Devin swung his hammer, bashing it down on the lump of metal that was due to become a blade. The muscles on his back ached as he did it, the heat of the forge making sweat run through his clothes. In the House of Weapons, it was always hot, and this close to one of the forges, it was almost unbearable.

“You’re doing well, boy,” Old Gund said.

“I’m sixteen, I’m not a boy,” Devin said.

“Aye, but you’re still the size of one. Besides, to an old man like me, you’re all boys.”

Devin shrugged at that. He knew that, to anyone looking, he must not have looked like a smith, but he thought; the metal demanded thinking to truly understand it. The subtle gradations of heat and patterns of steel that could change a weapon from flawed to perfect were almost magical, and Devin was determined to know them all, to truly understand.

“Careful, or it will cool too much,” Gund said.

Quickly, Devin got the metal back into the heat, watching the shade of it until it was exactly right, then pulling it out to work on it. It was close, but it still wasn’t quite right, something about the edge not quite perfect. Devin knew it as surely as he knew his right from his left.

He was still young, but he knew weapons. He knew the best ways to craft them and to sharpen them… he even knew how to wield them, although both his father and Master Wendros seemed determined that he should not. The training the House of Weapons offered was for nobles, young men coming in to learn from the finest sword masters, including the impossibly skilled Wendros. Devin had to do it alone, practicing with everything from swords to axes, spears to knives, cutting at posts and hoping it was right.

A clamor from near the front of the House briefly caught Devin’s attention. The great metal doors at the front stood open, perfectly balanced to swing at the slightest touch. The young men who’d come in through it were clearly noble, and just as clearly slightly drunk. Drunk was dangerous in the House of Weapons. A man who showed up drunk to work here was sent home, and if he did it more than once, he was dismissed.

Even clients were generally shown the door if they were not sober enough. A man with a blade who was drunk was a dangerous man, even if he didn’t mean to be. These, though… they wore royal colors, and to be anything less than courteous was to risk more than a job.

“We are in need of weapons,” the one at the front said. Devin recognized Prince Rodry at once, from the stories about him if not in person. “There is a hunt tomorrow, and there will probably be a tournament following the wedding.”

Gund went to meet them, because he was one of the master blacksmiths there. Devin kept his attention on the blade he was forging, because the least slip or mistake could introduce air bubbles that would form cracks. He made it a point of pride that the weapons he forged didn’t break or shatter when struck.

Despite the metal’s need for his attention, Devin wasn’t able to take his eyes off the young nobles who had come there. They seemed around his age; boys trying to be the prince’s friend rather than the Knights of the Spur who served his father. Gund began by showing them spears and blades that might have suited the king’s armies, but they quickly waved them away.

“These are the sons of the king!” one of the men said, gesturing first to Prince Rodry and then to another man Devin guessed to be Prince Vars, if only because he didn’t look slender, gloomy, or girlish enough for Prince Greave. “They deserve finer stuff than this.”

Gund started to show them finer things, the ones with gilt handles or decoration worked into the heads of spears. He even showed them some of the ones that were master made, with layer upon layer of the finest steel, wavy patterns built into them through clay heat treating, and edges that could serve as razors if need be.

“Too fine for them,” Devin murmured to himself. He took the blade he was forging and considered it. It was ready. He heated it up once more, ready to quench it in the long bath of dark oil that stood waiting for it.

He could see from the way they were picking up the weapons and waving them that most of those there had no real idea what they were doing. Perhaps Prince Rodry did, but he was away on the far side of the House’s main floor by now, trying a great spear with a leaf-bladed head, spinning it with the expertise that came from long practice. In contrast, those with him looked more like they were playing at being knights than actually knights. Devin could see the clumsiness in some of their movements, and the ways that their grips on the weapons were subtly wrong.

“A man should know the weapons he makes, and uses,” Devin said, as he plunged the blade he’d made into the quenching trough. It flared and flamed for a moment, then hissed as the weapon slowly cooled.

He practiced with blades so he could know when they were perfect for a trained warrior. He worked at his balance and his flexibility as well as his strength, because it seemed right that a man should forge himself as well as any weapon. He found both difficult; the knowing of things was easier for him, the making of perfect tools, understanding the moment when—

A crash from over where the nobles were toying with the weapons caught his attention, and Devin’s gaze snapped over in time to see Prince Vars standing in the midst of a pile of armor collapsed from its stand. He was glaring at Nem, another of the boys who worked at the House of Weapons. Nem had been Devin’s friend as long as he could remember, large and frankly too well fed, maybe not the fastest of wit, but with hands that could shape the finest of metalwork. Prince Vars quickly shoved him the way Devin might have pushed a stuck door.

“Stupid boy!” Prince Vars snapped. “Can’t you watch where you’re going?”

“Sorry, my lord,” Nem said, “but you were the one who walked into me.”

Devin’s breath caught at that, because he knew how dangerous it was to talk back to any noble, let alone a drunk one. Prince Vars drew himself up to his full height and then struck Nem across the ear, hard enough to send him tumbling down among the steel. He cried out and came up with blood on his arm from where something sharp had caught it.

“How dare you talk back to me?” the prince said. “I say that you walked into me, and you’re calling me a liar?”

Perhaps someone else there might have come up angry, come up ready to fight, but despite his size, Nem had always been gentle. He just looked hurt and perplexed.

For a moment, Devin hesitated, looking around to see if any of the others would intervene in this. None of the ones with Prince Rodry seemed as though they were going to intervene though, probably too worried about insulting someone who outranked them so greatly even as nobles, and maybe some of them thinking that maybe his friend did deserve a beating for whatever they thought he’d done.

As for Prince Rodry, he was still over on the other side of the House’s floor, working with the spear. If he’d heard the commotion above the din of working hammers and rushing forge bellows, he didn’t show it. Gund wouldn’t interfere, because the old man hadn’t survived as long as he had in the environment of the forge by causing trouble for his betters.

Devin knew he should stand by too, even when he saw the prince raise his hand again.

“Are you going to apologize?” Vars demanded.

“I didn’t do anything!” Nem insisted, probably too stunned to remember how the world worked yet, and truth be told, he wasn’t all that bright when it came to things like this. He still thought the world was fair, still thought that not doing anything wrong was enough of an excuse.

“No one talks to me like that,” Prince Vars said, and hit Nem again. “I’m going to beat some manners into you, and when I’m done you’ll thank me for the lesson. And if you get my title wrong while you do it, I’ll beat that into you too. Or, no, let’s give you a real lesson.”

Devin knew he should do nothing, because he wasn’t as young as Nem, and he did know the way the world worked. If a prince of the blood stood on your toes, you apologized to him, or thanked him for the privilege. If he wanted your best work, you sold him it, even though it looked as though he couldn’t swing it right. You didn’t interfere, didn’t intervene, because that meant consequences, for you and your family.

Devin had a family, out beyond the walls of the House of Weapons. He didn’t want to see them hurt just because he’d been hot-tempered and not minded his manners. He didn’t want to stand by and see a boy beaten senseless for a drunken prince’s whim either, though. His grip tightened on his hammer, and Devin set it down, trying to tell himself to stand back.

Then Prince Vars grabbed Nem’s hand. He forced it down onto one of the anvils.

“Let’s see how good a smith you are with a broken hand,” he said. He took a hammer and lifted it, and in that moment Devin knew what would happen if he did nothing. His heart raced.

Without thinking, Devin lunged forward and grabbed for the prince’s arm. He didn’t deflect the blow by much, but it was enough that it missed Nem’s hand and struck the iron of the anvil.

Devin held the grip, just in case the prince tried to smash him with it next.

“What?” Prince Vars said. “Take your hands off me.”

Devin struggled, pinning down his hand; this close to him, Devin could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Not if you’re going to keep striking my friend,” Devin said.

He knew that just by grabbing the prince, he’d created trouble for himself, but it was too late now.

“Nem doesn’t understand, and he wasn’t the reason you knocked over half the armor in here. That would be the drink.”

“Take your hand off me, I said,” the prince repeated, and his other hand strayed toward the eating knife at his belt.

Devin pushed him backward as gently as he could manage. A part of him still hoped this could be peaceful, even as he knew exactly what was going to happen next.

“You don’t want to do that, your highness.”

Vars glared at him, breathing hard, with a look of pure hatred.

“I’m not the one who’s made the mistake here, traitor,” Prince Vars growled, death in his voice.

Vars set down his hammer and picked up an arming sword from one of the benches, although it was obvious to Devin that he was no expert with it.

“That’s right—you’re a traitor. Attacking a royal person is treason, and traitors die for it.”

He swung the sword at Devin, and instinctively, Devin grabbed for whatever he could find. It turned out to be a forge hammer of his own, and he brought it up to block the blow, hearing the ring of iron on iron as he stopped the sword from connecting with his head. The impact jarred at his hands, and there was no time to think now. Catching the blade against the hammer’s head, he wrenched it from the prince’s grip with all his strength, sending it clattering across the floor to join the pile of discarded armor.

He made himself stop then. He was angry that the prince could come in and strike at him like that, but Devin was all patience. Metal required it. A man who was impatient at the forge was a man who got hurt.

“You see?” Prince Vars called out, pointing a finger that was trembling in either anger or fear. “He strikes at me! Seize him. I want him dragged to the deepest cell the castle possesses, and his head on a pike by morning.”

The young men around him looked reluctant to react, but it was just as obvious that they weren’t going to stand by while someone as low-born as Devin fought with a prince. Most were still holding swords or spears that they’d been trying out inexpertly, and now Devin found himself in the middle of a ring of such weapons, all pointed straight at his heart.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Devin said, not knowing what else to do. He let the hammer thud to the floor, because it was useless to him there. What could he do, try to fight his way out against so many? Even though he suspected he was better with a blade than the men there, there were too many to even try it, and if he did, what then? Where would he be able to run, and what would it mean for his family if he did?

“Maybe there’s no need for a cell,” Prince Vars said. “Maybe I’ll take his head off here, where people can see. Put him on his knees. On his knees, I said!” he repeated when the others didn’t do it quickly enough.

Four of them came forward and pushed Devin down, while the others kept their weapons trained on him. Prince Vars, meanwhile, had picked up the sword again. He lifted it, obviously testing the weight, and in that moment Devin knew that he was going to die. Fear filled him, because he couldn’t see a way out. No matter how much he thought, no matter how strong he was, it wouldn’t change things. The others there might not agree with what the prince was about to do, but they would stand by anyway. They would stand there and watch while the prince swung that sword and…

…and the world seemed to stretch out in that moment, one heartbeat fading into the next. In that instant, it was as if he could see every muscle in the prince’s frame, see the sparks of thought that powered it. It was easy in that moment to reach out, and to change just one of them.

“Ow! My arm!” Prince Vars yelled, his sword clattering to the ground.

Devin stared back, stunned. He tried to make some sense of what he’d just done.

And he was terrified by himself.

The prince stood there, clutching at his arm and trying to rub some feeling back into the fingers.

Devin could only stare at him. Had he really done that somehow? How? How could anyone make someone’s arm cramp just by thinking about it?

He thought back to the dream once more…

“That’s enough,” a voice called out, interrupting. “Let him go.”

Prince Rodry stepped into the circle of weapons, and the young men there lowered them in response to his presence, almost breathing a sigh of relief that he was there.

Devin definitely did, yet he kept his eyes on Prince Vars, and the weapon he now held in his off hand.

“That’s enough, Vars,” Rodry said. He stepped between Devin and the prince, and Prince Vars hesitated for a moment. Devin thought he might even swing the sword anyway, regardless of his brother’s presence.

Then he threw the blade aside.

“I didn’t want to come here anyway,” he said, and stalked out.

Prince Rodry turned to Devin, and it didn’t even take another word for him to be released by the men who held him.

“You were brave to stand up for the boy,” he said. He lifted the spear he held. “And you do good work. I’m told this is one of yours.”

“Yes, your highness,” Devin said. He didn’t know what to think. In a matter of seconds, he’d gone from being sure he would die to being released, from being thought a traitor to being complimented on his work. It made no sense, but then, why should things have to make sense in a world where he’d somehow just done… magic?

Prince Rodry nodded and then turned to leave. “Be more careful in the future. I might not be here to save you next time.”

It took several more seconds before Devin could bring himself to stand, breaths coming in short bursts. He looked over to Nem, who was trying to hold the wound on his arm closed. He looked scared and shaken by what had happened.

Old Gund was there then, taking Nem’s arm and wrapping a strip of cloth around it. He looked over to Devin.

“You had to interfere?” he asked.

“I couldn’t let him hurt Nem,” Devin said. That was one thing he would do again, a hundred times if he had to.

“The worst he’d have gotten was a beating,” Gund said. “We’ve all had worse. Now… you need to go.”

“Go?” Devin said. “For today?”

“For today, and all the days that follow, you fool,” Gund said. “Do you think we can let a man who fights a prince stay in the House of Weapons?”

Devin felt the breath leave his chest. Leave the House of Weapons? The only real home he’d ever known?

“But I didn’t—” Devin began, and stopped himself.

He wasn’t Nem, to believe that the world would turn out the way he wanted just because it was the right thing. Of course Gund would want him gone; Devin had known before he interfered what this might cost him.

Devin stared back and nodded, all he could do in response. He turned and began to walk.

“Wait,” Nem called out. He ran to his workbench and then ran back with something wrapped in cloth. “I… I don’t have much else. You saved me. You should have this.”

“I did it because I’m your friend,” Devin said. “You don’t have to give me anything.”

“I want to,” Nem replied. “If he’d hit my hand, I couldn’t make anything else, so I want you to have something I made.”

He passed it to Devin, and Devin took it carefully. Unwrapping it, he could see that it was… well, not a sword, exactly. A long knife, a messer, sat there, too long to be a true knife, not quite long enough to be a sword. It was single edged, with a hilt that stuck out only on one side, and a wedge-shaped point. It was a peasant’s weapon, far removed from the longswords and arming swords of the knights. But it was light. Deadly. And beautiful. Devin could see at a glance, as he turned it and as it gleamed in the light, that it could be far more nimble and deadly than any proper sword. It was a weapon of stealth, cunning, and speed. One perfect for Devin’s light frame and young age.

“It’s not finished,” Nem said, “but I know you can finish it better than I could, and the steel’s good, I promise.”

Devin gave it an experimental swing, feeling the blade cut the air. He wanted to say that it was too much, that he couldn’t take it, but he could see how much Nem wanted him to have this.

“Thank you, Nem,” he said.

“You two done?” Gund said. He looked over to Devin. “I won’t say I’m not sorry to see you go. You’re a good worker, and a finer smith than most here. But you can’t be here when this comes back on us. You need to go, boy. Now.”

Devin wanted to argue even then. But he knew it was futile, and he realized that he no longer wanted to be there. He didn’t want to be somewhere he wasn’t wanted. This had never been his dream. This had been a way to survive. His dream had always been to be a knight, and now…

Now it seemed that his dreams held far stranger things. He needed to work out what they were.

The day your life will change forever.

Could this be what the sorcerer meant?

Devin had no choice. He couldn’t turn around now, couldn’t go back to his forge to set everything back where it should be.

Instead, he walked out into the city. Into his destiny.

And into the waiting day before him.

CHAPTER SIX

Nerra walked the woods alone, slipping between the trees, enjoying the feeling of sunlight on her face. She imagined that everyone back in the castle would have noticed that she had slipped out by now, but she also suspected that they wouldn’t care that much. She would only complicate the wedding preparations by being there.

Here in the wild, she fit. She wound flowers into her dark hair, letting them join the braids. She took off her boots, tying them together over her shoulder so she could feel the earth beneath her feet. Her slender form wove in and out of the trees, almost wisplike in a dress of fall colors. The sleeves were long, of course. Her mother had drummed the need for that into her long ago. Her family might know about her infirmity, but no one else was to.

She loved the outdoors. She loved seeing the plants and picking out their names, bluebell and hogweed, oak and elm, lavender and mushroom. She knew more than their names, too, because each had its own properties, things it could help with or harm it could do. A part of her wished she could spend all her life out here, free and at peace. Maybe she could; maybe she could persuade her father to let her build a home out in the forest, and put what she knew of it to good use, healing the sick and the injured.

Nerra smiled sadly at that, because even though she knew it was a good dream, her father would never go along with it, and in any case… Nerra held back from the thought for a moment, but couldn’t forever. In any case, she probably wouldn’t live long enough to build any kind of life. The sickness killed, or transformed, too quickly for that.

Nerra picked at a strand of willow bark that would be good for aches, putting strips into her belt pouch.

I’ll probably need it soon enough, she guessed. There were no aches today, but if not her, then maybe Widow Merril’s boy, down in the town. She’d heard that he had a fever, and Nerra knew as much about dealing with the sick as anyone.

I want one day without having to think about it, Nerra thought to herself.

Almost as if thinking about it brought it to her, Nerra felt herself growing faint, and had to reach out for one of the trees for support. She clung to it, waiting for the dizziness to pass, feeling her breathing come harder as she did it. She could also feel the pulsing on her right arm, itching and throbbing, as if something were striving to get loose under the skin.

Nerra sat down, and here, in the privacy of the forest, she did what she would never do back at the castle: she rolled up her sleeve, hoping that the coolness of the forest air would do some good where nothing else ever had.

The tracery of marks on her arm was familiar by now, black and vein like, standing out against the almost translucent paleness of her skin. Had the marks grown anymore since she’d last looked at them? It was hard to tell, because Nerra avoided looking if she could, and didn’t dare show them to anyone else. Even her brothers and sisters didn’t know the full truth of it, only knew about the fainting fits, not about the rest of it. That was for her, her parents, Master Grey, and the lone physician her father had trusted with it.

Nerra knew why. Those with the scale-mark were banished, or worse, for fear of the condition spreading, and for fear of what it might mean. Those with the scale sickness, the stories said, eventually transformed into things that were anything but human, and deadly to those who remained.

“And so I must be alone,” she said aloud, pulling her sleeve down again because she could no longer stand the sight of what was there.

The thought of being alone bothered her almost as much. As much as she liked the forest, the lack of people hurt. Even as a child, she hadn’t been able to have close friends, hadn’t had the collection of maidservants and young noblewomen Lenore had, because one of them might have seen. She hadn’t even had the promise of lovers, and suitors for a girl who was obviously sick were even less likely. A part of Nerra wished she could have had all that, imagining a life where she had been normal, been well, been safe. Her parents could have found some young nobleman to marry her, as they had with Lenore. They could have had a home and a family. Nerra could have had friends, and been able to help people. Instead… there was only this.

Now I’ve made even the forest sad, Nerra thought with another wan smile.

She stood and kept walking, determined to let herself enjoy the fineness of the day at least. There would be a hunt tomorrow, but that was too many people to ever really enjoy the outdoors. She would be expected to remember how to chatter to those who saw prowess in killing woodland creatures as a virtue, and the noise of the hunting horns would be deafening.

Nerra heard something else then; it wasn’t a hunting horn, but it was still the sound of someone close by. She thought she caught a glimpse of someone in the trees, a young boy, perhaps, although it was hard to tell for sure. She found herself worrying then. How much had he seen?

Maybe it was nothing. Nerra knew there had to be people somewhere else in the woods. Maybe they were charcoal burners or foresters; maybe they were poachers. Whoever they were, if she kept going, Nerra would probably run into them again. She didn’t like that idea, didn’t like the risk of them seeing more than they should, so she threw herself off in a new direction, almost at random. She could find her way through the woods, so she wasn’t worried about getting lost. She just kept going, spotting holly now and birch, celandine, and wild roses.

And something else.

Nerra paused as she caught sight of a clearing that looked as though something large had been in it, branches broken, ground trampled. Had it been a boar, or maybe a pack of them? Was there a bear about somewhere, large enough that maybe the hunt was needed after all? Nerra couldn’t see any bear prints among the trees though, or indeed anything at all that suggested something had come through on foot.

She could see an egg though, sitting in the middle of the clearing, rolled onto one side on the grass.

She froze, wondering.

It can’t be.

There were stories, of course, and the castle’s galleries had some petrified versions, devoid of any life.

But this… it couldn’t really be…

She made her way closer to it, and now she could start to take in the sheer size of the egg. It was huge, big enough that Nerra’s arms would barely have fit around it if she had tried to embrace it. Big enough that no bird could have laid it.

It was a rich, deep blue that was almost black, with golden veins running through it like streaks of lightning across a night sky. When Nerra reached out, ever so tentatively, to touch it, she felt that the surface of it was strangely warm in a way that no egg should have been. That, as much as any of the rest of it, confirmed what she had found.

A dragon’s egg.

That was impossible. How long had it been since someone had seen a dragon? Even those stories were of great winged beasts flying the skies, not of eggs. Dragons were never helpless, small things. They were huge and terrifying and impossible. But Nerra couldn’t think what else this could be.

And now the choice is mine.

She knew she couldn’t just walk away now that she’d seen the egg here, abandoned with no sign of a nest the way a bird would lay its clutch. If she did that, the odds were that something would simply come and eat the egg, destroying the creature within. That, or there would be people, and she had no doubt that they would sell it. Or crush it out of fear. People could be cruel sometimes.

She couldn’t take it home with her either. Imagine that, walking through the gates of the castle with a dragon’s egg in her hands. Her father would have it taken from her in a heartbeat, probably for Master Grey to study. At best, the creature within would find itself caged and poked at. At worst… Nerra shuddered at the thought of the egg being dissected by scholars of the House of Knowledge. Even Physicker Jarran would probably want to take it apart to study it.

Where then?

Nerra tried to think.

She knew the woods as well as she knew the path to her chambers. There had to be somewhere that would be better than simply leaving the egg in the open…

Yes, she knew just the place.

She wrapped her arms around the egg, the heat of it strange against her body as she lifted it. It was heavy, and for a moment Nerra was worried she might drop it, but she managed to clasp her hands together and start off through the woods.

It took a while to find the spot that she was looking for, looking out for the aspen trees that signaled the small space where the old cave was, marked out by stones that were long since mossed over. It opened in the side of a small hill in the midst of the wood, and Nerra could see from the ground around it that nothing had decided to use it as a resting place. That was good; she didn’t want to take her prize somewhere it would be in fresh danger.

The clearing suggested that dragons didn’t make nests, but Nerra made one for the egg anyway, collecting twigs and branches, brush and grass, then weaving all of it slowly into a rough oval on which she was able to rest the egg. She pushed the whole thing back into the dark half of the cave, confident that nothing would be able to see it from outside.

“There,” she said to it. “You’ll be safe now, at least until I work out what to do with you.”

She found tree branches and foliage, deliberately covering the entrance. She took rocks and rolled them into place, each so big she could barely move it. She hoped it would be enough to keep away all the things that might try to get inside.

She was just finishing when she heard a sound and turned with a start. There among the trees was the boy she had glimpsed before. He stood there staring at her as if trying to work out what he’d seen.

“Wait,” Nerra called out to him, but the very shout was enough to startle him. He turned and ran off, leaving Nerra wondering exactly what he had seen, and who he would tell.

She had a sinking feeling that it was too late.