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Chapter 049: Lord Aldric Ward
The summons came on a silver tray.It was delivered at breakfast by a page boy in blue livery, who bowed to Edric, bowed to the room, and held out a single folded card as though it might go off. Edric took it. His face did something complicated as he read."Lord Aldric Ward," he said, "requests the pleasure of Noel Thornwick's company at tea. This morning. In his private study. Alone."Nobody said anything. In the corner of the loft, Rhea had stopped buttering a roll."It's a courtesy," Edric added, in a small voice. "He does it for promising entrants. I'm told he did it for the lad who won three years ago. A cup of tea, a few kind words." He lowered the card. "I don't believe a word of it.""Neither do I," said Ethan."You don't have to go.""If I don't, he'll know I'm afraid.""If you do, he'll know you're a fool.""Maybe." Ethan set down his fork. "But a fool who goes is a fool he can't read yet."Bram walked him to the door of the Citadel.He said nothing the whole way, just stump
Chapter 048: A Debt Repaid
The boathouse stood at the east end of the lake, a squat timber shed with a sagging roof and a rotting dock that ran out onto the ice.Ethan went there at midnight, because it was the one place in Frostmere nobody visited. The snow was knee-deep. A thin moon shone through ragged cloud. His burns had closed to a tight, itching pink, and he could move again without wincing, but the loft had grown unbearable. Four walls and a goat and Edric's snores. He wanted air that tasted of nothing but cold.He wanted, if he was honest, to think.Forty-seven percent. The number sat in the corner of his mind like a stone in a boot. Cinder Veil. Wildfire Lash. He'd run the question through his head for two days, in every direction. He could take them. It would take a touch, a second of contact. Dorian would lose both skills and never know why.Ethan crouched on the dock's edge and brushed the snow off a plank.A debt, he thought. Is it a debt if you take it without asking?Stalker's Instinct gave him
Chapter 047: Lost on Purpose
"Hold still," Rhea said, "or I'll put this salve on your face."Ethan lay on his stomach on a straw pallet in the hayloft of the Frozen Anchor, with his tunic cut away and a lantern hissing on a crate beside his head. Every inch of his back was a map of red welts. A pale orange stripe ran from collarbone to hip where the Cinder Veil had caught him. Rhea's hands moved over it with brisk, impersonal care, smoothing on a cold, greasy paste that stung like vinegar."You're enjoying this," he muttered."Immensely." She dabbed at a blister. "Do you know what I watched today? I watched a boy I've spent a month training stand still and let a Rank C fire mage hit him in the chest. On purpose. In front of five thousand people.""It worked.""Did it?""Endurance, ten. The senior judge nearly wept.""I'm not asking about the judges." Her voice was low and flat. "I'm asking whether it was worth it. If he'd put another ounce into that last blast, Ethan, I would have been scraping you off the boards
Chapter 046: Dorian Again
The draw for the second round was posted at dawn on a board outside the Marshal's tent, and Ethan read his own name twice before he believed it.THE PROVING. First Bout. DORIAN HALE of House Hale. NOEL THORNWICK of House Thornwick."Of course," said Edric, at his shoulder, in a voice that dripped with fatalism. "Of course it's the one with the fire. The gods enjoy a joke.""It's an exhibition," Ethan said. "It's not a knockout.""It's a scoring bout. The Marshal's judges award marks for skill, endurance, and conduct. The top eight of the sixteen advance." Edric leaned on his cane and chewed his lip. "A loss doesn't end you. But a loss badly might.""Then I'll lose well."The old man gave him a sharp look. "You mean to lose."Ethan said nothing."Boy." Edric's voice dropped. "I've sponsored three champions in my life. I've never sponsored one who planned to lose. Is there something you aren't telling me?""There are a lot of things I'm not telling you.""Ha." Edric thumped his cane on
Chapter 045: First Round
The Lake of Ward was a quarter mile of black ice under a white sky, and twenty thousand people had come to watch it kill someone.They lined the shore in banks of fur and wool, shoulder to shoulder, stamping their boots against the cold. Vendors sold hot cider from copper urns. Children sat on their fathers' shoulders. At the north end, a stand of blue-and-silver pavilions held the great Houses, their banners snapping in the wind. And in the middle of the lake, on a low rock island rising out of the ice, stood a single tall pole with a white flag on top. The Ward Standard."The rules are simple," said the Marshal, a heavy man in a fur cloak, from a wooden platform at the shore. His voice was big enough to carry. "Twenty-two entrants. One standard. The first to lay a hand on it wins the round and the purse. Any who fall through the ice are out. Any who are struck down are out. The host House's champion is seeded to the second round by ancient right." He raised his hand. "Let the ice be
Chapter 044: The Pressed Flower
The Blessing of the Lake began, according to tradition, in the Glass Garden.Ethan stood in the entrants' line at nine in the morning, in a clean white tunic with the thorn crest stitched on the breast, and tried not to look at the ceiling. It was a dome of clear glass, forty feet high, bolted over a great round courtyard in the heart of the citadel. Steam rose from vents in the floor. Under it, the air was warm and wet and green, so strange after the cold stone halls that it felt like stepping into a different country.Ferns hung from the beams. White orchids climbed the pillars. A narrow stream ran through the middle on a bed of black pebbles, and the whole place smelled of damp earth and sweet rot and flowers he had no names for."The springs under the lake," Edric murmured, leaning on his cane. "They keep the garden warm all winter. A Ward marvel. They say it's why the family never fails.""Fails at what?""Anything."The entrants stood in a row down the length of the central path
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