by Amie Kaufman
The others lowered him down into a dark alleyway, their hands warm in his. “Be careful,” Lisabet whispered.
“If they get you somehow, we’ll get you back,” Rayna promised.
“Don’t trust them too much,” Ellukka advised.
Anders was tingling with anticipation, his heart thumping. Sakarias had been injured in the battle between the wolves and the dragons, and Viktoria had dragged him free, helping him escape. Anders had been losing sleep over what his friends must be thinking about him, but the fact that they were here now—perhaps even working with Hayn—gave him his first taste of hope that they might not hate him.
He hadn’t realized the Academy was starting to feel like home until he’d realized that he could never go back. But he’d known before that moment that these were his friends.
His heart was beating fast as he made his way out of the alley and darted through the adults who were funneling down the street toward the gate, keeping the hood on his cloak up. Both his friends saw him straight away—and the always-smiling Sakarias wasn’t smiling at all. Viktoria wore suspicion like a mask, hiding her thoughts.
The three of them wordlessly stepped to the edge of the street, and as Sakarias moved, Anders saw for the first time that under his Ulfar cloak, his arm was in a sling. His wiry form looked a little smaller than usual.
For a long moment, nobody spoke. Anders knew he was the one who had to break the silence.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“Don’t,” said Viktoria quickly, her voice hard. “We’re not here to talk about it.”
Sakarias simply looked away, studying the crowd.
Anders’s heart hurt. “You don’t understand,” he said softly. “If you’d killed their leader, the battle—”
Viktoria held her hand up to stop him. “We were there for you, Anders. You and Lisabet. Because you were our friends. We were terrified, we thought they’d be torturing you. We were so scared of going up into Drekhelm, but for you, we—everyone in the class found the bravery to do it. And when we arrived, you fought with them.”
Anders felt the words like a punch in the gut.
And then Sakarias spoke, still not looking at him. “Why did you go there, Anders?”
Anders fought the urge to look up at the rooftops. He didn’t want to give away where his sister was—didn’t know how much he should tell his friends. Hated that he had to wonder. “It’s complicated,” he said weakly. “I promise it wasn’t to betray you. Did Hayn send you?”
“He’s been arrested,” Sakarias said softly.
Anders reeled. Had Sigrid found out what Hayn was doing? Did she know about their connection?
“He’s been confined to his workshop,” Viktoria said. “We don’t know what’s going on, but Hayn asked one of his guards to pass on a library book to Sakarias, said he’d promised it to him for class.”
“And I didn’t need it for class,” Sakarias said. “And we all know I’ve never borrowed a library book in my life, unless someone made me. So we figured something strange was happening.”
“So we went through it,” Viktoria continued. “And we found a map inside, and a note, asking us to find a way to get out and bring it to you.”
“He was counting on us still being your friends,” said Sakarias, pulling a folded piece of cloth from inside his sling and holding it out to Anders.
Anders took it, mouth dry, tucking it inside his jacket. “And are you?” he asked quietly. “Still my friends?”
Nobody spoke, but the others exchanged a glance.
“How’s Lisabet?” Viktoria said eventually.
“She’s fine,” Anders said, heart sinking. “I promise she’s safe.”
They were quiet again. He waited, hoping against hope they might have something more to say.
“We want to be,” said Sakarias eventually. “Your friends, I mean. We care about both of you, and so do the others—Jai, Mateo, Det. But it’s hard.”
Viktoria nodded. “Right now, we’re in the middle. We’ll carry Hayn’s message—”
“And miss dinner,” Sakarias reminded them, sounding more like himself for a moment.
“And get in all kinds of trouble if we can’t sneak back in,” Viktoria continued. “But we’re doing it because Hayn asked us to. We’re trying to trust you, Anders, but . . .”
She trailed off and shrugged, and Sakarias didn’t contradict her.
Anders had a lump in his throat that made it hard to swallow. He knew that even this was more than he deserved—his friends still felt exactly like he used to about dragons, and as far as they knew, he’d betrayed them.
And they were right, that was the worst part of it. Even if it was to avoid a greater, much worse battle, he had fought against them.
Even if he’d been fighting to keep everyone safe, they were the ones who’d fled, injured and afraid. It was a lot that they were even here.
“Thank you for trying,” he said quietly. “I’ll prove you can trust me. Please just keep trying to believe. You should go, though, before it gets even later.”
“Good luck,” said Sakarias. “I hope you’re not doing something we’ll regret helping with.”
“Tell Lisabet to be careful,” said Viktoria. She moved around to Sakarias’s injured side to shield him from being jostled by the crowd, and after a moment, the two of them slipped into the sea of people. Soon, they were just two more shadows in the dim lanterns hanging outside the shops and houses.
Anders hurried back into the alleyway to help the others down, and together they slipped outside the gate, keeping their heads bowed in the dark to avoid the notice of the guards who still stood watch there, calling out to draw attention to their wanted posters.
“We can take off much closer to the city,” Ellukka said, once they were clear and making their way along the road outside the walls. “Nobody will see, there’s not much moonlight. I can’t wait to be in the air, this place is freezing.” She looked much weaker than she had that morning, after a long day exposed to the cold of the city, and away from the underground lava of Drekhelm.
“We should look at the map first,” Lisabet said. “Just in case there’s anything we need from the city before we go. We’re so late, we’re bound to be in trouble anyway, five more minutes won’t be the worst of it.”
They walked a little ways along the road that led to the distant ford, but with the crowd thinning as the night drew on, it was easy enough to find a gap in the people and slip off the path. They found a spot behind a large rock, and Anders pulled out the piece of cloth, unfolding it and setting it on the ground.
It was a map of Vallen, almost exactly like those he’d seen in class, or on the wall in the map room at Drekhelm, with a compass rose in the top right corner, and intricate knotwork drawn all around the edges. It had been inked directly onto the cloth.
The cloth itself was shot through with silvery thread, the metal Drifa had forged woven straight into the fabric. That must be how its magic worked—all artifacts required metal, and the magical fire of a dragonsmith, and Anders could only imagine that the wolf-designed runes must be engraved on the thread itself, unimaginably small.
“Well, it’s a map all right,” said Rayna, poking at it with one fingertip. “Nothing happens when I touch it. How do we let it know we’re Drifa’s family?”
It still felt so odd, to hear it out loud. Anders studied the map in the pale moonlight. Apart from being made of cloth, rather than paper, it looked perfectly ordinary.
“Blood,” said Anders. “That’s what worked with the purse. Perhaps after such a long time without anyone touching it, it needs help waking up.”
“Good idea,” said Rayna, unpinning the brooch that held her cloak shut and pricking her finger without hesitation. She held her fingertip over the compass rose and gently squeezed it until a drop of blood fell onto the circle at the dead center of it. “I want to find the location of the Sun Scepter,” she said clearly.
At first, nothing ha
ppened.
“There!” said Ellukka after half a minute, pointing at the knotwork around the map’s edges. And sure enough, when Anders looked more closely, the beautifully drawn border was writhing, changing, rearranging itself.
“It’s making letters,” Lisabet whispered, leaning in to study the words that now made up the map’s border. Slowly, she began to read them aloud.
“Where the sun greets herself at every dawn,
And the stars admire themselves at night,
Where blue meets blue the whole day long,
The scepter’s head is wedged in tight.”
A shiver went down Anders’s spine. “Well,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what it means yet, but this is it. This is how we find the Sun Scepter.”
“This is how we stop the Snowstone weakening the dragons,” Rayna whispered.
Anders nodded slowly. “This is how we keep the peace.”
Chapter Eight
AS ANDERS FOLDED UP THE MAP AND TUCKED IT inside his coat, Ellukka spoke. “The Sun Scepter could change everything,” she said intently. “This is how we could end the feud forever. We dragons have never tried to start fights—it’s only ever been the wolves. This could be a way to weaken them so much we can take charge for good. That could be how we keep peace.”
Anders froze. “Ellukka, no,” he said, stumbling over the words in horror. “No, that’s not what this is for. It’s not what we agreed. We agreed we were going to find a balance, a way to make sure neither the wolves nor the dragons were strong enough to beat each other.”
She turned to him, hands on her hips. “Why are you defending them? The wolves have wanted posters up for you, you should be on our side!”
“I’m not on your side,” Anders began, “I’m—”
“Well, you can’t be on their side!” she interrupted.
“I’m not on anyone’s side!”
Suddenly all three of the girls were staring at him, and he realized he’d shouted. He never shouted.
“I think we’re on both sides,” Rayna said, for once the voice of reason. “I think we have to be, because we are both, Ellukka.” She didn’t sound completely certain—and Anders had never seen her show the slightest concern for wolves before. But the idea of an uncle was a powerful draw. Especially one who cared about them as much as Hayn seemed to.
“Let’s talk about it when we get back,” Lisabet suggested. “Mikkel and Theo must be covering for us by now.”
They walked a little farther from the city gates in silence, until they were in a dark gully where the dragons could transform and take off without being seen. Anders and Lisabet wrapped all their layers of clothing around themselves tightly, preparing for the freezing cold of the night air.
This time there was no landscape to see below them—just black beneath and the stars above, and the feeling of flying endlessly through the night. Occasionally Anders saw the moonlight glint off a river or lake, but after a time he was too cold to really look for anything below. He retreated inside his own thoughts, going over everything that had happened that day, and everything that would happen next.
The girls landed a little ways around the mountain from the doors to the Great Hall, scrambling for purchase on the loose scree and the snow, and once they were securely in place, Anders and Lisabet slid down to the ground. Rayna and Ellukka transformed back into humans, and the four of them made their way up the mountainside together. The dragons were already looking stronger with the mountainside beneath their feet, and even Lisabet, strengthened by a day in Holbard’s cold air, looked all right.
They were hoping that they’d be able to slip through the little human-size doors unnoticed, and hurry away into the passageways of Drekhelm, with nobody the wiser that they’d been out at all.
But they weren’t that lucky. Ellukka walked carefully through the door with the others behind her. Anders was right on her heels, unbuttoning his coat, which meant that when she suddenly stopped, Anders, Rayna, and Lisabet piled up behind her—Anders got a faceful of blond plait and nearly inhaled it.
When he stepped out to see what had made her stop, his heart sank. There were her father, Valerius, and the bushy-bearded member of the Dragonmeet, Torsten, who had been so suspicious of him when he’d first met the council. The two big men were sitting together at one of the small tables around the edge of the Great Hall—the center was left clear for dragons to land in—and the remains of their dinner were lying before them. They must have come here for a chance to talk.
“Ellukka?” Valerius said, rising to his feet. “What were you doing outside at this time of night?”
Ellukka opened her mouth and closed it again, but Rayna didn’t miss a beat.
“Stargazing,” she said, from behind her friend. “It’s a beautifully clear night.”
“What?” Valerius looked from Rayna to Ellukka and back again, and beside him, Torsten snorted.
“We just stepped outside,” said Rayna.
Belatedly, Ellukka came to life. “Stargazing,” she said, nodding vigorously. She was doing a terrible job of pretending, and if Valerius couldn’t tell, Torsten clearly could.
“And why were you stargazing?” he asked, frowning behind his beard.
“Why not?” Rayna said breezily—Anders knew she knew full well what Torsten thought of at least two of them, but she’d faced down scarier people on the streets of Holbard. “It’s a beautiful night.”
“You’re not supposed to be outside after dark,” Torsten said with a scowl. “Particularly the wolves. How do we know you weren’t signaling someone?”
“Signaling?” Anders spoke up for that. “Who would we signal?”
“And we could just as easily do that during the day,” Lisabet pointed out. “With a mirror or something.”
Torsten looked very thoughtful. Anders could have kicked her.
“So you’ve thought about that?” the big man asked.
“No!” Lisabet replied. “I’m just saying—”
“How long have you been out there?”
Just then Mikkel came running into the Great Hall, using an entrance behind the two Dragonmeet members. He skidded to a halt, and Theo slid through the door, coming to a stop up against his roommate.
“Hey, there you are!” Mikkel said, with exaggerated cheer. He could clearly tell they were in the middle of an alibi, and just as clearly didn’t know how to back them up. “How was—”
“Stargazing!” Anders and Rayna said together, before he could finish.
“Stargazing,” he agreed, nodding hard. Torsten turned and looked over his shoulder at him for a long moment, and Mikkel stopped nodding.
“We were just outside,” Ellukka said. “We’d have heard you if you called for us. And we weren’t long.”
“That’s right,” Mikkel agreed. “They had dinner with us just before.”
“Are you sure?” Valerius asked, looking at the redheaded boy and then back at his daughter.
“Father!” said Ellukka, indignant.
Anders flicked a glance to Torsten. The big man was staring at Anders’s chest. Was the map visible? Had it somehow edged out of his pocket? He looked down and saw that the bright pink-and-gold waistcoat he’d been wearing as part of his disguise in Holbard was there on show, looking nothing like the clothes he’d been taking from the dragons’ store cupboards. Torsten had to be wondering where it had come from. Anders realized with a chill that Rayna still had a green-and-gold shawl tied over her skirts.
“Time we started getting ready for bed,” Rayna said, with a polite bow to first Valerius and then Torsten. “Good night!”
“Listen, I—” Torsten began.
But Rayna grabbed Ellukka’s hand, hurrying off down the nearest hallway, and a moment later the others were all piling in after her. Nobody called them back.
“Let’s talk in our room,” said Anders.
“With food,” Rayna added.
“I’ll get it,” Theo volunteered. “But don’t start without me
!”
Anders, Lisabet, and Mikkel settled in on his bed, Rayna and Ellukka side by side on Lisabet’s.
Mikkel shook his head sadly as the others shed some layers, warmed up, and waited for Theo. “Leif asked if you were back,” he reported. “I said yes, and last time I saw you, you were eating dinner, so he went off to look for you. Then I saw him again later, and he hadn’t found you, of course, so I sent him to the classroom. It was kind of a mess.”
Theo showed up then with a tray piled high with thickly buttered slices of brown bread, two big bowls of stew—one for each bed—with six spoons, and a bag of apples tucked under his arm. “Okay,” he said, distributing the food. “Go.”
As they hurriedly ate, they told Theo and Mikkel everything that had happened that day. Anders could tell almost straight away that, like Ellukka, Mikkel could see in the Sun Scepter the possibilities for beating the wolves once and for all. Theo didn’t look as enthusiastic about that idea. Dragon he might be, but he’d only left his family in Holbard a few weeks ago, and of course he still loved them.
When they were all done with the story, Anders spoke into the silence that followed. He knew what he said next was going to be very important, and he’d chosen his words carefully on the way back from Holbard.
Now he felt as if he were leaping out into the air, trusting Rayna to soar out beneath him and catch him. Trusting her to back him, as the two of them had always backed each other, no matter what. He hoped she’d meant what she’d said before, about being both wolf and dragon born.
“There’s only one way we’re going to use the scepter,” he said, making his voice firm.
“What’s that?” asked Mikkel.
“We’re not going to use it to help either side win,” Anders said. “If we can find it at all, we’re going to use it to keep things equal between the wolves and the dragons. There can’t be more battles, no matter who has the advantage. We’re lucky nobody was killed last time.”
To his intense relief, Rayna nodded. “Anders and I are the only ones who can use the map to find it,” she said. “So that’s the deal.”