Thus, looking forward to gruel, eyes on the pot, bowl in hand, it was the, “Mother,” from Larochette that drew his attention. She, like him, leaned toward the cookfire, but her eyes strayed beyond Armitage’s ministrations to their breakfast. Her bowl was now only loosely held, her lips slack, just like that time the Justiciar laid her across the school’s floor with a stout blow to the skull. Amir raised an eyebrow, because Mother was a curious thing to say about the quantity of whiskey in their breakfast, when she finished, “Fucker.”

  He swivelled. There, wings wide in a braking glide, was a dragon. No mistaking it for a heron, because it was pretty close. Its body was blue, and the size of—here, his mind scrabbled for a useful yardstick—perhaps seven horses. Speaking of horses, they panicked, which is what Amir should have been doing. He commanded some modest mastery of the Storm, but if legends were true, dragons didn’t much care. This dragon wore no cloak of caution as it descended, and where Amir expected fire to blaze, the crackle of electricity arced between giant teeth in a wide-gaping maw.

  He swivelled further, eyes finding Sands Apart. The Feybrind had spent the rest of the night sulking, which was understandable since her side tried to murder her. They hadn’t bound her hands, and now would have been a prime time to leg it. But no, even Feybrind could be stunned. The cat sat, jaw slightly agape, ochre gaze locked on the dragon. Amir glanced about for Faust, expecting the big man to be there, hammer in hand, but he was only half right. The giant was half-way out of his tent, frozen in the act of straightening, weaponless, mouth open.

  There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to get involved.

  He dropped his bowl, charging the dragon. He made it perhaps ten metres from it, blade held high and back, yellow glow tinting the steel as his perfect steps shook the ground. The dragon impacted, shaking the ground harder, Amir’s perfect steps thwarted. His blade flickered as he stumbled. The dragon’s long neck gave it impressive reach as it snaked its head forward, mouth wide.

  Amir dived, rolling away from the maw, coming up in high guard, because what else was a man supposed to do when facing a foe that stood—again, his brain fumbled with measurements—three storeys above the ground?

  The dragon arched back, inhaling, and Amir figured this for the end.

  //HOLD.// Vertiline’s Sway gripped his heart, holding all in earshot. The dragon trembled, then turned ponderously toward her. Amir was able to slide his eyeballs, the rest of him locked tight, and he marvelled the dragon was only slowed. Vertiline strode from her tent, and while she must have left in a hurry and thus lack of armour was a given, Amir was astounded she carried no blade. Her hair was unbound, platinum locks tugged in the breeze from the dragon’s great wings. “I thought never to see another wonder, and here you are. I am Vertiline, and would know your name, dragon.”

  The dragon’s eyes narrowed as it peered at her. //LITTLE THING.//

  “Vertiline.” She said it slower. “The world has changed much since your kind flew above it. I knew one like you, once. She was mighty. Ormeon the Redeemer.”

  Lightning crackled between the dragon’s teeth. //ORMEON’S NAME IS CARRIED BY THE WIND. IT IS A MEMORY IN THE EARTH. YET I DO NOT KNOW HER.//

  Vertiline walked closer. “Where do you come from, dragon? Where is your Skyforge?”

  Skyforge? Amir managed to blink, muscles trembling with the strain imposed by the Sway. The dragon didn’t notice his struggles, lowering its massive head to peer at Vertiline. //I AM LOST.//

  “Hmm.” Vertiline closed with the creature, hands on hips. Amir noticed her metal arm glint in the dawn’s light from beneath the billowing cotton of her shirt. “Geneve said you must be called. That your names are given things. What does your Manifest say?”

  //THERE IS NO MANIFEST.// The dragon looked to the sky, but there was naught there Amir could see. The morning was cloudless. //THERE IS NOTHING LEFT.//

  “Then I shall name you.” Vertiline made no move, but the dragon reared back.

  //NAMES ARE FOR BINDING. I REMEMBER SLAVES OF THE COMMAND.// It’s blue eyes crackled.

  Amir managed to turn his head, and spotted Sands Apart. The woman still hadn’t moved, perhaps stuck fast in the Sway’s molasses as he was, but her ochre gaze seemed to shift from yellow to an earthier shade. The dragon remembers Commands but doesn’t know they only apply to Feybrind. He tried to speak, but nothing but a croak came out.

  “There is no binding.” Vertiline shook her head. “We hold none of that here.”

  //YET THE PEOPLE ABOUT YOU LIE SUBSERVIENT TO YOUR SINGLE WORD. YOU ARE A SLAVER, AND I WILL END YOU.// It inhaled, great chest widening like the Three’s own bellows.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Vertiline warned.

  The dragon breathed, and where Amir expected cleansing, terrible flame, the blue-white actinic glare of lightning crackled. Vertiline held her metal hand up, energy arcing and spitting as it wound about the hand. When the dragon was done, she held a thunderstorm in her clenched fist. Her arm trembled with strain, and Amir thought he heard the creak of tortured metal. She gritted, “We keep no slaves,” pointed her arm at the sky, and relaxed her hand.

  A crackling, sinuous whip of light scorched the sky. The sound was all thunderstorms in one, a resonating BOOM that made Amir’s bowels tremble. The dragon watched the discharge, head tilted to one side like a curious dog, then eyed the High Justiciar. //YOU ARE A MAGICIAN?//

  “I am lost, too,” Vertiline said. “But I’m with people who can help us find the way.”

  The dragon considered this, then bunched as if to leap. Amir managed to choke out, “A name, Justiciar. Give it a name.”

  The dragon held a moment, and Amir wondered if it was afraid. Surely something that large could fear nothing. Vertiline walked toward it, bowed her head a moment in thought, then said, “Myryntir the Protector, come back to us when you have need of answers.”

  The dragon launched; a gust of wind knocked Amir to his backside. He watched it fly away, wings wide against the sky, and thought, She didn’t give it a name. She reminded it of its purpose.

  Faust was unusually pensive. Amir could see it in the set of his shoulders, the cant of his head, and just how damnably hard he swung his hammer. They were embroiled in a round of sparring, because the High Justiciar had noted their inadequate attempts to face a dragon then ordered a rousing round of Three’s Bastard before setting up an impromptu fighting ring.

  Amir didn’t have the heart to call Three’s Bastard its correct name of Destiny’s Supplicant. His legs hurt too much from squat jumps in full steel plate.

  I have not had breakfast, and Khiton’s balls but the big man can swing. Faust’s hammer slammed into Amir’s blade. It was a blow so ridiculous in the context of most men’s wars Amir should have been a nail pounded into the dirt. The one saving grace was the lick of yellow about his steel but it was only the raggedy edge of the Storm. I am getting tired.

  “Knight Adept, the edge of your blade is not straight.” Vertiline’s cool voice carried from Amir’s right. “In moments, Novice Faust will have the better of you, and it is only perfection and art that stands between you and the bleak other side of death.”

  Amir felt his jaw clench, because of course Faust was beating him like a toy drum. Vertiline had said to win without drawing blood or ‘causing undue damage on our limited supplies’, which meant Amir couldn’t use the Storm to cut Faust’s weapon in half. Or, the man himself, and while he loved Faust like a brother most of the time, this was a rare moment he carried true hate in his heart.

  They stalked each other, circling like dogs. Sweat dripped from Amir’s brow, slicked his palms, and did nothing whatsoever to cool him, because he still wore that damnable plate. If anything, he was basting inside the steel as the sun’s bitter brightness smote from on high.

  Sands Apart came into view. The Feybrind made a big show of standing back, keeping to her namesake and not mingling, but Amir was sure it was an act from the swish, swish of her tail. He glanced to Sight of Day, whose golden gaze rested on him for a moment before returning to Sands Apart. Amir saw no desire there, nothing like lust, just a pure calm as if a golden ocean spread everywhere the Feybrind looked.

  At which point he found himself airborne, chest plate ringing like a gong, as Faust’s blow inverted sky and earth and set Amir on his ear. He hugged dirt, spat grass, and groaned.

  “Well?” Vertiline’s call drew his ragged attention. She was partially hidden behind Faust, the man’s legs taking most of Amir’s limited vision. The giant stood tall, hammer held low, shoulders still bunched as if wrestling with a weight. “Your opponent lies prone. Finish him.”

  Amir rolled, but Faust’s strike never landed. “Justiciar, he is helpless.”

  “Then he is no Knight.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Be quick about it.”

  Faust looked at Amir. Amir looked right back and got an arm under himself. He wished he wore Cophine’s summer dress; it would be lighter than all this steel. He had but moments. Knee beneath him, just so. Shoulder held forward. Arm up, palm raised in Higher Tides. Faust’s blow came down, the hammer blow right on Amir’s palm.

  A crescent glimmer of yellow ran down Amir’s gauntlet. A bare shadow of the Storm’s radiance, so he still felt much of the blow through his hand. It numbed right to the elbow. He used the impact to roll, coming upright in a clatter of bitter resentment. “How may I best him?”

  Vertiline raised a cool eyebrow. “If you cannot fight a child without hurting him, you are unfit to carry the black.”

  Amir felt his eyes bulge, a hot retort on his lips. Larochette rested her arms on a pike, a smile on her lips that did not go to her eyes. He didn’t understand why. She wasn’t in this pit with the Bear of Baragor. For some reason he couldn’t ken, his gaze was drawn again to Sands Apart. The Feybrind half-smiled, more smirk than anything, but those ochre eyes were dark with curiosity. You spared me, they seemed to say. Can you do the same for a stronger foe?

  Faust swung again. Amir stepped to the side, stuck his foot out, and tripped the giant. Faust was no fool, trained in the same arts as Amir, and staggered only a moment. It was sufficient for Amir to cross to his fallen steel, kick the blade with a toe, and snatch it from the air. He held it cross guard, then pointed the tip at Faust. “You would do well to remember all the tricks of men.”

  “I know the patterns,” Faust rumbled, then croaked to a halt as Amir’s foot caught him in the balls. The giant’s descent to the ground was as graceful as a toppling tree, as silent as a held breath.

  Amir snatched the hammer’s hilt from his enemy’s nerveless fingers, then placed his steel against Faust’s throat. “Do you yield, brother?”

  “I want to be sick.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He turned to Vertiline, noting her approving smile. “Why do you approve? I didn’t beat him with the Storm.”

  “That was not the lesson,” she said.

  “Then what was the lesson?” He felt perplexed. “Aside from, ‘wear a box’?”

  The High Justiciar glanced to Sands Apart. “Knights are more than the Storm, Adept. We are the river that collects the streams of humanity. We are the justice the world needs.” She sighed. “And we are its mercy, even when it hurts.”

  When Amir looked to Sands Apart, he found nothing but empty air.

  Chapter Six

  This is very confusing. Tarragon stood by Evanne’s side, because it made her feel warm. The once-fairy looked with suspicion at the lordling who’d popped out of a demon gate, because he also made her feel warm, just in a different way, like he was an uncle she’d somehow lost along the way but found under the sofa. It made her suspicious because she didn’t trust demons, and he smelled like them, but his claims of living in their land for sixteen years would account for it.

  It was ridiculous, of course, because no one could live in their world. Especially not a man who held no Storm. And not a very young man at that.

  They were in the command room of Dancing in the Storm. Heser the Cheg was there, and he and the lordling had pounded each other in a huggy-yet-manly way for some time. The Raven had placed a cool kiss on the lordling’s cheek and he’d grabbed her and swung her about in a whirlwind embrace, which—surprise upon surprise—she didn’t seem to mind. No one had paid Evanne much mind, which Tarragon could see annoyed the bard no end. Tarragon didn’t have fond memories of being sixteen, because she’d spent it locked in a cage underground as everyone above died, but she remembered enough of the confusion about literally everything, so imagined Evanne was in a similar state to her.

  Evanne cleared her throat in just the right way. The sound crept under the conversation between three people ignoring her and Tarragon and quietly tugged the rug beneath their feet. They stopped talking, and the lordling looked at Evanne. “Nice.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “I,” he put a hand on his chest, “am a liar, sometime thief, and maker of dreams. I know the tone people use to say they’re angry, impatient, and in love. Your throat-clearing was just the right level of aggression and impatience with a salting of boredom. Well done.”

  Evanne stared at him, so Tarragon stepped in. “You know this sword.” She tapped the hilt of Requiem. The blade tinked, as if it were happy to be touched.

  “I do.” The lordling sobered. “It is the blade of my true love. She’ll want it back, no mistake.”

  “Where is the Saviour of Ravenswall?” Morgan put a hand on the lordling’s arm. “Where is our dear friend? I admit to missing her these long years and could use her counsel.”

  “Now hold on.” Evanne stepped past Tarragon. “This guy,” she jerked a thumb at the lordling, “is supposed to be, what, the Meri of legend? One of the three who dived into the portal, which Mama has guarded for all sixteen years of my life?”

  “Legend?” The lordling seemed surprised. “‘Mama’?”

  Evanne soldiered on. “The man who saved the world by taking his doom into the demon realm?”

  “I’m not a legend. I’m barely forty.”

  “You look sixty,” Heser rumbled.

  “The doom took it out of me,” Meri admitted. “There is always a price. Back to the mother thing. Who’s the kid?”

  Tarragon felt her suspicion rear. “There is no way a man of any kind could survive in the demon realm for a year, let alone sixteen.” She drew Requiem. “Talk, or I put you down, demon.”

  “Wait,” Morgan said.

  “Hold,” Heser said at the same time.

  “What the hell?” Evanne shouted over the top.

  “Go for it,” Meri said.

  Everyone looked at the lordling. Tarragon looked at the sword then the lordling. “What?”

  “I said, go for it. I’m either a demon, in which case killing me is absolutely the right call. I’d do it myself in your shoes. Or, and I’m just putting it out there, I’m what I say I am. A man who’s survived in the demon realm for years, and who probably has a few Tricks. Like this one.” He puffed at Requiem as if blowing out a candle. The sword’s light died. Tarragon gawked at the blade, now just exquisite silver-bright skymetal. The lordling clapped his hands, said, “Now that’s out of the way,” and then he yelped as Tarragon rushed him.

  And found herself on the ground, staring at the ceiling. The lordling somehow held the blade, tucked neatly under his arm, hand out to Tarragon. “That’s enough of that. Let’s grab a drink and talk this out.”

  Then he went down like a sack of meal as Evanne cracked her guitar over the back of his head.

  Everyone shouted all at once. The Raven was screeching at Evanne about how you don’t knock out family and Evanne was hollering about he’s not family he’s a demon-spawned illusion and Heser was bellowing for silence, for pity’s sake.

  All of that happening up there gave Tarragon a moment to stare at the lordling. He’d fallen quite close to her, his nose perhaps a handspan from hers. He was out, a snuffed candle. His face was an old man’s, but well-preserved, like he knew how to eat and live well, starting the morning with grapefruit and yoga. There were smile lines at the corners of his eyes. He sported a close beard, grey about the muzzle, and it suited him well. She believed his face was used to being kind, because that’s what it looked like even though he’d been knocked out.

  She touched the side of his face. His eyelids fluttered, and he looked at her. His gaze was grey, like her name, and despite being knocked to the floor, he didn’t seem angry about it. “You’re not used to being a person, are you?”

  Tarragon inched her face closer, because everyone up there was still screaming at each other, and there were a lot of angry expressions and pointed fingers. “I was a fairy until recently.”

  “A Builder?” He seemed surprised. “I knew a Builder. She turned out to be a goddess.”

  Tarragon took this on faith. “You didn’t kill me when you disarmed me.”

  “I’m not a demon.”

  “Demons don’t kill. They’re into the possession game.”

  “You were here in the last war?” He closed his eyes for a minute. “Some of their rank escaped ahead of me. We rid this world of them, or it all starts again. We must find Geneve.”

  “She’s not here.” Tarragon propped herself up, climbed to her feet, then offered her hand to Meri. “But I know someone who can help.”

  He let her help him up. Evanne, Morgan, and Heser went silent. Meri brushed himself off, then looked to Evanne. “Vertiline.”

  “You what?” She looked like she wanted to slug him again.

  “Your mother is my much-loved companion, Vertiline. Your father is Armitage, the rock that took a dragon from death’s door to saviour. I see it in your eyes, your face, and the colour of your soul.” He offered her his hand. “I would make peace with you, niece.”

  Evanne still looked like she wanted to punch him but looked to Morgan. “Auntie, is this the man you know?”

  “He is.” The Raven nodded. “No one else I know can annoy so many people so quickly.”