Chapter 2

The narrator scans the neighboring troop ship, the Lady of Groves, for her brother Amiel, who fears the voyage to occupied Gallardia. She sees him soon after the goblin incident, dressed finely with a ceremonial sword, assigned as a supernumerary to the renowned and feared wizard Fulvir—an arrangement that alarms her.

Noticing white natal-day ribbons in Amiel’s hair, the narrator jokes with her fastleaf-chewing captain, marking Amiel’s eighteenth birthday amid rough seas. Amiel, now over his seasickness, declaims a poem to dolphins, prompting the narrator’s protective memories of him as “Chichún.”

The narrator questions why Amiel must serve Fulvir—“Lightningbinder,” creator of war corvids and reviled as Father of Abominations—while she herself serves in the experimental First Lanza of Corvid Knights, whose ravens can be lethal even to handlers. When two speardams move to mock Amiel, the narrator whistles, flashes her Calar Bajat tattoo, and silently warns them off. Amiel and the narrator exchange waves and a kiss blown across the gap.

Inocenta, the narrator’s formidable axe-wielding friend, asks about the “pup.” Their banter reveals the family: brother Pol is a general; Migaéd is a “sixt-general,” more ornament than soldier, and a luckless gambler. The exchange underscores Inocenta’s brutal skill and their camaraderie.

A cry of “Land” rises from ahead. As Gallardia comes into view, Inocenta remarks, “So are we all,” framing the shared peril as the fleet approaches war.