Lance of Earth and Sky (The Chaos Knight Book Two) by Erin Hoffman

territories grew more numerous the farther northeast they traveled, and on the fourth morning, thick banks of fog obscured much of the ground below. When they finally peeled away toward midmorning, revealing strips of heavily developed land, Vidarian confessed himself stumped.
    “I don't remember this city,” he admitted. “It must have been a village when I was a child, now far grown.”
    But as the fog cleared further beneath them, it did not reveal the rolling green hills he remembered from boyhood. The same tightly packed buildings ranged over height and valley alike, spreading from horizon to horizon. With a sudden shock he realized that there would be no separation—this strange sea of never-ending structures was Val Imris, the Imperial City.

B y noon they drew within sight of the tall walls of the city proper, and three pairs of familiar black-and-white wings launched from a guardpost below, rising to meet them. Vidarian signaled the gryphons and Isri to keep to their course; the steady wingbeats of the Sky Knights indicated they were in no hurry. It took the better part of an hour before they drew within hailing distance.
    In truth, Vidarian had expected some form of escort long before they came within the outer boundaries of Val Imris, and at the sight of the three “knights” the emperor had sent, he began to wonder if his anxiety about the summons was entirely misplaced. Of the three riders, one was properly equipped and old enough to have earned some of his scars honestly. The other two were striplings: a thin girl whose ferocious expression could not make up for her small size, and a boy several sizes too small for the battered armor he wore. The emperor must not be too concerned about them if he sent children to escort them to the palace.
    He braced himself for a confrontation, but the salute that the lead knight gave them was, if anything, more deferential than etiquette required. He brought his horse, a handsome tricolor with gleaming black wings, up alongside the craft. Without being asked, Isri and the gryphons had given them a wide berth as they hovered to talk. “Captain Rulorat?” the knight called, and when Vidarian answered in the affirmative, he introduced himself as “Caladan Orrin-Smyth, Master Handler of the Imperial Ironhart Wing.”
    The “captain” was not lost on Vidarian. “Caladan Orrin-Smyth, of the Nirea Orrin-Smyths? Are you a fourth son, sir?” The Orrin-Smyths were an old merchant family—the alliance of two even older ones, in fact—and their loyalty to the imperial family was legendary. The fourth son of every generation was given to the emperor's protection by way of the imperial Sky Knights.
    The man smiled and touched his visor with a gauntleted hand. “I am, Captain. My father, Pavel Orrin-Smyth, spoke well of his trading with Rulorats, and with your mother's family, also.”
    “I had not counted on finding friends at the capital,” Vidarian admitted. “I appreciate your volunteering to escort us?” He trusted Caladan's diplomatic upbringing to interpret his tone as: why are a Master Handler and two apprentices sent to greet us, rather than a wingleader?
    Caladan's friendliness faded and his mouth hardened to a thin line, only for a moment, but long enough for Vidarian to realize he had misstepped. “You've not heard the news,” he began. “There is much—”
    A whisper of wings from above them, and Isri, looking tired, landed on the edge of the Destiny , swaying it enough that Vidarian stepped back from the rail to avoid being pitched out. Calphille offered her arm to Isri, but they all turned at the soft cry that one of the apprentices let loose at the sight of her.
    The girl rode a royal, if a young one, its pelt still mottled with yearling gray but distinctly giving way to iridescent black. Vidarian thought at first she was simply surprised, as he had been, to see a seridi for the first time. But the girl's reaction wasn't simple shock—it was fear.
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