by Amie Kaufman
He had five weeks to find out where Rayna was, get there, and rescue her.
This is good news, his mind whispered again, trying to silence his panicking heart. If they want to sacrifice her, they’ll have to keep her alive. This gives you time.
But Anders still felt sick as he looked up at Professor Ennar. “I’ll work as hard as I can, I promise,” he said.
“I’m sure you will,” she agreed. “And don’t make the mistake of thinking these skills are just for battle. Wolves keep the peace right across Vallen. When you’re older you’ll go out on long patrols of the island, visiting smaller towns and villages, and walk the streets of the city here. And if the dragons make good on their threat, you’ll be ready to stand with us and fight.”
“Yes, Professor.” Anders could hear the faint hesitation in his voice.
“You’ll catch up with the class quickly,” Ennar promised him, mistaking the tone for something else. “Every wolf is born with a gift for this, and you’ll refine yours much more quickly than you think.”
She turned away, and with a sharp whistle recalled the class, who completed their lap and lined up once more, breathing heavily. At her instructions, they dragged over soft mats from the edge of the hall and began with drills in pairs.
Anders found himself standing opposite Mateo, the mountain, his heart sinking. He could see the other boy’s muscles beneath his light brown skin. Who had muscles when they were twelve?
He was going to be mashed into pulp before he ever left to save his sister. Forget that—he was going to be pulp before he got a chance to leave the combat hall. But all this could be important, so he had to try.
The first two times they came together Anders hit the mat in under ten seconds, landing hard on his back, the air driven from his aching lungs. Each time Mateo smiled an easy smile and leaned down to offer him his hand, helping him up. As if trying to drive his spine out through his chest was nothing personal.
But it turned out that all his practice on the streets—climbing up and down the sides of buildings, running from the Wolf Guard themselves some days, squeezing into places he didn’t belong and jumping from places he shouldn’t have been—was worth something.
Mateo might know the moves, but Anders had the speed and flexibility. The third time, when Mateo stepped forward to reach for him, Anders ducked, then stepped in closer rather than back, lifting one foot to hook it around the back of the bigger boy’s knee, and pull. Mateo’s eyes flew wide open as his knee gave way and he crashed backward.
He lay staring up at the rafters as if he’d never seen them before, and given his size, maybe he hadn’t. Just as Anders began to wonder if he’d made a mistake, Mateo’s face split in a grin, and he moved, levering himself to his feet. “Show me that move,” he said, still grinning.
“Sure, if you show me how you sent me flying last time,” Anders shot back, and Mateo rumbled with laughter.
Perhaps combat class wasn’t going to be completely terrible.
But it turned out he thought that far too soon. Ennar prowled along the rows as they sparred in pairs, correcting stances and moves, offering advice, and, very rarely, praise. And then they transformed, and things got worse.
It took Anders nearly five minutes to manage his transformation, while half the class watched, and the other half pretended not to. He’d never transformed on purpose before, and Ennar quietly coached him, offering suggestions and advice. His head was whirling with everything he’d learned, and the more he knew their eyes were on him, the harder it became to slip into the wolf form waiting inside of him.
His gaze swept across the hall and the pack of wolves waiting there, and he picked out Lisabet’s nearly black pelt, almost as dark as her hair. Sakarias’s fur had a hint of red to match his reddish-blond hair, but Viktoria’s was a light gray, nothing like her long black hair.
Lisabet offered him a wolfish grin, one that reminded him of her usual, human smile. He relaxed just a fraction, and next thing, he felt the pain of the transformation shooting along his arms and legs.
The world looked different from down low. The smells rushed to him, telling him exactly where each of his classmates stood. It felt strange, almost uncomfortable, to be so aware of his body. To feel the quick, testing swish of his tail, and know his muscles were waiting to launch him into a run the moment he asked them to.
But at least he’d managed it—if it had taken much longer, his brain might have melted completely, what with the embarrassment of everyone staring at him.
Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come. The class lined up along the wall to practice their ice spears, taking their places by a strip of the floor made of stone. Ennar paced along the line once more. The wolves reared up onto their back legs, then smacked their front paws down against the stone floor. Ice spears burst forth from the ground, smashing against the wall.
Some were as thick as his human arm, others were thin and sharp, and a few, those of the newer students, were more like shards of ice. The air around them cooled, and Anders felt more comfortable in his own skin, taking his place in line to try and cast his own spears.
Ennar padded along the line of students to stop beside him to help, offering instruction with her soft growls and whines, with the flick of her ears and the tilt of her head. As before, he found he understood her as clearly as if she’d spoken out loud, even though the words themselves were complex. Channel the essence all around you. The ability runs through your veins. Draw the moisture from the air, from the ground, and will the ice into being—you command it, so you need to act commandingly.
Anders understood her words, but he wasn’t sure he understood her meaning, so he copied the others carefully. He concentrated on the moisture that must be floating around in the air, trying to push all other thoughts out of his mind. Then he reared up, smacking his paws down on the ground, bringing every bit of his willpower to bear on creating a spear.
Nothing happened.
Don’t worry. The tilt of Ennar’s head was calm, her breathing slow. It will come. Try again.
But it didn’t.
If he’d been a human, Anders would be burning hot with embarrassment right now. As a wolf, he knew his ears were flattening against his head, and he couldn’t stop himself from sinking low to the ground, as if he could vanish right through the floor. Just as he understood every word Ennar spoke to him as a wolf, he knew that now, anyone who looked at him could see that he just wanted to be invisible.
Ennar shifted back to human form effortlessly, walking over to pick up a bowl of water from a shelf by the door and carrying it back to him. Crouching, she poured it onto the floor until there was a puddle right in front of Anders, and then transformed back into her wolf form. Try now, she said with a tilt of her head.
Anders reared up again, smacking his paws down in desperation. He had to be able to do this. This was the weapon he’d need, one of the parts of his plan to rescue Rayna.
He just didn’t understand what she meant—he could imagine there must be moisture in the air, and he could see the puddle in the ground, but how did he get it to do what he wanted? How did he summon it?
He had about as much chance of opening a door without touching it, or predicting the future. It just didn’t make sense.
Don’t worry, Sakarias growled, coming up beside him. Everybody gets this. I’ll bet my tail you have it in no time.
But there was an uncertainty in the tilt of his head that told Anders everything he needed to know. Anybody else would have it by now. Sakarias didn’t understand what he was finding so difficult.
He kept trying for the rest of the lesson, but though Ennar stopped by again and again, he couldn’t manage so much as a snowflake. Some of his classmates tried to offer helpful advice, and others didn’t bother to hide their amusement, tongues lolling and tails wagging as they laughed at him. The boy with no family, who’d avoided telling anybody what his tie was to the pack, wasn’t a proper wolf. Surprise, surprise. Anders grew more and more pa
infully aware of their scrutiny, and of his failure.
He didn’t understand how to sense water, or how to talk to it.
It was as if he was missing the gift that every other wolf had been given.
CHAPTER NINE
LUNCH WAS AGONIZING. HALF THE CLASS tried to make excuses for his inability to generate a spear, and offered well-intentioned stories about their own failings, none of which were remotely the same. Anders couldn’t shake the sense of failure, or the sight of the students up at the other end of the table who were still smirking.
Sakarias tried telling him about the time he’d nearly pinned Viktoria to the wall with one of his first spears (Viktoria didn’t think that story was quite as funny), and Mateo admitted that once he’d generated a spear flying toward himself instead of away, and knocked himself unconscious.
Lisabet mostly watched him, and Anders couldn’t shake the feeling that she understood more than he wanted to tell her—that she could read his body language even as a human, and see the worry there, the impatience.
Anders chewed miserably through his fish stew as the others talked, his mind turning inexorably toward Rayna. His mood didn’t improve when Lisabet, Viktoria, and Sakarias led him to Military History class with Sigrid, the Fyrstulf.
“Jai’s in charge of textbooks,” she said, pointing through the crowd of students to one with their back to them, hair cut short like everyone else’s, clad in a gray Ulfar uniform. “They’ll get one out of the supply cupboard for you.”
Anders pushed his way through the crowd to see Jai about a book. Jai turned out to be a redhead with a ready grin and the sort of very pale, paper-white skin that looked like it would crisp if they ever went outside on one of Holbard’s rare sunny days. They gave him a textbook and a cheerful smile and a welcome to Ulfar, and Anders tried to smile back, though his heart was sinking at the size of the book he held in his hands.
There was no way his reading was good enough for him to follow along with the class. He could read a little, but he and Rayna had really only ever needed it for street signs and labels on the food they were stealing. They’d left school at six when they’d left the orphanage, and his lessons had been . . . occasional since then.
There was a boy named Det sitting near him, who had an easy smile, and hair and skin a rich, dark brown, quite tall for his age. By checking how far into the book Det seemed to be and comparing the diagrams he could see, he tried to find the right page in his own book. After a moment, Det noticed what he was doing and held up his book so Anders could see it.
He thought for a moment about confiding in someone that he couldn’t read the textbook, and looked around at his options. Lisabet had her nose buried in her book. In front of him, the back of Viktoria’s head didn’t look inviting. Jai and Mateo were arguing about something from combat class behind him, and he didn’t know Det, however friendly his smile was.
Sakarias sat to his left and looked busy already. Anders hadn’t picked him for a hard worker, but perhaps—having been poor once himself—he knew what an opportunity he had here at the Academy.
The decision was made for him when Sigrid strode into the room. Everyone sat up straight as she began her lecture. Anders didn’t know the names of any of the wolves or dragons involved in what sounded like an ancient battle she was describing, and his mind began to wander. He leafed through his textbook, looking at the pictures of attack formations and old battlegrounds, and artifacts the wolves had used in battle.
Next, his gaze drifted across to Sakarias again. Now he was sitting up straight, he could see what the other boy was writing. And he wasn’t writing at all—he was drawing. His quick, clever pencil was skating over his notebook, bringing to life a picture of a huge stack of textbooks, with a pair of boots sticking out of the bottom of them, as though the wearer had been crushed by the mass of reading. Sigrid was visible at the edge of the picture, adding another book to the stack.
Anders’s mouth quirked as he tried to hide a smile. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who found the Fyrstulf intimidating.
Sigrid’s tone changed suddenly, and he jumped, snapping his gaze up. Had she seen Sakarias’s sketch? Had she seen Anders smiling at it?
But no. She was glaring at Lisabet, who was apparently repeating a question. Lisabet’s pale skin was a little pink under her freckles, but otherwise she was unapologetic in the face of the pack leader’s displeasure.
“I was asking about the treaty times, Sigrid,” she said.
“What do the treaty times have to do with it?” Sigrid asked, close to a growl. “This is a military history class.”
“Well, you need the black to see the white,” Lisabet replied. “You need the warm to feel the cold. And you need to see peace to understand battle. There have been times we got along with the dragons. Decades. Some historians even say centuries.”
“There have been times,” Sigrid said, “when we tolerated the dragons in order to reach a goal. We have never trusted them. We never got along with them.”
“But that doesn’t seem right,” Lisabet pressed. “I mean, the courtyard here at Ulfar is literally sized for dragons to land in, it’s huge. We must have wanted them here to do that.” Now everybody in the class was staring at her, including Anders, though he was doing it for a different reason. Listening to her tugged him in two different directions.
On one hand, hearing her defend dragons was putting his teeth more on edge. He and Rayna were orphans because of the dragons. He and Rayna had grown up on the streets, never knowing a moment’s safety because of dragons.
He was alone, trying to figure out how to rescue his sister from whatever trickery had turned her into a dragon. He had no family to help him, because of dragons.
But on the other hand, Lisabet was the first one he’d heard even raise the idea that dragons might be reasoned with. A tiny part of him wondered if Lisabet would help him, if she knew what had happened. If she might believe that even though Rayna was a dragon, she was also a hostage. A hostage in danger of the equinox sacrifice.
“That’s enough, Lisabet,” Sigrid snapped. “Pack and paws, why would we dream up a danger that wasn’t there? Our artifacts are breaking, one by one. If we had a way to repair them, we would. If we could trust the dragons enough for that, we would. What could be worth more than that?”
Anders blinked. What did dragons have to do with repairing artifacts? He felt like she’d made a leap he didn’t understand, but it clearly wasn’t the right moment to raise his hand.
Lisabet stared at the Fyrstulf for a long moment, and when she spoke, her voice was very quiet, but her gaze was direct. “Power,” she said.
“Power?” Sigrid repeated, her voice going dangerously hard.
“The mayor doesn’t run Holbard,” Lisabet said, soft and even. She knew she was getting into trouble, Anders could tell, but she kept talking anyway. “The parliament barely runs Vallen. We do. And all because they’re afraid of dragons, and they need us to protect them.”
“And we will,” Sigrid snapped, raising a hand to point at the door, baring her teeth like an angry wolf. “Because we know best. Get out of my classroom. We will discuss this later.”
The whole classroom was deadly silent, and nobody else moved as Lisabet rose slowly to her feet, her jaw stubbornly squared. She was a solitary figure, almost . . . Anders had to search for the right word. Almost lonely, he realized. He’d noticed before how her face turned serious as soon as she stopped smiling, but now, it seemed something more than that.
Her footsteps were the only noise in the room as she walked through the doorway, then pulled the door closed behind her.
After a long beat of silence, Sigrid resumed her lesson.
“Well,” she said, disapproving. “You can be sure that the dragons who have been spying in Holbard and who knows where else around Vallen aren’t doing it because they’d like to come celebrate the year’s end feast with us and exchange gifts. When you all were babies we fought them for Holbard. We lost l
ives preventing them from burning down the whole of this city, and as some of you in this room know”—and here her gaze lingered uncomfortably on Anders—“our personal losses were great.”
There was a soft, general murmuring of agreement around the classroom. Nobody else wanted to be sent out.
“Betrayal of the pack is punishable by death for an adult, and by exile for a student,” Sigrid continued. “And though I do not question Lisabet’s loyalty, her softness toward dragons is misplaced and inappropriate. Now, let’s move on and discuss the ways in which we estimate how long it will take a squad of the Wolf Guard to travel a particular distance.”
She had the class get up from their seats and come to the front of the classroom to gather around her desk. Everyone was still tense, and tentative about speaking, but they began to relax as they studied the artifact that sat there.
It was a large metal sheet, with a knotwork design engraved all around the edges and a compass marked with runes at the top. The rest of it showed a map etched into the metal—it was the island of Vallen down to the very last detail, from the Westlands Mountains up in the remote northwest of the country to the Seacliff Mountains in the east, with the Icespire Mountains running down the country’s spine. He could see the city of Holbard with its high walls, and the farmlands to the west. Rivers snaked across the landscape, and the coast crinkled in and out in a design as intricate as the edge of any snowflake.
“This map works with these two markers,” Sigrid said, holding out her hand to show them two small, metal discs. “We place one in our location, and the other where we want to go. The numbers that appear in this corner here,” and she tapped the map, “will tell us how many hours the travel will take for a human on foot, a wolf on foot, and a horse-drawn wagon.
“It’s less accurate for the wagon,” she continued with a wry smile, at odds with her usual, stern expression, and Anders didn’t find it very comforting. She’s trying to calm things down after losing her temper at Lisabet. “It probably depends on the horse. Nevertheless, you can see how useful it would be.”