Crownhaven. The Royal Academy. The first weeks.
The old bell tower stood where the Academy ended.
Behind the north wing, behind an overgrown garden where no one had planted anything for years, the outer wall ran along the slope, and below it, far below, flowed the river. At night you heard it more than you saw it. An even, dark rushing that rose up between the stones.
The tower sat on the wall like a bird on a fence. Narrow, tall, of the same dark stone as the north wing, with a pointed roof missing shingles like teeth in an old mouth. Right at the top, under the roof, four narrow arches, one towards each point of the compass. And in the middle, barely visible, a dark shape.
The bell.
On the first night Ren stood in front of the door for a long time, the black key in his hand, before he put it in the lock. It turned heavily. Rustily. As if no one had moved it in a very long time.
I’ve kept the key ever since.
The door swung open. Beyond it was darkness, and the smell of dust and pigeon droppings and old, damp wood.
He stepped inside.
The stairs were as rotten as Silas had said.
They wound up the inner wall of the tower, narrow and steep, and some steps were only half steps, and some were missing altogether. Ren climbed in the dark, his left hand on the wall, his right stretched out in front of him, and counted. He had not brought a lantern. Light in an abandoned tower could be seen from far away.
At the thirty-fourth step his foot went through the wood. He caught himself on the edge of the wall, heard the splinters fall into the depths below him, a long time before they struck, and stood motionless for a while until his heart had calmed.
At the sixty-second step he was at the top.
The bell chamber was a small, round room, all of stone, just as Silas had described it. Moonlight fell in through the four arches and painted pale strips on the floor. The wind passed through, cold and fresh, carrying up the rushing of the river.
And in the middle, from a thick black beam, hung the bell.
It was bigger than he had thought. Almost as tall as he was, of dark bronze gone greenish, and on one side, from the bottom almost to the crown, a crack ran through the metal, so wide that Ren could have laid his little finger in it.
He walked round it. Slowly. He did not know what he was looking for.
Then he found it.
On the floor, all round the bell, in the stone. Dark patches. At first he had taken them for shadows, or for pigeon droppings. But when he knelt and ran his finger over them, they were smooth, glassy, like the sand in the training circle where his fire and Cedric’s had met.
Burn marks. Star-shaped. Branching. Dozens. Perhaps hundreds, some on top of each other, some only as big as a coin, some as big as a plate. And on the wall beside the east arch, at eye level, scratched into the stone with a knife point or a nail, two letters.
A. R.
And beneath them, smaller, crooked, in a hand so bad that Ren could hardly read it:
One heartbeat. Then two.
He sat in front of that wall for a long time.
He thought of a boy, seventeen years old, thin and serious, with black hair, who had sat here thirty years ago with an arm full of scars and scratched these words into the stone so that he would not forget them. Because every night he had forgotten them, the moment the lightning came.
Ren laid his hand on the letters.
They were cold. But he left his hand there for a long time all the same.
On the first night he did not even try.
On the second night he sat down in the middle of the bell chamber, his back against the beam, his left arm on his knees, the leather bracer beside him on the floor, and waited. He did not call the lightning. He did not reach for it. He only did what he had not done since Fernwick. He stopped holding it down.
It took a long time.
Then, at some point, he felt it. Deep down, beneath the fire, beneath the warm, patient flame he showed every day in lessons. A crackle. A trembling, like a thread drawn too tight.
He let it come.
Only a little way. A small way, down his arm, as far as the wrist.
The pain was there at once. Burning, sharp, as it had been back then in the pasture. Ren clenched his teeth and counted.
One.
And let go.
The lightning withdrew. Reluctantly, like a dog on a leash. Ren sat there, panting, sweat on his forehead although the wind blew cold through the arches, and looked at his arm.
Nothing. No spark. No light. Only the burning, slowly fading.
One heartbeat.
It was nothing. It was almost nothing.
But he had let it come, and he had let it go, and in between it had not broken loose.
On the fifth night he managed two heartbeats.
On the eighth he saw a spark for the first time. Tiny, golden, on the tip of his forefinger, no bigger than a glow-worm. It danced there for a breath, crackling, like a living thing, and Ren stared at it and forgot to count, and in that moment the thread snapped.
The spark leapt.
It leapt from his finger, right across the bell chamber, a thin, glaring thread of light, and struck the bell.
The bell sang.
It was not a peal. The crack was too deep for that. It was a hum, deep and dark and long, which Ren felt more in his teeth than in his ears, a note that spread through the bronze and went into the stone and out through the arches into the night.
Ren threw himself flat on the floor.
He lay there, his face on the cold stone, and listened to the note slowly fade. It took an eternity. Then it was quiet. Only the river rushed. Somewhere in the city a dog barked.
No one came.
He lay there a long time anyway. Then he sat up and looked at his arm. At the wrist, at the spot that had split open after the duel with Emilia, it glistened wet and red. You are reading on NovelPing, the official source.
And if the arm splits, you stop. At once.
He put on the leather bracer and fastened the three buckles and climbed down the sixty-two steps, skipping the thirty-fourth.
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For the next three nights he did not go up.
By day he was Ren Harlow from Fernwick, fifth in the Rankings, fire.
He sat in the back row of the theory hall and listened to Silas talk about mana and about the exhaustion that came when you used too much of it at once, and about the scars that some sub-elements left behind if you drove them too far too early. He did not look at Ren as he spoke. Not once. But he talked about scars for a whole hour, and Ren wrote down every word.
He learned history from an old mistress who closed her eyes when she spoke, and law from a young master who talked so fast that no one could keep up except Nora, who wrote everything down and explained it in the evenings to Bea, who forgot everything.
In the afternoons he stood in the circle, with blunt sword and reined-in fire, and fought farmers’ sons and craftsmen’s daughters and once Bea, who sent a flame so close past his hair that it smelled of burning afterwards and Milo laughed about it for half an hour.
He did not fight Emilia. Greaves made new pairings every month, and the month was not over yet. But he saw her. Every afternoon, on the other side of the circle, upright, her white hair tied back, fighting count’s sons and Julian Thorne and once Rosalind, where no one could quite see who actually won.
Sometimes she looked over. Not often. Not for long.
He was always looking somewhere else just then.
And every morning, an hour before sunrise, as he crept back from the bell tower through the overgrown garden, he saw Cedric Valemont on the training yard.
On the tenth morning Cedric was not raking alone. Greaves stood beside him with a cup in his hand, and when Cedric leaned the rake against the barrier, Greaves handed him a practice sword. Cedric took it. Greaves said something. Cedric shook his head. Greaves set down the cup, stepped behind him, took his hand and laid the fingers around the grip, one after another, the way you show a child how to hold a spoon.
Cedric stood very still.
Ren watched from the edge of the garden, in the shadow of an old wall, and thought of a farm boy from the south who had lain in the sand thirty years ago, and of a thin boy with a book who had held out his hand to him.
Like a bird.
He moved on before either of them noticed him.
On the thirteenth night he held the spark.
Not for long. Five heartbeats. Perhaps six. He sat leaning back against the beam, his hand before his face, and on his fingertip a light was dancing, golden and crackling, and he looked at it and counted and did not let it go and did not let it leap. He held it. The way you hold a bird. Not too tight. Not too loose.
Six.
He closed his hand. The spark went out.
His arm was burning. But it was not bleeding.
Ren leaned his head against the black beam and laughed. Quietly, almost silently, with his eyes closed. He did not know when he had last laughed like that. Not at something Milo had said. Not because it was expected of him. Just because.
One heartbeat. Then two.
Then six, Father.
He opened his hand again. He wanted to try once more. Just once more. Just one spark.
And at that very moment he heard the stairs.
It was not a loud sound. A creak, far down in the tower. Wood giving under weight. Then a pause. Then another, a little higher.
Someone was coming up.
Ren froze. The spark on his fingertip was almost there, almost born, and he wrenched it back so hard that a searing pain shot through his whole arm, into his shoulder. He bit his tongue so as not to cry out. He tasted blood.
The creaking came closer.
He looked around. The bell chamber was round and empty. Four arches, a beam, a bell. No hiding place. No door. Only the stairs leading down, straight to where the footsteps were coming from.
And the arches.
Ren grabbed the leather bracer and shoved it into his shirt. Then he stepped to the west arch, the one that looked out over the river, and looked down. Below him the tower wall dropped sheer, along the wall, far down to where the water gleamed black and silver in the moonlight. But directly beneath the arch, an arm’s length lower, a narrow ledge ran round the tower. No wider than two hands. Covered in moss and pigeon droppings.
He heard someone swear below. Quietly. A girl’s voice.
Ren swung a leg over the parapet.
The ledge held.
He stood on it, his back to the tower wall, his heels over the drop, his hands pressed flat against the cold stone. Below him the river rushed. The wind tugged at his coat. He did not dare look down.
Above him, in the bell chamber, the footsteps stopped.
Someone was at the top.
Ren held his breath. He heard this someone standing there. For a long time. Then a step. Then another. Slowly, carefully, the way you step into a strange room where you are not sure you are alone.
Then a voice.
“Hello?”
Ren knew the voice. Calm. A little rough. The voice of someone who had stood over a grindstone all day and was not used to talking much.
Nora.
“I know someone’s here.” She did not speak loudly. She did not sound frightened. She sounded the way she always sounded. Matter-of-fact. As if explaining to a customer why his sword was blunt. “I saw the light. From the garden. And the bell. A few nights ago. I thought I’d dreamed it.”
Ren pressed himself against the stone. His arm was burning. His tongue was bleeding. He thought of the way back, along the ledge, round the tower. There was none. The ledge ended after three steps at a place where the wall had broken away.
He was stuck.
Above him Nora walked through the bell chamber. He heard her footsteps. He heard her stop. Heard her crouch down. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Then nothing for a long time.
“These are warm,” she said quietly. Not to him. To herself. “This one’s still warm. Like iron just taken out of the forge.”
The burn marks. The new ones. The ones from tonight.
Ren closed his eyes.
“And it smells odd.” A sniff. “Like outside, after a thunderstorm. When lightning’s struck somewhere.”
Silence. Then a sound Ren could not place at first. A soft scratching. Stone on stone. Then he understood: she was running her finger over the wall. Over the letters.
“A. R.,” she read. Slowly. Then, more slowly still, with effort, as if deciphering something very crooked: “One heart… beat. Then two.”
Ren heard her stand up.
He heard her step to the west arch. Directly above him. So close that he could hear her breathing when the wind dropped for a moment. He saw the hem of her brown dress above the parapet, an arm’s length above his head. Her hand on the stone, rough, callused, covered in little scars.
She only had to look down.
She looked out. Over the river. Over the roofs of the city, lying in the moonlight like a sea of grey slate.
“You know,” she said, and it was not clear whom she was talking to. The night. The river. No one. “Sometimes at night I go to the old smithy. At the back of the garden. The one nobody’s used for ten years. Because I can’t sleep unless I’m doing something with my hands. Bea thinks I’m mad.”
The wind picked up. Ren felt his left foot slide a little on the moss. He pressed his heels into the stone.
“And sometimes from there I see light up here. Gold. Very brief. Like sparks from the forge when you let the iron get too hot.” A pause. “Or like dust. In a Touchstone.”
Ren stopped breathing.
Nora stood at the arch a moment longer. Then she took her hand from the parapet.
“None of my business,” she said.
Her footsteps receded. Across the bell chamber. To the stairs. Down, step by step, creaking and groaning, and once a quiet curse, somewhere in the middle, at a spot where the thirty-fourth step was presumably missing.
Then the door banged shut below.
Ren stood on the ledge a long time.
He stood there until his legs were trembling and his fingers were numb and the moon was beginning to sink behind the roofs of the city. Then he pulled himself up, over the parapet, back into the bell chamber, and sat down on the floor with his back against the wall, right beneath the two letters.
His hands were trembling. He looked down at them.
On the floor in front of him, in the moonlight, lay something that had not been there before.
A small rag. Coarse, brown, linen, neatly folded. And inside, when he opened it, a lump of grease, yellowish and soft, that smelled of tallow and herbs.
Forge grease. The grease smiths rubbed into their hands when they had stood too close to the fire. Against burns.
Ren stared at it.
Then he rubbed a little of it on his wrist, on the red, open place beneath the scars, and it cooled, and the burning eased. And he thought of Owen, who had rubbed grease into his split hands in the first winter, without a word.
The next morning, in the theory hall, Nora sat down in front of him beside Bea as always.
She did not look round. She said nothing. She took out her quill and her inkwell and her exercise book, in which she wrote down everything the young master in law said too fast, and smoothed the paper.
Only when Silas came in and everyone turned to face the front did she lean back a little. Only a little. So that it looked as if she were searching for something in her bag.
“The thirty-fourth step’s missing,” she said quietly, without turning round. “Nearly broke my leg.”
Ren said nothing.
“And you shouldn’t use so much grease at once. That’s enough for two weeks, if you’re sparing.”
Then she straightened up again and dipped her quill in the inkwell, and Silas began to speak, and Ren sat in the back row, with his back to the wall, and did not hear a single word.
In the afternoon a new sheet hung on the board in the colonnade.
A crush in front of it, as on the first day. Milo pushing through until he stood at the front, and then making a sound, half cheer, half horror.
Field exercise for the first year. Departure in seven days. Ten days, five of them in the forests two days’ journey east of the city, on the old road to Eastreach. Mixed groups of four. The assignments are binding.
Beneath it the groups. Sixteen of them. Ren found his name in the seventh.
Group seven. Fairweather, Milo. Callan, Nora. Harlow, Ren. Winterhall, Emilia.
“Oh no,” Milo whispered. And then, after a moment in which he read the line again: “Oh. Oh. Ren. Ren, that’s either the best thing that could ever happen to us, or we’re all going to die.”
Nora stood beside them and read the line too. She said nothing. But she looked at Ren from the side, for a breath, with that look she gave blades.
On the other side of the colonnade, between two pillars, stood Emilia Winterhall, reading the same line.
She turned round. Over the heads of the crowd her gaze found him. At once, as if she had known where he was standing.
She raised an eyebrow. Only the tiniest bit.
And then you don’t stop.
Ren looked at her and thought of five days in the forests to the east, on the old road to Eastreach. Of a black key, a rag full of grease and two letters in a wall. Of a spark he had held for six heartbeats.
Six heartbeats.
He hoped it would be enough.
He did not know for what.