The last stop before Crownhaven. The ninth day after Harlby.
Ren saw the towers before he saw the city.
In the late afternoon the caravan had climbed a long, flat hill on whose crest stood an inn, a lopsided half-timbered house with a sign on which someone long ago had painted a milestone. The Last Milestone, it said beneath, in faded letters. Hobb had said they would spend the night here. By tomorrow noon they would be in Crownhaven.
Ren had walked on ahead of the wagons, and when he reached the crest he stopped.
Before him the land fell away westwards in gentle waves, fields and pastures and little woods, threaded by the silver ribbon of the Calder, which wound through the plain in wide loops. And far beyond, where the river vanished into the haze, they rose. White. Slender. Almost golden in the light of the sinking sun.
The towers of the palace.
He had last seen them in smoke. Above the roofs of the burning residence, above the lanterns and garlands of the name day, while Desmond dragged him through a dark lane and his hands were red.
Seven years.
They looked exactly the same as they had then. That was the strangest thing about it. He had thought they would look different somehow. Smaller. Or darker. Or at least a little damaged, the way everything else in his life had been damaged. But they stood there, white and slender and beautiful, as if nothing had happened.
For the towers, nothing had happened.
“Is that them?”
Milo had stepped up beside him, the featherless hat in his hand, and was staring west with his mouth open.
“That’s them.”
“They’re …” Milo searched for a word. For once he did not find one. He simply stood there and looked, and Ren looked at him from the side and thought that Milo was seeing the towers for the first time. That to him they were nothing other than what they looked like. White and beautiful and full of promise.
He envied him. For a moment so fiercely that it hurt.
Milo lowered his voice, as if the towers could hear him. “I heard you can see them glowing at night. Because there’s a candle burning in every window. Is that true?”
“On the king’s name day. Not otherwise.”
Milo looked at him. “How do you know that?”
Ren did not answer. He turned and walked to the inn.
Owen told Milo at supper.
He did it the way he did everything: calmly, without beating about the bush, between two spoonfuls of stew. That he would turn back early tomorrow morning. That the sheep in Fernwick did not tend themselves and that Odell would tear his ears off otherwise. That Ren could manage the rest of the way alone, and certainly with Milo at his side.
Milo put down his spoon. “But you’re coming to Crownhaven. To the trial. To watch.”
“No.”
“But …” Milo looked from Owen to Ren and back again. “My father didn’t want to come either. He said the city’s not for him, too many people, too much noise. But you … you taught him everything. Don’t you want to see him pass?”
Owen looked at him for a long time. Ren saw something move in his face, very briefly, like a shadow over a field.
“I know he’ll pass. I don’t need to see it.”
Milo opened his mouth, shut it again and then nodded slowly, as if Owen had said something very wise. Then he stood up, walked round the table and hugged Owen. Just like that, without asking, with both long arms, so tightly that Owen nearly dropped his cup.
In seven years Ren had never seen Owen so surprised.
“Thank you,” said Milo, his face against Owen’s shoulder. “For being there during the raid. And for the bread for the deserters. And for getting him …” He nodded in Ren’s direction. “Well. For getting him like this. He’s a bit odd, but he’s all right.”
Owen sat motionless, his arms half raised, as if he did not know where to put them. Then he laid a hand on Milo’s back. Only briefly.
“Look after him, Fairweather. He’s always looking behind him. Someone has to look ahead.”
“I will.” Milo let go, wiped his eyes as if he had got some dust in them, and sat down again. “And you have to meet Duchess. Some day. She’ll like you. She likes people who don’t talk much.”
Later, when the inn was quiet and Milo was snoring in the dormitory under the roof, Ren found Owen behind the stable.
There was a small yard there with a well and a woodpile, and from the wall you could see across the plain all the way to Crownhaven. The towers were only pale strokes in the darkness now. Above them hung the moon, almost full.
Owen had set a lantern on the rim of the well. Beside him lay the two sacks from the mule’s back, the sacks whose contents he had not revealed to Ren the whole way. And on the chopping block before him lay his knife.
“Sit down.”
Ren sat down on the block. He did not quite know why, but his heart was beating faster.
Owen stepped behind him. Ren felt his fingers undo the leather cord at the nape of his neck that had held his hair together ever since it had grown past his shoulders. The black hair fell onto his neck.
“You wear it like he did,” Owen said quietly. “Did you know that? Exactly like him. He tied it at the back too, back at the Academy, because he was too lazy to have it cut. And because he didn’t care how he looked.” A pause. “You have his height. His shoulders. The way you tilt your head when you’re listening to someone talk nonsense. Anyone who knew him sees him in you. And in Crownhaven there are many who knew him.”
Ren sat very still.
“May I?”
It was the first time Owen had asked his permission. For anything. In seven years.
Ren nodded.
The knife was sharp. He heard it more than he felt it, a soft, dry cutting, and then something lay in Owen’s hand, long and black and gleaming in the lantern light. Owen went on working, quickly and surely, shorter at the sides, shorter at the neck, longer on top, uneven, as if the wind had cut it and not a knife.
It did not take long.
When Owen had finished, he stepped back. Ren stood up and leaned over the well. In the black water, lit by the lantern, he saw his face.
He hardly recognised it.
His hair stood out wildly from his head, short and tousled, a few strands falling onto his forehead. Without the long hair his face looked narrower. Harder. Older. The scar on his chin was easier to see. He no longer looked like a boy who wore his hair tied back because he did not care. He looked like someone who came from the east, from the border villages where the orcs climbed over the palisades.
He no longer looked like Aldwyn Ravenmoor.
Ren did not know whether he should be relieved or sad. He was both.
Only the eyes had stayed. Grey, almost silver in the black water. His mother’s eyes.
Look after them. After her eyes.
Behind him Owen grunted with satisfaction. “Better. Now you look like a brawler from Eastreach.”
“Thank you. Very kind.”
“That was a compliment.” Owen threw the cut hair into the lantern. It hissed, curled and burned with a sharp smell. “Nobody recognises brawlers from Eastreach. They all look the same.”
Then he opened the first sack.
He pulled out a coat. Long, dark, of heavy, densely woven cloth that looked almost black in the lantern light and shaded into deep grey at the edges. It reached below the knee. Two rows of leather buckles sat at the breast, and the collar was high enough to turn up against the wind. No crest. No embroidery. Nothing that would have betrayed to whom it belonged.
Owen held it up. Ren stared at it.
“That’s …” He cleared his throat. “Owen, that’s too expensive. It costs more than we make in a year …”
“It cost me nothing.”
“Owen.”
“It cost me nothing I still need.” Owen laid the coat over Ren’s arms. It was heavy. Warm. It smelled of wool and new leather. “Do you remember Thornby? The cloak I got you there?”
Ren nodded slowly. “You traded it for a button. From your armour.”
“A silver button. Ravenmoor silver. The armour of the bodyguard had twelve of them.” Owen looked at the coat, not at Ren. “I kept the other eleven. For seven years. I didn’t touch them when we were hungry in the first winter, or when the roof caved in, or when you had the fever in the fourth year, after the lightning.” He shrugged, as if it were nothing. “I didn’t know what I was keeping them for. Until Silas’s letter came.”
Ren held the coat in his hands and could not say anything.
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“The last thing left of the House of Ravenmoor. Apart from you. Put it on.”
Ren put it on. It fitted. Of course it fitted. Owen had had it made to his measurements, at some point, somehow, without Ren noticing. It fell heavy and straight from his shoulders, and when Ren moved, the hem swung around his boots, and for the first time in seven years he did not feel like someone who was hiding.
He felt like someone who was coming back.
From the same sack Owen drew something else. A leather bracer for the forearm, new, of thick, dark-dyed leather, with three buckles instead of the two the old one had had. On the inside, where it lay against the skin, it was lined with soft felt.
“The old one has done its service. This one will last longer. Two layers. A sabre won’t get through that. A dwarven axe, maybe.”
Ren buckled it on. It sat firmly, from wrist to elbow, over the scars, over the healing cut from Brackenhollow. He felt the lightning beneath it, as always. Quiet. Scratching.
Then Owen opened the second sack.
The sword was wrapped in oilcloth, as carefully as if it were a child.
Owen did not unwrap it himself. He laid it on the chopping block and stepped back, and Ren understood that he was to do it himself.
He folded back the oilcloth. Layer by layer.
It was a hand-and-a-half sword. Longer than his old sword, by a hand’s breadth perhaps, with a grip long enough for both hands but so well balanced that it could also be wielded with one. The crossguard was plain and straight, the pommel a simple, round-ground stone. No ornament. No gold, no silver, no crest.
But the blade.
The blade was dark. Not black, but the deep, shimmering grey of thunderclouds, and when the lantern light slid over it, Ren saw fine, wave-like lines in the steel that moved like water when he tilted his head. He had seen such steel only once before. On Bodvar’s belt knife, which the dwarf never sold, no matter how much he was offered.
“Dwarven steel,” Ren whispered.
“From the forges of Orvundar. Bodvar forged it himself. I asked him last summer.” Owen leaned against the well. “He brought it to me in the winter, when he came with the letter. Hidden under the canvas. I wanted to pay him. He didn’t want to take anything.”
“Why not?”
“He said you don’t charge Harlow’s boy, who defends a dwarf against a miller’s son.” Owen smiled crookedly. “And then he charged me half the price anyway. For the material. He’s a dwarf.”
Ren lifted the sword. It was lighter than it looked. Much lighter. It lay in his hand as if it had always been there, as if it had been waiting for him. He made a slow swing through the air, and the blade sang. A soft, bright note, like a finger on the rim of a glass.
Just before the hilt, where the blade met the crossguard, something was engraved. Small, angular signs. Dwarven runes. Ren could not read them.
“What does it say?”
“I asked Bodvar the same thing.” Owen looked at the runes. “He says it’s an old blessing. The dwarves write it on everything that goes out into the world. On blades, on wagons, on the doors of their border fortresses.”
“And what does it mean?”
“Come home.”
Ren looked at the small, angular signs in the dark steel.
Come home.
He thought of Ravenhold. Of the grey walls and the crooked towers and the apple tree he had fallen from. The castle where Duke Winterhall now sat. He thought of the burnt-out house in Crownhaven that he would see tomorrow.
He had no home he could come back to. Not yet.
Not yet.
He slid the sword into the scabbard Owen handed him. Plain, dark leather, to match the coat. He slung it over his back, and the weight settled between his shoulder blades as if it belonged there.
They sat on the wall for a while and looked west. Owen had put out the lantern. The moon was enough.
“Tell me about him,” Ren said at some point. “About the Academy. About the first day.”
Owen was silent so long that Ren thought he would not answer. Then he began to talk. Quietly, slowly, his eyes on the distant towers.
And Ren listened.
Crownhaven. The Royal Academy. Thirty years earlier.
Desmond had never in his life seen so many people who had so much money.
They stood everywhere in the great courtyard of the Academy, in little groups, in velvet and silk and highly polished boots, and they talked in those voices that never needed to be raised, because someone was always listening to them anyway. Beside them Desmond felt like a plough horse that had accidentally wandered into a stable full of racehorses.
He had passed the trial. He still did not know exactly how. He had shown a flame, big and clumsy, and fenced against an examiner with a sword he had inherited from his uncle and that was really used for chopping wood. The examiner had disarmed him three times. But Desmond had got up again each time, and on the fourth the examiner had stopped disarming him and nodded instead.
Common class. Of course. Farmers’ sons always went into the common class.
On the first morning he sat down in the great lecture hall in the first free row he could find. Next to a boy who was sitting alone.
The boy was tall and thin, with black hair tied at the nape of his neck and a face so serious that it almost looked funny again. He was reading a book. He did not look up when Desmond sat down. Nor did he look up when Desmond introduced himself. Or when he told him he came from the south, from a village no one had ever heard of, and that his father bred pigs, and that he had probably only passed the trial because the examiner had felt sorry for him.
Only after a while did Desmond see the crest on the spine of the book. A silver raven.
He had heard of the Ravenmoors. Everyone had heard of the Ravenmoors. He ought to have stood up and sat somewhere else, as befitted a pig breeder’s son.
He stayed where he was.
He stayed the next day too. And the day after. He talked about lessons and about the food in the refectory and about the girl from the upper class who had looked at him as if he were something you find under your shoe. The heir of Ravenmoor never answered. Sometimes he turned a page when Desmond paused. That was all.
Desmond went on talking anyway. He did not know exactly why. Perhaps because no one else sat beside him. Perhaps because no one else sat beside the boy with the raven.
For three months.
Then came the day of the duel.
It was an exercise, nothing more. Every student of the common class against one from the upper class, with blunt blades, before the assembled year. Desmond drew a boy named Crane, whose father owned three silver mines and who had not missed a single opportunity since the first day to call him swineherd.
Crane was good. Much better than Desmond. He danced around him, knocked the blade out of his hand three times and laughed every time, and the third time half the year laughed with him. The fourth time Desmond stumbled and landed in the dust, and Crane put his foot on his chest and said something about pigs and mud that Desmond would not forget for the rest of his life.
Desmond did not get up again. Not this time. He lay in the dust and stared at the sky and wanted to go home.
In the evening he sat alone on the training yard, his uncle’s old sword across his knees, wondering whether he should pack his things.
Footsteps on the gravel. Someone sat down beside him.
Desmond did not look up. He knew who it was. He recognised the smell of old paper.
For a long time neither of them said anything.
“You hold the sword too tight.”
Desmond slowly turned his head. The heir of Ravenmoor sat beside him, knees drawn up, looking not at him but at the sword.
“What?”
“You hold it too tight. With your whole hand. As if you’re afraid it’ll run away.” He spoke quietly, a little hoarsely, as if he had not used his voice for a long time. “That’s why Crane knocks it out of your hand so easily. Stiff grip, stiff wrist. You have to hold it loosely. Like a bird. Firm enough that it can’t fly away. Loose enough that it can’t suffocate.”
Desmond stared at him.
“You can talk,” he said at last.
“Of course I can talk.”
“Three months. I’ve been talking to you for three months.”
“I know.” Something twitched at the corner of the other boy’s mouth. Almost a smile. “You talk a great deal.”
“You never asked a question that needed an answer.” The boy stood up and brushed the dust from his breeches. Then he held out his hand. “Get up. I’ll show you the grip. My father taught it to me. Once you’ve got it, Crane will never knock the sword out of your hand again.”
Desmond looked at the outstretched hand. A pale, narrow hand with a plain silver ring on one finger, a small raven on it.
“Why? Why are you helping me?”
The heir of Ravenmoor thought about it. Seriously, the way he thought about everything.
“Because you sat beside me for three months,” he said then. “Even though I never answered. No one has ever done that.” He kept holding out his hand. “I’m Aldwyn.”
Desmond took it.
Four weeks later he faced Crane again. He held the sword like a bird. Crane did not knock it out of his hand a single time.
Desmond won.
And up in the stands, among the laughing, cheering students, sat a thin boy with black hair and a book on his knees, and when Desmond looked up at him, he closed the book.
That was all. He only closed the book.
But Desmond knew what it meant.
“And Silas?” Ren asked after a long silence.
“Silas joined us in the second year. A bookworm from the upper class who didn’t get on with his own year. He spoke to Aldwyn in the library because they both wanted to borrow the same book.” Owen laughed softly. “They argued for an hour over who should get it first. After that there were three of us.”
He fell silent again.
“Tomorrow you’ll see him. Silas. He’s older now, and he’ll act as if he doesn’t know you. He has to. Let him.”
“I know.”
Owen reached into his coat pocket.
Ren knew what it was before he saw it. He knew it from the way Owen held his hand. Closed, careful, the way you hold a small bird.
Owen opened his hand.
In the moonlight lay a ring. Heavy, silver, worn smooth. On its face a raven with outspread wings.
Ren had last seen it when his father pulled it from his finger, on the top step of a burning staircase, over his mother’s body. For him. When he’s old enough.
He did not reach out. He could not.
“I wore it for seven years. On a cord, under my shirt. Every day. I didn’t even take it off when I slept.” He looked at the ring. “It was the last thing he asked of me. As a friend. Not as a duke.”
He took Ren’s hand, turned it over and laid the ring in it. Then he closed Ren’s fingers around it, the way Aldwyn had closed his back then.
The ring was warm. Warm from seven years against Owen’s chest.
“You’re old enough,” Owen said quietly.
Ren held the ring tight. He felt the edges of the raven in his palm, the wings, the beak. He felt something tighten in his throat, and he let it. For the first time in a long while he simply let it.
Owen said nothing. He only sat beside him on the wall, shoulder against shoulder, and looked west until it had passed.
Then he pulled a leather cord from his pocket and handed it to him.
“Not on your finger. Not yet. A ring with the raven of Ravenmoor on the hand of a commoner from Eastreach … that would be the end before it begins.”
Ren threaded the ring onto the cord and tied it round his neck. The ring slid under his shirt and came to rest on his chest, right where the mana slept. Warm. Heavy.
“Not yet,” Ren repeated.
“Not yet.”
They said goodbye before sunrise.
Ren had not slept. He had sat on the wall until the sky in the east turned grey, in the new coat, with the new sword on his back and the ring on his chest. He had slipped a note under Milo’s blanket that said: Going ahead. Something to do in the city first. See you at registration. Bring hat. R.
He did not know exactly why he wanted to go alone. Only that there was something in Crownhaven he had to look at before he did anything else. And that he did not want anyone beside him while he did. Not even Milo.
Owen was waiting at the gate of the inn, the mule on its bridle. The sacks were empty and rolled up. He watched Ren as he came across the yard, and for a moment, just one tiny moment, Ren saw something in his face he had never seen there before.
He saw that Owen was afraid.
Then it was gone.
“You look good.”
“I look like a brawler from Eastreach.”
“Like a well-dressed brawler.” Owen looked him up and down, the coat, the sword, the tousled hair. “He would have laughed. And then he’d have told you to clean your boots.”
Ren looked at his boots. They were muddy. Of course they were.
They stood facing each other, and neither said anything. Ren had spent the whole night thinking about what to say. He had prepared sentences and discarded them again, like the names back when he had decided on Ren. None of them had fitted.
“Owen,” he said at last. “Desmond.”
Owen flinched. Ren had not spoken the name aloud in seven years.
“Thank you.”
It was too little. It was far too little for seven years, for a burning corridor and an ice-cold river and a bridge and a fever and a thousand mornings on a snowy training ground. But it was all Ren had.
Owen nodded. He said nothing. He only took a step forward and pulled Ren to him, briefly and hard, one hand in his tousled hair, the way he had done in the dark under the bridge when Ren had cried for the first time.
Then he let him go.
“One last thing.” His voice was rough. “For seven years I’ve told you to look behind you. That whoever only looks ahead dies from behind.”
“I know.”
“That’s still true.” Owen laid his hand on Ren’s chest. Where the ring lay. “But don’t forget to look ahead now and then too, Ren. Otherwise you won’t see where you’re going.”
He took his hand away. He clicked his tongue, and the mule set off, and Owen Harlow walked down the hill, eastwards, towards the sun that was just rising over the distant hills.
He did not look back.
Ren watched him until he had disappeared behind the first bend. Then a little longer.
Then he turned round.
Before him lay the road west, grey in the first light, and at the end of the road stood the white towers of Crownhaven, waiting for him, as they had waited for seven years.
Ren pulled the coat tighter. He felt the weight of the sword on his back and the weight of the ring on his chest.
Come home.
He set off. Alone.
And for the first time in a very long while, he was looking ahead.