The Dawn-Gate of Aethelspire swung open not to the rumble of carriage wheels on stone, but to the powerful, syncopated thrum of great wings beating the cool morning air. The Crown Prince's Progress was not departing on horseback or in lumbering land-carriages. For a journey that needed to cover vast distances with imperial alacrity, the Emperor had authorized the Royal Aviary.
Before the gate, harnessed to a carriage of silverwood and azure enamel, were four Dawn-Griffons. They were not true hippogriffs (those were rarer, wilder things), but their lineage was noble—powerful equine bodies the color of sun-bleached sand, with the heads, wings, and taloned forelegs of giant eagles. Their feathers were shades of gold, cream, and ruddy brown, and their eyes held the keen, imperious intelligence of raptors. They stamped their hooves and preened, the early light glinting off their ornate leather and silver-chased harnesses. The carriage behind them was light, aerodynamic, with large, reinforced windows and the silver bridge sigil emblazoned on its sides.
Prince Cassian stood by the carriage door, dressed for travel in sturdy but fine clothes of grey and blue, a practical sword at his hip, his expression a careful mask of calm anticipation. Around him, the convoy assembled, a microcosm of the court set to fly.
Lord Ferant, a grizzled Knight-Captain of the Argent Shield with a beard like a wire brush, was doing a final check of the four griffon-handlers and the dozen mounted guards on smaller, swifter Sky-Steeds (avian mounts closer to large hawks). "Remember," he barked, his voice accustomed to cutting through wind, "formation flying. The carriage is the heart. No straggling, no grandstanding. We are not on a hunt; we are on a procession that happens to be eight hundred feet in the air."
To Cassian's right, fussing with a leather-bound portfolio, was Undersecretary Linus, a minor minister from the Pillar of Sun & Moon, assigned as the Progress's official recorder and protocol officer. He was a thin, precise man who saw the world through the lens of precedent and procedure. "Your Highness, the first acknowledged stop is the Ducal seat of Valtor. The greeting ceremony is outlined on page forty-three. You will accept the formal fealty oath after the review of the household troops, but before the midday feast. It is crucial to observe the correct order, it sets the tonal…"
"It sets the tone, yes, Undersecretary," Cassian interrupted gently, his eyes on the griffons. "I have reviewed the outlines."
Next to Linus stood Master Theron, the Prince's assigned tutor for this journey. Older, with a kind, weathered face and eyes that had studied more stars than books, he was from the Collegium of Lyria's less doctrinal wing, a scholar of geography, natural philosophy, and "the living character of the land." He carried a staff topped with a light-capturing crystal. "Ignore half of what's in that portfolio, my prince," he murmured, a sly smile on his face. "Ceremony is the shell. We are here to taste the meat within."
A cluster of young squires—boys of noble houses serving the knights—buzzed with excited nerves, their eyes wide at the Dawn-Griffons. One, a red-haired lad named Jaxon, was being sternly quieted by his assigned knight.
Cassian took a deep breath. This was it. The palace walls were about to fall away, replaced by the endless sky and the sprawling, troubled quilt of his father's realm.
He was about to step into the carriage when his sister, Lyra, came running from the gate, her healer's robes fluttering. She shoved a small, cloth-wrapped bundle into his hands. "From Mother," she said breathlessly. "She said to give it to you when you were leaving. It's… practical."
Cassian unwrapped it. Inside was a slender, beautifully made dagger in a supple leather sheath. The blade, when he drew it an inch, was a peculiar, non-reflective grey. "Star-iron," Lyra whispered. "From the same vein as Father's ceremonial pieces. It… resonates. It will hold an edge against things other than flesh, she said. And it will always point north if you're truly lost." She hugged him quickly, fiercely. "Watch for the symptoms, brother. And come back."
He sheathed the dagger, attaching it to his belt, a tangible piece of his mother's fierce love and warning. "Thank you, Lyra. Keep Father company. He'll need it."
With a final nod to the assembled company, Cassian mounted the steps and entered the carriage. The interior was spacious, lined with padded blue velvet, with secured compartments for maps, books, and supplies. Undersecretary Linus and Master Theron followed him in, taking seats opposite.
Outside, Lord Ferant gave a sharp, whistling command. The griffon-handlers called out. With a mighty, unified heave of muscle and a thunderous clap of twelve-foot wings, the Dawn-Griffons strained against their harnesses. The carriage shuddered, then lifted, smooth and astonishingly quiet. The ground fell away, the Dawn-Gate shrinking, the immense, orderly geometry of Aethelspire spreading out beneath them like a carved model. The wind rushed past the windows, a constant, roaring companion.
They gained altitude, levelling off into a steady cruising flight above the cloud-dappled landscape. The capital gave way to orderly farmlands, then to the darker green of the Verdant Veil's outer reaches, a vast forest-sea to the south.
For a time, they flew in silence, each absorbing the perspective. Cassian watched the world crawl by below, feeling simultaneously immense and tiny.
It was Undersecretary Linus who broke the silence, clearing his throat and opening his portfolio. "Now, Your Highness, regarding Duke Valtor. His recent request for a reduction in military levies, cited as being for 'internal trade security,' is, in my assessment, a transparent ploy to hoard martial power. The precedent set by Emperor Valerius I in the matter of House…"
"Linus," Master Theron said, his voice calm but firm. "Look out the window."
The Undersecretary blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"Look. Out. The. Window," Theron repeated, pointing. "What do you see?"
Linus frowned, peered out at the passing landscape. "I see… the Verdant Veil. Imperial territory. Managed woodlands."
Theron sighed. "You see a green blot on a map. Prince Cassian, what do you see?"
Cassian looked. From this height, the forest was a textured blanket, dark and seemingly endless. But as he focused, he saw variations. A scar of lighter green where timber had been harvested. A thin, meandering line of silver—a river. A faint, almost invisible smudge of grey smoke from a woodland village. "I see… depth," he said slowly. "I see a living thing. Parts of it are cultivated, parts are wild. I see the river that probably feeds half a dozen mills before it reaches the plains. I see the smoke of people who live by its rules, not ours."
Theron nodded, pleased. "Exactly. Linus sees a political entity. You are beginning to see an ecosystem. That is the first lesson of the Progress. The empire is not a diagram of heraldry and tax districts. It is a collection of interconnected ecosystems—of forests, fields, mines, ports, and people. The Duke of Valtor isn't just a political actor. He is a man sitting on a specific piece of land, with specific resources, specific problems. His 'transparent ploy' might be born of a genuine fear—of bandits the imperial reports undercount, or of a bad harvest he hasn't yet reported, or of a greedy neighbor we haven't thought to consider."
Linus spluttered. "With respect, Master Theron, statecraft requires abstraction! We cannot govern every tree and every farmer's complaint!"
"Nor should we," Cassian said, surprising himself. He was thinking of his mother's words. Seek understanding. "But to govern the abstract correctly, we must first understand the concrete. My father's weariness, I think, comes from governing only the abstraction for too long." He turned from the window. "Master Theron, when we land at Valtor, I wish to see not just the household troops, but the granaries. The repair logs for the local roads. I want to speak to his master of hounds about game populations in the last year, and to his chief steward about the price of seed."
Theron beamed. Linus looked horrified, scrambling for the correct precedent for a prince inspecting granaries.
Lord Ferant's face appeared at the small speaking-tube grate. "Your Highness, we're crossing over the Oakhaven borderlands now. That smoke to the southeast—that's larger than a village hearth. Could be a controlled burn. Or something else."
Cassian shifted to look. A wider, greyer plume was indeed smearing the horizon, far to the south of their direct route to Valtor. The blight lands. The crafted sickness.
"Can we alter course slightly?" Cassian asked. "Not to land, but to get a better look from the air?"
Ferant's voice was cautious. "It would add time, and take us off the sanctioned flight path. The local garrisons might be… jumpy."
"Do it," Cassian said, the command coming easier than he expected. "A wide circle, high altitude. I want to see."
The carriage banked gently. As they drew nearer, the plume's source became clearer: not a single fire, but several across a swath of land that should have been a patchwork of green and gold fields. From this height, the 'blight' was visible as a sickly discoloration—patches of brown and dull yellow spreading like bruises across the landscape. One area was entirely blackened, smoke rising from it.
"By the Twelve," Linus whispered, his bureaucratic detachment shattered by the visceral sight of sickness on such a scale.
"The reports said 'anomalous,'" Theron said grimly. "They did not say 'consuming.' Look at the pattern. It follows no natural watershed or wind direction. It clusters. As if… dropped."
Cassian felt a chill that had nothing to do with the altitude. A crafted blight. An act of war against the land. His mother's words. This was no mere agricultural problem. This was an open wound. And his father had called for 'study' and 'measured response.'
"Record the coordinates, Undersecretary," Cassian said, his voice tight. "Note the extent. We will be revisiting this. Not just Oakhaven town, but that… that ground zero."
They completed their circle and swung back on course. The mood in the carriage had changed. The theoretical had become terrifyingly real.
"This changes the Progress," Cassian said after a long silence. "Viscount Oakhaven will be our second stop, not our fourth. We will see this up close."
Linus finally found his voice, though it was subdued. "The protocol for an unannounced visit to a region under imperial inquiry is… complex, Your Highness. It could be seen as undermining the Assessor's authority."
"Or it could be seen as the Crown taking a direct, vested interest in a crisis," Cassian countered. "We are not going to interrogate the Assessor. We are going to see what he sees. And perhaps what he chooses not to."
Master Theron leaned back, a thoughtful look on his face. "The prince who sees the blight from the sky and then walks in the blighted field. That is a story that will travel faster than any imperial dispatch. It will give hope to the desperate, and pause to the corrupt."
As the Dawn-Griffons beat their steady rhythm towards Valtor, Cassian stared at his faint reflection in the window, superimposed over the shrinking, wounded land below. The lessons had begun. The first one was the weight of true seeing. The maps were lies of omission. The empire was sick, and he was flying over its fever. His Progress was no longer just a tour of fealty; it had become a race to diagnose the illness before the patient, and the dynasty, succumbed. The conversation in the carriage had ended, replaced by a heavy, determined silence, filled with the thrum of wings and the specter of a spreading, magical decay.