Prologue
James Dawson, Hero of the Battle of Caer Rigor, and captain of the airship Krystshun, stood with keys in hand and contemplated the ramifications of her treason.
For starters, “James” was a lie, and “Dawson” was a surname she had picked by random off of a tombstone. Her sex and gender had been a carefully guarded secret for eighteen years. That wasn’t treason against the Crown, not in the way that the keys in her hand were. But living as a man definitely thumbed the nose of the Empyrium’s strict social order.
She had served in Her Majesty’s Navy since she was seventeen years old, and was now the youngest Naval officer ever to be considered for a seat in the Admiralty. If chosen, Captain James Dawson would be the first member of the Royal Navy’s Aeronaut Corps to serve on the Empyrium’s highest military council.
If she unlocked the fetters that bound the hands of the man in front her, however, her life and her career as she knew them would be over. The prisoner shifted on his feet, no doubt uncertain himself about her intentions.
The keys jangled softly as she flipped through them. When she had found the right one, the Captain closed the meager distance between her and her silent “guest”. She didn’t need to look up at his face, to feel his shock and disbelief.
“You are free to go, Your Highness,” she said in the low-toned tenor that she had perfected in her first year as an aeronaut. “I apologize for the inconvenience of your capture.”
“What the hell?” the prisoner finally spoke.
His Kymrin accent was cultured, as befit a man of his station and education. It was, however, still unmistakable, impossible to confuse with the crisp, clipped accent of the Empyrium’s High Society. It was an audible reminder that outside the thick oak door of her quarters, the Captain and the Crown Prince were sworn enemies in a bitter war that had been waged for almost almost two decades.
“I have no intention of handing you over to my superiors,” Dawson finally lifted her eyes from the level of their hands, and met the Kymrin’s gaze.
Her breath hitched for just a moment when she looked him in the eye. She had expected the keen intelligence, but it was the unfettered wildness that stared back at her that stole her breath. She had heard that the sons of the late Kymrin king, Gwyn Ap Nudd, were as wild as their fabled father. It was a known fact that the youngest prince of the Kymrin had been little better than a vicious beast, who had torn children apart and then butchered their mothers in their sleep. His older brother, the Crown Prince, had a quieter reputation, but it was said that human women were helpless against his charms and that he could tear out a man’s throat with as much ease as a rabid wolf. Dawson had scoffed at such descriptions as little more than the most blatant propaganda, but for just a second, she could believe every single horrible thing that had ever been said about the line of Gwyn Ap Nudd.
There was a look in Derwyn Ap Gwyn’s bark-brown eyes that promised the annihilation of all that Dawson represented. She didn’t blame him for his rage. She even understood it, in her own way. But it was hard to maintain eye contact with an Otherkin prince who clearly wanted nothing more than to burn her airship out of the sky.
“Then what do you intend?” Derwyn’s voice was clear, bright, and hard.
“I intend to help you escape. It was sheer dumb happenstance that my men even captured you. I certainly gave no order for them to do so.”
Confusion softened the edges of his anger, and his gaze turned wary. The prince’s thick brown eyebrows knitted together as his brow wrinkled in an expression of disbelief.
“Freeing me would be treason, Captain Dawson.”
“I am aware.”
Dawson broke eye contact and moved around the corner of her heavy oak desk, away from her prisoner. She stopped when she was between her chair and the middle drawer of her desk. She then pulled her shoulders back and clasped her hands behind her.
“I have committed treason almost weekly for the last five years. What’s one more act of silent defiance?”
Derwyn was silent for a moment. He rubbed his wrists and winced at the raw skin that the cold-forged iron cuffs had left behind.
“What sort of treason would the famous Captain Dawson ever commit?” his question was a challenge.
“I have a position of military power that few in Kymry can claim. I have used that privilege to the benefit of the Resistance.”
“In what way?” the Prince lifted his narrow chin and looked down his damn nose at her.
It was obvious that the heir apparent to the Kymrin throne wouldn’t be persuaded with words and conviction alone. The Captain met Derwyn’s piercing gaze for a moment longer, then reached beneath her deep blue jacket and pulled a key out of the pocket cleverly sewn into its inside lining.
The small room was so silent that she could hear in perfect detail the heavy tread of boots above them and the shouts of her men as they prepared the Krystshun’s sails for the storm that had yet to break over the horizon. They all knew the currents of the wind, and the signs of the clouds that gathered above their main mast. Dawson, in particular, had always been attuned to the scent of rain and ozone that heralded a gale. It was a peculiar gift she had never been able to understand, but it had never once steered her, or her ship, into a storm without warning.
She smelled ozone now. It had grown thicker by the hour and it was almost to the point where Dawson could feel the kiss of latent electricity up and down the back of her neck. She intended to use the storm to cover Derwyn Ap Gwyn’s escape, though she admitted nothing of her plans for the moment.
She opened her desk’s middle drawer with a brief twist of her wrist. Then it was a simple matter of pulling open the false bottom and retrieving the sealed envelope within the hidden compartment. She handed the folded and wax-sealed paper over to her unbound prisoner. He took it and turned it over once in his hands, before the wax seal caught his interest.
After a moment, Derwyn jerked his head up. He stared at her with a mixture of disbelief and incredulity.
“This is the Highwayman’s symbol,” he held the envelope out to her, the wax seal bright in the mote-filled light between them.
The image impressed in the blood-red wax was that of a horse in full gallop to the left, above the shaft of a yeoman’s arrow that pointed right. Over the years it had gained a particular notoriety in Kymry. To the Kymrin Resistance, it had become a symbol of hope, of power on their behalf in some high place. To the Empyreans, it had become a harbinger of destruction, of battles thwarted, supply lines disrupted, soldiers killed, and prisoners set free.
To one, it was a symbol of freedom. To the other, a symbol of chaos. Neither of them knew to whom the symbol belonged.
Not yet, anyway.
Dawson pushed the drawer shut and locked it. Once the key was again safe in its hidden pocket, she took a deep breath and lifted her chin. Decision made, she dropped the manner of speech she had developed in order to pass as a man, and spoke in her true voice.
“That it is.”
Derwyn frowned and tilted his head to one side in subtle confusion. She knew he had caught the difference in her speech, but hadn’t yet pieced together what it meant. She took another deep breath before she spoke again.
“Those are the plans for an assault on Caer Forwyn.”
She didn’t need to say anything more. Derwyn shot her a look of utter disbelief, before he tore open the seal and unfolded the papers in his hands. He read for several minutes, and looked up only after he had shuffled the last page back into its proper order and refolded the papers into neat thirds.
“We’ve been told all this time that our elders, women, children, and injured would be left alone,” his hand, still gripped tight around the sheath of paper, fell to his side as if in defeat.
“You can’t tell me that no one in the Resistance has questioned why you’ve been instructed to pull all of your noncombatants back into one location.”
“We have. But we couldn’t find the deceit inherent in the promises,” Derwyn pulled a deep breath in through his mouth, then let it out with a heavy sigh. “We don’t have anywhere left to go that we can keep safe.”
“It is a classic Empyrean trick,” Dawson explained. “You Kymrin are growing desperate. We all know it. This tactic was first played out against the Aaraans, long before either you or I were born. It’s been done to the Albans, too, though to lesser effect.”
Her lips twisted into a grim smile.
“Those highland bastards are constitutionally incapable of trust, and had the sense to split their noncombatants into several groups. To this day, the Empyrean High Command has only ever known the location of two of those groups. You Kymrin would do well to heed the example of your cousins.”
The Prince lifted the papers one last time, in something of a salute.
“Thanks to this, we will.”
He paused and looked Dawson over, his eyes thoughtful and searching.
“You’re a woman.”
He had finally pieced together the truth of her change in tone and pitch.
“I am.”
“The mighty Captain James Dawson,” Derwyn laughed, but there was little mirth in the sound of it. “The conqueror of Kymry. A woman.
“Tell me,” his matching smile was sharp. “What sort of reward do you think you’d receive if your superiors ever found out about what lies beneath that crisply ironed uniform of yours?”
Dawson didn’t answer. She took a step back from her desk and moved toward the gleaming porthole. For a long moment, she stared out at the blazing blue sky that she had come to love more than anything, or anyone, in her life.
“I have never understood why women are considered so less capable than men. Captain James Dawson has accomplished what he has, because I willed it all into being. I have out-thought, out-classed, and out-maneuvered my enemies. I have sustained deception of one sort or another for just shy of twenty years. It is my mind, my courage that is so admired.
“Strength is so often held against women as a measure of their worth. Yet I have pulled up anchors, climbed riggings, unfurled sails, fought hand-to-hand, and swabbed the decks the same as any aeronaut. I would also pit the strength of my character against any man, human or Otherkin. It is, after all, the strength of my convictions that destroyed your homeland, and that then turned me to the task of balancing the scales of my wrongs.”
Dawson turned back toward Derwyn with a small smile that was almost lost in the shadows cast by the light across her face.
“And for one to go against all that she has ever known, against all that she has ever been, takes a strength of mind and spirit that you and I both know far too few will ever possess.”
“You should have been born Kymrin,” Derwyn words were soft and honest.
“I have often wished the same,” Dawson’s answer was just as wistful. “Your women enjoy freedoms that I have had to lie in order to gain.”
“You haven’t enjoyed the lie?” the Prince motioned toward her uniform and her bars of command.
“Not particularly, no. There are some to whom Captain Dawson would have been their true identity. But I have always been a woman playing at being a man, and I have always understood that difference. The Captain has always been a means to an end, not the external reality of an inner truth. If it had ever been possible, I would have much preferred to have lived honestly as myself, and worn this uniform as a woman.”
“These are quite the secrets to share with an enemy.”
“I would say that doing so is necessary for trust.”
“And why would you need me to trust you?”
Otherkin prince and human aeronaut stared at each other long and hard. When Dawson spoke, it was with a sense of deep finality.
“I am intimately familiar with Otherkin deals, and of the respect reserved for such debts. When you leave this ship, Your Highness, you will owe me a life debt, the most solemn of them all. I would ask that you repay it immediately.”
“Well,” Derwyn snorted with contempt. “And here you almost had me convinced you were setting me free because it was the right thing to do.”
“It is a common misconception that doing what is right is always sacrificial. It is possible, Your Highness, to do what is right because you believe in it, and yet still acknowledge any benefit for one’s self in doing so.”
“Now you sound like an Otherkin. You don’t deliver on expectations, Captain,” Derwyn actually laughed and ran his empty hand over a goatee that hadn’t been properly groomed in several days.
The smile Dawson gave him in response was tight, but proud.
“So, what would Captain Dawson ask of the Crown Prince of Kymry, in exchange for the ultimate act of treason?”
“I would ask that you save my life as well. I’ve known for some time that Empyrean Intelligence has been watching me with increasing interest. Initially, your disappearance from a ship of the line would be interpreted as gross negligence on my part. The accusations of treason would come after my affairs are scrutinized less kindly in the light of a court martial. Without drastic intervention, I will not live to see my next birthday. I could defeat a thousand Kymrys and it would never be enough to save me from the Queen’s wrath for just this one act of aiding the heir of her greatest, and most defiant, enemy.”
Said heir stroked his goatee, deep in thought, and eyed her hard. Then an expression of sly curiosity slid across his face.
“What made you decide to become the Highwayman?”
Dawson closed her eyes and grimaced. It was only after a heavy sigh that she opened them again, and for the first time since since he had entered her quarters, the Captain couldn’t look the Prince in the eye.
“It was the execution of your brother and his mother. What was done to them was,” her mouth twisted even deeper into a grimace, and she turned her head away from him. “It was beyond the pale.”
“My brother did go berserk and slaughter an entire fort of unarmed civilians. Most of whom were orphaned children and pregnant women. His execution was inevitable.”
“Yes. Execution,” Dawson kept her voice low, but her tone turned hot with the passion of her convictions. “An execution is hanging the accused and being done with it. His mother was innocent of any involvement in what happened at Fort Gaenor -”
“She was accused of being a high-ranking leader of the Resistance,” Derwyn cut in.
Dawson made a noise of dismissive disgust.
“Those charges were circumstantial at best. A civilized court of law does not hang a woman on fucking hearsay. We all knew why Gwynnifer Creiddy-Lad was hung that day, and we all knew damn well that her noose was poorly tied on purpose. She strangled to death for twenty minutes while her son was forced to watch.”
The Captain took a deep breath to steady herself. Five years later, and nightmares of that day still plagued her.
“I never want to hear the sounds of that sort of grief ever again. I sure as hell never want to be the cause of it, either. Then to watch your brother be beaten to death?”
Dawson shook her head, her eyes wide and her face pale with the horror of it.
“That was murder by unhinged torture, not an execution. If I had been the person then that I am now, I would have saved him myself.”
The force of her convictions had led Dawson to place her hands on top of her desk and lean over toward Derwyn. The Kymrin lifted an eyebrow at her.
“Bold words, Captain.”
“I mean them,” she insisted. “That was the day when I realized that the righteous civility and honored dignity of the Empyrium is as much a lie as Captain James Dawson, if not more. I am bound to a cruel society that serves a Queen of barbarism and hatred, who is crowned with blood and enthroned on bones and ashes. I will save the last remaining king of her enemies, and then I want out."
She stared up at Derwyn, unblinking. In her heart of hearts she prayed that he would believe her. Then something occurred to her and she frowned.
“You’ve accepted what I’ve said so far quite easily. Or, at least, you seem to -” she let the words hang unspoken in the air between them.
Was he playing her? Could she have courted more disaster and even greater danger by being so honest with the only remaining son of King Gwyn Ap Nudd? Dawson knew the stories of the late King, too. “Stories” that had once claimed Ap Nudd’s body was as immortal as his soul. That before his death at Caer Rigor, he had ruled Kymry with god-like power over both the living and the dead. That on the mortal side of an invisible Veil, he had ruled on an oaken throne, crowned with verdant leaves. That in the realm of the spirits, he’d had no throne but the back of a death-white mare, and no crown but a helm of horns.
There were others besides the Kymrin who had spoken of the King in hushed whispers. Even in a captain’s dignified circles, Dawson had heard stories of the horrors that would often befall Empyreans under a full Kymrin moon. It had gotten to the point, just before Ap Nudd’s death, that she had been forced to forbid any gossip among her aeronauts about the rumored butcherings that had happened on the mountain battlefields below them.
There was still that glint of his father’s legendary wildness in the Crown Prince’s eyes, along with a sudden cunning.
“I cannot see souls like my father. But he taught me how to read the truth in another’s eyes. Liars always tell on themselves, often by looking away. This entire time, you’ve looked me dead in the eyes. You either have a heart of iron, or you’re as true as they come. So far, I have neither seen nor sensed any evidence that you are not the latter.”
A sly smile twisted up a corner of his mouth, the sight of which made Dawson push herself away from her desk. She didn’t step back, but the simple act of standing straight put distance between them that hadn’t been there moments before. She stood, wary, and ready for whatever he was about to deliver.
“Now, about this matter of saving your life. Are you familiar with the Dark Country?”
For a moment, Dawson was confused.
“You mean the Shadowlands?” she frowned and shook her head. “That’s just a legend.”
“I can assure you that it is very real,” Derwyn’s smile faded and the look he gave her left her with no doubt that he was telling the truth. “And there are ways into it that do not require waiting every seven years for the one day when the doorway into it manifests in this reality.”
Dawson shook her head to indicate that she didn’t understand where the Crown Prince was going with his current line of thought. He sighed and crossed his arms over his slender chest.
“I will save your life in exchange for saving mine. However, my father taught me to never fulfill a debt without first demanding interest.”
Dawson pursed her lips, but if she was honest with herself, she had expected something of the sort from him. She knew all about Otherkin and their debts. Humans never got off easy. Her entire life so far bore testimony to the truth of that. When an awkward silence began to stretch out between them, she realized that he expected her to agree before he set the terms of their arrangement.
“Very well then,” she crossed her own arms with an exasperated huff.
“There is a task to which I would set you. The question is, however, in what manner do I ask you to fulfill it?”
“I would like at least a little clarification before I agree,” Dawson insisted through gritted teeth.
“Of course. But before we get to that,” Derwyn flashed her a straight line of teeth, bright against the evergreen hue of his skin. “What fate do you most fear in this life?”
In retrospect, Dawson realized that she probably should have thought through the reasons why an Otherkin would even ask such a seeming non sequitur.
“Marriage.”
Derwyn’s grin grew even wider.
“Perfect.”
