Chapter One

The right-hand door would not sit.

Aron held it upright on two wooden blocks while his father aligned the three hinges. Most of the weight rested on them, but whenever he let his hands relax, the door leaned away from him.

“Higher,” Bruno said.

Aron lifted his side.

“Down a touch.”

He lowered it a fraction. The upper hinge came level. Bruno set its pin, then worked on the other two while Aron kept the latch edge aligned with the frame.

At last Bruno stepped back. Aron bent and drew the blocks clear.

The cabinet looked finished.

It stood in the cleared space between the main bench and the testing alcove, dark, square, and severe, its iron walls lined with kiln-clay. Master Meletos had commissioned the expensive beast for his reagents, though he had offered no useful account of what those reagents might do. He had only said that some must be protected from fire, while others ought to be contained if they caused one.

Bruno took the edge of the door and swung it inward.

The door stopped with its lower corner against the frame, on the side where the latch sat.

“Bottom corner,” Aron said.

It had passed freely the afternoon before, when they first fitted the door. Bruno ran his thumb up the iron upright beside the hinges and paused at the upper one.

“It sits low,” he said. “Take it down.”

Aron laid the door flat across the bench. Bruno crouched beside the open cabinet and worked a small file through the upper ends of the hinge sockets. A slant of sun from the window flashed along the file as the rasp came and went over the metal. Fine grey filings gathered beneath his hand.

When he had finished, Bruno brushed the filings aside and checked the line of the hinges.

“Up with it.”

Together they lifted the door back into place. Bruno swung it shut and drew the bolt across. It found its socket without a scrape. He opened the cabinet once more, closed it, and tested the bolt with the heel of his hand. Only when it did not shift did he look over at Aron.

Aron nodded. Bruno nodded back and turned towards the alcove.

“Bring the tray.”

The leather aprons hung beside it, dark at the hems from oil and stiff where heat had hardened them. Aron fastened his and pulled the long gauntlets over his hands before he took the iron tray, heavy even through the leather, and the brass test cage from the shelf beneath the bench. He set the tray beside the furnace and handed the cage to Bruno.

Bruno bent to open the furnace door.

An ember salamander stirred among the banked coals. Its back was black as the ash around it, but copper showed at its throat when it raised its head. Its eyes followed the dried red pod Bruno took from the jar on the mantel.

He set the cage on the stone before the open furnace, broke the kilnpepper in two, and dropped the smaller piece inside.

“Steady heat,” he said, holding up the rest. “The other half when we’re done.”

The salamander came over the lip of the furnace, crossed the stone to the open cage, and climbed in for the pepper. It settled there on the ash. Bruno pressed its little door shut with his thumb and set the cage on the tray.

They carried the tray to the cabinet together, holding it level between them. The brass cage gave a faint rattle as Bruno slid the tray inside. He shut the right-hand door, worked the bolt home, and moved around to the far side while Aron remained on the latch side.

They stood back from the cabinet, which was sensible for a first test. Yet from that distance Aron saw it differently. Until then he had known it beneath his hands, piece by piece; now the doors were shut, and it stood ready for Meletos. He looked at it longer than he meant to.

Heat began to build behind the iron doors. Nothing showed at the seams, but the air above the cabinet began to tremble.

Aron watched the narrow space where the door had caught before, and kept looking back to Bruno. His father had his head slightly bowed, the way he did when he was reading the pressure in a piece of work. The furrow between his brows had not come.

The shadow there held fine and even as the heat worked into the metal. Aron had just begun to breathe easier when the iron brace beneath the latch tore loose with a crack that filled the workshop, wrenching the bolt halfway from its socket. The right-hand door jumped open by the width of a hand. Heat burst through the gap, and Aron threw his gauntleted arm across his eyes. The leather shielded him, but heat seared the exposed side of his face from cheekbone to jaw.

Bruno forced the door wide with a leather pad, caught the cage with the long tongs, and carried it rattling to the furnace. He held the remaining kilnpepper over the coals. The salamander left the cage for the pepper and burrowed into the fire.

The pain began tight and dull, but sharpened as Bruno reached him.

Bruno tipped Aron’s chin towards the window, keeping his fingers to the unburned side. The skin from cheek to jaw had blanched, and red was already rising along its edges. He opened the remedy box and took out the small green-glass pot of salve.

“Leave it,” Aron said. “It’ll be gone by evening. Don’t waste the salve on me.”

“Gone by evening? Regeneration, is it?” someone said from the yard door.

A courier held the rear rope of his cart. Behind him, a broad-backed burdenbeast waited between the shafts, its harness dark with sweat.

“Something like that,” Aron said.

“I could use that. I’ve been waiting on the district healer since winter, and my back is no better for it.”

“You’re welcome to the burn,” Aron said.

“I’ll pass. This is Halsted Fine Works, is it?”

“It is,” Aron said.

“Good. Delivery, then. Iron stock and a crate from the smelter.”

“Iron first, please,” Bruno said. “Then the crate.”

He put the salve back in the remedy box.

“See to your face,” Bruno said. “I’ll manage the iron.”

He turned back to the cart while Aron went to the washstand. A square of polished steel hung beside it, used more often for checking a finish than a face.

The burn ran from his left cheekbone to the angle of his jaw. No blisters had risen. It looked shallow and unlikely to leave a mark. His skin kept scars only from deeper wounds.

He turned his head to see where the burn ended. The skin pulled tight along his jaw, and he winced before facing the steel squarely again.

The steel darkened his brown eyes and made his hair look almost black, though the furnace light still found the deep brown beneath it and a faint red cast.

He held the hair away from the narrow scar through his eyebrow, looked at the smaller mark on his upper lip, and sighed. Aron gave his appearance little thought, but he did not think scars improved it. The marks on his face and back often slipped his mind because he rarely saw them. Those on his hands and forearms stayed in view while he worked, and some still itched.

He ran a fingertip across the reflection, leaving a faint smear on the steel, then looked into the yard. His father was already saying goodbye to the courier.

The courier closed his hand around the coin and touched two fingers to his cap before taking up the rope again. The burdenbeast followed him through the gate.

Bruno returned to the cabinet. He crouched beside the damaged door and pressed the iron brace back beneath the latch with a leather pad folded over his hand. It lay flat while he held it there; when he let go, it bowed away again, leaving the latch crooked.

“We’ll leave it there for today,” he said. “Come back to it tomorrow.”

He stood and looked at Aron.

“The burn?”

“Fine, Father. It’s closing already.”

“Your mother’s shift starts soon. I should get home and take Devin off her hands. Coming?”

“I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind. What needs doing?”

Bruno’s gaze rested on the burn. Aron knew the look; his father wore it whenever Aron was badly hurt. The pain in his face was gathering strength. At home, his younger brother would demand all Aron’s attention as soon as he came through the door, and he was not sure he could bear it until the worst had passed.

“Well, since you ask. Rack the iron, check the smelter’s count, sort the fittings, sharpen the bench chisels, oil every clamp in the shop, and mend every leaking roof in Halveth.”

Aron had heard the list before. Bruno always ended it with an impossible job, then waited for the smile he wanted. Aron gave it to him, though the burn stung.

“I’ll start with the roof,” he said. “A little air may do my face good.”

Bruno took his coat from its peg.

“Don’t stay too late.”

Aron promised he would not. He listened to the yard gate close behind his father, then looked back at the cabinet.

Aron crossed to the damaged door. The iron brace still bowed away beneath the latch. Bruno should have felt the pressure gather there before it gave way. His talent had made him a master of precision cabinetry and mechanisms, yet during the test he had watched the seams as closely as Aron, and the break had surprised them both.

The cabinet was a different kind of work. Master Meletos had ordered it for himself, and Bruno had named a price. Coin would change hands when it left the workshop.

Every settlement mage was meant to be its warden. But the fighting had not reached Enedali towns for two centuries, and most people came to Meletos with a service to offer or some useful thing they could spare. The Halsteds already had their own arrangement with him. Rhea, Aron’s mother, had a talent that let her trace a reaction back to its nearest cause. She spent regular hours in Meletos’s receiving room; in return, he kept Devin supplied with calming draughts.

Aron examined the bent brace again, but found nothing they had missed. He let it fall. The new iron waited by the yard door.

He worked through the bundles, checking the count as he cut the cords and sorted the bars by length. Then he prised the lid from the smelter’s crate and laid the hinge blanks across the bench. Two were warped and went aside. A narrow blank had found its way into the wrong row; he noticed when the stack refused to lie flat and moved it.

Between tasks he watched the shadow of the yard wall lengthen towards the workshop door. Liam, Aron’s best friend, was expecting him before sunset. The sun was still above the roofs. He had time to see the work through and still reach Liam.

A drop of sweat ran from his hairline into the burn. The sting made Aron think of what his own talent was good for.

Halveth found a practical use for every talent but Aron’s. Even Elsi Venn, who could make her feet half a size longer or shorter, had found a place at old Ueli’s shoe shop. She tried on shoes Ueli had not yet finished while he adjusted the fit.

His own gave him nothing until he had been cut, burned, or broken. It spared him visits to Mistress Verena, but no decent trade asked a man to be hurt for a living.

Aron sharpened the chisels, worked oil into the screws of the two clamps, and swept the ash from the testing alcove. By the time he had finished, the brass cage was cool enough to wipe clean and return to the shelf beneath the bench.

The sun stood low over the roofs when Aron banked the furnace, washed the metal dust from his hands, and locked the workshop.

Liam was leaning against the gatepost when Aron came out.

“Finally,” Liam said. “I was beginning to think I’d have to go in and drag you out.”

“Hello, Liam. Why didn’t you?”

“No. Absolutely not. I’m not getting involved in that.”

Liam fell into step beside him, and they turned towards the hill.

“You know me. I’d offer to help and, Ened forbid, you might accept. Then I’d get a finger caught in something or come away with a splinter.”

“Poor Liam,” Aron said. “It must be hard, being so well brought up.”

“Barely surviving, I assure you,” Liam said.

His gaze caught on Aron’s left cheek. The burn had faded to a narrow pink trace, but Liam knew his face too well to miss it.

“What happened?”

“That?” Aron ran his fingers over the mark. There was almost nothing left to feel. “We were testing a fireproof cabinet for Meletos. The heat got out through the latch.”

Liam frowned.

“I know you. If a baking dish had to come out of the oven, anyone else would pull on a glove. You would reach in bare-handed and call it quicker.”

Aron found no answer that did not sound like an excuse.

Liam did not ask again. They had reached the cemetery, following the path between the old stones towards the hill.

“You can tell me the rest about the cabinet later,” Liam said. “I have better news. Master Ravellin of the Motley Crown has offered me a place. Can you imagine?”

A long shhhhhhh rose from the hushbells in the grass.

“Can you imagine?” Liam repeated in a whisper.

“Isn’t the Motley Crown a—”

Shhhhhhh.

Aron lowered his voice.

“A travelling troupe?”

“It is. But you understand what an opportunity—”

Shhhhhhh.

Aron kept his finger to his lips. Liam’s news had taken him by surprise, and he wanted the last few steps to the gate in silence before he had to answer it. The hushbells were only an excuse; they would not trouble the boys for speaking.

They left the cemetery behind and came out among the vineyards.

Liam lasted perhaps six steps.

“Can you imagine? What could possibly be better for an actor in Halveth?”

“I don’t know. A devoted following?”

“Seven members of my family and you. A number requiring both hands, certainly. But look at me. Can a treasure like this be kept at the edge of a forest?”

Liam turned on the path and struck a pose.

Aron could not keep from smiling.

“And yet you mean to rob Halveth of its brightest star. Cruel.”

Liam looked at him with pleased affection.

“That is the advantage of going with a troupe. Its stars return to shine on their native town from time to time.”

They went farther up the slope, looking for a place to open the supper Liam had brought.

“Not there.” Liam caught Aron by the sleeve. “Can’t you see the forget-me-laters?”

Aron looked down at the patch beside his boots.

“All we need is to fall asleep here and wait for a vineyard hand to wake us. Who knows when that might be?”

Liam moved farther up the slope.

“I still have to be at the theatre tonight,” he muttered.

They found a place where the grass thinned around a flat stone and the land fell away to the vines below. Liam shook out a handkerchief, pinned one corner with his knee against the wind, and unpacked supper.

“Oh,” Aron said. “Pies. Your grandmother’s?”

“Obviously. You have barely been at our table these past weeks.” Liam loosened the string of the last parcel and added its pie to the handkerchief. “Grandmother sent this with instructions.”

Liam used his talent, and his voice became hers: older and broader than his own, with the exact soft bite of her disapproval.

“Your Aron goes about pale as a turnip and twice as limp. Put in another pie.”

Aron laughed.

He loved Liam’s family. When they were younger, he had spent whole afternoons at their house after school, swallowed into its noise: cousins on the stairs, pans striking in the kitchen, Liam’s grandmother scolding someone no one could see. The Halsted house had never invited that kind of staying.

Aron took one of the pies. The crust broke under his thumb, and the smell of butter, soft cheese, and crushed caraway rose into the cooling air.

“I love these,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank the woman who thinks you’re wasting away.”

Liam took a pie for himself.

For a while they ate without speaking. Liam leaned back on one hand and turned his face to the sun. Below them, the last of the day softened Halveth until roofs, narrow streets, and the first slopes seemed to run into one another. Aron knew suddenly that he would remember the evening. He did not know why the thought troubled him.

He stopped chewing.

“Liam.”

“Hm?”

“Are you really going this time?”

Liam did not answer at once.

“Your bag was packed last year too,” Aron said.

Something crossed Liam’s face: the old, ready reason. There was always a reason, and it always made staying easier to explain.

“Liam, I’m sorry. But did you accept, or are you still thinking?”

“I accepted.”

Liam’s voice dropped on the last word, but there was no hesitation in it.

“In four days we give the last performance here. Then the Motley Crown leaves for Oakford. I go with them. My name is on the paper.”

“I see,” Aron said.

Liam folded his hands between his knees.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“Do you?”

“You think I’ll get halfway down the road, miss my bed, miss my mother’s cooking, decide the world is cruel, and come crawling back to the peace and comfort of my own room.”

“No,” Aron said.

Liam glanced at him.

“I think you won’t come back.”

Liam turned towards the town below.

Neither of them spoke. The sun was low beyond the town. Dull gold ran along the vineyard rows, catching the red-brown earth between them. Beyond the clustered roofs, the nearer folds of the hills had gone violet; farther out, one ridge followed another into the haze.

Aron tried to remember Velorin Coast.

He had been nine when Bruno brought them back to Halveth. What stayed was width, mostly. The canals cut between the streets, and from one bridge he could see another beyond it, then more roofs and towers still. Long, low boats with dark hulls and turquoise trim slid past below. Bells sounded from the temples of the Unspent, the guild halls, and the port.

His first school had a blue door. When carriages crossed the bridge outside, the classroom windows trembled.

Aron had been born in that city. Then Devin was born, and three years later Bruno took them home.

Halveth was tight around Liam. The town knew him too well, and had too little to offer him.

Aron could understand wanting more. He wanted Liam to have it.

But in four days, Aron would lose the one friend he had found with difficulty and kept against the odds.

There was nothing to do with it.

He would have to learn the shape of the space Liam left behind.

“Aron,” Liam said.

Whatever came next was cut off by a furious cry from the trees.

“Rot your eyes, you honey-gutted little bastards!”

Liam jerked round.

“What was that?”

“There.” Aron pointed towards the trees. “Keep your voice down.”

Near the forest edge, one of the old fruit trees shook as if caught in a private storm. Something large clung among the branches. Wings beat once, twice, scattering leaves. Three deep scratches ran down the trunk. Then the thing hauled herself higher, and Aron saw the pale oval of a woman’s face above the dark, filthy mass of her feathers.

Liam’s expression changed from alarm to astonished delight.

“Is that a harpy?”

The harpy braced herself in a split in the tree.

“Out of my way, you sluggish piss-specks—”

“Judging by the language,” Aron said, “yes.”

“She came out of the forest?”

“I didn’t see her arrive.”

They watched her make another attempt. She stretched towards a swollen honeycomb tucked beneath a branch, wings half-open for balance, hair hanging over her face. The human parts of her made the rest worse, not better: shoulder, cheek, breast, mouth. All of it dirt-streaked, all of it furious.

The bees moved around her in slow, wavering loops.

“Is she trying to steal honey?” Liam whispered. “From lazybees?”

Aron watched the slow gold drift around the comb.

“It looks like it.”

The harpy cursed the lazybees with feeling. They took their time in the air, as lazybees did, drifting around the broken comb. Their stings, unfortunately for her, had no lazy in them.

The swarm tightened, and the harpy jerked back with a shriek, slapping at her neck.

The next curse sent three blackbirds out of the hedge.

The harpy went back to the comb.

Liam made a low sound of protest.

“Arsad’s teeth. She’ll pull it down.”

“Leave her,” Aron said. “She’ll fly off.”

“The lower vines need lazybees,” Liam said. “Everyone knows that. You can’t just let her tear a hive apart for honey.”

The harpy had no interest in their opinion. She shoved herself deeper into the leaves, one wing dragging through the branches, and reached again for the swollen comb. Bees worked round her head and shoulders in a loose cloud that closed and opened again as she moved.

Liam looked over the ground near his feet. There was a stick in the grass, too thin for anything but kindling, and a stone half-sunk in the earth.

“Don’t throw anything,” Aron said.

“I wasn’t.”

But his eyes were still on the stone.

Aron looked back to the tree, where the harpy had one foot hooked over the branch and was working herself closer, shaking leaves loose as the comb sagged under her weight.

And then, from just behind Aron’s shoulder, came the roar of a dragon.

He flinched, hands flying to his ears before he understood the sound had come from Liam. The cry had the sharp, tearing edge of an eagle’s call, but rougher underneath, too large for any bird that belonged over Halveth.

At the tree, the harpy forgot the hive.

She flung herself from the branch. Her wings beat wild as she struck the trunk hard enough to shake the tree. The branch sprang back, and the comb, already torn where she had been pulling at it, split along its weight and came down through the leaves.

It did not fall cleanly. Wax caught on twigs and broke. Honey smeared the bark, shone on the roots, dropped into the grass in thick strings. Bees poured after it until the whole space around the tree seemed to move.

The harpy hit the ground, scrambled upright, and lifted her face to the open sky.

Then she looked at Liam.

Whatever she knew of dragons, she knew there had been none in Enedal for centuries.

The curse she flung at him was too fast for Aron to follow, but it had Liam taking a step back before the bees closed around her. She beat at them with both wings and lurched towards the forest, still shouting. Some of the swarm followed her. More circled the broken comb. The rest began to spread through the grass, across the slope, towards the abandoned supper.

Liam stared at the ruined hive.

“I only meant to frighten her off.”

A bee drifted between them.

“Run,” Aron said, already getting to his feet.

They abandoned everything.

The supper, the cloth, the ruined view stayed on the hill while they ran down through the vineyard rows. Lazybees might take their time in flight, but they stung no more gently than busybees once they had decided on war.

Aron ran with his hands up, swatting at his face and hair, ducking from bees that were already past him. He knew how ridiculous he must look. Somehow that only made it harder not to laugh. Ahead of him Liam yelped, stumbled, recovered, and kept going, and Aron followed, half-blind with bees and evening light and the wild, stupid relief of running from something no one expected him to bear.

Liam cried out again near the lower wall, but neither of them slowed until the road bent between the first houses and the vines fell behind them. Even then they kept brushing at their sleeves and collars, each of them glancing back towards the vines to make sure the swarm had not followed them down.

“I only meant to help,” Liam said.

“I know,” Aron said. “But what was a harpy doing here?”

Liam looked back up the hill. The tree was hidden by the slope now, but Grevorn showed above it, dark against the sky.

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t remember the last time Grevorn let anything magical out this way,” Aron said. “We keep out of the forest; the forest keeps out of Halveth.”

“Well,” Liam said, touching the sting under his ear and wincing, “I can tell you I shall not miss living so close to Grevorn.”

The swelling under his ear had deepened, and another sting had risen on the back of his hand.

“Come on,” Aron said. “Mistress Verena will have something for that. If we go now, you’ll have time before rehearsal.”

They took the shortest road towards her house. It was almost dark now, and lamplight had begun to show in the windows here and there.

After a few steps, Liam glanced sideways at him.

“What about you? Don’t you need Verena?”

“It seems they didn’t sting me.”

“Oh, excellent.” He started walking again. “I try to save them, and they aim every last sting at me. Just when I thought the evening could not get any worse. No sunset, no supper, and for gratitude, a sting in the back.”

Aron smiled at the pun. He was not as sorry for the evening as Liam was.

Liam’s eyes went to the darkening rise.

“The broken hive,” he said. “That isn’t an omen, is it?”

“Oh, you’re being dramatic.”

“Maybe,” Liam said. “But not every day you see a hive torn open like that. The harpy too. The last thing I need before I leave is a bad sign.”

“Don’t worry,” Aron said. “It will be all right.”

He did not put much faith in omens. The wild, breathless laughter of the run down the hill was still in him, and the ruined hive made the whole thing seem more ridiculous than alarming. Losing the pies Liam’s grandmother had sent was, as far as Aron was concerned, the worst the evening had to offer.

He was still smiling when they came to the fountain. A woman hurried up from the west with her skirts gathered in one hand and went past them without looking.

“Again?” someone said from an open doorway.

“No one could live beside that and keep their patience,” another voice answered.

At the lower end of the square, two men were hurrying west. One carried a coil of rope, and a third caught up with them from the opposite side.

“Has the mage come yet?” he called.

“Someone’s gone for him,” one of the men said without slowing.

Liam made a small sound beside Aron. He understood.

“Sorry,” Aron said, and ran.

Ahead, men were shouting at one another.

“Back!” someone yelled. “Hold him!” “The rope—no, not there!”

A man stumbled out of the lane with blood running from one eyebrow. Before he could fall, a hand caught his elbow and guided him to the wall.

Beyond the wounded man, the yard lay open to the street. Bruno was in the middle of it, locked in a struggle with something much larger than himself.

From a distance, it looked like a man. Up close, two black hooves were planted on the paving beneath it, and its hands ended in claws. A man’s shirt covered its back. The cloth was whole, but it was stretched taut across shoulders too broad for it.

Bruno clung to the beast from behind, his arms locked around its middle. His hands barely reached one another across the breadth of its body. Whenever it surged towards the gateway, it dragged him forward over the paving; he planted himself and fought to pull the creature off its course.

One net lay trampled and torn among the hooves. The two from the pens held the other stretched between them, shifting as Bruno shifted, watching for the one cast that would drop over the beast and not over him. It never came. He was always inside the throw.

Cobb himself worked low with the rope, feeling for a hoof to loop, and the beast’s head swung round, teeth closing a hand’s breadth from his wrist. He fell back, rope and all, and Bruno dragged the creature round again, away from the open street.

Claws reached back over the beast’s shoulder. They caught Bruno’s sleeve and opened the flesh beneath. He only tightened his grip.

“Bruno, give us space!” someone called.

“Keep him in the yard! The mage is coming!”

Rhea came running from the lane that led from Meletos’s house, her hair loose about her shoulders.

“Bruno, please!” she cried from the edge of the yard, a hand going to her mouth. “Do as they say. He’ll kill you!”

Bruno made a sound that might have been an answer, but the creature’s snarling swallowed it. When Aron ran through the gate, Bruno saw him and shouted, “Aron, get back!”

The turn towards his son loosened Bruno’s hold. The creature wrenched sideways. He lost one hand from its middle and caught at the upper arm, but Aron had already reached it. He struck the beast’s side and took hold of the shirt at the shoulder, sweat-dark and stretched hard under his fingers. His other hand slipped at the throat; he drove his forearm under the jaw instead, locked his legs around the body, and pulled with everything he had, trying to turn the head away from his father.

“Get off him!”

The beast screamed. A hoof shot back. Bruno avoided it, but the turning body caught him across the chest and flung him into the gatepost. He caught himself there, bent over the wood. Blood ran from the torn sleeve along his arm.

Before Aron could turn back to his father, the creature had him in its grasp. Claws pinned his sleeve to his arm, while the other hand clamped across his ribs and began to drag him loose. Aron fought to keep the jaw turned. His own blood ran over his fingers, and his grip began to slide. At last the knee he had braced against the creature’s flank gave way, and he went down hard on the paving.

The men had come close with the net.

“Move!” one of them shouted. “We need room!”

Aron pushed himself onto one elbow. The arm he had fallen on barely answered him, and every breath pulled at the wounds along his side.

The beast turned towards him.

Bruno moved before it could reach Aron. He came in limping and caught the raised claw at the wrist, forcing it aside. The net hung in the men’s hands while they shouted over one another.

The creature strained against Bruno’s hands, against Aron’s fingers closing round its wrist, against the men crowding in with rope and net. It broke the hold in one savage wrench. Aron was dragged forward, lost his footing, and struck the ground hard on his wounded side. The impact tore the claw-marks wider.

Bruno lunged in behind the creature one last time, and never reached it. The beast bunched its hindquarters and kicked; both hooves caught him square beneath the ribs.

The blow put him into the wall of the house and down its length to the paving. Bruno had kept his feet through everything until now, bleeding and battered, but the kick emptied him out. This time he lay where he had fallen and did not rise.

Rhea was already there, on her knees, both hands pressed to his side. Aron looked from his father to the beast that had done it.

“You damned monster!” he shouted, and ran at it again.

The net dropped over them just as Aron reached the creature. Its weights thudded against the shirt and one arm; the beast faltered, tangled at the head and shoulder, while the men pulled hard from the edges. Aron struggled inside the mesh. A hoof came down beside his knee. Claws found the net and ripped it open.

“Back!” someone shouted. “Boy, back!”

Before the beast could turn towards Bruno and Rhea, Aron forced himself upright.

The torn net slid away.

“Here,” Aron said.

“Look at me.”

The creature heard him. It lowered its head and came for him.

Someone at the gate shouted, “The mage is here!”

“Everyone who can stand, back,” Meletos called as he came through the gate with a black case under one arm. “Give me room.”

The men drew the torn net and rope aside. Meletos set the case on the paving, took three small irons from it, and flung them wide across the yard. They struck the ground in a rough triangle around the beast. When he raised one hand and spoke, the air between them tightened into a ward.

The creature flung itself at it. Its cry rose raw and ragged when empty air stopped it short. It clawed at one side of the ward, then another, screaming at what it could not reach.

Aron went to his father.

Rhea was bent over him, both hands pressed to the blood-soaked cloth at his side. Bruno drew breath, but his eyes did not open.

Behind them, Meletos had gone back to the case. His hand moved through its padded slots and closed around a round sleeping ampoule.

The sight of Meletos at the open case drew the creature’s head round. It came at him with its jaws wide; the barrier took the rush, and its teeth shut on empty air before his face. The mage recoiled. The hand he had raised jerked down. At the gate, the ward thinned.

The beast struck it again. This time the barrier bent open around the charge, and the beast was through and away before Meletos could gather the spell back.

He snatched another sleeping ampoule from the case and ran to the mouth of the side passage. The way beyond the gate was empty. He hurled both after it. One burst on the paving behind it. The second came down nearer the gate. Hoofbeats were already carrying it beyond the last houses.

Aron took a step after it. Then Rhea called Bruno’s name again, and he turned back.

The mage came out of the passage breathing hard, sweat darkening the grey at his temples. He made it only as far as the open case, and sat down beside it. His eyes went to Bruno, then to Rhea bent over him. He pressed his forehead into his palm.

“Damned boy,” he said. “My draughts don’t hold him. Now he breaks a ward.”

He looked at the men. “Carry his father to Verena.”

His gaze moved to Aron.

“His brother too.”

* * *

Verena’s workroom had room for the bed, a stool, and little else. Bruno lay across the mattress with one leg hanging over the side, his booted foot still on the floor. Rhea held the lamp while Verena cleaned away the blood. Verena laid two fingers to his side and looked past the wound to what had broken beneath it.

“Two ribs,” she said. “Nothing has gone into the lung. The cuts are shallow. They have bled freely, that is all.”

Bruno’s face was grey, and he had not opened his eyes. Rhea caught at Verena’s sleeve. “Why won’t he wake?”

“The blow took the breath from him,” Verena said. “He is breathing now. Let him be.”

Verena looked towards Aron. “Liam, take him through to the front room. Water is by the stove, and clean cloths and bandages are in the tall cupboard. Do not let those wounds close over dirt.”

Liam put a hand at Aron’s elbow and led him through the door beside the bed. The front room had a stove at one wall and a narrow table beneath the window. Liam filled the basin at the stove, set it on the table, laid out the cloths and bandages, and pulled a stool over for Aron. When Aron lifted his torn shirt, the claw marks across his ribs and under his arm had already stopped bleeding. The skin around them was still red and swollen.

Liam had gone pale as soon as they left Verena’s workroom. He had never seen so much blood, or so many wounds at once, and now he had to clean Aron’s himself. He wet a cloth in the basin and reached for Aron’s ribs, but his hand stopped halfway there.

“Are you all right?” Aron asked.

“I’m all right.”

Liam made for the bench, but his knees buckled before he reached it. Aron caught him under the arms and, despite the pull in his own side, lowered him onto it. Liam’s pulse was quick but steady. It was the blood that had turned his stomach, nothing worse. He only needed to lie still until the room stopped turning for him.

Aron left the bandages beside Liam, took the basin, and went outside. In the yard, he washed the dirt from the cuts in his side. The water stung, and blood clouded the basin beneath the cloth. Where the claws had opened him, the torn skin was drawing shut.

His brother had crossed a line, and Aron had no room left to forgive him. His father lay inside with two broken ribs, hurt worse than Aron had ever seen him.

The men had gone at Devin with rope and net because no one wanted to use more force against a neighbour, least of all a boy of sixteen. But they might have stopped him before he got to Bruno. Devin did not heal as Aron did, and a hard blow might have stayed with him long enough to teach him that attacking people had consequences.

From beyond Verena’s gate, Aron heard a man say, “We’ve had men through every street. He isn’t in town.”

“The tracks go past the last houses,” another answered. “Towards Grevorn.”

“We’ll lose them in the dark,” one of the searchers said.

No one answered with a plan to follow him. Outside Verena’s gate, the voices turned to Bruno, and then to the dark. Before long, people began to leave.

Aron understood what none of them said. Halveth’s problem had run into the enchanted forest on his own feet. If Devin stayed there, no one would have to decide what should be done with him.

His mother would not accept a search that ended with, “We looked and did not find him.” If no one else went after him, she would. Aron looked down at the basin. The water had turned red around his hands. He closed his eyes. He knew what he would have to do.

When Aron went back into Verena’s workroom, Rhea was alone with Bruno. She looked up at him.

“Did they find him?”

“No.” Aron did not say more.

Her eyes went to the blood on his shirt. “Aron, I have not even looked at you. Are you dizzy? Does it hurt when you breathe?”

“A little. It’s closing.”

“You and your father should not have gone in. Neither of you should have...” She stopped and looked down at Bruno. When she raised her eyes again, her face had changed. “Oh, Aron. I’m so sorry. My poor boy.”

“I’m already healing,” he said. “Father is not.”

He had fought with her over Devin too many times to begin again beside Bruno’s bed. Instead he told her what the men had said. “They say he ran towards Grevorn. No one is going after him.”

“Alone in Grevorn?” Rhea said. “He’ll be frightened. He won’t find his way home.”

Aron put his arms around her. She began to cry against his shoulder. Only hours earlier, he had been running down the hill with Liam shouting beside him. Now his mother was weeping in his arms, Bruno lay hurt on Verena’s bed, and there was no one to go after Devin but him.

When Rhea’s crying had quieted, Aron found Verena and asked for a calming draught for his mother. Then he went home.

He took a little food from the kitchen and packed it in the small travelling bag. The net was where it always hung. He coiled the rope beside it, then went to the cupboard Bruno kept for emergencies. The two sleeping ampoules were still there. Bruno had not had time to reach for them. Aron wrapped them in a cloth and put them in the bag.

He left a short note for his mother where she would see it, and went out towards Grevorn.