In the 19th, 20th, or 21st year of King Donahue’s reign — depending on which calendar one used — an estrangement in the Western Fortunes, now ten years old, had escalated to civil war.

A warlord had risen to power by the name of Kuinkazner, and it was to that cold and pitiless name that many strange rumors had come to be nailed. The fast-moving and well-financed Kuinkazner had humbled many of the ancient cities and shrines of northern Sanzakarth. Desert kingdoms seem to breed tyrants — one kind of desolation begetting another — and this Kuinkazner was as cruel as any other. He made an open show of those who denied his ancient claims: burning whole towns, crucifying entire families, seizing whatever assets pleased him, executing peaceful priests, burying scholars alive, throwing disabled children into pits of starving hyenas, desecrating temples erected to those better spirits who refused to hear his bloody vows, and enslaving tens of thousands for their unwilling part in his coming kingship.

Withstanding him, sequestered in the ancient fortress of Anzioch, was a young girl by the name of Silayujon. However, the current Queen of Anzioch, 22nd of her line, the scheming Guinsiratu, ignored the claims of Silayujon, intending instead to promote her own daughter, Shin Shadane, and come to treaty with Kuinkazner by marriage. And so, Anzioch was a city with two queens: one backed by the lawful Sabler Order and another by murder, malice, and intrigue.

Invoking a forgotten covenant, the Sablers captured Anzioch with only five thousand men and held it under the authority of an old but celebrated Vambrasian name:

P A L E D R A G O N.

The Sabler Commander, the prestigious General Saxallen Duralamayre, a man who had walked the world for eighty-five years and killed for seventy of them, held the city in obedience to King Donahue’s primary wish: Sanzakarth must not fall back into heathenry.

The very image of that heathenry was Kuinkazner, commanding a two-hundred-thousand-man army, whose hateful gaze now lay fixed on Anzioch, the great seaside fortress that guarded the southern Sea of Hooks.

Fortunately for the Sablers, their best allies included the legendary Blackthorns of the Eastern Fortunes and the House of Yale, which had recently immigrated from the distant skies of Royos. The breadth of the Sabler Commonwealth, with its fair practices, devotion to law, free markets, and broad moral and economic benevolence, was too philosophically precious and commercially prosperous to risk the advance of a rapacious desert-dwelling despot. Investing themselves into the matter, the Blackthorns and the Yales came to Anzioch offering aid, insight, money, and (as the Sablers had hoped) the use of their many strange artifacts.

Tristanué Azhora Yale was one such ally.

She was living on Arbonshire at the time, a small islet off the eastern side of Arbonhale, the island capital of the Sabler Commonwealth. It was purchased twenty years prior when two of her aunts, Allessia and Devon, barely older than her, were gallivanting around the Southern Rhone. It was open to anyone from the Houses and Blackthorn or Yale or any of their many political allies and personal friends. As for Tristanué, she loved to travel. Whether it was to the far Eastern Fortunes to see her relatives, those benevolent rulers of Nymiria, the Blackthorns, or west to San Sabé to visit her cousins there, she loved the breadth and diversity of the civilized world. Nonetheless, whenever Tristanué went home, she went to Arbonshire.

After having spent almost five months in Anzioch — in no small way irritating General Saxallaen Duralamayre with her many daring but unsanctioned midnight raids against Kuinkazner’s flanks and less-defended fortifications, which, when timed right, included the old religious capital of Anzukar — she was delighted to be over one hundred-and-thirty leagues away from even one grain of sand and the general’s scowls.

In those weeks, she and her younger sister Tristana returned to their favorite pastime, pearl-diving nude into the clear blue warm waters around Arbonshire. When the Ministry of the Ungentlemanly Warfare and Strange Auspices learned Tristanué planned to return to Anzioch, their senior officer, Lord Hoel, proposed a co-venture: allowing a small number of Sabler explorers and spies to travel with her.

Hoel would have made this petition to Tristanué’s successful cousin Orland, but she could not be found. Or, to Tristanué’s other cousin, the devout, rational, and beaming Kazandria, but a proposal of marriage — from a king no less — had seized her political and romantic sails like a gale-force crosswind. Even Hoel, whose fiercest detractors knew he possessed an utterly fearless soul and a mind for diabolically clever subterfuge, dared not come between a young girl and her royal vows. Still, he tried. Kazandria’s response, always in her pretty cursive, contained one name:

Tristanué.

So Hoel played the one hand Kazandria offered him, unaware whether he should raise or fold, whether he was playing an ace or a jack. Tristanué had distinguished herself alongside Kazandria and Prince Ezrabeth Paledragon, but she was the wild card: the one most likely to color outside the lines a little too boldly. Kazandria obeyed Scripture and Ezrabeth her Amendments, but there was no such inspired writing that curbed the impulses of Tristanué Azhora Yale. As for the officers Hoel requested, they were less soldiers than scientists and could offer little assistance to their Sabler brothers in Anzioch. However, Kimjudeya was of deep interest to the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and Strange Auspices. Just east of Sanzakarth, Kimjudeya was situated across the Axle of Mior, or ‘the Transom’ as the Sablers called it: a colossal arch of rock stretching over the entrance to the Sea of Hooks for thirty-three leagues.

Others called it the Devil’s Backbone.

Though presented professionally and dispassionately, Tristanué nevertheless politely declined Hoel’s proposal. Standing flat-footed in the young woman’s rejection, the powerful Lord Hoel, First Minister of the clandestine Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and Strange Auspices, fell to scheming.

Again.

During her previous months at Anzioch, Tristanué somehow became the bearer of title and deed to an old mountain fortress in Kimjudeya called the Tharn of Widows. The legalities of this acquisition remained dubious but owing to the great successes Tristanué and her family had won for the Sablers at Anzioch, Hoel decided not to look too closely into this curious land grab.

Fortunately, Hoel was presented with another lure.

The Ministry of Remote Ages had delivered a fragment of a northern prophecy flagged for relevance by a rather insightful scribe. As for the prophecy itself, it belonged to a Bezelite oracle named Adderyke, now ten centuries old.

All good politicians recognize few things coax the anxious soul like a well-timed prophecy.

So Hoel decided if he could not win Tristanué over on the merits of a co-venture or blackmail her over forged documents, he would play to her vanity — a foible all too common among the young and beautiful.

Adderyke’s prophecy, in part, read:

A dangerous one comes!

Beautiful like a smooth cedar in winter: leafless, lordless.

She is coveted by men; women desire her.

Wing and stone! She battles from above.

She is wrapped in the sky — a crown of sky, eyes of sky.

She judges from a hard terrace.

Under her, the night has grown wings!

Voncubréja rises!

Despite being warned that prophecies were little more than riddles dipped in molasses, sticky to the touch, and impossible to unknot, Tristanué nonetheless believed those old words forespoke her, or at least her growing popularity, though she preferred the word fame.

In other words: she took the bait.

And though vanity is never a virtue, her swagger was not entirely unfounded. The granddaughter of the Loring King, she considered herself heir to his assets and legend. Like all the Yales who were graced and glamorized by her grandfather’s most extraordinary power — the Loring Hex — she believed herself a deadly contestant in any match.

Like her father, her complexion was lighter than carob but darker than caramel, a hue the Sablers cited as cedar (though they sometimes spelled in sidar). This hue was semochan in the old Saarkan language and jharkaramé in the Kimjudeyan tongue. All this proving something as simple as color can elude consensus. And being Khytherian, her figure was entirely glabrous like the rest of her family or ‘leafless’ as the Saarkans put it: possessing no hair even down to her most intimate seam. And ‘without a lord,’ she reasoned, one would be ‘lordless’; unmarried — which she was. Being ‘coveted by men’ and ‘desired by women’ only meant she had impressed both sexes with equal effect — a feat she considered something of a triumph.

Regarding ‘wing and stone,’ she believed those words spoke of her great raptor and her Pier of Ventures.

‘Wrapped in the sky — a crown of sky, eyes of sky’ surely that was the light azure Ecclesiarch armor she had recently acquired, along with her azure hair and eyes. Unlike the rest of the children and grandchildren of Ryvern Yale, who were born with white, ivory, or cream-colored hair with bright amber eyes, Tristanué’s hair shined blue like a proud summer sky, as did her eyes. The blue complimented her skin with a paralyzing effect.

The ‘hard terrace’ must, she believed, refer to the Pier of Ventures. The last line, ‘Under her, the night has grown wings!’ could only mean her giant falcon, Mr. Midnight, who, as his name implied, was black as night with a beak lacquered in brass.

Regarding Voncubréja (pronounced vawn-koo-BREY-ah), neither the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and Strange Auspices nor the Ministry of Remote Ages could make sense of the name other than to lean on some incomplete and questionable southern scrolls that claimed it belonged to a vanished goddess-queen of Kimjudeya.

Captivated by all those words, ones that were simultaneously old and near, prevision that straddled the ages, Tristanué agreed to Hoel’s band of merry experts.

They were, in order:

Sir Anderclay - a titled mechanical engineer and naturalist from the Ministry of Distinctive Differences. His brother Andershaw was an accomplished astronomer in the Republic of Brune. Elshender of Tiel - a historian and archaeologist from the Ministry of Remote Ages. Syrolucis of Owlen - an older aristocratic arbiter from the weird Ministry of Undeviated Souls. Baloroy and Hax - two armed escorts, or ‘sure-men’ from the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and Strange Auspices. Tristanué guessed they were assassins.

Further distinguishing her trip were two kings and a prophetess named Lady Skythorn, a young saint who overthrew nations with carols and moved mountains into the sea with songs. The darling of the Sabler Order, she had personally taken up the obligation of destroying the Warlocks of Eoln, demon-taming sorcerers supporting Kuinkazner’s conquests in Sanzakarth with terrifying sorcery. Accompanying her was the handsome young King Lancider II, ally to a distant Saarkan king who sought to repay Lady Skythorn for the beneficence of her late mother. The second King was the enigmatic and imposing Wyngard, an itinerant beast-taming royal, towering, wild in look, who had taken an unconfessed interest in Tristanué.

In addition to all these exalted souls, two others came along: a pubescent Sanzakarth native named Surandot (formerly Jaquessa), who served as her page, and her black-haired, blue-eyed bodyguard Jocasta Valan.