And he wasn’t alone. There were a good ten drafters in some sort of military attire with him, light blue tunics emblazoned with a golden eye high on the chest. Her father wore one as well, though richer, with brocade and a sword at his hip. He was the leader of them.

Emotions rolled over Liv like a swell rolling over a swimmer at sea. After the surprise, there was a little bit of that little-girl glee, but trailing that like a secondary wave that engulfs you just when you think the worst is past was raw anger, unfaded despite the passage of months.

Her father waved her over to join him at his table, and she went, but as she walked, she felt the tableaux shift in her head. It took on sudden symbolic connotations: her father beckoned her to walk to him; he didn’t come to her. He stood there, asking her to leave her friends and join him at the place he had prepared for her.

What was he doing here? Had he been following her? Impossible! But here? In one tavern of hundreds, on the other side of the world? It was too much coincidence to be coincidence.

Stop being a twit, Liv. It’s your father.

He crossed the last few steps between them quickly, as if he couldn’t hold back any more, real joy etched on his features. They embraced.

For a dozen heartbeats, all was well in the world.

Finally, they released each other.

Here it comes. She stood with her back straight. She suppressed an urge to tug the laces at her tunic’s open neckline tighter.

“Aliviana,” her father said. “You look so strong.”

It was the last thing she’d have expected from the legendary General Corvan Danavis. It slipped right under her armor. “So do you, daddy.”

He laughed, and she couldn’t help but smile.

“Will you join me?” Corvan said. “I saved us a table.”

Saved it? Like he expected me? How could he know she’d be here?

“Of course,” she said.

“I’ll dismiss my people if you dismiss yours,” he said, eyes twinkling.

Liv hadn’t even been aware of Phyros coming to stand behind her. But she paused. She didn’t need to let her father dictate what she did or didn’t do.

“No disrespect,” Corvan said to Phyros. “I’ve heard you’ve done yet more mighty deeds in keeping my daughter safe, Lord Phyros Seaborn. I owe you everything.”

Phyros scowled, and Liv realized she’d never heard his surname, nor known that he was of noble blood. The thought that he’d concealed that fact from her, and that her father had known it, nettled Liv. “He can sit with your people.” In a place this crowded, being at the next table would be enough to be out of earshot.

A one-eyed bar slave came over as Liv took her seat, and her father said, “Drinks for these three tables. On me. You have mead? Keep it flowing.” When the man left, Corvan said, “Have you had it before? There used to be a large Angari community here in Wiwurgh, so you can find some of their foods and drinks still. Little of their blood.”

“There were Angari here?” Liv asked. She hadn’t seen a single blond head here.

“After the Everdark Gates were closed, the community was isolated. A plague came and killed the Angari in much lower numbers than the Parians here. The Parians blamed them for the plague. They exterminated them all. Any half-bloods they could find, too. Even people who were a quarter Angari, or children generations later born with light skin, found life here unbearable. They moved elsewhere in the satrapies or simply found it impossible to marry. Extinguished, completely.”

It was the kind of trivia her father knew that had always amazed Aliviana. He knew something interesting about most everything.

“It was the superviolet,” she said.

“Huh?”

“The Angari priests were superviolet drafters.”

“Really? Oh, maybe I have heard that,” he said, his eyes flicking up as he searched for the memory. “But…”

She felt a little stab of pleasure. “The priests of Ferrilux blessed their worshippers’ food and water. Living in poverty for generations, the Angari must have noticed that it had an effect. So if that later plague was born of bad meat or bad water, the Angari wouldn’t have died as much.”

“Religion saving lives?”

“Clearly only in the short term,” Aliviana said. “Since it got all of them killed.”

“I still don’t understand,” Corvan said. “Are you saying their god intervened with their food?”

“It’s the superviolet. Disease loves darkness. We infuse all our bandages with superviolet. Men recover from wounds that would otherwise suppurate and gangrene. The chirurgeons have said our survival rates for even minor wounds are five and ten times better than those left untreated.”

“Aliviana, that’s brilliant,” Corvan said.

“It wasn’t my discovery,” she said. “I hear that there are even a few chirurgeons using it at the Chromeria now. They don’t understand why it works, but they’ve seen that it does.”

“No, I didn’t mean the discovery—though it was. I mean you, applying it like that, backward, figuring out history with what you know. Orholam’s beard, think of the tragedy of it. The Parians”—he looked around the Parian tavern—“the ancient Parians massacred the very people who could have saved them. Not to mention the countless lives that could have been saved in the centuries since then.”

“And saved countless superviolet drafters from the drudgery of only writing secret messages back and forth to each other.”

“Indeed. So you must have whole corps of superviolet healers.” He drew idly in the wetness ring that had formed around his mead cup.

Distracted, Aliviana almost volunteered more, but stopped herself. She wasn’t going to give him any details about the disposition of the Color Prince’s forces.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking out loud. It’s a brilliant leap. Of course you’ve already put it to the best use. I’m sorry. I had no idea that my historical anecdote would intrude on our present … difficulties. How have you been? Did you get my letter—no, never mind, that doesn’t matter.”

The bar slave finally brought their mead, having served Phyros and Corvan’s men first. Stupidity, or a deliberate slight? Liv wondered. Drinking the sweet sharp mead gave her an excuse to gather her wits. She couldn’t see any harm in sharing, and if she shared, surely he would, too. So she began.

The sea had fought them all the way. Liv and her crew had been through horrible storms. They’d frequently needed to stop to make repairs. Then they’d been marooned in a fishing village for a month, stuck in what they’d come to call a crystal storm. Shards of blue luxin the size of a thumb and edged with sharp angles beat down day and night, for a count of twenty-seven, then stopped for some multiple of that long, and then began again. Anyone caught outside in the storm was shredded. The crystals themselves broke apart almost instantly in the sun afterward, leaving gritty blue dust everywhere.

It had seemed like the end of the world must be upon them, but when they finally escaped, they’d found the crystal storm was localized. People twenty leagues away hadn’t even noticed clouds.

They all knew what it had to be, though Liv didn’t tell her father. The blue bane had regrown, somewhere, and no one was in control of it. Or a madman was.