Anders stared at her as she spoke, a shiver running through him that had nothing to do with the nerves the docks usually awoke in him. Even though she spoke about the battle each month, reminded the Vallenites of the danger and the sacrifices the wolves had made, this month she was more intense than usual, an edge to her voice.
Casually, Rayna slipped into place just in front of the mercher, apparently choosing that moment to retie the tattered ribbon at the end of her braid. She adjusted her copper hairpins and fiddled with her bow a little, tucking in a stray black curl, and then flung the braid back over her shoulder. In the same movement, she released a pinch of finely ground pepper from between her thumb and forefinger. It wafted straight up to the mercher, who was already drawing breath in indignation at having Rayna’s hair shaken in his face.
Anders’s job was to slip two fingers into the man’s pocket—a thumb was too bulky—and let them graze along the silk of the lining until he found his coin purse. Quickly he eased it free, then dipped inside his own coat, dropping the purse into one of the waiting pockets. It felt light, though—probably just a couple of coppers.
He left the man in the middle of a sneezing fit and slid sideways, past a pair of local merchers in brown coats. Rayna would meet him away to the man’s right, as always. Together, they set off in search of their next mark.
Anders extracted a small purse from a woman in a yellow dress busy gossiping with her neighbor, while Rayna politely asked them the time, keeping away from the front of the crowd.
The Wolf Guard lined the edge of the dais as the Fyrstulf spoke, all alike in their gray uniforms, hair cut short, eyes narrowed as they swept across the crowd. It was like they were beaten into the same shape when they walked through the doors of Ulfar Academy, each one turned out from the same mold.
Sigrid was speaking again. “Who now claims ice wolf blood and, having reached their twelfth birthday, steps forward to be tested? Many Vallenites proudly claim at least one wolf in their ancestry, but few have the gift that will allow them to transform.” The words gave Anders a shiver. The gift she was talking about could change someone’s life forever in an instant. “With this rare gift,” the Fyrstulf said grandly, “comes great responsibility: an obligation to enter Ulfar Academy. To train to join the Wolf Guard, and devote one’s life to protecting Vallen. It means life as a soldier. It means—”
A brutal gust of wind tore through the square, ripping away her words. The crowd staggered and some fell, screams rising all around Anders.
In an instant he was in the middle of the memory this place always tried to bring back. The screaming was terror, the wind was carrying smoke, and as Rayna grabbed for him, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
He whirled around to see something huge moving amidst the sea of ships’ masts, and his brain conjured up the rumors from the night before—conjured up the memory of the dragon he’d seen with his own eyes just half a year before.
His mind made the billowing ship’s sail into a dragon, swooping in toward the port—and then the wind was gone, and he saw the dragon was no more than cloth, and realized the screams were dying away. His heart slammed in his chest as the people around him picked themselves up.
“The artifacts are failing,” a woman wailed nearby.
“The dragons are doing it,” another hissed.
Up on the dais, the Fyrstulf was looking as calm as ever, as if nothing had happened. “The wind arches sometimes require venting,” she said, raising her voice over the hubbub of the crowd. “That should have been arranged for the nighttime, when nobody would have been disturbed. My apologies. Now, let us continue with the Trial of the Staff. Who seeks to join the Wolf Guard and play their part in protecting our people?”
The crowd was still murmuring as five children his own age walked up the steps to the dais, three girls and two boys. They were each dressed in their best, and the last girl in line was shaking so hard Anders was pretty sure she was going to fall off the stage before she made it up to the Staff of Hadda and the Trial itself. Anders was still trembling pretty hard himself after the fright the surge of wind had given him.
There were at least two dozen more children queuing for their chance to make it up onto the dais. Most of them wouldn’t succeed. In a good month, two or three candidates would successfully transform. Anders always felt sorry for the ones who failed.
The first boy stepped up to stand front and center as a member of the guard handed Sigrid the staff. Sigrid nodded, and the boy’s face drained of what little color it had, until it almost matched his fine white coat. When he spoke, he was so nervous his voice shook as he lifted it to be heard over the noise the crowd was still making.
“My name is Natan Haugen. My grandfather is Bergur Haugen, who was a member of the Wolf Guard. My great-grandmother was Serena Andersen, who was a member of the Wolf Guard. My brother Nicolas Haugen transformed three years ago and is a student at Ulfar Academy. I claim ice wolf blood and stand for the Trial.”
Sigrid and many of the crowd nodded as Natan looked sidelong at the Fyrstulf. Even from his place in the crowd, Anders could tell that Natan was gazing at the amulet hanging at the woman’s throat.
The amulet was a small ring of gray polished metal suspended on a leather band, engraved with a complex design in runes. There were stories about what the amulets did—that they allowed a wolf to tell when you were lying, that they gave a wolf the strength of ten people, or perhaps just that they were the only way of knowing a true member of the guard. Whatever they were for, Natan was staring at Sigrid’s like it was his ticket to a new life, and in a way, he was right.
It was a life Anders would never have, though—he’d never belong to anything as important as Ulfar, and he’d never have a family lineage he could recite like that. Rayna was all he had—and she was more than enough, he reminded himself.
But sometimes, especially on the hungry days, he wished he too had a mother or father, aunts or uncles, or grandparents.
The boy reached for the Staff of Hadda, then hesitated. So many hands had gripped it over the years that the pale wood was worn smooth, a long strip of engraved metal wrapping around it in a spiral. The staff was one of the most important artifacts in Vallen. Only the most powerful were named for their creators, and for the wolves the Staff of Hadda transformed, it was a ticket to a new life.
Bracing himself, Natan grasped the staff, and the whole square held its breath—even Anders and Rayna paused, standing side by side.
Nothing happened.
Several heartbeats later, Sigrid reached out to rest her hand on Natan’s shoulder, slowly guiding him back and away from the staff. “Vallen thanks you for your willingness to serve,” she said, but as she released him, and he stumbled to the edge of the dais to walk slowly down the stairs, she was already looking hungrily at the next girl in line. Anders bit his lip, watching the other boy’s shoulders slump.
The next girl didn’t transform either. Rayna grabbed Anders’s hand, giving him a squeeze as reminder that they had work to do. They picked their way through the crowd, scoring a copper here, another two coppers there, Rayna doing the bold work of distraction, Anders carefully taking hold of the money and trying not to alert his marks or mess it up.
The familiar ceremony wore on in the background as candidate after candidate recited their lineage as proof of their right to undertake the Trial, and trembling, grasped the staff. The mood in the square grew darker as every single one of them stubbornly stayed in human shape.