The Ground That Held

Five days after Eridan died, the western speaking platform disappeared. Atyas found its empty place through a field lens shortly before dawn. The timber frame upon which his father had been displayed had been taken apart during the night. The speaking horn was gone. So were the prison rail, the black screens and the post where Arcanis had stood beyond the reach of every ordinary bow. For one moment, the bare ground resembled retreat. Then the first light reached the western canal.

Valanorian engineers had moved the platform timber into new artillery beds farther south. Two batteries no longer faced the freight gate. They faced the bridge carrying Sorethi grain from the inner river. The black-armoured ranks had shortened their exposed line and fortified the canal bank they already possessed.

Arcanis had not abandoned the siege.

He had stopped asking Atyas the same question.

“They learned what the gate could survive,” General Veyra said beside him. “Now they intend to learn what the city cannot live without.”

Atyas lowered the lens. The observation gallery had lost three windows to artillery. Boards covered the openings, but cold air still entered through the cracks. Beneath them, the command table showed a capital region reduced to coloured stones, broken roads and water marks. The western freight gate remained closed. The northern outer sluice did not belong to Feenix any more.

The inner channel still carried water.

Four eastern districts remained connected to the protected core by one road wide enough for casualty carts. Beyond them, more than two million civilians lived behind defences the central army could no longer reach without crossing Keh’Dia-controlled ground. The city had held. Seraphina entered with the morning return roll beneath her arm. A black band crossed the silver crest upon her armour. The same cloth had been tied around the standards of every Asehrian formation still recognised by her command.

She placed the report before Atyas.

“Of the three thousand one hundred and twelve missing after the western gate closed, one thousand two hundred and forty-six are now accounted for alive. Five hundred and thirty-eight entered smaller canal posts. Four hundred and seventeen reached casualty stations under incomplete names. One hundred and sixty-six appear upon a verified prisoner list. The rest returned through the southern culvert or were recovered during the night exchanges.”

“The dead?”

“One thousand one hundred and eighty-four confirmed.”

The first count had observed nine hundred and seven. Numbers continued dying after people did.

“Unresolved?” Atyas asked.

“Six hundred and eighty-two.”

He placed his hand beside the column without covering it.

“And the surrendered soldiers?”

“Twenty-three probable killings. Nineteen are supported by more than one witness. Four remain disputed. The Seventh Company captain admits that he repeated your words after his commander ordered the pursuit stopped.”

“Does he say why?”

Seraphina looked at him.

“He says he believed the King of Asehria had given him a direct command.”

No one in the gallery pretended that answer belonged only to the captain.

“Preserve his statement,” Atyas said.

“It is preserved.”

“I want to hear it when the western wounded can be moved without taking physicians from the siege.”

“You will.”

Veyra turned one of the eastern markers.

“Until then, the twelve-hour review begins.”

The second order required every Asehrian formation to have its purpose and authority examined twice each day. Veyra had extended the same rule to Phoenix formations wherever the two armies shared a road, water system or civilian route. The first reviews had been treated as paperwork written by a grieving boy. The third had saved the northern control house. An Asehrian company assigned to defend an evacuation road had remained there after the road became unusable. Before the review existed, leaving an assigned position without a new command could have been called desertion. Because the purpose had to be named again, Seraphina and Veyra moved the company six streets north before a Keh’Dia assault reached the empty route.

The soldiers did not win the lost road back. They prevented the assault from entering the water chambers beneath it. Every review forced commanders to ask whether an order still served the reason it had been given.

That made the process slower.

It also prevented yesterday’s fear from ruling ground that had changed during the night. Veyra read the eastern assignments. Seraphina corrected two Asehrian company strengths. Captain Maelin refused a request to move Phoenix Guards from the inner medical routes merely because no second assassin had been found. A canal engineer explained why a gate marked intact upon the military map could no longer bear the force of closing. Atyas listened. No one asked him to command the walls.

When the northern channel appeared in the review, he asked how many households depended upon it. When the western grain bridge appeared, he asked which wards would lose bread first if the new batteries found their range. When a restoration representative demanded that the Seventh be returned to the gate to recover its honour, Atyas asked whether honour changed the purpose written beside the formation.

It did not.

The Seventh remained at the southern casualty road beneath a different captain. Near the end of the review, Preya brought three printed notices recovered from the outer wards. All carried the seal Atyas had used upon his second order.

None carried its words.

The first told Phoenix families that Asehrian soldiers had been ordered to seize private water stores. The second told Asehrian soldiers that Feenix intended to disarm them after Eridan’s burial. The third quoted Atyas accurately.

Kill every last one of them.

Beneath the sentence, an added line claimed the order remained the only true command he had given as king.

“The paper is ours,” Preya said. “Taken from a public-reading store in Ward Nine. The type belongs to a press lost during the eastern withdrawal.”

“How many?” Solara asked.

“Unknown. These entered through civilian bread lines. Others were tied around arrows at the northern channel.”

Solara read the first notice again.

“They used Eridan to pull Asehria towards the western gate,” she said. “Now they use Atyas to push Feenix away from them.”

“And the true sentence?” Maelin asked.

“They use that because denying it would make every correction look like another lie,” Atyas said.

Preya waited with her pen. He did not tell her to call all three notices false.

“Print the complete second order beside the third,” he said. “Include the time of both commands. For the water stores, publish the actual seizure authority and every district where Veyra has used it. For disarmament, publish the current weapon rules beneath both commands.”

“People want a simpler answer,” Governor Halren said from the lower table.

“So do they.” Atyas looked towards the enemy line beyond the boards. “That is why they keep giving us one.”

The clerks took the orders for copying. Maelin kept Alaria at the table when the others began to leave, and Atyas stopped beside her.

“The service passage has a second lock,” the captain said. “Phoenix holds one key. The Watch holds the other. Both posts will record your movements, including when you escort him.”

Alaria placed her old key beside the map.

“Night instructions as well?” she asked.

“Especially those. Your word alone no longer closes his door to the Watch.”

Atyas looked at Seraphina. “I chose to go.”

“You did,” she said. “Your departures will be checked at both posts. So will your return. Being king changes which orders you may give. It does not make a false account of where you are useful to the people guarding you.”

Alaria signed the revised access order. Maelin folded the signed page around the key.

Before the evening review, Maelin brought a copy of a small folded note. Jonan’s wife had produced it after seeing his body. It carried their son’s name and the transport-camp number already held by the missing-family office. Someone had written that a further message would come through the southern medical stores. The paper had been folded around two small coins.

“She says he received it six weeks ago,” Maelin said. “He told her not to spend the money. She thought he was saving it for their son’s journey home.”

“Is it the son’s hand?” Solara asked.

“She does not recognise the writing. The camp number could have come from a captured register.”

Atyas read the short promise again. It said nothing about Eridan.

“The stores?”

“A relief delivery arrived that day. We have its receiving clerk and two carriers to question. None is accused. I have sent guards to preserve the original ledger.”

Solara placed the copy beneath the medical inquiry. The son remained missing. For the first time, the inquiry had a delivery to trace.

That night, Solara found Alaria in the small sitting room outside Atyas’s bedchamber, trying to thread a needle. Both guard posts had marked the Queen’s arrival. Beyond the outer door, the Phoenix Guard and the Watch exchanged the change-of-shift countersign. Alaria lowered the needle when Solara entered. Strands of chestnut hair had slipped from her braid, and the lamplight picked out the freckles beneath one tired eye. She straightened slowly, sparing the bruise beneath her ribs.

“Is it the grain bridge?”

“It is still standing. Veyra has the gallery until the next review.” Solara looked at the shirt spread across Alaria’s knees. “Has that offended you?”

“The button came off.”

“I had gathered that.”

Alaria tried the thread again. The end bent against her thumb. Solara held out her hand. After a moment, Alaria surrendered the needle.

“He is asleep?”

“For now.”

Solara moved the lamp closer. There was a plate beside it, with a piece of bread beneath an overturned cup.

“Yours?”

“His. He may want it when he wakes.”

“And have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

Solara glanced up.

“Ask the kitchen if you require witnesses.”

“I am relieved there would be some.”

She passed the threaded needle back and took the other chair. Alaria found the old stitch holes with her thumb. For a while, they listened to the guards outside. Farther away, a cart rattled over the courtyard stones.

“He asked me something this morning,” Alaria said. “Before we went to the gallery.”

Solara waited.

“Whether I could remember his mother’s voice.”

The Queen’s hands settled in her lap.

“He can remember things she said. Whole conversations, sometimes. But he says they sound like his own voice now.” Alaria drew the thread through the cloth. “I told him I remembered.”

“You do.”

“Yes. I could not make him hear it.”

Solara looked towards the bedchamber door.

“She used to become very quiet when she was angry with Eridan.”

“He would lean closer.”

“Every time.”

Alaria smiled at the shirt.

“I shall tell him that.”

“Tell him she did it to me as well.” Solara looked at the shirt. “Once she sent my letter back unopened.”

“The fever winter?”

“She wanted my physicians. I had children dying in the copper wards. She called me a coward for keeping them here.”

Alaria set the needle across her thumb.

“She was frightened.”

“So was I.”

“Did she apologise?”

“At the end of the winter. She returned the scarf she had borrowed twelve years earlier. It had moth holes.”

Alaria began to smile, but Solara was still looking at the cloth.

“I meant to make her mend it next time she came.”

The needle slipped through Alaria’s fingers. She picked it up before answering.

“I shall tell him about the quiet voice.”

“Yes. You can tell him the rest when he asks.”

Alaria turned the button beneath her fingers, checking that it lay flat.

“I used to bring him things,” she said. “A horse. A blade. Something to make him pleased to see me. Then I would leave, and Isolde would have to persuade him to put it down and go to bed.”

“She complained about you.”

“I know. I have begun to sympathise.”

Solara laughed softly. Then her eyes filled, and she rubbed beneath one with the heel of her hand.

Alaria put the sewing down.

“I miss her too,” she said.

The Queen nodded. Neither tried to hurry the other past it. Behind the inner door, a bed rope creaked. Alaria turned towards it and listened until the room was quiet again.

“You have become a mother to him,” Solara said.

Alaria kept looking at the door.

“I never meant to take her place.”

“I know.”

“He still needs her.”

“Of course he does.” Solara leaned forward. “He needs you as well.”

Alaria pressed the folded shirt between her palms.

“I thought, when we brought Eridan through the gate, that I would be able to sleep in my own room again.”

Her mouth tightened. Solara reached across the space between their chairs and rested a hand on her wrist.

“But I had already started wondering whether he would still come to find me,” Alaria said. “With some foolish complaint. Or because he had done something he wanted me to see.”

“He would.”

“I wanted him to.”

Solara’s hand stayed where it was.

“I love him,” Alaria said. “Even when he is being impossible. I want to hear what he has to say before he leaves a room. I find myself saving things to tell him.”

She looked down at Solara’s hand.

“I would have stayed, even with Eridan here.”

“You could have told Eridan that.”

“I think he knew.”

“So do I.”

The lamp gave a small hiss. Alaria picked up the shirt again, and Solara let go of her wrist.

“You have sewn through the back,” the Queen said.

Alaria lifted the cloth. The two sides rose together. She stared at them, then began to laugh. It caught painfully in her throat, but Solara was laughing too.

“Give me the little knife,” Alaria said.

Solara found it beside the thread. She drew her chair closer and held the lamp while Alaria unpicked the stitch.

Prince Caelen received his father’s request at Marren beneath the light of three enemy signal fires. None stood inside Caldris. The Keh’Dia had raised them along the occupied side of the winter track after Feenix’s western gate closed. Every night, the fires changed position. Every morning, Caldrin scouts found enough footprints to suggest an army and too few abandoned stores to prove one had arrived. Four Marren divisions watched the border. King Aldren asked whether one could be spared.

He did not order it.

The western grain bridge remains open. Caldrin engineers hold its third span with Phoenix and Asehrian formations. Arcanis has moved two artillery batteries towards it. Send one division if the northern evidence permits. If it does not, hold Caldris.

The final sentence appeared in Aldren’s own weakened hand. Caelen read it twice. His senior officers waited around the command-house map. One wanted all four divisions retained until scouts counted the force behind the signal fires. Another wanted an immediate crossing to destroy the Keh’Dia stores before the snow roads softened. The commander of the Second Marren Division said nothing. She knew it was her formation Aldren expected Caelen to choose. A Sorethi broadsheet lay open beside the map. Its title read:

THE SILVER KING HOLDS FEENIX TOGETHER.

The account described Atyas’s public words, the water-channel defence and the second order. It named Solara once. It did not name Veyra, the Phoenix engineers or the Asehrian companies that had died keeping the sluices closed.

It named Atyas eleven times.

Caelen folded the page over the title.

“The fires moved again last night,” he said.

His intelligence captain nodded. “Farther east.”

“Towards the winter track?”

“Away from it.”

“Supply marks?”

“No complete wagon entered the visible camp. Small parties have approached from the south and returned before dawn.”

“They want four divisions watching three fires.”

“Or they want us to believe that before they cross.”

“Both can be true.”

Caelen looked at the ridge measurements he had maintained for years before anyone called the roads part of Atyas’s warning. If he sent nothing and Feenix’s grain bridge fell, Caldris would remain protected behind a city being starved for lack of help. If he sent everything, the enemy would discover that three signal fires could empty a border.

The current warmed behind his hands.

One answer offered pride: refuse the request and force his father to remember which son held the kingdom he had left. Another offered envy: send more than asked, reach Feenix in time to win the defence no broadsheet could give Atyas.

Caelen let neither write the order.

“The Second Division travels with its bridge companies and field hospital,” he said. “It retains its officers and Caldrin command. Inside Feenix’s territory, all movement answers Veyra’s routes. The other three divisions divide into four visible camps. No additional fires. Let their observers count real tents and reach the wrong conclusion about the people inside them.”

The intelligence captain began recording.

“If the track is crossed?”

“The Second turns back until it passes the southern relay. After that, we hold with three.”

“Your father asked for one division,” the silent commander said.

“He asked for my judgement.”

Caelen signed the movement beneath his own seal. Then he added a public line to travel with it.

Caldris sends what the evidence permits. This force answers the defence of an allied capital. It does not pass beneath a foreign crown.

No one in the command house objected.

Before noon, the Second Marren Division began moving south.

Three days later, a copied Feenix notice returned through the relay.

Caldris has answered the call to hold our common world.

Caelen’s public line appeared beneath it in smaller type. His name did not appear at all. He placed the notice beside his preserved crossing report and continued reading the northern counts.

He did not recall the division.

The Second Marren Division reached the western grain bridge on the tenth day after Eridan’s death.

It did not break the siege.

Its bridge companies replaced exhausted crews upon the third span. Its infantry freed two Phoenix formations to reinforce the southern canal. Its field hospital received Asehrian wounded without requiring them to surrender their weapons at the entrance. The western bridge remained open. Sorethi grain reached the protected stores six hours later. Oradani engineers found a way to reverse one damaged inner lock without reopening the northern sluice. Darest still sent no soldiers, but three of its inspected hulls carried medicine into the southern harbour beneath Sorethi protection. Queen Ilyra’s river guards turned back before entering Feenix because her treaty promised passage, not an undeclared foreign deployment. None of the decisions formed one army.

Together, they denied Arcanis the quick isolation he had prepared. The Valanorian batteries withdrew from the grain bridge after losing two ammunition barges to Phoenix night crews. They did not return home. They moved behind the captured southern canal and began constructing covered positions beyond ordinary counterfire. The Keh’Dia stopped spending assault ranks against the northern control house. They flooded the outer machinery courts instead. Their engineers let the water freeze across the approach and built a new crossing upon ground Feenix could no longer use. Fresh ranks replaced the soldiers who had failed at the sluice. Officers changed formation patterns before Veyra could exploit what the defenders had learned.

By the twelfth day after Eridan’s death, no general in Feenix believed the capital would fall before morning. No honest one claimed the siege was ending. The immediate breach had become a longer contest of grain, water, roads, loyalties and sleep.

Atyas attended every second review.

On the twelfth morning, Mira served him the assembly’s interim resolution. Common contributions would continue paying for defence, food and the wounded. They would fund no new Crown-directed advance until the assembly had examined the western inquiry’s interim findings. Halren had proposed the restriction. Mira had supported it.

“It doesn’t decide the captain’s guilt,” she said. “Or yours.”

Atyas looked for a place to sign.

“There isn’t one. The quartermasters already have it.”

She took him into the hearing chamber. A clerk directed him past the black-winged chair to a plain bench facing the witnesses. Alaria remained by the door.

Toren Vaal stood beneath guard with one arm bound across his chest. He had served Asehria for twenty-two years, held three provincial roads after the palace fell and lost both brothers during the occupation. Atyas’s written account lay open before him.

“I heard my king,” Vaal said. “My field commander ordered the pursuit stopped. I believed the direct command outranked him.”

Justice Dane asked whether he had seen soldiers surrender.

“I saw Valanorian steel lowered.”

“Were they still attacking?”

“No.”

“Did you repeat the order then?”

“Yes.”

Atyas began to speak. Dane raised her hand without looking at him.

Vaal turned a page of the royal account.

“You say here that you meant us to bring him home. Why did you tell us to kill them all?”

The clerk waited. Atyas could hear the pen touching the edge of the inkpot.

“I wanted them away from him.”

“Alive?”

Atyas looked towards Seraphina. She stood beside the second witness bench and gave him no help.

“I wasn’t thinking about letting anyone surrender.”

The clerk asked him to repeat the answer. He did. Dane ordered both accounts copied for the field witnesses and Vaal’s defender. The inquiry would continue when the wounded could testify; neither the captain’s service nor the king’s admission settled what each had done.

When Vaal had been led away, Seraphina took Atyas’s place before the questioner. She described the signals she had prepared and the command she had failed to contain. Atyas waited until her account was finished.

Afterwards he sat alone upon the witness bench. Alaria came from the door. Her sleeve had caught beneath the strap of her armour; when she eased it free, she pressed a hand against the bruise at her side. He had not asked how much it hurt.

“Train me,” Atyas said.

Alaria looked towards the door through which Vaal had left.

“We train tomorrow.”

“Not the morning forms.”

“Then what?”

“Harder.”

The word entered the empty chamber and showed both of them what it meant.

“You have slept four hours since the last eastern attack,” she said.

“So have you.”

“That does not improve your argument.”

“Arcanis spoke to me for less than a minute.” Atyas looked at the seven-star clasp upon the table. “That was enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“For me to lose the end of everything you taught me.”

“You found it again.”

“Only after you made me look at the men I was about to send.”

Alaria’s face changed.

Atyas stood.

“I cannot require that every time.”

“No.”

“Then train me.”

She should have made him sleep.

Part of her knew it.

The rest had stood close enough to stop Jonan’s wrist and not close enough to save Eridan.

“Get your armour,” she said.

The lower practice court had no windows. Phoenix Guards used it during bombardment because two storeys of stone separated the floor from the nearest exposed roof. One wall held blunted swords, weighted poles and shields repaired too many times for ceremony. The opposite wall remained blackened by generations of First Blades teaching controlled release to soldiers who believed flame was the lesson.

Atyas brought the embersteel sword.

A new sheath covered it. The leather was plain and untreated, made by an armourer who had not asked how the first one burned. Alaria drew the sword before he could. The blade carried no visible damage. A faint darkening marked the edge where heat had remained trapped against leather.

“Teach me to do it again,” Atyas said.

“No.”

“You gave it to me.”

“I did.”

“Then teach me to use it.”

“If all you learn is how to make it burn, Arcanis taught you more about the current than I did.”

She returned embersteel to its sheath and placed it beyond the edge of the court. Then she threw Atyas a blunted sword.

“Show me where the first movement ends.”

He took his stance.

Alaria attacked before he completed it.

The flat of her blade struck his shoulder. He recovered, turned and drove towards her centre. Anger tightened the movement through his back. The current followed it easily. She caught his blade and redirected it past her side.

“Again.”

Atyas struck.

“Your father told you to watch the gate.”

The words entered between movements.

He drove harder.

Alaria yielded two steps.

“Protect your right.”

He heard the instruction and continued the attack. Her sword crossed the unguarded side of his ribs. Pain stopped him where choice had not.

“Again,” Atyas said.

They reset.

Alaria gave him anger and an opening. He used both. Before the strike completed, she changed the purpose.

“Withdraw.”

Atyas remained in range to finish.

Her hilt struck his mouth.

He tasted blood.

“Again.”

She should have stopped then. Instead, Alaria remembered the drainage spike entering beneath Eridan’s collarbone.

“Jonan was inside the city before you opened the gate,” she said.

Atyas attacked.

The current entered his legs and made the distance disappear. His first strike forced Alaria across the centre line. His second carried more strength than the blunted blade required. His third belonged to the first two because he had not released anything between them. Alaria caught it upon the lower half of her sword. Heat moved through her palm.

Not flame.

Control.

She turned the block into a short release through her shoulder and threw Atyas past her. He struck the floor upon one knee.

“The gate did not put Jonan beside him,” she said. “Your command did not place the spike in his hand.”

Atyas rose.

“It placed my father in the room.”

“So did Seraphina.”

“Because I ordered her out.”

“Because she believed we could reach him.”

“Again.”

Alaria moved. This time she did not soften the contact when he failed to turn. The practice blade struck his thigh hard enough to fold the leg beneath him. He caught himself upon one hand.

“Again.”

“Stand first.”

He did.

They continued until sweat darkened the collar beneath his armour and Alaria’s injured side changed the angle of her breathing. Every failure gave Atyas another reason to demand the next attack. Atyas lost his sword for the seventh time. It struck the stone and turned twice. He reached for it. His fingers closed upon empty floor.

“Again,” he said.

Alaria stood over him with her practice blade raised. For a moment, she wanted to obey. The desire frightened her more than his anger had. She lowered the weapon.

“No.”

Atyas found the hilt and used it to force himself upright.

“You said harder.”

“This is not harder.”

“I can still stand.”

“That is not the measure.”

“Then hit me until I understand it.”

The sentence stopped both of them.

Alaria let her sword fall.

Metal struck stone between them.

“You are not asking me to teach you,” she said.

Atyas wiped blood from his lip.

“I asked for training.”

“You asked me to hurt you until the pain feels equal to what happened.”

“It never will.”

“No.” Her voice broke upon the word. “It never will.”

He looked away.

“And you agreed.”

“Yes.”

She unfastened the guard from her sword hand because her fingers had begun shaking beneath it.

“If I make you hard enough,” she said, “then I can pretend I failed because I had not taught you enough. That makes what happened something I can correct.”

Atyas looked at her.

“You did not fail.”

“I saw his hand move.”

“You caught him.”

“After the spike entered.”

“You stopped him reaching farther.”

“Then I killed the only person who could tell us why.”

Alaria sat upon the practice floor before her legs chose the moment for her.

“I cannot train hard enough to make Eridan alive,” she said. “I cannot make you strong enough that no one reaches you. I know that. Tonight I wanted not to know it.”

Atyas remained standing for another breath. Then the injured leg gave way, and he sat opposite her.

“I wanted you to punish me.”

“I know.”

“You should have stopped.”

“I know.”

“I am angry that you did not.”

Alaria nodded.

“You should be.”

“I never told my parents you let me train with real steel.”

“I don’t know whether they learned it another way.”

“I thought I would tell them when I was older.”

“So did I.”

He looked at the bruise beneath the opening of her armour.

“Your side is worse.”

“Yes.”

“You said it was fine.”

“I lied.”

“Then don’t tell me it’s fine.”

“I won’t.”

Atyas swallowed and wiped his split lip with the back of his hand. Alaria reached towards him and waited. Atyas stared at it. When he tried to move, his bruised leg would not hold him.

“Will you stay?” he asked.

She nodded.

Atyas took her hand.

Neither had the strength to pull the other upright.

They stayed upon the floor instead.

After a while, he rested his head against her shoulder. Alaria leaned her cheek against his hair with one arm around him and the other pressed carefully to her injured side.

The guard at the door fetched Mira when neither could climb the stair. She examined them on the practice floor and sent for two porters. Alaria began to explain. Mira asked Atyas to tell her instead.

“I asked her to keep going,” he said.

Mira looked at his split lip, then at Alaria.

“And you did.”

“Yes.”

The report reached Solara that night. She came to Alaria after Atyas had been put to bed and left a written restriction on the table: no private contact training until Mira cleared them both. Any permitted drill would have a court guard present. Either pupil or instructor could end it without giving a reason.

“Your commission to protect him remains,” Solara said. “It does not authorise this.”

Alaria read the page through. In the morning, she placed her acknowledgement beside Mira’s report.

They returned two mornings later for the slow footwork Mira permitted. A court guard sat by the open door with the restriction on his knee. No armour, no blows to the body, and twenty minutes before he ended the session whether either asked or not. Alaria carried wooden swords; the embersteel remained in Atyas’s room.

“What do you say if you want to stop?” she asked.

“Enough.”

“And then?”

“You put it down.”

Alaria laid both swords on the floor. She waited until he chose one before taking the other and drawing three chalk marks.

“First mark, advance. Second, guard the post. At the third, wait for me.”

Atyas moved slowly. The first turn pulled at his bruised thigh. Alaria shortened the distance between the marks without asking him to make it again.

He reached the post and brought his wooden sword across it. She walked around his guard. He followed her point too long and left the other side open.

“There,” she said, holding the point clear of his sleeve.

He looked back at the post.

On the next pass he gave ground early enough to keep it covered. At the third mark she said, “Stop.”

His hands wanted the next movement. He lowered them. Alaria set her sword upon the floor and waited until he asked to try once more.

Halfway through that attempt, his ribs began to hurt.

“Enough.”

Her sword was down before he finished the word. The guard noted the time. They had used less than half the twenty minutes.

Atyas sat upon the bench by the door. Alaria left both weapons on the floor and sat at the other end.

“I still need to learn the sword,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And if it never burns?”

“Then you will have a very expensive ordinary blade.”

“Embersteel.”

“Very expensive ordinary embersteel.”

He almost smiled, then touched his split lip.

“I wanted you to stop me before I could hurt anyone.”

“I will try.”

“You didn’t stop yourself.”

“No.” Alaria looked towards the guard. “Mira has my account. So does Solara. If I cross that line again, tell them. You shouldn’t have to make me listen on your own.”

Atyas remained where he was until the pain eased. Alaria did not fill the waiting with another lesson.

When he stood, she offered a hand. He took it.

The northern signal bell sounded above them.

Two strikes.

A report, not a breach.

They climbed from the practice court together. Justice Dane waited outside with Solara, Seraphina and a sealed document beneath her arm. Beyond them, messengers moved towards the command gallery carrying the next twelve-hour review.

“The Crown Court requests a coronation date,” Dane said.

Atyas looked at Solara.

“Can the city spare the chamber?”

“For one hour,” she said. “Not for a festival.”

He looked at Seraphina.

“Can Asehria spare the officers?”

“Enough to witness. Not enough to pretend the siege has paused.”

He looked at Alaria. She waited beside the stair while he turned back to Dane.

“Tomorrow,” Atyas said. “Before the next review.”

Dane recorded the hour. Outside, a new shift took over the water bells.