboard the thundership.

"I am beginning to consider killing you for my own enjoyment."

At the boom of his voice, Benji and Renna pulled apart and turned to face the intruder, dumbstruck.

"You have made a simple task difficult, but if you join me now, I will forgive you." He extended his plated arm. "Even your consorting with the enemy can be overlooked," he added, throwing a pointed glance at the two youths behind her.

She stepped back, and Renna and Benji moved up to flank her, their argument of a moment ago forgotten. "What is that?" Renna demanded.

The Novhar's reaction was almost imperceptible, but Tali had been watching for it. As soon as her companions joined her, his hands flattened, and she knew he prepared to conjure. Before she could think, she threw up a wall of air in front of her. Her powers, steered by panic, hijacked her actions and made her dance backwards. On instinct, Renna and Benji copied, moving away from her still-intact shield of air even as the Novhar spewed fire at her. Two opposing elements clashed mid-air, the brief conflagration enough of a distraction for the three of them to increase the distance between them and their attacker.

Unfazed, the Novhar ploughed through the wreath of dissipating smoke and tossed a fireball at them. Tali threw herself beneath it, landing heavily on her knees. A trail of heat burned its way across the back of her neck, but otherwise didn't harm her. In response, Renna loosed a whip of lightning, but she hadn't been able to conjure properly, and it was a weak thing. The Novhar smacked it away and advanced.

Benji punched his splayed palms at the Novhar, his flame guttering a few inches ahead of him. The Novhar laughed cruelly.

"This is what the Jalin's blood produces? How can he hope to succeed Erdohan with such pitiful progeny?"

Tali threw herself to her feet and felt her power unspool within her. Unthinking violence usurped the Jalin's training, and she tore at her soul to wring out every last drop. She flung her barrages without thought; a fireball followed by a streak of shadow she aimed at the Novhar's eyes; a spray of water chased by a snapping tendril of lightning; a clump of sod supported on a whip of conjured wind.

Even as the Novhar defended against her attacks, she felt her strength sapped, felt a little piece torn from her soul with every scrap of aasiur she flung outwards. By the time the Novhar had halted a few feet before her, she'd fallen to one knee in exhaustion.

Before he could grab her, a rope of fire snapped at the back of his head. He recoiled, snarling as he turned to face Benji, who was poised a short distance behind him.

"There it is, you bastard. I knew you had some fire in you," Renna cheered. Her exultant grin dissolved as the Novhar took a step towards Benji.

Tali was helpless, able only to watch as Renna ploughed into Benji's side and sent them both sprawling just as the Novhar spewed fire at them. It flickered aimlessly over their tangled bodies, but the Novhar kept advancing.

"Perhaps I shall bring all three of you with me," the Novhar pondered as he advanced, heavy-footed and inexorable. Renna and Benji, tangled, stunned by the impact with the deck, could only watch in mounting horror. "You two pitiful worms will serve as leverage."

Tali had nothing left, couldn't even rise to standing lest her heart explode in her chest. Her attacks had been thoughtless, stripping her of power and leaving her an empty, pointless vessel. Her lack of control, her inability to call upon what Fell had taught her, would mean she'd have to watch as her friends were murdered, unable to intervene. And then she would be the Novhar's prisoner, and everything she and her uncle's cadre had fought for over the last few weeks would be for nought.

But none of that happened. Instead, she heard a wordless bellow at the far end of the deck. A figure, faceless and shapeless to Tali's sickened gaze, sprinted towards them even as the Novhar loomed over Benji and Renna, still sprawled where Renna had toppled them. The Novhar glanced at the intruder, then his intense eyes skidded over to Tali. He seemed to assess the distance between them, no doubt wondering whether he could snatch her before her rescuer could intervene.

A great impaling spear wrought from aasiurmantic ice soared towards the Novhar, fired by the approaching figure. The Novhar whipped aside, snatching the ice-spear from its arc as it passed before banishing it to oblivion with barely a gesture.

The attack spurred the Novhar to a decision. "This is not over, Valhir," he said. "Next time, I kill those who aid you."

He winked out of existence just as another ice-spear arrowed towards him, passing harmlessly through where he'd just been standing. If Tali hadn't felt the waft of aasiur fading into the atmosphere as the Novhar's sudden worldstriding portal closed, she would've assumed he'd never existed at all.

The sprinting figure resolved into the Jalin as he neared, his hands splayed and gently steaming with the ice he'd conjured. By the time he stumbled up to them, Tali had climbed to her feet and Renna and Benji had disentangled themselves. For an absurd moment, the four of them shot confused looks at one another, until finally Fell's eyes settled on Tali. She could tell from his narrowed brows he knew what had happened. He couldn't have missed the Novhar's towering form, even from the other side of the deck, though he chose to pretend at obliviousness for now. There seemed little any of them could do about the immortal monster when it had already departed.

"What's going on?" he asked. Perhaps he wanted to hear the truth for himself.

Tali looked down and fumbled for an answer. How could she explain this situation without looking like the fool she knew she was? After all, she'd agreed to help Renna visit her mother, a dangerous criminal, by breaking into the stormking. Even without the Novhar's involvement, that was enough to warrant severe punishment.

Benji saved her. "I was struggling with some classwork," he said, small and cowed in his father's shadow. He rubbed at his head and frowned, perhaps still stunned by Renna's life-saving tackle. "Tali agreed to help, and Renna tagged along. We had a disagreement, and it came to blows."

Why he lied, Tali didn't know. Maybe he thought he covered for her and Renna, or didn't think his father would believe him. Maybe he genuinely thought the Jalin hadn't seen the Novhar, and believed he could conceal the immortal's presence about the ship until he could obtain his own answers from Tali and Renna. It didn't matter, though; Fell didn't challenge his son, though he clearly wanted to. To ask about the ten-foot figure he'd hurled ice-spears at would be to acknowledge its existence to Renna and Benji. Better, Tali knew, to feign ignorance.

Tali would have some explaining to do. Not only to the Jalin, who already knew her secret, but to her friends, who'd now both seen her display magic she wouldn't learn for years, had she been a normal mage. As well as she'd been doing at concealing herself, it all meant nothing now, if the pair decided to tell others.

Not to mention the Novhar. It had almost killed her friends. There was no denying the immortal's presence here.

"It is incredibly irresponsible of you to have schoolyard fights aboard the Keizerin's flagship," Fell said. He addressed his son, but his words were meant for Tali. "Is this your way of repaying me? I allow you to use your mother's flagship as your home when you should be at the College, like every other student, and you mock my lenience."

Benji anchored his gaze to his feet. "I'm sorry, Father."

"Jalin," Fell corrected.

"I'm sorry, Jalin."

Fell glanced again to Tali. "This won't happen again. Promise me that."

Even as Benji mumbled his promise, Tali met the Jalin's gaze and nodded.

The Novhar still hunted her, she alone his target. She couldn't endanger her friends, not if the immortal meant to murder any who interfered. Not if he'd dared to trespass into central Kaltoren, the very heartland of those who Heller had thought would protect her from the Novhar.

There was, she realised, nowhere she could hide.