Page 55 of FoolSilver
“Cadet Max is an alchemist of a classification we haven’t encountered before. Her abilities are tied to a sentient metal called Coldiron. I could keep briefing you on what it does, but I’d rather show you.” He looked at me. “Cadet Max.”
The Fae woman angled toward me with the measured attention of someone taking stock of a variable they hadn’t yet categorized.
I peeled myself off the wall, crossed to the open space beside the tactical map, and stripped the armguard from my forearm, holding it flat on my palm.
As I pushed the intent, the armguard flowed, dividing and reshaping—not the arrow from Greyhold, not the sanjiegun from the training hall. Two chakrams formed in my palm, each ten inches across, dark iron-black, humming with contained energy. The moment they separated from my skin, the room changed.
The temperature dropped. Not from any ventilation shift—the Stormglass sconces flickered once, a circuit briefly contested. Several officers straightened without knowing why, bodies registering a predatory presence before their minds caught up with it. One general’s hand moved toward his sidearm and stopped. A commander pressed her back into her chair. The colored pins on the tactical map trembled faintly in their housings.
“I’d advise against touching the chakrams,” I said. “They’re fully saturated with Coldiron. When they’re not in contact with me, the metal is hostile, and it doesn’t distinguish between friend and target.”
I set them on the table and stepped back.
A colonel in an oxblood and navy uniform—Nikolai’s house—pressed her thumb flat to the surface of a chakram anyway. Her scream was short and involuntary. She jerked her hand back, but it was already too late. Some people just didn’t listen. Her hand that had touched the chakram withered before our eyes.
“Medical wing,” Nikolai said. “Now.”
Two aides had her out the door before the room could finish processing what it had just seen.
No one else reached for the chakrams. That was more like it.
I looked at Aelindor. He nodded his permission. I stretched out my hand, and the chakrams flew back, shifting mid-flight, and settled onto my forearm as a bracer. I saluted the room and dropped back to the wall beside Frost.
The skepticism that had greeted an unproven claim had walked out with the colonel. What replaced it was harder to name. Awe? Fear?
“An alchemist of high caliber is exceedingly rare.” The voice belonged to General Rhaek Solenne of Drakken’s House—charcoal uniform, gold Leo sigil bright over his left breast, smooth dark skin going gray at the temples. “I’ve met two in my career. Neither came close.”
“Finally.” Commander Lee leaned forward, dark eyes moving between me and the chakrams on my wrist. She’d traded her fatigues for the dress uniform. She was one of the Forged: human baseline rewritten by the Rupture’s flood of magic. “We have an exceptional alchemist in our ranks.”
Caspian tapped the table. “The Covenant has been sourcing Stormglass through the black markets for decades, because thePallid Court controls the largest deposits on the continent.” He gave his briefing the way he did everything in a war room—fast, no wasted words. “Crimson Ridge, old Utah. Roughly eighty percent of total production across all four kingdoms. We’ve raided it seven times and never breached it.” He let everyone take it in. “What nobody knew, what we didn’t know, is that Max has been running a covert operation out of that mine for the past decade. Half the Stormglass shipment out of Crimson Ridge has been seeded with dormant Coldiron, inert until commanded. Half the continent’s Stormglass infrastructure, including a third of this fortress, is compromised.” He looked around the table. “The Pallid Court’s output tripled ten years ago. They credited better extraction methods.” His eyes moved to me, pride brimming in them. “They never knew it was Max.”
“To put it plainly,” Nikolai chimed in, “we’re extremely fortunate we reached her first.” He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t need to. The room understood what the alternative looked like.
“Our enemies have no idea nearly half the Stormglass shipped from Crimson Ridge is already tainted,” Aelindor offered. “One command from Max and we cripple the Pallid Court’s entire infrastructure—transport, communications, arcane weapons, every facility running on their Stormglass. All of it goes dark. Simultaneously.”
General Solenne’s fist came down on the table. “Then we move. We activate the asset and we take out the Pallid Court.”
The room broke open. Officers leaned forward, talking over each other, voices climbing—the particular fever of people who had been fighting a war for decades and had just been handed a way out. I understood it. Everyone wanted the White Witch dead. The energy in the room was raw and contagious, and for a moment I let myself feel it too.
Then the Fae woman’s voice cut through the noise without increasing in volume.
“It’s not that simple.”
The room quieted faster than it had for General Solenne’s fist. She had that quality, the authority of someone who had been one of the most dangerous people in every room she’d ever entered and had never needed to announce it.
“The White Witch’s top mages have begun to identify the metal,” she said. Her gaze moved briefly around the table before settling. “They’re analyzing it. I risked my cover to fly back and report this in person, because the window is narrowing.”
“Lady Vaelith,” Frost murmured in my ear.
I filed it away.
“The Witch’s coven calls it Foolsilver,” Lady Vaelith continued. “The trickster metal. It mimics silver under inspection, which is why their alchemists dismissed it as worthless for years. That’s no longer the case. Their senior mages have reported to the White Witch that Foolsilver may be the most strategically significant metal on the continent. They’re working to unlock its magic now.”
From the wall, I said, “Did you bring a sample?”
Every head turned. Apparently, cadets didn’t speak in this room unless addressed. I held my ground. I needed to know if Coldiron and Foolsilver were indeed the same.
Lady Vaelith looked at me directly. Whatever she was measuring, she took her time with it. “Impossible,” she said. “Coldiron attaches to host metals and disguises itself completely. You cannot extract a sample any more than you can bottle a shadow.” I didn’t point out that she couldn’t—but I could. “Only a sufficiently powerful alchemist can detect it at all. Until recently, the Pallid Court had no one capable of that. Now they’re looking.”
