The Royal Academy. The second day of the Blossom Moon.
The Academy’s training yard lay behind the main building, in a wide oval court surrounded on three sides by tiers of stone seats, like a small theatre. The ground was hard-packed sand, yellowish and fine, and darkly stained in places. Ren preferred not to know by what.
That morning only a hundred and forty applicants stood on that sand.
Ren had counted them as they gathered in the first light. A hundred and forty out of more than three hundred. The faces were the same as yesterday, but they looked different. More tired. Harder. Whoever stood here today knew they carried something inside them. And everyone knew that half of them would still be going home tonight.
The masters sat on the tiers. And above them, on the topmost steps, the students of the higher years, who had come to watch. Ren spotted Edmund at once. He sat in the middle of the top row, his feet on the step in front of him, an apple in his hand, entertaining his friends with something that made them all laugh.
“He’s come to watch us suffer,” Milo said darkly. He wore his new hat, the blue feather bobbing, but his face was green. “I heard he comes every year. He bets on who goes home crying.”
“Then make sure he loses.”
Milo looked at him. Then he grinned, weakly but sincerely. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
The element trial went quickly.
At the far end of the yard targets had been set up. Straw dummies on posts, in three rows one behind the other, the last so far away that you could hardly make it out. Beside them wooden discs on ropes that swung in the wind, and flags of thin cloth on tall poles. And in the middle, on a flat stone dais, a row of copper bowls full of water.
Mistress Mabry explained the rules in her parchment voice. Each applicant had three attempts. Fire at the dummies, wind at the flags, water at the bowls, earth at whatever came to hand. They would be judged on accuracy, power and control. Whoever missed the target lost points. Whoever hit something other than the target lost more. Whoever hit an examiner could go home straight away.
The plump master from the day before, whom the others called Master Dunmore, read out the names.
Ren watched. He saw flames lick across the sand and reach the first row of straw dummies, or not. Water rising from the copper bowls and flying through the air in arcs, sometimes elegant, sometimes like an upturned bucket. Gusts of wind tugging at the flags. An earth mage made a boulder grow out of the ground and knocked over a dummy three rows back, and someone on the tiers clapped.
Nora needed only one attempt.
She planted herself on the sand, feet apart, the way she had stood at her grindstone. Then she stamped once.
The ground in front of her split open. A crack, straight as if drawn with a ruler, shot across the yard faster than a horse could run, and at its end a wall of earth and stone burst upwards, man-high and as wide as a barn door, right beneath the middle dummy of the last row. The dummy flew in a high arc over the wall of the training yard and disappeared.
For a moment it was silent.
“Earth,” said Mistress Mabry. “Excellent.” Then, after a pause: “The dummy will cost you nothing. This time.”
Nora nodded, as if she had been told it would rain tomorrow, and went back to her place.
Then came Milo.
Ren watched him step onto the sand. Watched him raise his hands, eyes on the flags, on the middle one, the red one. Watched him take a deep breath.
The first gust hit the blue flag beside it.
On the tiers someone laughed. Loudly. Like a fanfare.
Milo went red. But he did not lower his hands. He closed his eyes. And Ren saw his lips move, and he did not need to hear what he said. He knew. At home there are only fields. So the wind knows where it wants to go.
The second gust struck the red flag so precisely in the centre that it bellied like a sail and tore from its pole.
The third caught it out of the air, turned it twice in an elegant arc and laid it on Mistress Mabry’s table.
With a little flourish at the end.
“Wind,” said Mistress Mabry. She regarded the flag on her table. “Good. Very good, in fact.”
Milo stood on the sand and stared at his hands. Then he turned to the tiers, to Edmund, and doffed his hat. Low. With a sweeping bow.
Edmund stopped laughing.
On the tiers, others were laughing now.
Emilia’s turn came shortly before noon.
She stood in front of the copper bowls and did not even raise her hands. She only looked at the bowls.
The water rose. From all twelve bowls at once, in twelve thin, glittering threads that drew together in the air into a sphere as big as a cartwheel. The sphere hovered above the dais for a heartbeat, shimmering and clear.
Then it froze. And shattered. Into hundreds of splinters, narrow and sharp as needles, which shot across the yard and struck every single straw dummy in all three rows. All at the same time.
The dummies stood there, bristling with ice, white with hoarfrost. Not one had fallen over.
Emilia turned away and left.
On the tiers no one clapped. It was too quiet for that. Ren heard Milo swallow beside him.
“That,” Milo whispered, “was eerie.”
“That was precise.”
He watched her go. That face again. No smile. Only the calm, relieved face of someone who had completed a task.
Ren made an effort to be bad.
Not too bad. Owen had drummed that into him. Whoever is too bad stands out just as much as someone who’s too good. Be ordinary. Ordinary gets forgotten.
So he stood in front of the straw dummies and raised his right hand and let a flame rise above it, middling in size, orange, calm. And sent it forward. It flew across the sand and struck the middle dummy of the first row. The dummy caught fire and burned, cleanly and evenly.
Second attempt. Second row. A hit.
On the third attempt he aimed at the last row and let the flame drop a little too early. It missed the dummy by a hand’s breadth and went out in the sand.
Mistress Mabry looked at him for a long time. Her eyes were narrow. Yesterday she had seen a Touchstone three-quarters full.
“Fire,” she decided at last. “Controlled. Little power.”
Ren nodded and went back. He felt her gaze on his back the whole way.
“What was that?” Milo hissed when he was standing beside him. “Yesterday very strong and today little power?”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re never tired.”
Ren did not answer. On the other side of the yard, under the blue awning, Princess Rosalind sat writing something in a little book.
In the afternoon came the combat part.
A circle had been drawn on the sand, ten paces across, in white chalk. In the middle stood a man Ren had not seen before. He was not tall, but he was broad, with a bald, scarred skull and a grey beard cropped so short that it looked like stubble on a field. Half his left ear was missing.
“Weapons Master Greaves,” he said, and his voice sounded like a boot on gravel. “I’m running the combat part. Listen carefully, I’ll only say this once.”
He raised a sword. A practice sword of blunt steel, rounded at the edges, the point covered with a leather cap.
“You fight with these. With nothing else. Anyone who brings their own blade into the circle is out.” His gaze travelled over the applicants and rested briefly on the sword on Ren’s back. “Magic is allowed. This is a battle academy, not a dancing lesson. But whoever deliberately burns, drowns, crushes or tears his opponent to pieces is also out. And comes to see me afterwards.” He smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. “A fight ends when one of you is disarmed, when one of you leaves the circle, when one of you yields, or when I say so. When I say enough, it’s enough. Anyone who strikes after that has a problem with me.”
He lowered the sword.
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“The pairings will be drawn by lot. Master Dunmore.”
Ren watched him. He watched Dunmore draw the slips without looking, read them out and pass them on. And he watched Cedric Valemont leaning on the barrier on the other side of the yard, perfectly relaxed, arms folded.
He had not looked at Ren a single time. Not all day.
That was worse than if he had stared at him.
Nora fought a tall, blond nobleman’s son with a crest on his chest, who smiled at her as if it were all a game.
He stopped smiling when the ground under his feet went soft as mud and swallowed him to the knees. Nora walked over to him, took the sword out of his hand the way you take a spoon away from a child, and handed it to Greaves.
“Disarmed.” Greaves sounded almost amused.
Milo drew a girl with short red curls and freckles, who grinned at him as if she had just been given a present.
“Beatrix Quinn,” she said, holding out her hand before Greaves started the fight. “Fire. You’re the one with the flag, aren’t you? That was good. I’m still going to flatten you.”
She flattened him. But it took a while. Milo kept her at a distance with gusts of wind, whirled sand into her eyes, made her flames flicker aside, and for quite a while it looked as if he might win. Then she feinted an attack from the left, Milo turned his wind to the left, and she came from the right and knocked the sword out of his hand.
“Disarmed.”
Milo stood in the sand rubbing his wrist. Beatrix Quinn went over to him, clapped him on the shoulder and said, loudly enough for everyone to hear: “If he doesn’t get through, I’m not going either.”
Greaves raised an eyebrow. But he made a note.
Emilia fought a slim, dark-haired boy from the upper class with a bored, handsome face, who introduced himself as Julian Thorne and made Emilia a bow so deep that it seemed almost mocking.
The fight lasted two breaths.
In the first, Julian raised his sword. In the second, it was frozen to his hand, and his feet to the ground, and Emilia stood in front of him tapping him on the chest with the leather cap of her blade.
“Yield?”
Julian Thorne looked at his frozen boots. Then he laughed. “With pleasure, Lady Winterhall.”
Ren saw Rosalind fight, against a broad-shouldered count’s son who was twice her weight. He did not see exactly what happened. No one saw it exactly. She only raised her hand once, and the count’s son dropped his sword and pressed both hands to his ears and staggered out of the circle, with a face as if someone had hit him over the head with a hammer.
Greaves frowned. “Left the circle.” He said it slowly, as if he did not trust the words.
Rosalind smiled politely and handed him her practice sword. She had not even raised it.
“Harlow, Ren.”
Master Dunmore drew the next slip from the pouch. He glanced at it, and Ren saw him hesitate for a moment. His gaze slid to the barrier. To Cedric. Then back to the slip.
“Against Valemont, Cedric.”
On the tiers it suddenly went very quiet.
Ren stood up. He did not look over at Dunmore. He did not need to look to know how that slip had got into the pouch. He only watched Cedric slowly push himself away from the barrier and step into the circle, with a face that was smiling for the first time that day.
Ren took the sword from his back, the dwarven sword with the blessing on its hilt, and laid it in Milo’s arms.
“Look after this.”
Milo held it as if it were made of glass. “Ren …”
“I know.”
He went to the weapon rack beside the circle and took a practice sword. It was heavier than his own blade, worse balanced, with a grip that had seen a thousand sweaty hands. Ren weighed it in his hand. Then he stepped into the circle.
Cedric stood facing him. Ten paces. He held his practice sword loosely at his side, the point in the sand, and regarded Ren the way you regard a horse you are about to break in.
“I hoped it would turn out like this.” He spoke quietly, only for Ren.
“I know. You paid for the slip.”
Cedric’s smile widened. “Prove it.”
Weapons Master Greaves stood at the edge of the circle. He looked from one to the other. He had drawn his brows together, and Ren had the impression that what was going on here had not escaped him. But he said nothing.
He raised his hand.
“Begin.”
Cedric came at once.
No probing, no circling. He came across the sand like a storm, sword raised high, and a flame shot from his left hand, red and hot, a whole wall of fire racing ahead of him and blocking Ren’s view.
Ren did not step back. He stepped aside, to the left, half a pace, the way he had before an axe in Brackenhollow. The flames brushed past him, so close that he felt the heat on his cheek and smelled singed hair. And out of the fire came Cedric’s blade, slanting down from above, at his shoulder.
Ren caught it. Steel on steel. The blow was hard, much harder than he had expected. Cedric was no weakling. He had trained, for years, with the best fencing masters a duke’s gold could buy. He struck fast and precisely, high, low, a feint to the middle, and every blow came with a flame that dazzled Ren’s eyes and scorched his skin.
Ren parried. Dodged. Parried again. He was pushed back, step by step, towards the edge of the circle.
On the tiers someone whooped. A fanfare voice.
He’s good, Ren thought. He’s really good.
Cedric pressed on. He was laughing now, quietly, between the blows. “Is that all, nobody? Controlled, little power?” A blow. A burst of fire. “Yesterday very strong, and today you back away like a farm boy from a bull?”
One more step. The edge of the circle was right behind him. Ren felt it without looking. The way he felt everything that was behind him.
And then he felt something else.
The crackle. In his chest. Under the leather bracer. It had stirred when Cedric sent the wall of fire, and now, with every step he gave ground, it grew louder. One heartbeat. Only one. He would be faster than Cedric, so much faster that Cedric would not even understand what had happened.
No lightning. Not in the trial.
Only Ravenmoor.
Ren let go of the thread.
And then he saw it.
He saw how Cedric held his sword. Knuckles white. Fingers clawed so tightly around the grip that the tendons stood out at the wrist. Every blow came from the shoulder, not the wrist. Hard. Fast. And stiff. So stiff that after every stroke he needed a heartbeat to catch the blade again.
You hold the sword too tight.
Like a bird. Firm enough that it can’t fly away. Loose enough that it can’t suffocate.
Ren loosened his grip.
Cedric’s next blow came from above, with all his strength, a flame rolling after it. Ren did not catch it. He let it come. He let the blade slide along his own, very lightly, like water over a stone, and turned his wrist, only a little, in a small, tight circle.
Cedric’s sword followed the turn. It had to. His hand was too stiff to let go, and too stiff to resist. The blade turned with it, once around Ren’s blade, and when Ren snapped his wrist up at the end of the circle, it flew out of Cedric’s hand.
It was very quiet.
Cedric stood there with an empty hand, his fingers still curled as if holding something that was no longer there. He stared at his hand. Then at the sword in the sand. Then at Ren.
Ren stood at the edge of the circle, the practice sword loose in his hand, its point in the sand. He had not even used fire. Not once.
Weapons Master Greaves’s voice cut through the silence. “Disarmed.”
Cedric’s face twisted.
Ren saw it coming. He saw the empty hand rise, saw heat gather between the curled fingers, red and glaring and far too much. Not the fire of a duel. The fire of a man who had been humiliated in front of a hundred people and could not bear it.
“Enough!” roared Greaves.
Cedric did not hear.
The flame shot from his hand, a roaring red wave, straight at Ren’s face.
Ren raised his left hand.
He did not think. He let the fire come. His own fire, the warm, patient one he had held above his palm every evening for seven years until everything went black before his eyes. It rose in his chest and shot from his hand, orange and even, and met Cedric’s flame in the middle of the circle.
The two fires collided.
For a heartbeat they stood in the air, red against orange, heat against heat. The sand beneath them began to glow. Ren felt Cedric push, with all his strength, with all the fury he had. He was strong. The stone had said so.
But the stone had also said that Ren was very strong.
He did not push back. Not entirely. He only held his ground. He let his fire stand like a wall, calm and even, and let Cedric run against it. Breath after breath. Until Cedric’s flame began to flicker. Until it grew weaker. Until Cedric fell to his knees, gasping, hands trembling, empty, burned out, his face grey with exhaustion.
Only then did Ren let his fire go out.
He could have pushed it further. He could have let it roll over Cedric, just a little way, just enough that he felt it. He would have deserved it.
Ren let it go out.
Weapons Master Greaves stepped into the circle.
He looked down at Cedric, kneeling and gasping in the glowing sand. Then at Ren. Then at the sand between them, which, where the flames had met, had turned into a glassy black crust.
“Valemont,” he said quietly. “I said enough.”
Cedric did not answer. He stared at the ground.
“Get up. Get out of my sight. We’ll talk about your result tomorrow, and you won’t like it.” Greaves waited until Cedric had scrambled up and stumbled out of the circle to the other nobles, who silently made room for him. Then he turned to Ren.
He looked at him for a long time. The coat Ren had not taken off. The tousled hair. The practice sword he still held loosely in his hand.
“Who taught you that?” he asked. “The turn. At the end.”
“My uncle.”
“Your uncle.” Greaves’s mouth twisted. “I’ve seen that turn exactly twice in my life, boy. Both times at this Academy. Nearly thirty years ago.”
Ren felt the blood drain from his face.
Greaves looked at him a moment longer. Then he shrugged, as if he had thought better of it, and turned away.
“Well fought, Harlow. Winner. Next.”
Ren walked out of the circle. He felt nothing. His legs moved, and at some point he was standing beside Milo again, who pressed the dwarven sword into his arms and talked at him so hard that Ren did not understand a single word. Nora stood beside them, arms folded, and nodded to him, once, gravely.
On the tiers a few people clapped. Not many. The commoners. The nobles did not clap.
Except one.
Right at the top, in the middle of the highest row, Edmund was standing. He had thrown away the apple, and he was clapping, slowly and loudly, and when Ren looked up at him, the crown prince grinned and raised his hand as if raising a cup.
“Fernwick!” he called, in his fanfare voice, so loudly that it rang across the whole yard. “I bet on you! Against my own friend! Don’t tell him!”
His friends laughed. Ren did not understand the joke. He did not understand Edmund. He had thought he would hate him, and he did. But Edmund was still clapping, and it did not look as if he were pretending.
Ren turned away.
And saw, under the blue awning, Emilia Winterhall.
She was not clapping. She sat there, upright as ever, hands folded in her lap, looking at him. She was frowning slightly, the way she had yesterday at the market when she said he was strange.
Their eyes met. Across the whole yard.
Ren held her gaze. One heartbeat. Two.
Then she turned her head away and said something to Rosalind, who sat beside her.
Rosalind did not look at Ren. She was writing in her little book.
In the evening, when the last fights were over and the sun was sinking behind the towers, Ren, Milo and Nora sat on the lowest steps of the tiers and waited to be told what came next.
The results would be announced tomorrow. The Rankings. The classes. Who stayed and who went.
“I’m out,” Milo said for the fifth time. He had taken off his hat and was turning it in his hands. “I lost. I’m definitely out.”
Nora snorted. “You laid a flag on Mabry’s table. With a flourish at the end. She said very good. And you held out against Quinn longer than anyone else who fought her today. I counted.”
“Really?”
“Really. And she said she won’t go without you. Do you think Greaves didn’t write that down?”
Milo thought about it. Then he put his hat back on. The blue feather bobbed.
“You can be quite nice, Nora Callan.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
Ren sat beside them and said nothing. He held his left arm under his coat. It was burning, not as badly as yesterday, but it was burning. He had not used the lightning. He had only felt it and let it go again, yesterday at the stone and today in the circle. But it cost him something every time.
And every time it will cost you something.
He thought of Greaves. Of the half ear and the stubble and the voice like a boot on gravel. I’ve seen that turn exactly twice in my life. Both times at this Academy. Nearly thirty years ago.
Twice.
Once with a thin boy with black hair and a book on his knees.
And once with a loud, stubborn farm boy from the south who had climbed back into the circle four weeks after a humiliating defeat.
Crownhaven is a city full of eyes, Ren thought.
And the Academy, he realised, was full of people who remembered.