Liaza did not choose. Davit chose for her. He hoisted her onto his hip, kicking off the cracked flagstones of Jheva with enough force to shatter the paving, and bounded toward the boarding gangway of his skyship, the *Alaverdi*. The wind screamed across the precipice. Behind them, the abyss belched black brine into the upper mist, the shattered crystalline spire raining needles of cold turquoise across the village roofs. "Secure the stays!" Davit bellowed, throwing Liaza onto the brass grating of the quarterdeck. "Cut the moorings! Now!" Crewmen in greaves of blackened silver sliced the tether ropes with broad-bladed daggers. The ship shuddered, lifting on its buoyancy ribs. Below the hull, the world fell away. Liaza scrambled to her knees, reaching desperately toward the shrinking cliff face. Her palms caught only bitter vapor. The roof of her grandmother's stone cottage shrank to a grey pebble, swallowed by the rising mantle of clouds. "They have no defense down there," she shouted over the howl of the rushing air. She scrambled toward Davit, grabbing the stiff wool of his coat. "Turn around! You brought this beast to their doors with your noise and your iron!" "The beast came because your blood sang to it, girl," Davit said without looking at her. He planted himself at the helm, his palms gripping the steering yoke. "And if we stay, it digests the entire landmass down to its bedrock. We run, or we become ash." He threw the steering yoke to port. The vessel groaned, pitching violently as it plunged into the jaws of the Shulaveri Canyons—a narrow passage bordered on either side by sheer, drifting towers of quartz and petrified moss. Storm-clouds curdled inside the passage, bloated and purple, spitting sheets of static. Then the abyss rose to meet them. A black limb, thick as a watchtower and slick with foul-smelling grease, breached the cloudline behind their rudder. It had no eyes, no joints; it was a lash of liquid dark that split into a dozen hair-thin filaments, whistling as they sliced through the gale. "Evasive rudder!" Davit barked. "Bring the keelson burners to full draw!" "The core cannot endure that pressure, my lord!" a deckhand yelled, clutching a shuddering brass winch. "Burn it anyway!" The skyship plummeted through a pocket of dead air. Liaza’s stomach rose into her throat. She slid across the rain-slick planks, her palms searching for purchase against the rivets. Above them, a lash of shadow grazed the mainmast. The yardarm snapped with the sound of a dry bone breaking, tumbling down into the churning clouds below. Another coil struck the starboard flank. The vessel tilted at forty degrees, scraping against the crystalline wall of the gorge. Turquoise sparks showered the deck in blinding torrents, hissing against wet wood. Liaza pulled herself up by an iron stanchion. The air tasted of copper and burning oil. She could hear the entity’s breath—a rhythmic, sucking vacuum that pulled the heat out of her skin. She had spent nineteen years mending the fates of goats and weavers, tying golden knots of quiet luck for women who only wanted healthy babes. She knew nothing of slaughter. She shrank against the bulwark, her knees trembling beneath her sodden skirts. To her right, the lashing cables of the cargo deck gave way under the strain. A chest of solid ballast iron—five hundred pounds of raw anchor-metal—sheared its iron bolts. It careened across the slanting deck straight toward her ribs, sliding fast on a skim of greasy rain. Liaza froze. Her hands reached out instinctively, fate-threads flickering like frail yellow sparks around her knuckles, entirely useless against an iron crate hurtling toward her skull. "Liaza!" Davit abandoned the helm. In three strides, he cleared the steps of the quarterdeck. He did not call out an order or reach for his sword; he simply threw his entire body between her and the hurtling metal. His shoulder hit her sternum, throwing her clear into the shadow of the cabin door. In the next fraction of a second, the corner of the iron chest struck Davit’s left arm, pinning him against the bulwark before bouncing off and crashing through the portside railing into the mist. Bone cracked. Davit hissed through gritted teeth, falling onto one knee. Liaza scrambled to his side, her terror momentarily forgotten. Davit’s dark leather sleeve was shredded from shoulder to wrist. Blood welled up thick and hot from a deep, jagged furrow where the iron edge had torn the flesh down to the white sheen of muscle. "You're bleeding," she stammered, reaching out. Her fingertips brushed the edge of the wound, recoiling at the burning warmth. "Why did you—" "Back inside," he snarled, though the color had drained from his olive skin, leaving him pale as tallow. He shoved her hand away with his good right arm. "Get behind the hatch. Now!" The vessel struck an upwelling of air, pitching nose-down. Across the gorge, two massive limbs converged, forming a living wall of roiling, oily flesh that blocked their exit. The Shulaveri Canyons were ending in a cul-de-sac of quartz teeth, and the entity waited to swallow the hull whole. "My lord! We are trapped!" the helmsman shrieked, bleeding from a cut above his eye. Davit rose, swaying on his boots. His left arm hung limp, dripping red onto the soaked deck boards. His grey eyes hardened, burning with an obstinate, terrifying fury. "Vent the keelson," Davit ordered. His voice was flat, devoid of panic. "Lord Davit—that will crack the vessel's floating spine!" "I said vent it! Blow the valves! All of them!" He dragged himself to the main pressure lever beside the helm, wrapped his bloodied hand around the greasy iron bar, and pulled down with all his remaining strength. A shriek of tortured bronze echoed through the keel. A blinding dome of blue fire erupted from the vents beneath the skyship’s stern. The shockwave tore through the narrow cleft, shattering the surrounding quartz towers into a billion blinding fragments. The sudden, violent discharge of core energy punched through the mist like a dawn explosion. The appendages of the Mts'q'emsebi writhed, blistering and hissing as the heat burned their oily hide. With a hollow, bellowing groan that shook the teeth in Liaza's jaw, the beast recoiled, plunging back into the black cloud-ocean. Behind them, the *Alaverdi* died. The blue glow in the hull sputtered out. The buoyancy ribs lost their hum. The craft became nothing more than a thousand tons of falling wood and iron, hurtling out of the gorge and clipping through the dense, tangled canopy of an unmapped, overgrown island. Branches whipped the deck. Rigging shredded. The sound of splintering timber was deafening. Liaza threw her arms around Davit’s waist as the hull scraped across moss-covered stone, tearing away the keel, grinding to a halt in a violent, shuddering slide that flung them both into a mound of crushed ferns and damp earth. Silence fell over the wreckage, broken only by the hiss of cooling steam and the steady drip of rain from giant, ribbed leaves. Liaza pushed herself up, spitting dirt. She was bruised, her clothes soaked, but whole. Beside her, Davit lay on his back among the fern fronds. His breath rattled in his chest, his left sleeve soaked through with crimson that stained the pale green moss beneath him. "Davit," she whispered, crawling toward him. She pressed her hands against his torn forearm to staunch the flow. "Davit, wake up. Please." He opened his eyes halfway, his lips dry and pale. "Still bossing me... weaver?" Before she could answer, the foliage parted. The damp smell of crushed fern gave way to the sharp, bitter scent of dried wormwood and burnt resin. Footsteps approached—soft, deliberate, completely unhurried. A figure stepped through the curtain of dangling vines, holding a gnarled walking stick made of seasoned hornbeam. "You have brought a great and terrible power to my home, children." Liaza froze, her hands hovering above Davit's bloodied arm. She looked up through the drifting jungle mist. Standing above them, completely dry under the canopy, was Keto.

Whispers on the Wind