The Ashen Hand
Hedda Corvane set a dragonsteel collar on the table, right in front of Rowan.
It was black iron with a dull red sheen, thick as his wrist, with a lock like a clenched fist. Just looking at it made the warmth in his chest shrink.
"Either you learn to control that fire by the end of the week," she said, "or you wear this. Your choice."
"That's not much of a choice," Rowan said.
"It's more than the Order would give you." Hedda leaned back and folded her arms. "Welcome to the Ashen Hand, boy."
* * *
The Ashen Hand lived in the bones of a ruin.
Hollowmere had been something grand once. A great hall of pale stone on the shore of a misty lake, half swallowed now by moss and willow roots. Columns stood with no roof to hold. Stairs climbed to nowhere. In the broken courtyard, around cook fires, lived about fifty people: farmers, runaway servants, ex-soldiers, a blacksmith with one hand. And a few children, fifteen and sixteen years old, who had run from the Trial before the flame could catch them.
One of them, a small boy with cropped brown hair named Pim, had followed Rowan around all morning like a puppy.
"Is it true you bent a door?" Pim asked for the third time. "With your hand?"
"It was a small door."
"Can you breathe fire?"
"No."
"Not yet," said Hedda, who was sharpening a crossbow bolt nearby. "Pim, go and help with the fish."
Pim went, grinning over his shoulder.
Talia sat on a broken pillar with the Codex pages spread across her knees, pretending not to listen. She had barely stopped reading since they arrived.
"You want to know why I didn't just leave you both in the swamp," Hedda said. "Fair enough. Nine days from now is the Tricentennial Jubilee in Dawnspire. Three hundred years of Dawn. The Regent will stand on the Cathedral steps in front of the whole city. And so will we." She tapped the crossbow. "We have people in the capital. Weapons. A plan. What we don't have is a spark. Something for the people to see, something that tells them the Order is lying."
"You want me to be the spark," Rowan said slowly.
"I want you to be a dragon-blooded boy standing in the square, breathing fire, while the Order's knights can't stop you. Nobody will forget that."
"I'm not a weapon."
"Everyone's a weapon," Hedda said. "Most people just never get aimed."
"I don't care about your uprising," Talia said, without looking up. "I care about the Sanctuary. My brother is in there. If your plan gets me inside, fine. If it doesn't, I'll go alone."
Hedda studied her. "The Sanctuary is connected to the Cathedral. Tunnels. Guards. Knights. You won't get ten steps."
"Then I'll get nine and think of something."
For the first time, Hedda almost smiled.
* * *
A scout came in at noon, mud to the waist. He'd been to Greywater and back.
"The old archivist," he said, "they've taken him to Dawnspire. To the Sanctuary, for questioning. The smith and the kitchen girl are fine. The Lantern questioned them, but let them go."
Rowan let out a breath he'd been holding since the Blackfen. Bram and Nell were safe. Osric wasn't.
"What happens in the Sanctuary?" he asked. "Really?"
Hedda's jaw worked. She touched the scar on her neck without seeming to notice.
"I was a Dawnknight once," she said. "Eleven years. I escorted children to the Sanctuary gates. I never went inside. Nobody goes inside but the Regent's own people. And beneath the Cathedral there's a place called the Sunken Chapel. Knights are forbidden to set foot in it. Even the High Lantern. If you're caught on the stairs, you lose your rank. Maybe more." She dropped her hand. "One night they told me to carry a sleeping girl down there. Twelve years old. I said no. So they burned off my brand and threw me out. I was lucky."
Nobody said anything for a while.
* * *
Training was a disaster.
"Breathe," Hedda said. "In through the nose. Feel the heat. Hold it. Don't let it out."
Rowan breathed. He felt the heat. It rose in his chest like a tide.
The iron pan he was holding turned red, then orange, then sagged over his fingers like hot wax.
"Well," said Hedda. "That's one less pan."
He tried again. And again. Each time, the warmth answered too fast or not at all. When he got angry, the grass at his feet started smoking. When he got scared, his scales rose and stung. By dusk he was shaking with exhaustion, his arm covered in dark, coin-shaped marks, and he had melted three pans and a spoon.
Pim sat on a nearby wall the whole time, swinging his heels and offering advice. "Maybe think about something sad," he suggested. "Or something happy. Or cabbage."
"Why cabbage?"
"I don't know. It's calming. Nobody ever got angry about cabbage."
Rowan tried thinking about cabbage. The spoon he was holding melted anyway.
Hedda watched him with her arms folded, saying nothing, and that was worse than shouting. He could feel her measuring him. How long before he was ready. How far the fire could reach. How many knights it could stop. It made his skin crawl, and the more his skin crawled, the hotter his hands became.
Talia brought him a cup of water. "You're thinking about it too hard," she said.
"You don't even have fire."
"No. But I watch people. Every time you try, you look like you're bracing for a punch." She handed him the cup. "Maybe it's not something you fight. Maybe it's something you listen to."
He thought of the voice. The mountain. The song.
"Maybe," he said.
* * *
That night, Rowan couldn't sleep again. He sat on a broken step at the edge of the camp and watched the mist move on the lake.
The tag at his throat went warm.
He frowned and touched it. Like before, in Greywater. A coin held in a fist. He told himself it was the fever. He'd had a fever for two days now. Everything felt warm.
Three minutes later, the lookout's whistle split the night.
"Knights!" someone screamed. "Dawnknights on the north causeway!"
The camp woke all at once. Torches flared. People snatched up crossbows and children. Across the misty water, silver armor gleamed in the moonlight, a line of riders coming fast along the old stone causeway that led to the ruins.
"How?" Hedda snarled, hauling on her boots. "How did they find the causeway?"
"There's an old bridge," a man shouted. "The wooden one, over the channel! If they get over it—"
Rowan was already running.
The bridge was a rickety span of old planks between the causeway and the island. By the time he reached it, the first knights were already thundering toward the far end. The Ashen Hand's archers were firing from behind the columns, but the bolts bounced off silver armor.
And on the near side of the bridge, alone, stood Pim.
The boy had come to help. He had a fishing spear. He was fifteen, and small, and terrified.
On the causeway, one of the knights raised a crossbow and aimed at him.
"No!" Rowan yelled.
The heat didn't rise. It exploded.
It came up through his chest and his throat like a river bursting a dam, and when he opened his mouth to shout again, what came out wasn't a word. It was fire. A roaring, blazing torrent of gold and orange flame that poured over the old wooden bridge and turned it into a wall of light.
The knight's bolt went wide. The horses screamed and reared. The bridge burned, and burned, and then collapsed into the channel with a crash and a huge cloud of steam.
On the far side, the knights pulled back. They could not cross.
The flames died. Rowan dropped to his knees.
His throat was on fire. Not the good kind. It felt like he'd swallowed a hot coal. He tried to say, Pim, are you all right? and nothing came out. Not even a whisper.
Pim stared at him with enormous eyes. Behind him, the Ashen Hand had gone silent. Fifty people were staring at Rowan with the same expression. Fear.
Then someone cheered. Then another. Then the whole ruin was shouting.
Hedda walked up and stood looking down at him. She didn't cheer. She looked like someone who had just been handed a very sharp sword, and was already thinking about where to point it.
"Well," she said quietly. "Now you can breathe fire."
* * *
Talia sat with him afterward by the embers of a cook fire, since he couldn't talk and couldn't sleep.
"You can't speak," she said. "At all?"
He shook his head.
"So I have to do all the talking. For both of us." She considered this. "Honestly, that's how most conversations go anyway."
He laughed. It came out as a silent, painful wheeze. She grinned.
"You saved Pim," she said, more quietly. "Everyone's going to say you're a weapon now. But I saw your face. You weren't trying to hurt anyone. You were trying to save someone." She paused. "Twice, now. Nell. Pim. That's a pattern, Rowan Thale."
He looked at her. He couldn't answer. But he thought she knew anyway.
Then Talia went still, staring past him.
The light from his fire was still clinging to the stones, a faint golden glow on the wall of the old hall behind them. And beneath the moss, where the heat had touched it, something was shining. Lines. Hooks. Curls. Claw-shaped letters, glowing like embers, spreading across the whole ancient wall.
Wyrmscript.
Talia rose slowly to her feet, the Codex pages clutched to her chest.
"This isn't a ruin," she whispered. "It's a library."