The Red Hand found Khara in the ruins of the Aremir palace. She was unharmed, but her expression told him all he needed to know: the black-haired elf had escaped, and with him, Myraden.

Only seconds after he found his disciple, a call rang out among the Aremir wizards and servants. “Lord One is dead! Lord One is dead!”

The Red Hand had seen enough to guess what had happened. He recognized the techniques of Lord Three. It used to have been his job to know and recognize—he was the Emperor’s contingency in case the Unbound Lords lived up to their name and went rogue. He knew all their techniques, what they looked like, and how to counter them.

But Lord Three had never been the bold type.

The Hand pondered the contradiction for a few more seconds, until an airship marked with the crest of the Neria Shipbuilding Company passed overhead, its sails fluttering and its hull creaking.

And there was his answer.

“Lady Neria…” Khara breathed.

“Indeed,” said the Hand. He shut his eyes. Nomad had been right.

What was worse was knowing that Nomad wanted to lead him off the scent of the black-haired elf and Myraden.

If he left Lady Neria to her devices, she would wipe out the Unbound Lords. Then she’d go after the Emperor, and when she ruled? There would be no one to release the Red Hand from service. He’d have failed on his oath, and the very last of his honour as a Seissen warrior would be forfeit.

There would be no fading into the sunset if Lady Neria won.

“Maybe she was just a guest at the party?” Khara suggested.

“Unlikely.” The Hand shook his head. Lady Neria…he had feuded with that mortal Lady enough to know her tendencies. She had been a thorn in many lords’ sides. “She is a schemer. She would never go to a party without a purpose.”

He hatched a new plan in a matter of seconds. “Come with me.” They prowled through the runes of the palace, jumping over heaps of rubble and skirting fires. Bodies covered the ground. There were injured wizards and guests of the Aremir family, not to mention injured mortal servants and workers.

As they walked, the Hand said, “You are ready. I have taught you everything I can about the arcane arts, and you are about to set out on your final quest at my command.”

“I…am?”

The Hand didn’t elaborate until they reached the center of the crumbling palace. In an open atrium, safe from falling debris and the fires, most of the survivors and upper members of the Aremir family had gathered.

A tent waited in the very center, embroidered with gold fabric and Aremir family horsehead crests. If a pompous lordling would be anywhere, it would be here.

The Red Hand walked through the atrium with his head high, projecting confidence. None of the lower wizards stopped him, and if there was anyone strong enough to concern him, they knew who he was and didn’t stand in his way.

He pushed open the flap of the tent and ducked inside, then held it open for Khara. “Is Ethelvaed here? Is Lord One’s son present?”

A young man in his early twenties perked up. He stood at the opposite end of a table in the middle of the tent, with Aremir elders (a few were Blazes, but most were Flares) surrounding him. He wore traditional Plainsparan armour, and was a Blaze himself.

“Who requests me?” said the young man. He was Ethelvaed; there was no one else it could be.

The Red Hand marched to the end of the table and placed his gloved hand on the end of the table.

Ethelvaed looked the Hand up and down, then said, “Oh. The…Red Hand? On the Mainland? I regret having never made acquaintances with you before.” He turned to the man beside him and whispered something harshly.

The boy had some manners, at least. But whispering in the presence of a superior was never wise.

“You may speak freely around me, Ethelvaed,” said the Hand. “I come to make a request of you.”

“I am busy.”

“An Unbound Lord does not deny the requests of the Red Hand.”

“The Red Hand should be in exile, and I am not an Unbound Lord yet.”

“You should be tending to the remains of your family.”

“I have thieves to catch. They dishonoured the family, and more likely than not, they were responsible for my father’s death.” He spoke coldly, for someone who had just lost his father. But then again, the chances that he was ever close with his father were slim.

“Our interests align, then,” said the Hand. He nudged Khara forward. “I offer my disciple into your service. She has reached the peak of Flare, and she only needs Ichor-ink to form a runebond. She has a strong five-Timber foundation and the best enhancements one can afford. She will be more powerful than any of your underlings.”

Ethelvaed raised his eyebrows skeptically.

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“Don’t let your pride get in the way,” the Hand snapped. “And don’t bother with your family’s traditions. Scan her spirit, and you’ll find everything I said truthful.”

“Sir?” Khara asked, looking at the Red Hand. “What are you doing?”

“In exchange,” the Hand continued, “I demand that you work with her and hunt down the black-haired elf who stole from you. Bring him to me alive.” The Hand rubbed his forehead. He was running out of time, and he couldn’t afford to play games. “Or bring me his head.”

Khara beamed. “I’ll make you proud, sir. I will rip Myraden’s head from her body, then I’ll take the elven heir’s head myself.”

“We only have a single keg of Ichor-ink left,” said Ethelvaed. “Enough for only two wizards to advance to Blaze, and you would have me use it on her?”

“Did I hesitate?” the Hand asked. “She’s stronger than any of your Flares, I guarantee it. Take her with you, and together you will destroy the thieves. You’ll cleanse this dishonour, and you will prove to the world that the Aremir family is still worthy of producing one of the four Unbound Lords.”

“What will you do, sir?” Khara asked.

Without the Emperor, the Hand would never be free. Without the Emperor, none of this mattered.

He couldn’t say for certain whether Khara would win. That would be up to her. She was a product of the Dominion, and nothing he said could change that now. He had to let go.

He said, “I am going to save the Emperor’s life.”

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Pirin sat on the lower bunk in the Featherflight’s crew quarters, nursing his wounded shoulder.

“It will heal in a few days,” Nomad said. He leaned over the stove, stirring a pot of soup—Alyus had made him do it. “That is, as long as you keep feeding it Essence and don’t aggravate it too much.”

Pirin had an enhanced body, now, and most had enhanced healing. Magic bolstered the body, so it only made sense that Essence could repair it. Still, he wanted to set it back in place and put it in a sling so it healed faster.

“If you hold still,” Myraden said, “I will help you set it.” She sat on the cot beside him. Pirin had helped bandage all of her wounds and scrapes—mostly so she didn’t get blood everywhere. With an enhanced body, her wizard blood wasn’t nearly as thin, and a cut wasn’t life-threatening.

Pirin took off his mask and set it on the bed beside him. Gray and Kythen were in the airship’s cargo hold now, but his Reyad was strong enough that it reached all the way over to Gray. Hopefully, without the mask, the gnatsnapper wouldn’t feel as much when they popped his shoulder back in place.

“Tell me where to push and how hard,” Myraden said. “I am not the healer among us.”

“Up slightly, then in,” Pirin said with confidence. He had recovered most of his healing knowledge from the Memory Chain, and he didn’t need to think about calling up the knowledge anymore. It was just…there, ready to use whenever he needed. He just knew it. “You’ll need to…uh, I dunno. How hard would you have to push to make a brick slide along the ground?”

“Not very hard anymore.”

“Well…however hard you’d’ve pushed before the enhancement,” he said.

She followed his instructions, and he gritted his teeth until his shoulder popped back into place. He gasped and winced and tried to keep his breaths steady. It didn’t stop a few instinctive shudders, but he was used to pain by now.

At that moment, Alyus’ head poked up from the hole in the floor between the crew quarters and the gondola. He raised his eyebrows. “Am I…interrupting something?”

“No,” Pirin and Myraden both said in unison, then shifted apart from each other.

“...Right.” Alyus climbed up to the top of the ladder and stepped into the crew quarters. “We can’t keep drifting. We need a course.”

“You maintained our westerly heading?” Nomad asked.

“I did indeed.”

“Now, we have what we need,” Pirin said. “If Ethelvaed was right—and I don’t see why he’d lie—then Sirdia is in even more danger than the Chancellor thinks. You said there’s a curse on that land that suppresses magical advancement—”

“As far as I can tell, only the advancements up to Blaze. You should be able to push to Wildflame frome Blaze, though it's not as if that makes any difference to the lowly wizards who find themselves completely incapable of advancing, or the advancements very difficult and slow.”

“So then we advance to Blaze on the way back,” Pirin continued, “and it should be fine, right?”

“Perhaps.” Nomad stroked his chin. “There is a new player, now, though. Lady Neria, a powerful mortal Lady, wealthy from her involvement in Dominion shipbuilding, is orchestrating a coup. She wants to take over the Dominion, and she claims to have an army.”

“Chaos on the Mainland only helps us,” Pirin said.

“Unless she manages a swift and decisive takeover.” Nomad dropped the ladle he was stirring with and faced them. “Sirdia only survived as long as it did because of its relative unimportance, and because the Emperor couldn’t afford another costly invasion of a distant land—not after conquering the nation of Pherodotes. But decades have passed since then and the Dominion has recovered. The only thing keeping Sirdia independent is the Emperor’s current war-weariness. Make no mistake: they have the means to destroy Sirdia.”

Pirin pursed his lips, then exhaled. He rolled his shoulder a little bit, then began to wind a sling around it with his spare bandages. “So…you want us to go after this Lady Neria?”

“If it is necessary for Sirdia’s survival,” Myraden said, “then we have no choice.”

“Why would she be building an army—however she’s doing that—if she’ll already conquer the Dominion with ease?” Pirin asked.

“Because the Dominion will be sending even armies to the Elven Continent, and she needs a force loyal to her to maintain control of the Mainland,” Nomad said. “We could take control of this army of hers.”

Pirin blinked in confusion. “Excuse me? You think we could take over a Dominion army? Or…an army made up of Dominion citizens?”

Nomad chuckled. “That’s where you’re mistaken. This isn’t an army of conscripts. If it was, someone would notice her making armour and training vast numbers of them, and there would be no guarantee of them obeying. No, she’s making an army out of nothing.”

Pirin glanced at Myraden. She shrugged, so he turned back to Nomad. “How?”

“There are…techniques I can think of that would make it work. She could create an Essence-fuelled army of construct-soldiers perfectly aligned to her will, so long as she had a device to control them. It would take years of planning and coordination, and incredible wealth, but it would be possible.”

Pirin clenched his jaw. “If we took control of the army, we could weaken her control and have another force to fight the Dominion off with.”

“Now that’s the spirit!” Nomad said. “We’ve maintained a similar course as her airship, if my hypotheses and senses are correct.”

“So we sneak aboard her airship and find out more,” Pirin said. “We take her army, and return to Sirdia not just as Wildflames, but with an army in tow?” He nodded. “I’m in.”