Page 46 of Scorched
I think about the way she taught me to forge without names. The Kael-ash fold she showed me when I was fourteen that she called the old way. The blades that hummed under my hands that she said was talent. The forge in the back room that she kept locked.
I think about the singing blade on the anvil and the key-shaped weapon I don't remember making and the seven impossible things I created during four days of heat with my hands and someone else's fire.
I think about the word. Bloodwork. He said it during the knotting—said it matter-of-fact, the way you say a thing to someone who already knows. I said I know that now. I didn't ask what it was. The heat rose again and I let the question go.
I'm not letting it go now.
The water steams. The obsidian walls gleam. Somewhere above me the Ember King is doing whatever kings do when theclaiming is over and the woman they claimed is sitting in their bath with questions she hasn't asked yet.
I will ask them.
Not today. Today I will bathe and dress and walk through the Ember Court with the brands on my skin and the assassin's mind sharp and clear and I will look at this place with open eyes. Today I will go to the weapons vault and I will touch the metal and I will see if it sings for me.
I close my eyes. The mineral water laps against the obsidian. The mountain hums.
When I open them, my hand is resting on the surface of the water and the water around my fingers is vibrating. A faint, concentric ripple spreading outward from my skin. Not from movement. From the hum. The same frequency as the singing blade. The same note as the hammer in the vault.
Coming from me.
I pull my hand from the water. The vibration stops.
I stare at my fingers. I stare at the still water. I put my hand back in. The vibration returns—faint, steady, a frequency I can feel in my bones and my blood and the brands on my skin.
Something in me is singing. And I do not know what it is. And I'm going to find out.
20
IGNUS
Three weeks after the heat breaks, the commander of my guard requests a private audience.
Varek has served me for four hundred years. He's never requested a private audience. He appears at the door of my study—the room at the top of the north tower, the one with the obsidian desk and the window that looks down over the courtyard and the forge chimney and the mountain's eastern slope dropping away into cloud. He closes the door behind him. He stands at attention with the specific rigidity of a male about to say something he doesn't want to say.
"It's about the human," he says.
"Sophia."
"The human, my king." He isn't being disrespectful. He's being careful. "She sparred with six of my guard this morning. Simultaneously."
"And?"
"She won."
I set down the intelligence report I was reading—border disputes with the Frost Court, nothing that won't keep. The fire-thread in the study walls flickers. I've not been able to fullycontrol the fire-thread since the claiming. It responds to my mood before I can mask it. Varek notices the flicker. He doesn't comment.
"Define won."
"She disarmed three of them in under a minute. The fourth she pinned to the training floor with a blade she took from his own belt. The fifth she knocked unconscious with an elbow strike. The sixth yielded when she pressed his own sword to his throat." He pauses. "My king, she did this barefoot, in a nightdress, using no weapons of her own."
"Were they injured?"
"Pride, mostly. Corporal Daven will need his jaw reset. She offered to do it herself. He declined." Another pause. "She also offered to teach them the technique she used to disarm the third. She was very specific about the footwork."
I lean back in my chair. The fire in the walls brightens—amusement, cutting through the control before I can catch it. Varek watches the walls brighten and his jaw goes tight and I see it: the commander of my guard is frightened. Not of me. Of the woman he is reporting on. Four hundred years of service and the thing that brings him to a private audience is a human female in a nightdress.
"Is this a complaint, Varek?"
"It is a notification, my king. The court is... adjusting."
