They didn’t see me.
“The Human Army sent their machines into the mountain but when they tried to harness the power of the river, something far more terrible happened. The shimmering river of magic turned from mist to solid crystal. It froze. The heart of the world stopped beating and every magical creature felt the change.”
I could taste bile in my mouth.
“Dragons plummeted from the sky. Elves aged centuries in seconds. Werewolves’ bodies became unstable and left them deformed. The magic drained from the creatures of the world. From all of us. And it has stayed that way ever since.”
In the darkness, I saw heads turn. Tiny little bodies examined themselves, then turned to inspect their neighbors. Their entire world was now covered in a sadness that the rest of us had been seeing for the last six years.
“You may still bear the greatness of what you once were. Wings, fangs, claws and tails are your gifts from the great river. They herald back to your ancestors and are nothing to be ashamed of.”
I bit down on the Clayfield too hard and it snapped in half. Somewhere in the crowd, a kid was crying.
“Remember, you may not be magic, but you are still… special.”
The film ripped off the projector and spun around the wheel, wildly clicking a dozen times before finally coming to a stop. Burbage flicked on the lights but the children stayed silent as stone.
“Thank you for your attention. If you have any questions about your body, your species or life before the Coda, your parents and teachers will be happy to talk them through with you.”
As Burbage wrapped up the presentation, I tried my best to sink into the wall behind me. A stream of sweat had settled on my brow and I dabbed at it with an old handkerchief. When I looked up, an inquisitive pair of eyes were examining me.
They were foggy green with tiny pinprick pupils: Elvish. Young. The face was old, though. Elvish skin has no elasticity. Not anymore. The bags under the boy’s eyes were worthy of a decade without sleep, but he couldn’t have been more than five. His hair was white and lifeless and his tiny frame was all crooked. He wore no real expression, just looked right into my soul.
And I swear,
He knew.
if you enjoyed
CROWNBREAKER
look out for
COLD IRON
Masters & Mages: Book One
by
Miles Cameron
Aranthur is a promising young mage. But the world is not safe, and after a confrontation leaves him no choice but to display his skill with a blade, Aranthur is instructed to train under a renowned Master of Swords.
During his intensive training, he begins to question the bloody life he’s chosen. And while studying under the Master, he finds himself thrown into the middle of a political revolt that will impact everyone he’s come to know.
To protect his friends, Arnathur will be forced to decide if he can truly follow the Master of Swords into a life of violence and cold-hearted commitment to the blade.
Prologue
It was late in the day when Syr Xenias di Brusias was ready to leave Volta. Almost everything that could go wrong had done so, and he was rushed and was prone, even after the life he’d led, to forget things, so he made himself stand by his fine riding horse in his two-stall city stable and review everything.
He still had not decided what to do by the time he mounted. He set himself in motion, mostly to avoid thinking too much.
His mare was delighted to be ridden; she’d been cooped up for as long as he had himself, and as soon as she was out in the street behind his house she was ready to trot, or more.
He kept her gait down because it was very important that he not be stopped. He was a little overdressed for a common wayfarer, in tall black boots all the way to his thighs and a black half-cloak and matching black hat full of black plumes, but he liked fine things and he lacked the time to change.
He was riding out of a maelstrom, and he needed to stay on the leading edge.
He could hear screams from the north, where the Ducal Palace was. He patted the sword at his hip with his bridle hand then he turned his horse at the first cross street—away from the palace of towering brick on the hillside, and down towards the river, the bridges, and the street of steelworkers where he had a commission to collect.
It struck him that if he collected the commission then he had made his choice; he would never be able to come back to Volta.
It also struck him that a violent political revolution could cover a great many dark deeds. There were already looters on the streets; two men passed him carrying a coffer, and neither looked up or caught his eye. The sound of breaking glass was almost as prevalent as the sound of screaming from the north.
He heard gonnes firing, and the snap of crossbows, and a sulphur reek floated past him and made his mare shy. There was the acrid reek of magik, too.
He let the mare trot, and her hooves struck sparks from the paving stones. Volta was one of the richest cities in the west, and it had fully paved streets and running water from the two great aqueducts, which was still nothing compared to the wonders of his home. The City.
Megara. Which he was about to help destroy.
Or not. He still couldn’t decide.
The mare stopped abruptly. There was a corpse in the street, and the sound of steel crossing steel. He tugged at her reins, turned along an alley that ran across the back of the shops and emerged on the next broad, empty street, with tall houses tiled in red rising high enough to block the sun.
He looked right and left, but the street was empty. From long practice, his eyes rose, looking at rooflines and balconies above him, but nothing moved, and he gave the horse her head. They flew along the street, past the corner of violence, and down to the riverside, where he reined in and turned the mare into Steel Street, where the armourers were. He knew the shop well; Arnson and Egg, the two families on the gold-lettered sign, had made fine gonnes since the principle had first been developed far to the east.
He had a moment of doubt; the street seemed deserted.
But he saw a light burning, and smoke from the chimney, so he dismounted, tethered his horse to a hitching post and moved his dagger back along his belt from habit. Then he pounded at the door despite the darkening eve and the sounds of violence in the high town.
He heard footsteps.
“You came!” said young Arnson.
He pushed in beside the young man.
“I came for my fusil.”
The lad smiled. “It is done.” He pointed at a leather case on the front bar. “Pater is gone; he says it will be bad here. I’m to keep the doors locked and only eat food in the house.”
“Very wise.” The man paused to admire the case; the fine steel buckles made by hand and blued, and expert leather-work.
Then he took out the weapon.
“You made this?” he asked.
The young man grinned. “I did, too. Pater helped with the lock; I’m not that dab with springs, yet. And I hired the leather-work.”
The boy was so pleased with himself that the man almost laughed.
He permitted himself a smile instead. “And the compartment?”
“Just as you asked,” the young man said. “Not in the weapon, neither.” He showed his visitor the cunning compartment built for keeping a secret.
“Superb,” the man in the black cloak said, and slammed his dagger into the young man’s temple, killing him instantly. The blade emerged from the other temple with admirable precision, and the man in the black cloak supported the corpse all the way to the floor, stepping away from the flow of blood. Then he filled the secret compartment with his deadly secret, wearing gloves; one tiny jewel skittered away across the table and he tracked it down, picked it up with coal tongs from the fireplace, and put it in his belt-purse. Then he threw his gloves—fine, black gloves—in the fire, where they sparkled as if impregnated with gunpowder. He left, satisfied, leaving the shop door wide open to the looters already movi
ng along the street like roaches.
But then he paused. The decision was made; there was no point in being sloppy or sentimental now. He took the tiny jewel from his purse using his handkerchief, covered his horse’s head with his cloak, and tossed it back through the open door. It was so tiny he didn’t even hear it hit the floor.
He led his horse away. Only after he counted one hundred paces did he trigger the jewel’s power.
The house behind him seemed to swell for a moment. Then fire, white fire, blew from every window, the glass and horn panes exploding outwards, the shutters immolating, the door blowing off their hinges. It sounded like a crack of thunder, followed by a rushing of wind, and then the fire began to catch the other old houses in the row, even as the first house collapsed inwards in a roar of sparks and a burst of thick black smoke.
He mounted his mare, who didn’t like the smell of blood on him or the sound or smell of smoke, and he used some of his power to cast an occulta. It didn’t make him invisible; it merely compelled most people to look elsewhere.
He drew a second pair of gloves from his belt and tried not to acknowledge that he’d always intended this.
The killing.
The secret.
The compartment.
The fire.
The massacre to come.
He had a little difficulty at the bridge; angry, unpaid mercenaries were holding the near end, and they wanted money and no amount of magikal compulsion was going to fool them. So he paid, handing over one hundred gold sequins—almost five years’ wages for a prosperous craftsman—as if it was his entire purse. They wanted to open his case, the case with the secret and the little fusil, and he prepared to fight them, but they lost interest.
There were more unpaid sell-swords in the streets of the lower town, and they were killing. He had to wonder if the duke was dead; and if he was, if the plan was still valid.
He considered changing sides.
Again.
To his enormous relief, there was no one on the Lonika Gate. He rode through unchallenged, and he was tempted to let the mare gallop; he needed to put time and distance between himself and Volta. The weight of his secret was tremendous; he flinched from it, trying to occupy his mind so that he would not think too carefully of what he was doing or what it would mean. He knew this would end his relationship with his wife.
Myra, his mistress, wouldn’t care. She might prefer him alone. She wouldn’t even understand.
But he understood all too well what it would mean.
All too well.
People were fleeing the violence; he passed a long line of carts in the winter fields. He rode aside at a barn, dismounted, and took off all his jewellery and his dagger belt, and put it all in his leather case. Sell-swords might search the case, but at least his rings wouldn’t give him away. He put his beautiful black doublet in the case as well and pulled on a smock. It was not as cold here as it would be in the mountains, towards the barbaric Arnaut lands, but it was cold enough, and refugees trudged past him carrying beds and bedding, blankets and furniture.
Lonika was five days away; Megara three or four more days beyond. But he had a fast horse, and the money to buy remounts at Fosse and Lonika; as soon as he was free of all the violence, he’d eat up the ground. Nine days travel for a man on foot would be perhaps three for him. He could arrive exactly on schedule, if he was fast. Dark Night. The night the ignorant feared. The perfect night, or so the Servant said. That was not his problem. Delivering was his problem.
He had to make the Inn of Fosse in two days; he’d managed as much on other occasions.
There were soldiers ahead, stripping a wagonload of a poor merchant family as a mother cowered with her children and a man held his split scalp together. Five men in rusting armour threw the family’s worldly goods into the mud, rooting for coins. Ten years of falling grain prices and increasingly violent weather had already stripped the countryside of coin and brought out the violence in people.
This was going to be worse.
He rode down a farm lane and well around the soldiers, and emerged on the turnpike into near darkness.
It was a major risk to travel in the dark. But he could see a farmhouse on fire off to the west, and it seemed to him that the whole world had come apart, which gave him comfort for what he was choosing to do. The world might end, but it would be far away and he’d be very well paid. Rich, even. And he’d have Myra. And other entertainments.
He left Volta on fire behind him and rode through the night.
By morning he was just twenty leagues from the Inn of Fosse. He knew the road and the hills, and he was wary, because the Arnauts, although they hadn’t made trouble in a generation, were a race of degenerate cattle thieves and sell-swords.
He climbed into the snow-clad hills, his horse tired and hungry, and he was watching the trees either side of the road. But when the road curved sharply into an ancient gully, he had no sight line, and the unpaid mercenaries had chosen their spot perfectly. They had a tree across the road, and he had no warning to turn aside or prepare a working, and he had to halt.
He loosened his sword in the scabbard and reached to unbuckle his fusil.
He never saw the crossbow bolt that hit him in the chest. It took him ugly hours to die.
1
Aranthur blew on his fingers and cleaned his quill on a scrap of linen. He was too tired to do his best work, and he took a deep breath while he looked through the small glass-paned window in his gable. The glass window was the single greatest attraction in the long room that he shared with three other young men. They each had a gable with horn panes, seven storeys above the cobbled street, which allowed only a fraction of the winter sun to enter. Only the desk window had glass where a student could see to work.
His eye was caught by the sparkle of his talisman, a kuria crystal. He waved a hand over it, thinking he’d left it engaged when he was studying for his examination, cursing the waste and then regretting his curses, but the brilliance was only the natural sun tangled in the stone and not an emanation of power.
The room was bitterly cold. He glanced at his brazier and his bag of charcoal, counting his coins in his head. He’d bought some things for his mother: elegant ironwork, better than he could afford; fine paper for his sister, leather gloves for his father that he had made himself from expensive ibix leather. He didn’t have the money to waste on charcoal.
It was also the last day of classes, and most shops would be closed and most of his tutors had already left.
He looked down at the lines he’d transcribed.
In the beginning there was darkness, and a void, and yet there was the mind of Sophia. And She said the word, and the word was Light, and light filled the whole of the heavens, and there was yet no earth, no water, no fire, no air. All was light.
He looked at the letters he had just formed. Të gjitha është dritë in the tongue of home. School—the Academy—so far had been little more than a pile of languages and a lot of writing. A little practical philosophy, and a very, very little magik. And even that little was more theory than practice.
He brushed back his unbound hair and tried not to curse; transcribing sacred words was not supposed to be accompanied by inattention and blasphemy. But it was a pleasure to write in his own tongue and not one of the dry, dead tongues that the Academy seemed to prefer, like Ellene, which drove him mad. He’d almost failed Ellene.
He’d almost failed everything. He hadn’t, but it had been close.
He sighed and dipped his pen. He could see from the last fifteen characters and the dots over the vowels that his quill was beginning to fray and needed cutting, but he was in a hurry.
And She spoke into the void and there was light, but to the light She sang, and then there were the elements, air, and water, and fire and earth. And the word was song, and the song was the Song, and even as the elements distilled from the light, She desired other voices in Her song, and they joined Her. And there was polyphony, and harmony, an
d unity. And earth and fire made Earth, and air and water made the Sea; fire and air made the Stars, and earth and water the other planets, and each was a unity, and each was a living form amidst the Infinite; and the Void was not in opposition, but was filled, so that where there had been nothing, there was Everything.
He wrote, and breathed on his hands, dipped his quill, and wrote again. But when his next vowel had an unacceptably sloppy dot, he sat back, managed not to swear, and rummaged for his friend Kati’s penknife. She was a student from Safi, a far-off land of burning deserts, and she had already left for home, sixteen days by ship and camel. Her parents were rich, and very demanding, but he envied her. She was going home.
She’d left him her penknife, a precious thing, sharp as a razor, just two inches of superb steel. He sat back and took a fresh quill from a tube of them, and cut it: a cut at the reverse angle to help with shape, a squeeze of the fingers to break the quill and form a slit, and then another deft slice to shape the nib. He rolled the quill in his fingers, liked the result, and used the knife to trim the feather to fit his hand, murmuring an invocation to the dead bird for the use of her quill and another to harden the tip. He dipped and tried it on a scrap of laid paper; the line was fine and steady. He went back to his work on vellum, copying out the opening chapter of The Book of Wisdoms.
He looked out of the window again and wondered if he was prevaricating. He had an eight-day journey home, and it was warm enough in the City. Arnaud, his Westerner mate, a Frankese from the other end of the world, claimed it was warmer outside than it was in the room. But the City was warm and comfortable in many ways, and the trip home was no little thing; he’d have to work as a deckhand to take a ship, and then he’d have to walk across half of Soulis, his home province, to reach his parents. He felt the temptation to stay—to write them a letter and then go to bed for a few days. He could get some scribal jobs and do more leather-work and use the money to eat his fill.
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