The execution site was arranged just in front of the royal table. The Emperor looked down from his perch to the tables, empty for now but already decorated, then further to rows and rows of seats where his people were placed — those that were influential, noble or rich enough to be invited to the palace itself. Outside, beyond the walls, he knew the simpler folk were celebrating, too. Perhaps he would be able to hear them if it were quieter, but the excited noise of the gathering obliterated any sound that might have floated in from the city.

The few clouds that had drifted about in the morning disappeared by now, scorched away by the sun. Rann’s stare was firmly on the southern sky just in front of them, but her side vision let her see her husband’s gaze following her, and she muttered —

‘After all our preparations, imagine how very wonderful it’ll be if they don’t show.’

‘I doubt Erren would do that, after —’

‘Erren!’ She huffed in scorn. ‘That’s exactly what concerns me. No battle yet has he liked enough to attend. Why would he change now?’

‘A battle is not what we want, either.’

‘It will have to happen eventually,’ Rann said. ‘Better now when we’re prepared, at least.’ She moved her head a little to check behind her head, making sure again that none were close enough to hear. ‘And I’d like to see those iron fliers, too.’

With some surprise, the Emperor realized he was somewhat curious himself. The notion both repulsed and fascinated him — the Old People's arts, brought to life. He did not wish for the return of the black skies, or the dirt and dust, or any of the other horrors of the Old People world — but he did wonder how exactly it had all been achieved. Nothing he knew had that kind of power, and perhaps there was a way to turn that power to a better use…

He watched the entertainment, all the while aware of how rigid Rann remained. The people likely noticed that as well, but he hoped it would not seem too odd to them, coming from her who could be like that often enough. These were times when her warrior side woke in her; this was when he understood her least. She would stare, motionless, poised as if about to strike prey, and in those moments he could no longer see in her the one he loved, but only someone to fear. But this part of her nature mattered to her, and so he had come to accept it.

There would indeed be prey today, whether Waterlanders came or not. As musicians and dancers, declaimers and actors rotated before his eyes, the Emperor could see Arenn behind the stage, stationed with the guards as they kept watch over the prisoner. After the performances were over, just before the feast, the spy was scheduled to die. Blood would awaken everyone’s appetite. It was an ancient drive, and not something to discuss openly, but arrangers of events still exploited it. The spy himself seemed asleep, apparently unbothered for the moment by his fate; but soon enough his head would fall, and just like that he would be no more than meat. None would touch him, not these days, yet the sweet smell of blood would affect them all regardless.

Now that she was in the public’s eye Arenn looked impassive, but the Emperor knew she would be uneasy, placed so close to the one she did not want dead yet could not help it. He saw the spy awaken and speak to her; she gave him no reply, but waved for water. When a guard poured it right into the child’s beak, some of it missed, leaving droplets to glitter on the feathers. There was nothing else there, on that small body — no badge of honor, no sign of belonging — nothing but the ropes. The device had been left behind, in the deep rooms, so as not to frighten the people with a display of forbidden technology. They would see some anyway if Waterlanders did arrive, but there was no need to worry them beforetime.

It was a shame that the Emperor did not enjoy the performances, but he could not help being so distracted. ‘Tomorrow’, Erren had promised; yet here that tomorrow was, drawing to a close, and still in the sky there was nothing but the sun that crept across and downwards, slow as a snail yet inexorable. Perhaps they would not show, after all. Perhaps Erren truly was the coward Rann thought him.

The last performance was a ballad — long and grand, chosen for the finish because of its somber subject. The musician sang of the battles against the Old People, and the many lives that were there futilely lost. Progressing from that to the execution would come quite naturally. The singer was known to the Emperor. Hannir by name, she had performed for the court many times before, always appreciated for her clear voice and poetic skill. But today of all days he could not hear her, had his thoughts wandering off constantly, and only hoped she did not notice and was not offended.

The sun was firmly to the Emperor’s right, already nearing the edge of the wall. The lower levels lay in blue shadow already, and the fires by the stage and on the tables have been lit. One of the guards was lighting some around the prisoner, too, and the Emperor saw the child’s stare follow the movements. Those blue eyes would never turn black now. Of all the unforgivable things Erren had done, this was the worst: sending a child to its death, and all just for the sake of a message… If only Erren would come in time to save this child — if only he cared to save him — there could still be some hope. But the sky remained empty.

The final chords of the ballad caught the Emperor off-guard, and he didn’t at first realize why all of a sudden such noise came from everywhere; then, as he saw Hannir spreading her wings wide in acknowledgement, he knew it for the end. Life-long training pushed him to pretend all was well, to stomp and caw in approval of his subject’s performance. But as he watched Hannir step down and walk away, something in his soul felt very small and very cold.

He should have never expected more of Erren. He was a traitor; he would only ever be that now. It had all been over the day he had left.

The Emperor stood up, and the crowd fell silent. Rann’s breathing was suddenly audible to him; she was still staring at the sky, but he sensed her tension, her rage, and knew she’d given up on expecting Waterland to do as promised. All the work was to be for nothing. Then again, perhaps that was Waterland’s plan — to waste the capital’s strength, and come in the night when everyone was tired from waiting. If so, it would be thwarted — Rann would be ready for such a turn, too — but for now, under this blank sky, there was nothing but disappointment.

The people were watching the Emperor. There was still the speech left, the last item on the list before the execution.

‘My dear people,’ he began, and was greeted by bowing and stomping. ‘It is a great honor to me that you would celebrate the birth day of my person with such joy. It is my duty to lead you, and guard you, and together with you advance to greater accomplishments. It is a duty that I do with pride, and I am grateful to all of you for your trust in me. I could not be more fortunate.’

The speech was all too familiar; the words varied, but the meaning remained, always. It was imperative to convey to the people how much he valued them. A number of his ancestors had been dethroned and destroyed over failure to do just that.

‘But not everyone was willing to follow our path,’ he continued. ‘Some have chosen to stray.’ A grumbling rose above the seats even before he called out the name. ‘The country of Waterland, which calls itself a republic, had sent us a messenger. That child you can see over there — the child who is…’

‘Traitor!’ someone screamed, and a number of voices rose in support. The Emperor opened his wings in a gesture of mollification, to silence them again.

‘A traitor indeed,’ he said once they subsided. ‘And by the law of this land, as a traitor he shall now die.’

The crowd cheered, stomping now with enough vigor to make the perches tremble. The prisoner stared into nothing, blinking heavily — impossible to tell at this distance whether from weariness, or tears, or simply the evening sunlight that he couldn’t avoid, tied up as he was. Arenn was looking up at the sky, keeping her face devoid of expression. Whatever she felt, she would not be careless enough to show any pity, not now when she could be torn apart for it.

‘If they had not sent him here, it would not need to happen,’ the Emperor went on. ‘If they left us in peace, we could be merciful. But they made their choices, and so we make ours. All traitors shall meet the same fate.’

Looking in the darkly joyful faces below, the Emperor felt sharper than ever the certainty that they would make him meet that very fate, too, if he displeased them even a little. He had known from the start that his title was formal and his power limited, but never before had it stung quite like this.

He took a breath to continue when he saw Arenn suddenly dart forward. So he was wrong about her, too — she would speak out, would plead for the child’s life, as if today hadn’t brought enough disappointment. As she landed before him he stared at her, amazed that she did not know better, appalled by what he would have to do to her now. He had no clue what to say to her, how to stop her, but there was also Rann — Rann and her anger, Rann who hissed in a furious whisper before Arenn could open her beak —

‘Don’t you dare! Don’t even think of it, you stupid —’

‘They’re coming,’ Arenn muttered, low enough for only the couple to hear, and at first the Emperor thought he’d misheard. He saw Rann’s eyes dart over the sky again as self-doubt flashed in her, but still it was empty, and she shot back, offended —

‘There’s nothing there! Are you saying they’re invisible, have you been listening to that —’

‘Not there,’ Arenn said, and something was very wrong about her voice. ‘Behind you. Look to the north, Majesty.’

Rann whipped around, and the Emperor turned to look with her, but before he could make anything out someone below shrieked —

‘What is that?!’

Then the Emperor saw, too, and at first did not believe his eyes.

Something was off about those shapes. Small and distant, they seemed nothing like the descriptions of old, but that was not all. Dark, oblong shapes hung in the sky as if at a strange angle, in a way that didn’t quite make sense — as if something in their geometry didn’t add up — and they did not seem to move, yet somehow there was still a feeling of movement. He could not really put it into words.

The crowd began to grumble again, louder by the second. Rann turned back to him, and just like that she was changed — elated, now that a battle was coming after all.

‘Tell the people to leave,’ she told him. ‘I’ll go down.’

The Emperor nodded, and in a flash of black and gold she was gone, dropping like a stone to the ground where under the perches her people were stationed.

The noise of the crowd washed over him like waves, growing; he saw them begin to move, and knew he had to take control before it was too late. The shapes loomed over the horizon, seemingly motionless, but by now all of the people had apparently seen them and were growing frightened. The Emperor flapped his wings to call for their attention, then shouted over the noise —

‘Fear not! You shall be protected! Leave for your homes at once, for this here shall now be a battleground — but fear not, for we shall prevail and celebrate our victory tomorrow!’ He searched for words, the right words, but with the wrongness of those shapes filling his mind it had become a challenge. ‘Waterland may threaten us, but we have far superior —’

‘Waterland’s to the south!’ someone yelled from the crowd, and the Emperor squinted down to see, but the unsteady light of the torches made it harder to tell faces apart. ‘That can’t be them!’

‘Shut up!’ someone else shrieked. ‘That must be some foul trick of theirs, to confuse us!’

‘A foul trick indeed,’ the Emperor proclaimed, wishing he could be as certain as he sounded. ‘Confusion is the way of Waterland, but where in their fetid marshes they could trap our brave soldiers, here in the heart of our land they will have no chance. Fear not, my people!’ He flapped his wings again, for emphasis. ‘Hooray!’

They responded, but the shouts came half-hearted, and muddled because most were taking wing at the same time. He watched them rise up above him and disperse, so fast that in just a few heartbeats the courtyard cleared. Plates left behind gleamed like clean-picked bones. The Emperor looked down, searching for his wife, but could see only a servant hurrying away with the decorations she must have thrown off. The rest of the soldiers, grey with dust, all appeared the same at this angle.

‘Majesty,’ Arenn said. ‘I don’t quite see the point to this trick. Why would they come from the wrong side if we can see them come just the same? They gain nothing by doing that.’

The Emperor looked across the yard to where the prisoner still stood, alone now that Rann called his guards to her side.

‘Let’s ask the messenger,’ the Emperor said and took flight, with Arenn falling hastily into place behind him.

The prisoner was staring north, kept staring even as they landed before him. Now, close up, the Emperor could see he looked feverish; but instead of excitement he only seemed confused, and the Emperor wondered if he could still understand what was happening.

‘You should be glad,’ he said to the prisoner. ‘They have come, after all.’

The child’s eyes did not leave the shapes.

‘But it’s not them.’

Again the foreboding rang through the Emperor’s mind, a sense of something forgotten, something horrific, but he went on stubbornly —

‘Who else would that be? The flying machines are coming, just as Erren —’

‘My country’s flying machines are nothing like these. I do not know what these are.’ The child picked weakly at the ropes with his beak. ‘Will you untie me now? Your feast is over, the execution will not happen today.’

‘Do not be so certain,’ the Emperor said, but his thoughts kept circling the objects in the sky. Something about them was trying to make itself heard in his head, something that he couldn’t quite catch. ‘I have promised it to my people, and I keep my promises.’

‘You have promised them victory,’ the child said.

‘And I shall bring it, or die.’

‘Then you might as well untie me now. To me, that does look much like your death.’

A guard landed next to them and bowed, eyeing the spy with obvious distaste.

‘You may speak,’ the Emperor said.

‘Her Majesty sends word,’ the guard reported, slightly breathless. ‘The defenders are in position. By sundown the attackers will be upon us.’

The sun hung above the wall, its red disk half-covered by the treetops.

‘So soon? How…’ the Emperor began, turning to the objects again — they had grown bigger, true, but they still seemed too far to have much of a speed, and there was still something wrong about them, something —

Then suddenly it all slid into place, and he stared, gaping, disbelieving. To move the way they did — in this odd, wrong manner that felt like it tricked the eyes, as if there was yet wasn’t any change — they had to be much larger than he had thought, and much higher, descending as well as advancing. That was what made them so strange, and that meant they were actually moving at an impressive speed.

‘What are these?’ he breathed out, and his own voice sounded alien to him.

Nobody answered him. Around, the winds were rising as if before a storm, though no cloud marred the sky.

It did not feel real, after all.

The Emperor stood on the abandoned execution platform, in a now empty courtyard, staring up at where the colossal machines drifted closer, rapid and utterly silent. Around him, the trees whispered in the wind, and the perches swayed and screeched — a mournful, troubled sound; but he could hear nothing else — no calls, no movement — and knew that all life in the woods had gone still, paralyzed as one by fear, watching the sky where the unknown loomed.

The Emperor’s mind boggled at it. The Empire was the world — so it was known, or had been. Apart from the small patch of Waterland there was nothing else — nothing but endless expanse of ocean, spreading every which way for as far as a crow could fly. Yet here was evidence right before his eyes that there was more — that there existed something that birthed these immensities, each the size of his palace at least.

If this was something that Old People had made, then no wonder countless ancestors of his had perished fighting them. Something so heavy, so shapeless should not possess flight at all, and for the life of him the Emperor could not comprehend how it was possible. Yet they did fly, and as they approached they loomed larger and larger, taking over the sky until one was right overhead, lowering itself until there was nothing left of the sky but a thin strip encircling the horizon — deep red on one side, blue on the other. The belly of the thing right above hung low enough that some of the firelight from the courtyard reached it, showing bumps and ridges — sheet metal, the Emperor guessed, each plate as large as the yard he stood in.

‘Let me untie him,’ Arenn said, and the Emperor realized with a jolt that she was still worrying about the prisoner. ‘We must leave here, all of us, leave Rann to her business. This is too dangerous, and he is weak, it is cruel —’

‘All right,’ he said, only wanting to be rid of her so as not to be distracted, ‘untie him, go.’

The knot was elaborate, but anxiety must have given Arenn greater insight, because she managed to unravel it in record time. The prisoner nearly fell on her, and she had to let him lean on her as she led him to the edge. But before they reached it, at last something changed.

An opening appeared in the metal, one of the pieces sliding aside to let out a much smaller shape. The Emperor had been looking up for so long in this limited light that his eyes started aching and it was hard to see, but it appeared to him that the shape began to descend.

‘Your Majesty,’ Arenn said, insistent. ‘We must leave now.’

There was reason in her words, yet something about this new development claimed his attention, and he waved her aside. From below, he heard the clicks of Rann’s weaponry taking aim, heard the sizzle of the lightning as it came to life in its cages. Its glow at last gave his eyes some relief, and he could see better. This shape had no wings, either. It was a much paler grey than the metal from which it emerged, and looked solid, seamless like an eggshell and in a way oddly…

Beautiful, the Emperor thought, and a sudden flash of hope lit up his mind. Something this lovely, this flawless would not be dangerous. The machines seemed hostile only because they were immense, but they had done nothing yet to prove it — and perhaps they would not, perhaps whatever they bore had come in peace… Perhaps, at the end of it all, there would be nothing to fear.

Oblivious of the world around him, overtaken by fascination, the Emperor watched the shell drift downwards. He gave up on guessing what it could be — he would learn soon enough; and so he only waited and watched, enraptured, as the thing touched the ground with a soft thump, raising small puffs of dust.

He heard the screeches from below as the weapons turned on their bases, following the shell.

‘Hold the fire,’ he called hastily, pitching his voice to carry, just in case Rann had a different opinion on it all. ‘No fire without my command.’

For a few moments, nothing happened. He stared at the shell, but it remained motionless. Someone landed near him, scraping the platform, and when he turned he saw Rann.

‘Why are you holding?’ she asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. ‘This is clearly a threat, this is…’

‘Not necessarily. Look how perfect it is, just look! I wonder…’

The pearl moved a little, and he forgot to speak. Out of nowhere a crack appeared on its surface, feather-thin and forming an oval; then, soundlessly, the oval was pushed out and slid aside, and a sudden gush of white light flooded the yard, blinding, making the Emperor look away.

When he turned back, they were already coming out.

Beautiful, he thought again, seeing them, and his breath caught. These were no Old People, certainly — none of that awkward frame, or disproportionate limbs, or inflexible joints. More than anything, in shape they resembled horses, but their skin was smooth like a frog and blue as a child’s eyes, sparkling gold and green where light brushed it. And they had faces — faces that were, perhaps, the only thing that somewhat resembled the Old People: flattish, with slit-like mouths and huge shining eyes that were placed in front, not at the sides.

The faces turned to where the crows stood on the platform, and their eyes met the Emperor’s.

Before such beauty his soul soared. There would be no danger, no battle after all, he was certain; if anything could bring peace and harmony, it would be these magical, wondrous beings, with their gazes full of wisdom. He saw the soft rising of their chests, the liquid movement of their limbs…

But near him, below and to the side, the lightning still sizzled, spurting fire, and before he could speak — before he could think at all — the visitors’ eyes were drawn to it, and changed.

‘Kill the aim,’ the Emperor said hoarsely, his throat grown sandy. Rann understood and took over, shouting —

‘Down with the weapons! No aim!’

But as the last of her words rang out he already knew they were too late.

The visitors had six limbs — he didn’t notice at first, because the top ones hung in line with the second pair. But he saw them now when they lifted a metallic bar, black against the faintly glittering blue skin — saw them as they aimed.

He did not even have time to move before a sheet of red light washed over his head, singeing the feathers. He sensed the heat and ducked, and the next thing he knew he was being pushed off the platform. He half-rolled, half-flew down, landing on the ground and in near-full darkness.