Adrin

Back when Adrin thought he might have a chance to apprentice with Dacrine Wyess, he’d memorized the path to her workshop on a map of the palace. That came in handy now, because her workshop was adjacent to his next destination, the Ethereal Guard training hall. Zafrys had offered to escort him there, but she had messengers to meet with, and Adrin didn’t want to delay her any longer.

The door was open, with sounds of activity carrying into the hallway. The room was already brightly lit; maybe Professor Wyess had already fixed all the lights? Adrin hesitated in the doorway for a moment before he stepped in quietly. Everyone was too engaged in their exercises to notice his arrival.

Adrin watched them with growing apprehension. There were sixteen people in the cavernous training hall, all of them wearing the same uniform, a deep red soldier’s tunic and black trousers. Only three were full members of the guard, marked by the gold stripes on their tunics. The rest were candidates, working in small groups throughout the room, some shooting targets, others taking turns on an obstacle course that looked as challenging as anything Adrin had seen at tournaments. A middle-aged Namaian woman, her red hair pulled back into a tight bun, watched as two students faced off with wooden swords. Adrin recognized her as the Ethereal Guard’s second-in-command, Suzari Wyess.

Instead of learning how to make weapons with Dacrine Wyess, he’d be learning how to wield them from her wife.

Adrin gripped the hilt of Isuld’s sword, which now hung from his belt, then wiped the sweat from his palm against his leg. Carrying that ancient weapon didn’t just allow him to borrow some courage from its first wielder; it also awakened his curiosity. Swinging that sword wouldn’t be half as interesting as studying it, puzzling out how it worked. He wanted to take a good look at that shisao blade with the benefit of the new sight he’d received from the Ocean.

“Ah. I hoped you would be joining us today.”

A man with three golden stripes down one side of his tunic got up from the bench where he’d been sitting and walked toward Adrin. There was something a bit unusual about his gait. The silver-haired captain of the Ethereal Guard had lost most of his leg in a battle with a construct many years ago, but the ceram replacement served him well, and he still stood with the perfect posture drilled into him by a long military career. Adrin stood a bit straighter, trying to mirror that upright professionalism.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Captain Halwer. Lieutenant Wyess.” Adrin added a nod to Captain Halwer’s second-in-command. Everyone in all corners of the room now turned their eyes on Adrin as well.

“Do you have any experience with a weapon, Adrin?” Captain Halwer asked.

“Only two years of swordplay, at an Elgri school. I’m afraid I gave it up when I was twelve.” He didn’t tell Halwer that it had been his mother’s idea—she had hoped the training would help him defend himself on the schoolyard—or how much he’d hated it. Just standing here in a training hall dredged up unpleasant memories. “To be honest, I always thought I’d be building weapons, not wielding them.”

“But you changed your mind, and now you’re my problem instead of Dacrine’s,” Lieutenant Wyess drawled.

Adrin didn’t know what to say to that. He had no choice? That didn’t paint him in a great light, and it wasn’t precisely true, either. He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, hoping for another boost of confidence, but all he felt was a pang of regret for the path not taken.

“I chose to do the most important thing. I am committed to that decision.” The words were as much a reminder for himself as an answer to the lieutenant.

The third full member of the guard still hadn’t said a word. In fact, he didn’t appear to have moved at all from his seat on a bench on the opposite side of the room, and his stillness and the opacity of his expression were a bit unnerving.

“Well, let’s see what we have to work with,” Suzari Wyess grumbled. “Shoes off before you step on the mat.”

“I’ve got an assembly meeting this afternoon—”

“You’ve got plenty of time before the assembly meeting. All I know about you is that you were a no-show for Dacrine yesterday, then the Ocean washed you up and made you the bloody Prince Ethereal. Shoes off. Follow me.”

Adrin obeyed, leaving his shoes on the tile floor before he stepped onto the mat.

“Not with that.” Suzari indicated Isuld’s sword. “Put it up on the rack there and take a wooden one instead.”

Perhaps he should have protested, but he was too weary to argue. Adrin took one look back at the captain, who watched silently, arms crossed, and placed the sword on an empty spot on the rack. Each of the practice swords arrayed there was slightly different in shape and size, and Adrin didn’t have a clue which one he was supposed to pick. After hesitating for a moment, he took one he guessed was roughly the same size as Isuld’s weapon and returned to face Suzari.

The other students closed in, making a circle around Adrin and their teacher. A long moment passed with the two of them facing each other. Was he supposed to salute her, or bow? Technically, Adrin outranked her as the Prince Ethereal, but he knew better than to point that out. It was hard to feel much respect, though, for someone who looked at him with such disdain.

“Ready stance.”

Adrin tried to remember the stance he’d learned all those years ago, but he knew he hadn’t gotten it right. One of the candidates snickered.

“You’d blow over in a breeze with your feet like that, Prince Ethereal. We’re in even more trouble than I thought. What am I going to do with you?” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. The candidates were getting closer, crowding in on him. Adrin half-expected them to start lobbing schoolyard taunts.

Stay calm, he told himself. Think. What does she actually want from you? What’s the point of this whole display?

Stolen novel; please report.

“Can’t decide how to humiliate me next?” Adrin said, breaking the silence. “Clearly, I know nothing about fighting. No matter what you ask me to do, I assure you, I will look like an absolute fool when I attempt it.”

Suzari narrowed her eyes. “Are you mocking me, Prince Ethereal?”

“I was under the impression that was what you were doing to me,” Adrin replied.

“I am trying to teach you a lesson.”

“And I am willing to learn. That’s why I’m here. If you need me to put on a show first and prove just how ignorant I am, I’ll do it. But . . .”

“Enough. Follow me.”

The crowd parted to allow Suzari and Adrin through. He followed her to a back corner of the room, where a quarter circle had been sectioned off with large, smooth stones. It was a Namaian memorial garden in miniature, with neatly-raked sand and stones inscribed with the names of the deceased.

Beside him, Suzari pressed her hands together and bowed her head against them in silent prayer. Adrin counted eight memorial stones. He recognized some of the names, and resolved to memorize all of them. There was no stone for Raen Semfrey, but then, he hadn’t been killed in the line of duty.

“This isn’t an exhibition match,” Suzari said. “Everyone else in this room understands that we ride the borderline between life and death every time we head out to fight. But we’ve only lost eight. Four in Bhadrat, two to the specter, and two others fallen in battle. If I could take the place of any one of them, I would. But we fight nightmares, your highness, and we’ve only lost eight guardians. Only eight in twenty-five years. And it’s not because we’re lucky.”

She swept her arm to encompass all the others in the room. “It’s because we’re the best. The strongest, the fastest, the most skilled. Everyone else in the room worked damn hard to get here. They’ve earned the right to train with us, yet some of them are still never going to be ready to run out with us when a seal breaks. And as good as our best is, some of us are still going to end up with our names carved in stone over here. Maybe all of us, if that disruption yesterday broke every seal in Elorhe.”

“Who’s gonna carve our stones if we’re all dead?” one of the students called out. Suzari barked a laugh before turning back to Adrin, who hadn’t cracked a smile. He met her eyes, hoping his solemn expression would show just how seriously he took her words, and his responsibility.

“Don’t think for a second that I’ll go easier on you because the Ocean promised you a crown. Out there, you may be the Prince Ethereal, and I suppose we’ll all have to bust our asses to keep you alive. But in this room you’re just another student. Nah, even that’s giving you too much credit. You’re going to have to work harder than anyone else here because you’ve got a load of catching up to do.”

***

When Adrin returned to his rooms he found two trunks containing everything he owned from his dormitory room at the university. Whoever packed them hadn’t made any effort to organize his belongings, though, just dumped everything in a disorganized mess. Adrin didn’t have time to sort through it all before he was expected at the assembly. He only hoped that nothing was broken as he looked for something suitable to wear. He’d worn his best tunic into the Ocean yesterday, and it was hardly in presentable condition now. Nothing else he owned seemed particularly princely. He was going to need a whole new wardrobe, but in the meantime, he chose what he thought was the best of his remaining options and headed for the bathroom to get cleaned up.

The water from the showerhead was cold, so Adrin scrubbed quickly with the soap that had been provided for him, then dried off with a fluffy towel that seemed large enough to serve as a blanket. He still couldn’t think of any of it as his—the towel, the soap, the whole suite of rooms. It all seemed meant for someone else, someone far more important than Adrin Remyer. The Prince Ethereal lived here. Adrin could almost believe he was that person, especially with Isuld’s sword in his hand. But when he looked in the mirror to comb his hair, he saw only the same face he’d always known, no sign that anything had been added or taken away.

He’d spent the last night on a sofa in the parlor, but beyond that he had a bathroom, a study, and a bedroom with a balcony facing the Ocean. His rooms were spacious, beautifully furnished, and bare. The contents of his trunks wouldn’t come close to filling all the shelves, wardrobes and cabinets of his new chambers.

There was one more locked door in his bedroom, a door that he guessed led to the chambers adjoining his—the suite that belonged to Princess Jocyanë. Adrin had a feeling that it was going to be a very long time before she was willing to unlock that door. That was all right with him. He had enough to worry about at present.

But there was one luxury that Adrin decided he could afford. He took Isuld’s sword and set it, unsheathed, on the desk in his study.

A thread of bright yellow light glowed and twisted across the dark material of the blade. When he let his focus shift to the ambient field, he saw currents falling away into it, as if the blade itself were a deep abyss that swallowed them. Each time another colored light came to the surface, it created ripples in the flow of ambient power through the room. The material was cold beneath his fingers, conducting heat away with incredible efficiency.

The blade was made of neither ceram nor metal, but shisao, which was more akin to the substance of the constructs than to anything that could be created with modern technology. The prospect of working with mere shards of shisao in Professor Wyess’s workshop had excited him, but now he was in possession of more of the stuff than was known to exist anywhere else in the entire world.

Save, of course, for the second shisao sword that had belonged to Isuld’s husband, Kierfes Talmuir. That one had been lost along with its last bearer, Danthan Semfrey, sixteen years ago in Bhadrat.

Sefoni came in while Adrin was examining the sword.

“Excuse me! I knocked, but no one answered,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear. Is it time to go already?”

“You’ve got another half hour. I just came to check if you need anything?”

“Nicer clothes,” Adrin said, looking down ruefully at his tunic. So long as he kept his arms down, he hoped, no one would notice the seam that was starting to come apart in the left armpit.

“Already on my list,” Sefoni said brightly. “You’ve an appointment with a tailor tomorrow. But don’t worry too much about it. I don’t think that anyone’s going to be looking their best today, given the circumstances.”

“Thanks. Oh—I suppose I’m hungry.” Adrin hadn’t thought of his stomach before, but it chose this moment to remind him that he’d had nothing to eat that day save a few bites at breakfast.

“Thought you might be. There’s a tray for you on the table back there.” Sefoni indicated the parlor behind her.

“Thanks. Sounds like you knew what I needed before I did.”

“Part of the job,” Sefoni said.

Adrin stood up, intending to go eat, but Sefoni lingered in the study.

“That sword is beautiful. It looks like I imagine vitricity feels. I was so small when I was Blighted that I can’t even remember what it was like, so I can’t really miss it. But I’ve always known something was . . . missing.”

Sefoni stepped closer, her eyes fixed on the sword. A swirl of red and violet was playing across the surface now, making chaotic ripples in the ambient field.

“It disrupts,” Adrin said, thinking aloud.

“What?”

“I—I just made the connection. It’s called a disruptor sword because it disrupts the ambient field.”

Sefoni smiled. “You ought to talk to my husband about that. After things calm down a bit, I suppose. I’ll let you eat and come back to fetch you when it’s time to go down for the assembly.”

She didn’t give Adrin room to ask who her husband was, or say anything other than a quick thanks before she left.