A Vow Beneath the Iron Tide

How it begins

The enemy fleet arrived beneath the sea wall instead of beyond it.

Neris watched its masts rise through the enchanted water like trees growing inside glass. Each ship leaned at a different angle. On the nearest deck, sailors tied themselves to the rails.

A commander stood beside the figurehead, holding a white cloth above his head.

“You're sinking,” Neris called.

“Yes.”

“You should stop.”

“I was hoping to discuss that.”

She recognized the voice. Darian Senn had negotiated the last blockade with such perfect courtesy that the council used his name as an insult.

Now water climbed his coat.

Neris opened a narrow channel in the wall. A boat drifted through, carrying the commander, two exhausted rowers and a small child asleep beneath a sail.

She looked at the child first.

Darian followed her gaze.

“There are others.”

“How many?”

“More than your council will want to hear.”

The wall trembled.

For three hundred years it had held back the tide through vows made by the harbor's ruling family. Neris had inherited the work, the keys and a set of ceremonies designed by people who never expected to ask whether she wanted any of them.

Darian stepped onto the quay.

“I can give the binding another name.”

She understood him.

A marriage vow. Another person tied to the city. Enough borrowed strength to keep the water standing while the fleet came through.

“No,” she said.

He bowed his head.

“Then tell me what else is possible.”

The question surprised her more than the proposal.

Above them, council guards gathered on the stair. Beyond the wall, the open sea continued pulling at the ships.

Neris considered the evacuation bells, the empty warehouses and the people her city had spent years calling an enemy.

“There is a way,” she said. “It won't belong to either of us.”

Darian set down the white cloth.

“For once,” he said, “that sounds promising.”