ARTHUR

The last thing Arthur wants to do is leave his family to fight a war that he disagrees with, but leave he must. He didn’t spend a year wheedling his way into that damn forger’s good graces only to give up his rank. It was well-earned, just not in the traditional sense. It took patience and perseverance. It took threats and influence. It took time.

He won’t give this up for sentiment, not when he can still come back to his family, not now that he has one to look after. And he will return to them. There’s no doubt of that. Malais’ pithy little war is a joke in comparison to the brutal battles he once led for Simikee, especially the siege he led on Rajask.

But Rajask doesn’t bear thinking about. Those memories make his skin crawl, make him want to cower from Fukashi’s clever shadows and grab Cel and run. Those memories still keep him awake at night, when he lets them.

Back in Simikee, he’d been General Tsula. Now he’s an unimportant lieutenant with no true friends, only allies. All he can think about as he and his fellow junior officers are briefed by his commander, General Vivienne Vonadieu, is his daughter’s tear-stained face when he’d left. Fukashi’s resigned pout comes in at a close second, but he at least understood Arthur’s need to leave home, so that he might win them a brighter future.

For all her cleverness, Cel had not.

“The Department Heads are as follows,” Commander Vonadieu declares and starts reading off names and jobs and subordinate assignments. Arthur is unimpressed yet unsurprised when he is declared Head of Supplies and is given a meager fifteen subordinates to manage, five per ship, all lower-ranking soldiers who probably need minimal supervision to get their jobs done.

He holds his at ease posture more stiffly than his peers and bites back a scowl.

Vivienne Vonadieu is the wife of a popular businessman who heads the city’s new solar power grid. Arthur has only met him in passing, one Leopold Vonadieu, but the man struck him as an arrogant social climber, leeching off the accomplishments of others. His wife is far more impressive. She’s taller than most Malroix women and more muscular. Fierce. Damn good with a sword. She demands respect, doesn’t ask for it.

Doesn’t have to.

People so easily bow to a handsome face and a strong voice.

It takes three days to get the ships ready to set sail. The glittering solar-sails are an invention of Leopold’s company. Arthur hears so in passing. He is not terribly impressed by them, especially when they sparkle so prettily in the sun. The purple glass panels are mounted where cloth sails would billow, easy targets for anyone with a bit of sense. He’s seen everything from Keshling foggers to Vultharian icetanks. Malroix ships are sluggish and fragile, but these people are too closed off from the rest of the world to know that. They assume they have the height of advancements, because their own advancements are all they know.

Their lack of knowledge of the outside world is carefully orchestrated by their government, which is the Malroix military’s upper crust officers, and most especially the three Councillor Generals and the city’s superior supreme, the Command General of Malais. But in this matter, they are simply arrogant. They choose ignorance, these fools.

Arthur doesn't bother to get to know his subordinates. They’re fodder in the long run, none of them possessing the gumption to climb the ranks in any way he can take advantage of. It may take three days for the ships to be ready, but with such an easy job, it only takes him one to do his part. He has his soldiers in line so easily. He intimidates them in the first brief, and they scramble to follow his orders so clumsily that it grates on his nerves.

He lets none of his annoyance show. This isn’t Simikee, much as he misses it. He has to be careful not to step on the wrong toes. But his subordinates get glimpses of who he used to be in a sharp word here, a quick suggestion there—and their shock is insulting.

He wants to say to them: do you know who I am?

But he doesn’t, of course. He’s not stupid.

He smiles thinly and pretends it was a fluke.

The Malroix are so long untested by conflict, yet this little war is sure to end in their favor. Their soldiers barely know what real battle is, but their leaders are ready to hurl them at Busurul. Numbers assure them victory, so they are not worried. It’s shamefully wasteful.

When the ships finally set out, Arthur is relieved to finally be moving. The winds off The Knell are tinged not only with sea salt, but with the scent singular to storms. He breathes it in. For most of the comically short voyage, he has stood at the bow of the ship, leaning into the metal apex, his eyes trained on the Pink Islets that sit just a few miles ahead. Beyond those pink beaches, bruised sky grumbles and flashes with lightning. One could turn a full circle and see the storm in every direction, even beyond Malais. It’s a ring around the Golden Isles called the Stormbelt, a mighty storm generated by Malais’ Godcore.

Arthur’s mouth thins at the reminder, dark memories scraping at the back of his thoughts.

Godcores are the souls of long-dead gods. They are strewn throughout the world, giant spheres of energy that humans have been known to take advantage of. Malais’ Godcore is the Stormcore. Its energy feeds Malroix civilization, its power-grid as well as its people, though it’s said to weaken with every passing year, thus Leopold Vonadieu’s determined shift to solar power.