The other boars had come back.They had gone sideways into the trees from the fire-wall, squealing, with their bristles smoking; now they came out again, one after another, all along the edge of the track, and their small red eyes were fixed on the ring of shields. The fire-wall was burning low. Fu Rong could feel it going—the heat she had put into the ground running out of it like water out of a cracked jar.She did not try to hold it. She let it go, and lifted her staff.It was oak, carved with the flame of Yanling from end to end, and at the tip of it, bound in a cage of red-gold wire, was a raw firestone the size of a plum, uncut, with the orange light moving in it like something breathing. She had carried it since she was sixteen. She had never needed all of it."Serpents," she said.It was not quite a word. It was the shape of a word in the old tongue of the pits, the one the first miners had used to talk to the fire under the mountain, and the firestone at the tip of the staff h

Carosso came up out of the plain in the middle of a bright afternoon late in the autumn, with the harvest in, and Fu Rong, who had grown up inside a mountain, reined in her Firesteed at the top of the last rise and simply looked.It was not built into anything. That was the first thing. It stood out in the open, on its hills, on both banks of its broad brown river, as if it had never once in its life been afraid of anything coming over the horizon—walls within walls, pale stone, and roofs of red tile and grey slate climbing the slopes, and towers, and the glitter of glass, and bridges strung across the river like beads on a thread. There was smoke going up from what must have been a thousand chimneys, and all of it went straight up in the still air. On the highest hill, above everything, stood a castle of pale stone with dragons on its banners. And on the edge of the city nearest them, on the flat ground by the river, something enormous was being built: a great oval of raw new stone, h

The audience was set for the third morning, in the throne room, and Fu Rong dressed for it as if for a battle.Red silk, the red of the royal house of Yanling, cut close and plain, so that it would not look as though she had come to be admired. A circlet of thin gold on her brow, no more; her mother's advice, given on the palace steps with both hands on her face. Wear enough to be a princess, and not so much that they wonder what you're selling. Liuyue had put up her hair and stood back and looked at her for a long time and then taken the jeweled pin out of it again, without comment."Too much?" said Fu Rong."Not enough of you," said Liuyue. "There. Now it's only you."The throne room of Castle Carosso was long and high and pale, with tall windows down one side, and it was full.She had expected that. She had not expected the way it was full. At home, a court stood still for an envoy—stood in its ranks along the pillars and waited, and did not speak, and did not move. Here they stood

They buried Aldo Tully on the morning of the twenty-first day, in the churchyard of the old river church below the arena, under a sky that had rained itself out in the night and was now very high and very clean.It was not a large burial. Ethan had not asked anyone to come. They came anyway: Master Brannoc, and behind him the dwarves of Ironroot in their rows, two hundred of them, in their working leathers with their hoods back and their beards combed; Calder, who had commanded the walls at Northfort, standing very straight with his one good eye on the grave; eleven men of the Steel Guard who had been farm boys in the reach and had stood on the east wall through the siege while an old man on the gatehouse steps counted the catapult strikes out loud. Nina, with her hands clasped in front of her and her face set. Celestia, in plain black, at Ethan's side.Nobody made a speech. The priest said the words for the dead, the short ones, and the dwarves said something of their own in their own

The Regent received them that evening in a small room at the top of the east tower, with one door and three chairs and a fire, and more people in it than it had been built for.Fu Rong had washed the soot off her face and put up her hair, and the arena was still on her. The heat of the staff sat in her palms. The dark sat in her shoulders, and in the dark a hand on her shoulder that was not there.The Regent sat by the fire in a plain coat, pale, with nothing on his face to say what had happened in the arming-room. But she had stood at the rail when he wiped his lip with the back of his gauntlet, and she had seen what came away on the leather. Lady Celestia stood behind his chair. Liuyue had come in with the folder, Leon stooped under the lintel behind her with his ribs strapped and an air of enormous contentment, and the Chancellor, Lord Renwick, a stout man in round spectacles, was wedged into the window corner with a writing-board on his knee."Princess. Take the chair. I've been si