The Work of Years

Eridan knew Valanor first by its light. Even through the narrow opening of the prison wagon, the copper mirrors were unmistakable. They stood upon towers along the western road, built to carry daylight into the capital’s lower streets. He had travelled beneath them with Isolde and Atyas nearly two years earlier. Atyas had twisted in the saddle in front of Alaria, looking back towards the carriage to make certain his parents saw the mirrors too.

Now three of the mirrors were broken.

A fourth reflected smoke.

The wagon passed beneath Valanor’s eastern gate after sunset. No herald announced the arrival. Keh’Dia riders surrendered the road to soldiers wearing Valanorian black and crimson without exchanging names, documents or surprise. That frightened Eridan more than another prison would have. Valanor had not known the enemy that crossed Asehria. King Renvar had received Eridan’s warning on the fourth day of the invasion, after the outer districts had begun falling but before the palace was breached. His relief could not cross the distance in time. One of the guards at the Northern Confluence had carried a Valanorian field notice offering passage to wounded Asehrian formations and requiring every unknown unit to disarm before crossing the border.

Renvar had responded as a king.

The soldiers outside the wagon responded as though the Keh’Dia belonged upon their road. Eridan tested the chain around his wrists. It had not weakened since the last time. The capital smelled of wet stone, ash and extinguished oil. Shops along the eastern avenue had closed behind wooden shutters. Broken furniture filled one intersection beneath the remains of a barricade. Valanorian soldiers watched the rooftops while prisoners in royal guard uniforms cleared blood from the street. Black banners still hung from the towers. The crimson royal seal had been cut from their centres. A black tower remained in its place. Eridan understood before the wagon reached the palace.

He refused to give the understanding a name until he saw who waited inside. The Hall of Laws had not been built as a throne room. King Renvar had preferred a chamber where the written law stood above the chair used to interpret it. During Eridan’s last visit, petitioners had filled the lower benches while Renvar argued with his own ministers beneath a ceiling painted with the constellations of Accalon.

The benches were empty now.

Keh’Dia officers stood among Valanorian guards. At the head of the chamber, Lord Arcanis rested one hand upon the table where Renvar had signed the western grain agreement.

He wore no ceremonial crown.

Renvar’s crown lay beside his hand.

“King Eridan,” Arcanis said.

Eridan stopped between the guards.

“Where is Renvar?”

“No longer governing Valanor.”

“That was not what I asked.”

“It is the answer that presently matters.”

Eridan looked towards the Keh’Dia officers. Their black tokens were visible here. No one had required them to conceal the marks Asehria had spent months trying to understand.

“Renvar did not know who they were,” Eridan said.

“No.”

“Valanor did not know they existed.”

“No.”

Arcanis’s fingers moved against the edge of the crown.

“Renvar did not.”

Eridan remembered Arcanis upon the western terrace on the night of Atyas’s birth, the model of the heavens he had sent afterwards, the questions beneath Asehria’s painted stars. He tried to recall a pause, a glance, something he should have noticed.

Beyond the Hall of Laws, blood was still being cleared from the avenues. Renvar’s soldiers had been placed in chains. Arcanis rested his hand beside the crown as though Eridan had arrived late for an ordinary audience.

“You knew an army was coming.”

“I knew your world was less isolated than its rulers believed.”

“So you opened Asehria to them.”

Arcanis’s expression did not change.

“Your kingdom was opened by thousands of people following instructions they considered ordinary. You of all rulers should understand the difference between causing a weakness and recognising one.”

“A distinction for the dead?”

“For those who intend to survive them.”

Eridan looked from Arcanis to the Keh’Dia officers standing beneath Valanor’s painted constellations.

“Do you know who commands them?”

“I know what has been asked of me.”

“That was not my question.”

“No.”

The admission was so calm that Eridan almost mistook it for confidence.

“You have placed them inside your capital without knowing whose orders they obey.”

“I accepted cooperation after its value had been demonstrated.”

“How?”

“Warnings that proved accurate. Observations no instrument upon Accalon should have been able to make. Knowledge of the comet before your priests had agreed what they were seeing.”

Eridan glanced at Renvar’s crown.

“And what were you promised?”

Arcanis looked towards the high windows.

“The lower fever ward has daylight now. We turned its mirrors yesterday. People who have spent their lives beneath that hill can see what their surgeons are doing.”

“Renvar ordered that work.”

“Renvar ordered another inspection. I had six replacement plans waiting for funds.”

Eridan remembered the broken collar upon the observatory stair. Arcanis saw the recognition.

“They sent a table of loads. I tested it against frames we had already lost. It found every failure, including mine.” He pressed his thumb against the edge of Renvar’s crown. “Then it named the weakness in a mirror still standing. We opened the casing. It was there.”

“And you could not take that knowledge without taking his kingdom?”

“The supply was conditional.”

“Upon what?”

“Access. Cooperation. A ruler who could guarantee both.”

Outside, a cart passed beneath the windows. Men in royal guard coats hauled a new mirror bearing through the mud; a Keh’Dia officer walked behind them. One stumbled, and the officer struck his shoulder until he rose. Arcanis watched the bearing clear the door.

“The fitters died because I signed a calculation I believed,” he said. “I will not wait for another frame to fall while a council decides whether I may learn why.”

“You are making prisoners build it.”

“They will be paid when the treasury opens.”

“They cannot refuse you now.”

Arcanis turned from the window.

“Valanor will need more than light to survive what is coming. I intend to give it the means.”

“Who told you what is coming?”

“A source that has so far been more accurate than any instrument in this building.”

“I asked who.”

“I do not have a name to give you.”

“Or a place?”

“Not yet.”

Eridan looked towards the black-armoured officers.

“Does it command them?”

“Their purpose and mine presently agree.”

One of the officers shifted beside the door. Arcanis stopped touching the crown.

Eridan stepped forward until the chain between his wrists tightened against the guard holding it.

“If Renvar is alive, let me see him.”

“You are not here to negotiate for Renvar.”

“Why am I here?”

Arcanis looked at the empty benches.

“Because Asehria still obeys your name.”

“Not while I wear these.”

Eridan raised his bound hands.

“A command spoken in chains carries no lawful authority.”

“Law is most convincing when enough people remain alive to verify the chains.”

“Then you should have chosen a quieter prisoner.”

For the first time, Arcanis smiled. It was the same restrained expression he had worn while discussing libraries with Eridan before Atyas was born.

That made it worse.

“Take him below,” Arcanis said. “He will be needed later.”

The guards turned Eridan towards the lower doors.

“Arcanis.”

The new ruler of Valanor looked at him.

“Whatever made that promise,” Eridan said, “these soldiers crossed one kingdom to reach a child. They will cross yours when it becomes useful.”

Arcanis glanced towards the constellations painted above the laws.

“That,” he said, “is why I intend to possess what they came for first.”

The doors closed between them.

Outside, Valanor’s bells began to ring.

Not an alarm.

A proclamation.

The assembly survived its first thirty days. On the thirty-first, it spent fourteen hours arguing over whether it had possessed the authority to survive them. It renewed the provisional articles for another sixty days. Preya carried the approved copy out to the waiting clerks while the delegates were still arguing over the next session. On the thirty-second day, Valanor sent three versions of the truth. The first arrived beneath a new seal showing Lord Arcanis’s black tower. It declared that King Renvar had surrendered emergency authority after unnamed conspirators attempted to compromise the capital. All treaties, refugee protections and border agreements would be reviewed by the new government.

The second arrived through a clerk who had ridden two horses to death.

Renvar had surrendered nothing.

Fighting had begun inside the Hall of Laws and spread through the palace district. Royal formations sent towards the Asehrian border had received orders to remain away from the capital. The observatory guard, western garrison and six members of the royal council had declared for Arcanis before the first bell sounded.

The third version possessed no seal.

It came with the first Valanorian families reaching Feenix. They described barricades, arrests and soldiers tearing Renvar’s mark from the city banners. Some said the King had died. Others had seen him taken alive beneath the palace. None had seen him surrender. Ambassador Edras Morn read all three accounts inside Solara’s council chamber. Then he removed the clasp bearing Renvar’s portrait and placed it upon the table.

“I recognise no authority transferred through a sealed letter while the lawful king cannot speak before witnesses,” he said.

It was the principle Renvar’s own letter had established for Asehria.

Edras applied it to Valanor.

Solara kept her attention upon him.

“Did Renvar receive confirmation that Atyas was in Feenix?”

Edras did not look towards Atyas before answering.

“The embassy sent two courier copies of his public declaration and a third account by river. Renvar’s foreign office acknowledged the first six days before the coup.”

“Who could read it?” Veyra asked.

“The King. His chancellor. Senior members of the royal council.”

“Arcanis,” Solara said.

“He would not have needed to steal the report,” Edras replied. “It reached him through his lawful office.”

The room changed around Atyas without anyone moving. Hiding had ceased to be possible when he entered the eastern reception district and spoke his name. He had understood that the Keh’Dia would learn he lived. He had not known the message would reach a different enemy before anyone knew to call him one. Lys Arven would not make the declaration Edras had made. She requested private passage home before sunset. She did not recognise Arcanis publicly. She did not condemn him either.

Solara closed Valanor’s embassy until its guards and records could be separated from the new government. Veyra doubled the watch upon every western road. Preya ordered copies made of every Valanorian refugee name before another seal could decide which of them existed. Atyas read the reports beside a survey of Valanor’s capital that Edras had spread across the table. He remembered copper light moving through open streets. He remembered public galleries filling beneath the observatory. He remembered King Renvar standing without his crown and saying that no kingdom should place the whole sky in one man’s keeping.

Now Arcanis possessed the observatory, the palace and Renvar’s crown. No report explained how he had known when to take them. During the weeks after the coup, two eastern formations refused Arcanis’s order to return. A river governor closed her cities to his appointees. Renvar’s surviving officers held three crossings long enough for civilians and royal clerks to leave. Solara kept the reports upon her western map. As long as those crossings held, Arcanis could not move Valanor’s full strength towards Feenix.

Before the coup, Renvar had accepted copies of the public record beneath his seal and required Valanorian witnesses at border readings. Arcanis kept the offices open while ordering every appointment reviewed. Two smaller kingdoms allowed Asehrian clerks to work inside refugee settlements but refused them access to local courts. Another permitted public readings only when one of its own officials stood beside the platform. Every concession created another place where a false order had to contradict a living person. Every border created another place where the truth required permission to cross.

The next renewal established a court for disputes between Asehrian settlements. Three host kingdoms objected to its reach. By the following session, half its authority had been withdrawn, and the clerks were copying narrower instructions. Atyas attended the assembly in the mornings, trained with Alaria before midday and studied with Solara until the lamps were lit. Seraphina taught him how commands failed between the moment they were given and the moment frightened people tried to obey them. Once every seventh morning, Seraphina claimed the training yard after Alaria.

Alaria never left. Seraphina taught Atyas to hold a narrow gate until the last person crossed. Alaria challenged any stance that assumed the ground would remain his. Seraphina taught him to settle the current through breath and footing; Alaria, to release it through a decision already made and leave before strength committed him to the wrong ground. Both stopped him when emotion outran judgement.

“Are you both going to disagree while someone is trying to kill me?” Atyas asked after the third interruption.

“If you are fortunate,” Seraphina said.

“The unfortunate version is when one of us has stopped seeing the other danger,” Alaria added.

Seraphina looked at her across their wooden blades.

“That was almost respectful.”

“Do not become dependent upon it.”

Atyas learned the difference between escaping a position and abandoning it from two women who still disagreed about where that difference began. Seraphina’s praise remained as scarce as it had been when he was ten. The first time he held the practice gate until the final marker passed and then escaped Alaria’s attack without losing his weapon, Seraphina lowered her blade.

“Better.”

Atyas looked at Alaria.

“She can still say it,” he said.

“You remain vulnerable to praise,” Alaria replied.

Some things survived the fall of Asehria without remaining unchanged. Mira taught him that a representative who agreed inside the hall might still return to a settlement that refused the decision. Preya taught him that a record did not become true because three archives copied the same mistake. Nela taught him that placing a record upon a public board did not make it understandable. She returned the first missing-family summary with fourteen words circled because none of the canal workers beside her knew what they meant.

Garran taught him that loyalty did not require agreement. He corrected Atyas’s memories of the palace when grief made them unfair, and refused to let the word prince end an argument that evidence had not.

After Daren denounced one of his uncle’s recommendations before the assembly, Garran carried supper to his nephew’s late watch. Daren remained in the doorway of the ward’s watch room when he saw who had brought it.

“If you have come to finish the argument—”

“Take the bowl. It is hot.”

Daren took it. Garran stepped inside, set down the bread and unfastened the strap that had been digging into his shoulder. The room had one chair. He left it for his nephew and sat upon the window ledge.

“I meant what I said this afternoon,” Daren told him.

“I heard you.”

“You looked at me as though I should have kept quiet.”

Garran pulled a loose thread from the strap.

“I would have preferred to hear it before the whole hall did.”

“I tried to tell you yesterday.”

His uncle stopped working at the thread. Outside, a pair of guards passed with the next watch return.

“You did,” Garran said.

Daren sat. He bent over the bowl at first, then leaned back against the chair. After a while he broke the bread in two and held out half.

“Have you eaten?”

Garran accepted it.

“Apparently not.”

They were still divided over the recommendation when the watch changed. Daren moved his boots so his uncle could stretch his legs.

Halren taught Atyas something almost every time he attempted to prevent it. The chair inside Atyas’s room became a narrow bed after Solara stopped pretending Alaria would use the chamber assigned to her. On quiet nights she slept in the adjoining room with the connecting door open. On the nights when a threat reached Feenix, she remained close enough for Atyas to hear the turn of a page.

The nightmares became less frequent.

They did not disappear.

Neither did the war.

Reports from occupied Asehria arrived through broken pieces of routes. A district held for eleven days, vanished from every signal and reappeared six weeks later beneath a different captain. Resistance cells destroyed a Keh’Dia storehouse and discovered half its grain had already been taken from Asehrian farms. Three cities refused surrender through the first winter. One stopped answering after its wells were poisoned by bodies. No message from the assembly received an answer from Eridan. The empty chair remained.

Atyas turned thirteen before the assembly’s first winter ended.

Feenix offered a public celebration.

He refused it.

Solara accepted the refusal, then held a private dinner and informed him that rejecting a room full of strangers did not excuse him from eating with people who cared whether he had been born.

Mira brought hospital reports.

Preya brought three recovered pages from Asehria’s childhood registry. Seraphina brought a new training coat because the old one no longer reached his wrists. At thirteen, he was growing faster than he learned where to put his elbows. The new cuffs fitted; the shoulders still waited for him.

Alaria brought nothing.

Atyas glanced beneath her chair, though he had told himself not to expect anything. She caught him looking.

“Finish your dinner.”

He did not ask.

The others left before the final lamps were extinguished. Solara returned to the council wing. Seraphina took Mira and Preya through the guarded passage towards the settlement offices.

Alaria accompanied Atyas to his room.

The connecting door to her adjoining chamber stood open. A low lamp burned beside the bed, and the new training coat had been folded across a chair. Alaria closed the outer door. She unlocked the chest beneath the window, removed her old road sword and laid it across the chair.

“You have carried this long enough,” she said.

Before Atyas could decide whether she was taking something from him, Alaria drew a long wrapped bundle from beneath her travel cloak and placed it upon the bed.

“You did bring something,” Atyas said.

“I did not bring it for the table.”

The shape beneath the cloth could only be a sword. Atyas unfolded the cloth. A plain dark scabbard rested inside. Nothing upon it resembled a royal weapon. No silver decorated the fittings. No seven-star seal identified the hand meant to carry it. Atyas drew the blade. It was only a hand’s breadth longer than the road sword Alaria had lent him during the fall of Asehria. The difference was not its size. This blade had a stronger spine, a guard made to catch steel and a balance fitted to the hand Atyas possessed now rather than the smaller hand that had held her blade in a burning room. Every part had been made for use.

He had trained with sharpened swords before. He had carried Alaria’s borrowed blade through the palace and killed with it beneath the trees. This was the first fighting sword made for him and the first that belonged to him. Faint bronze-grey lines moved beneath the polished surface when he turned it towards the lamp.

“Embersteel,” Alaria said.

Atyas had heard the name in Feenix’s military histories. The ore had come from the Red Hollow beneath the oldest northern mines, where a narrow seam produced steel that could hold a finer edge, survive repeated heating and carry a trained current through the blade. The seam had been exhausted before Atyas was born. What remained was guarded inside Solara’s royal armoury and reserved for generals, senior commanders of the Phoenix Guard and the First Blade. Atyas looked at Alaria.

“The armoury let you give this to me?”

“Under my authority as First Blade. The issue bears my name as well as yours.”

Atyas looked at the bronze-grey lines. “Garran has served all his life.”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t have one.”

Alaria sat upon the edge of the bed. For a moment she seemed to be considering putting the sword away.

“Your mother placed you in my arms on the night you were born,” she said.

The mention of Isolde changed the air between them.

“I don’t remember.”

“You were occupied with screaming at the universe.”

Atyas almost smiled.

“Your entire hand closed around one of my fingers. I was convinced I would hold you incorrectly and break something.”

“Were you afraid of me?”

“Deeply. You were very small and everyone in the room would have executed me.”

“Mother wouldn’t have.”

“Your mother would have gone first.”

For a moment, Isolde existed between them as something other than a body in a corridor. Alaria looked towards Atyas’s closed hand around the new sword.

Atyas ran his thumb across the leather of the grip.

“That night in the forest, I used the sword.”

“Yes.”

“I killed someone with it.”

Alaria did not make the memory kinder.

“You did.”

“To save you.”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you had this made?”

“No.”

The answer came without hesitation.

“This is not repayment for the man you killed. I would take that memory from you if steel could carry it instead. It cannot.”

She placed her hand beneath the flat of the new blade and lifted it slightly between them.

“I had this made because I cannot promise that I will always reach the space between you and the next weapon. I tried to do that in Asehria. I nearly died doing it in the forest. For a long time, I believed protecting you meant keeping you behind me.”

“You still tell me to stand behind you.”

“When arrows are involved, you should continue listening.”

Atyas waited. Alaria’s hand remained beneath the blade.

“I asked the smith to leave room in the grip,” she said. “You will grow into it. I would prefer you to do that with all your fingers.”

“I still make mistakes.”

“You will make worse ones.”

“That was comforting.”

“Comfort is Solara’s responsibility.”

Atyas looked at her over the sword.

“Then what is yours?”

“Keeping you alive.” Alaria looked towards the connecting door. “Though I suppose the guards could do that while you sleep.”

“You could go to your own room.”

“I’ve tried.”

The blade trembled against her palm. Atyas steadied it with both hands.

“Am I still an assignment?”

“You are my family,” she said. Then she looked down. “I don’t always know what to do with that.”

Something tightened behind Atyas’s ribs.

Alaria released the blade into his hands.

“Keep it beside mine.”

“Beside you?”

“Beside me.”

Atyas looked along the undecorated blade.

“Does embersteel make it stronger?”

“It holds an edge longer, breaks later and can carry the current as heat,” Alaria said. “The current can reinforce a movement, but your muscles still set the limit. The blade will not correct your stance or stop a strike you have committed to.”

“Can I make it burn?”

“Eventually. Until I teach you, you do not try.”

“Because I might damage the sword?”

“Because the sword will survive your mistake more easily than your hand.”

Atyas looked at the bronze-grey lines beneath the surface.

“Would it burn blue?”

“Only if you control it. Don’t chase the colour.”

“You make it sound less impressive.”

“I’m trying to keep your hand attached.”

“Does it have a name?”

“No.”

“I thought important swords were supposed to have names.”

“Use it awhile first. You can decide once you know it.”

She fastened the sword belt around him and adjusted the scabbard until he could draw without lifting his shoulder. The movements were practical and familiar. Only her refusal to look towards anyone else revealed what the gift meant to her. Atyas returned the sword to its sheath.

“Did Solara agree to this?”

“She authorised an embersteel blade for someone under my protection. I neglected to provide the name until after she signed.”

“Did she object?”

“The armoury form requests a name now.”

Atyas almost laughed.

“Why did you not give it to me at dinner?”

“Because they would have watched.”

“And?”

Alaria looked at him.

“It was not for them.”

Atyas placed the sheathed sword carefully upon the bed. Then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. Alaria became still for a heartbeat. One arm settled across his shoulders, drawing him closer. Her other hand remained at the back of his head as though guarding it from something the room no longer contained.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Learn to use it.”

“I will.”

“Then thank me when it keeps you alive.”

She did not release him first.

The following morning, Alaria began teaching him to wake the embersteel. Atyas cut at a scarred post until chips lay across the frost. The bronze-grey lines remained dull. When Alaria drew her own blade, a narrow blue line appeared along its edge and vanished at her release.

“Mine doesn’t do that.”

“You’re watching it instead of what you’re cutting.”

She tied a strip of faded red cloth to the opposite gate and stood between him and it with her shorter sword.

“Touch the cloth with the flat.”

He advanced, looking for warmth along the edge. She knocked the sword from his hand.

“Asehria,” she said when he recovered it.

The word sent him forward before he had taken a breath. Warmth reached the hilt. He followed the opening she offered and found himself facing the wrong way, his wrist caught, the gate behind him.

Alaria let him go. “The cloth, Atyas.”

He tried until she ended the lesson. Once he nearly reached it, but she caught his sleeve. The sword had been cold throughout that attempt.

On the ninth morning, Atyas reached the cloth with the sword still dark. Anger carried him through Alaria’s first defence; when she offered an opening away from the gate, he ignored it. The blade brushed the faded red before she could catch his sleeve.

Alaria did not congratulate him.

She stepped between Atyas and the gate and cut towards the cloth.

He blocked.

The need to keep what he had finally reached settled through his stance. The current entered his arms without flame. Alaria’s shorter blade struck his and failed to touch the gate. Then she moved around him. Atyas held his ground. She moved again. He refused to surrender the place he had won, twisted too late and watched her blade cut the cloth free.

“You said to protect it,” he protested.

“I told you to reach it.”

“Then why attack it?”

“Because the fight changed.”

She caught the falling cloth and tied it to the gate again.

Atyas looked at the length of cloth hanging from her fingers. He had watched her circle him and still refused to move.

“Tie it again.”

It took another twelve mornings before Atyas touched the cloth, protected it and surrendered the ground without surrendering the task.

The sword did not burn once.

That evening, Tarin found Atyas beneath a table with a brass wheel between his teeth.

“Are we meant to bow?” he asked Nela.

“Not if he can’t get up.”

Atyas removed the wheel. “Close the door. It rolled under here twice already.”

Nela shut it with her heel. Her black curls were bound high to keep them clear of the kitchen fires, and the hollows beside her mouth had filled since the ration hall in Asehria. She had brought a folded paper packet from the canal kitchens. Tarin put the second packet down beside Atyas’s scattered tools and began opening it. His curls remained impossible to flatten, but he had grown long in the legs; his knee struck the table as he reached for the food.

“Those are for all of us,” Nela said.

“I’m checking which broke.”

The little model upon the table looked nothing like the instrument Arcanis had given Atyas. That one had remained in Asehria. This had wire arms, a wooden base cut from a discarded box and two painted beads that were supposed to pass one another without touching.

They touched every time.

“Make that arm shorter,” Nela said.

“Then the distance is wrong.”

“It goes through the other moon now.”

Atyas climbed out and turned the wheel. The beads struck. Tarin supplied the sound of an enormous explosion.

“It didn’t do that before supper.”

“Perhaps it ate too much,” Tarin said through a mouthful.

Nela moved the food out of his reach. Alaria sat beside the window with a book open upon one knee. She had borrowed it from Solara’s rooms and spent the previous evening objecting aloud to a sailor who survived three shipwrecks without losing his boots. When Atyas asked whether she had a knife thin enough to lift the brass collar, she held one out without looking up.

“You are not having this until you put a board beneath it.”

“I haven’t scratched the table.”

She turned one page.

Atyas fetched the board.

Nela had to leave before the kitchen’s final collection. She tied the empty packets together while Tarin continued turning the model, slowly enough that the moons almost passed.

“You can come again,” Atyas said.

“After the washing,” Nela replied.

“I could ask them to—”

She looked at him. He stopped.

“After the washing,” he said.

Tarin made the moons collide once more before he followed her out. Alaria put a finger between the pages to keep her place.

“Do you want help?”

“You said you didn’t understand the gears.”

“I can hold something.”

He gave her the crooked arm. For a while they worked without speaking. On the next turn, the two beads passed with a space between them thin enough to see light through. Atyas turned the wheel again to make certain.

“Leave it,” Alaria said. “It works.”

“Only from this side.”

He moved his chair. She opened her book again. Neither noticed the supper tray cooling outside the door until the watch officer knocked.