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  Dart did her best to perform the exacting series of moves.

  And failed.

  A final twist and her hilt slipped from her tired fingers. Her sword spun into the mud.

  Laughter applauded her mishap.

  “Disarmed by the wind,” Pyllor said as he strode across the field, arms behind his back, plainly imitating the swordmaster he idolized.

  Yuril glowered at Dart, exhaling a trail of smoke from around her pipe’s stem. “Collect your sword, Hothbrin.” She turned her back on Dart, not even bothering to have her repeat the form this time, as if recognizing the impossibility. “We’ll move on to some open sparring now. I’ll be studying each of you to see how you have learned to apply the forms to actual swordplay. In the field of battle, you’ll need to flow smoothly from one to another, to recognize the waxing of one form, to react accordingly, to counter with another.”

  The group quickly paired up. Dart soon found herself alone, standing forlornly with sword in hand.

  Yuril nodded to Pyllor. “You’ll spar with her.”

  Pyllor’s eyes widened in surprise. He was five years her senior in swordsmanship. But he merely nodded. “As you wish.” The pairing was beneath him, but still a glint of wicked delight flashed in his eyes.

  Yuril lined the combatants around the field and raised an arm in the air. “Take your stances!”

  Dart backed a step, trying her best to settle into a ready guard. She was all too aware of her opponent’s weight, reach, and skill. Would her humiliation never end?

  “Swords up!” Yuril barked. “Begin!”

  Pyllor attacked immediately. He step-lunged, crackling fast. Dart barely got her guard up, parrying his sword aside. The tip of his sword sailed past her ear. She flinched when she should have taken the advantage with a counterattack.

  Pyllor sprang back deftly, turning his shoulder and striking down with his blade. The strength of the impact knocked Dart’s sword almost to the mud. Pyllor rocked forward and slammed Dart square in the chest with the point of his sword, hard enough to knock her back.

  She tripped and fell onto her backside.

  Pyllor stood over her.

  Dart rubbed where he had struck, knowing it would bruise. If the blade had been steel instead of wood, she would be dead.

  Around her the clack-clacking of other practice swords echoed. She was the first defeated. In a matter of breaths.

  Yuril rolled her eyes and surveyed the others.

  Dart regained her feet and stared glumly across the field. There was much crude hacking and slashing, bouts of brawn over skill, but several of her peers demonstrated flashes of talent: a turned feint, a roundhouse parry, a double thrust.

  Yuril called out a few rare compliments—which usually caused the receiver to stumble and lose his match, but the loss was greeted with embarrassed grins.

  “Again!” Yuril commanded.

  Dart picked up her sword. Two more matches and she was on the ground again, favoring a stinging wrist slap. Pyllor was not holding back—neither with his skill nor with his muscle.

  Tears threatened, but Dart let her anger pull her back to her feet.

  Pupp, bristling and fiery, stalked around her ankles. Dart waved him back with her free hand. Though without substance, Pupp could sometimes rile himself enough to have some impact on his own. Dart didn’t want him interfering.

  “Again!”

  Dart took her stance. When the call to start was shouted, she took the lead for the first time, lunging out with a feint to Pyllor’s sword. He countered, trying to smack her blade back. She anticipated and nipped her sword point under the swing of his blade.

  Pyllor’s eyes widened in surprise, caught off guard.

  Dart lunged into the opening, going for a tag to Pyllor’s torso.

  Instead, Pyllor reached with his free hand and grabbed her wooden sword, trapping it. He yanked it closer, dragging Dart off her toes. As she stumbled toward him, he clubbed the hilt of his sword into Dart’s chin.

  Her head snapped back, and she fell hard onto the frozen field.

  Yuril had missed the maneuver, witnessing only the end.

  “Hothbrin, never close guard! Learn to keep your distance!”

  The swordmaster turned away again.

  Pyllor sneered down at her.

  He had cheated and now gloated over his ill-gotten victory. If they had been sparring with steel, he would never have been able to grab a razor-edged blade like that. He would’ve lost fingers, and Dart’s lunge would have struck home.

  “That’s enough for this morning!” Yuril called out. “Off to your bread-boards! I’ll see you all on the morrow. And you’d better practice your stances!”

  Yuril barked the last while staring straight at Dart.

  A few chuckles rose from the others.

  With the lessons over, everyone headed across the cold fields toward the warm towers and halls. Most left in groups or pairs. Only Dart walked within a mantle of disgrace thick enough to hold off all others.

  A final glance back showed Pyllor with Yuril. The swordmaster’s back was to Dart, but she seemed to be sharing a few hard words with the young squire. Pyllor opened his mouth to offer some protest, but something in Yuril’s face made him close his lips. His eyes, though, noted Dart’s attention and flashed with fury at her. Plainly the discourse concerned Pyllor’s sparring match.

  Dart quickly glanced back around.

  Had the swordmaster witnessed his deceitful grab of Dart’s sword after all? Or was he merely being scolded for being so hard on such a lesser pupil?

  Either way, the black cloud around Dart grew a few shades lighter. Even Pupp shook out of his hunkered tread and trotted more brightly.

  Dart felt a renewed determination settle through her. She would practice, every night. She would not end up on her backside in the mud again.

  Still, her gaze stretched upward, following the rise of Stormwatch Tower into the steel gray sky. Up near the top lay the hermitage of the castellan, where Kathryn ser Vail held sway. Dart had her responsibilities there, too. The knighting ceremony for Tylar was only days away. There were a thousand details to attend to.

  Yet despite her duties here on the field and up in the tower, Dart had never felt more alone. She stared again at her laughing, jostling peers with a heavy heart. She missed her friend Laurelle, sharing a bed, talking in whispers all through the night. She had no friend like that here.

  No one even knew her real name.

  Pupp must have sensed the clouds about her shoulders, for he bounced back to her, biting at her training sword, his teeth passing harmlessly through the wood. She could almost hear his determined growls.

  A small, tired smile formed.

  She had at least one friend here.

  “Let’s go, Pupp—we’ve got a long climb.”

  Dart hurried up the stairs, around and around. After so many flights, her attention drifted, caught in the press and flow of the busy day—then a shout startled her back to alertness.

  “Mind the robe!”

  Dart danced around the rotund form of Master Hesharian, head of the Council of Masters. He huffed on the stairs ahead of her, filling the passage, one hand on the wall to support himself. His bald pate shone with a slick of sweat, highlighting the eleven sigils tattooed around the crown of his head, marking his mastered disciplines.

  He must have important duties with Warden Fields to have climbed so far out of his subterranean den. The levels of the masters were said to delve as deep below the land as Stormwatch climbed into the sky. It was the masters’ sole domain. Down below lay their domiciles, alchemy labs, and storehouses. Dart had heard rumors of Hesharian’s personal menagerie, where he studied new alchemies on beasts of the field.

  Dart pushed past him with distaste, earning a disgruntled glare from the massive man. He climbed with another master, one Dart didn’t know, an ancient man in a muddied traveling cloak. He also noted Dart’s passage. His gaze fell upon her. She glanced up—then shuddered,
almost tripping on a step. His eyes were the color of milk. He should’ve been blind, so scaled did his eyes appear, but Dart sensed the cold weight of his attention. For a breath, she heard the flutter of ravens’ wings, taken back to another moment of terror, of violation.

  Then his gaze drifted off, freeing her.

  She hurried past, followed just as quickly by Pupp, his stubby tail tucked low. She was relieved to finally reach the twenty-second flight, where both the Warden of Tashijan and Castellan Vail had their rooms. She fled the stairs, happy to be rid of the midday crowd ascending and descending Stormwatch Tower, though at this lofty height, most of the crowd had thinned. The only folk still on the stairs were those who had matters to settle with Castellan Vail or Warden Fields.

  Like the two masters.

  Glancing back, Dart saw them enter the stone hallway.

  What matters had drawn them so high?

  Dart turned away from them, toward the tall doors that marked the Warden’s Eyrie. The doors were open but flanked by a pair of knights. Dart noted the crimson stitching at the shoulder of their cloaks. A perfect circle crisscrossed with two slashes. The sigil of the Fiery Cross, marking them as the warden’s men.

  A small crowd gathered outside the open door. They were cloaked and dressed in shades of browns and blacks, plainly finery, but gone a bit tattered.

  A voice called from inside the doorway, “Again it is an honor to have a Hand of Lord Balger join us for the ceremonies! My manservant, Lowl, will take you to your rooms, where you may refresh after your trip. He’ll see that your trunks are unloaded from the flippercraft and brought to your rooms.”

  Dart stepped against the wall to allow them to pass. The retinue from Foulsham Dell had already arrived, undoubtedly early enough to take full advantage of the flow of wine and ale. She also noted that Lord Balger, god of that realm, had sent only one of his eight Hands to attend Tylar’s knighting. A veiled slight. Plainly there remained ill will between the god of the Dell, a realm of brigands and cutthroats, and the new regent.

  Over the past moon, bets had been placed among the knights on which realms would send emissaries and how many Hands from each would be in attendance. Dart eyed the passage of the lone Hand from the Dell, a pot-bellied man with a palsied gait. Few would make money on this wager.

  Once the party had passed, Dart continued down the hall.

  The pair of black-cloaked guards, who even here kept the wrap of their masklins over the lower half of their faces, barely noted her passage.

  Unfortunately she did not escape another’s attention.

  “Page Hothbrin…”

  She froze.

  “A moment, if you please.”

  Dart turned to find Warden Fields standing a few steps past his threshold. He was a commanding figure, tall in black boots and trousers, with a gray shirt and silver buttons. His manner was casual as he passed some trifling gift that the Hand of Lord Balger had presented to him to another manservant.

  Despite the few streaks of gray in his dark auburn hair, tied and braided with black leather, Argent ser Fields remained solid of muscle and stolid of countenance. He studied Dart for a measuring breath. His attention was disconcerting; one eye had been lost during an acclaimed campaign against a ravening hinterking. The old scar was now covered by a plate of bone, taken, it was said, from the skull of that same king.

  Dart backed a step—but she could not escape that easily.

  Warden Fields waved her forward with a warm smile. “Fear not, child. I won’t bite.”

  Swallowing hard, Dart drifted toward him. She could not refuse. Despite the difficulties last year, he remained the leader of the Shadowknights. She stepped across the threshold and entered his Eyrie.

  Argent spoke to the knights at the door. “Have Master Hesharian and his guest indulge me a moment—when they arrive.”

  Dart had noted that the large master remained halfway down the hall, greeting Balger’s Hand, wheezing and wiping a brow.

  Argent closed the door, nodded to her again, and strode into the room. A fire crackled in a large hearth. The windows that overlooked a central courtyard were heavily draped against the cold. There were few furnishings. Even the back corner of the room had its rugs rolled back to bare stone, with a rack of weapons against one wall. A spot for the warden to spar and keep his skills honed. It was said he remained one of the more formidable swordsmen.

  But Dart noted the layer of dust on the weapons rack.

  Argent had turned his attention to other battles of late.

  Keeping his place here in the Eyrie.

  Though he had been voted into position with almost unanimous backing of the knights and masters, all knew by what means he had stretched to capture Tylar when the regent was an outlawed godslayer. All had seen the petrified body of the warden’s former right-hand man, Symon ser Jaklar, accidentally cursed to stone by Argent’s own hand, wielding a sword black with corrupted Graces, a forbidden weapon. The disgrace went far toward unseating the man—but seemingly not far enough.

  Symon’s form had disappeared into the masters’ domain, deep under the Citadel, supposedly to seek some way to cure him, but more likely to whisk the corruption away from all eyes, to let time dull the horror.

  So with the backing of the likes of Master Hesharian, high master of the Council of Masters, Argent had initially kept his perch here in the Eyrie. And now his position grew more solid with the passing of every moon. Memories ran short when all of Myrillia was holding its breath and searching over its shoulders. Rumors and stories continued to abound: of strange beasts plaguing outlying realms, of madness among gods, of disappearances across the lands.

  And as this long winter stretched on, Argent found his support growing. Before his disgrace, he had founded the Fiery Cross among the knights. Over the recent centuries, the shadowknights had been dwindling in both numbers and esteem, seemingly becoming no more than couriers and sell-swords. Argent had promised to reverse that course, to return the knights to glory, to become its own force among the gods, all symbolized under the banner of the Fiery Cross.

  Such a conceit found fertile ground in many hearts.

  Even corruption could not fully unroot it.

  And now this latest ploy: to return to Tylar his shadowcloak and sword. The offer was made more to help Argent than Tylar. But it could not be refused. Such a gesture of unification was necessary. During these dark times, Tashijan needed to be strong, for there were greater dangers than those represented by Argent ser Fields.

  “Come inside. I wish to share a few private words with you.” Argent motioned her forward. “Knight to knight.”

  Dart remained where she was, head bowed, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. The warden had never once even spoken to her. To all, even the warden, Dart was no more than some page scooped up by Castellan Vail, a servant and courier. The warden remained ignorant of her true role and the secret hidden in her blood and heritage.

  So what could he want with her now?

  Argent crossed to a small table with a silver platter of brandied nuts and dried baby plums. Fingers waved at the fare. “Please help yourself. I imagine Mistress Yuril has worn you thin and hungry.”

  Dart’s belly was indeed empty, but she made no move, mumbling something that was incomprehensible even to her own ears.

  Argent plucked up a plum and rolled it between his fingers. “I’ve heard from a certain squire that you seem to be lapsing in your training.”

  Dart’s eyes flicked up, her face reddening.

  “We can’t have that. Perhaps it would be best if I freed you from your duties with the castellan.”

  “Ser,” Dart said, suddenly finding her voice, “please, no!”

  “No, I don’t suppose you’d like to lose such an esteemed position. A page serving the castellan. It is a rare honor.”

  Dart’s brow crinkled. What was all this about?

  “I’m certain the deficit to your training could be corrected…with a tutor, perhaps a bit of fo
rtifying Grace…but such an expense. I daresay it must be beyond your means, yes?”

  Dart just bowed her head. She could not stop her knees from shaking. Across the room, Pupp wandered about, poking his nose into corners.

  “But in the long run, it might be to the Order’s best suit to have such an esteemed member as yourself, one serving the castellan, to avail herself of such a boon.”

  “That would be most generous,” Dart said.

  Argent popped the plum between his lips and chewed for a moment, nodding as if in private conversation with himself. He finally spoke again. “Still, what is a boon if unearned? What sort of lesson would that be for a knight-in-training?”

  “Ser?”

  Argent sighed. “With all the tumult of late, the castellan and I have found so few moments to sit and share our thoughts on matters of Tashijan’s well-being. That is certainly not good for the Order. Perhaps as recompense for the additional expense of tutors and drips and drabs of special Graces, you, Page Hothbrin, could serve an additional duty—bringing to me Castellan Vail’s thoughts and words on matters of interest to the Order.”

  “I’m sure, ser—”

  Warden Fields silenced her with a stern look. “Of course, we wouldn’t want the castellan to know of your duties. I’d hate for Castellan Vail to think herself neglectful in making time for private meetings here at the Eyrie. She has enough to juggle as it is. So this would be between just the two of us.”

  Dart’s mouth dried, and her heart climbed to her throat.

  “If this is too burdensome, I’m sure we could find another page who might serve the castellan with more alacrity.”

  “No, ser…”

  Argent smiled again. The warden was asking her to spy upon the castellan, plying her with promises of boons while threatening to displace her from her position. All the while couching it as for the good of the Order.

  “Fine, fine…so it’s settled.” He strode back to the door. “I won’t keep you from your duties any longer.”