The Draw

The draw went up on the Founders' Court board two weeks before the Spring Trials, and by the time Tamsin reached it there were two hundred students in four colours of scarf packed in front of it and nobody could see anything.

"Hollis against Grey," somebody shouted from the front, and the crowd turned around to look at her as one animal.

She had known it was possible. Eight duellists from each House, thirty-two names, drawn from a bowl by the Headmistress's own hand in front of the Dean and the four captains. There had been no reason it would not be Dorian Grey. There had been no reason it would be, either, and yet here it was in the Dean's handwriting on the third line of the board: Tamsin Hollis, House Tide, First Year, Flame, against Dorian Grey, House Blaze, Third Year, Blaze. First bout of the second day. The only Blaze in the school against the only First Year who had reached Flame, and the Headmistress's nephew against a girl who had been told to pace.

"He is the captain of House Blaze," said Cassia Wren, who had arrived at her elbow out of the crowd. "He has been captain for two years. He has never lost a Trials bout. He is a rung above you and he does not pace, he does not need to, he has more mana than the lake."

"I know."

"Good. Now look at the fifth line."

Tamsin looked. Cassia Wren, House Tide, Second Year, Flame, against Caius Wren, House Blaze, Third Year, Flame.

"Brother against sister," Tamsin said.

"Same rung. His affinity is Radiant and mine is Clear and he has never beaten me at anything that was not a race, and this is not a race." Cassia's chin was set. "Mother is coming. She has written to the Headmistress for a seat. She says she will cheer for whichever of us is losing, and she means it, and it is going to be unbearable."

Dorian Grey came through the crowd then with the red scarves parting around him. He had the Headmistress's pale eyes and none of her stillness, and he stopped in front of Tamsin and looked at her the way he might have looked at a new stone in the Ring.

"Hollis. Flame in your First Year. My aunt mentioned it at dinner. She mentions very little at dinner." He put out his hand and Tamsin took it, because there were two hundred people watching and the first rule of the school was in all of their heads. "Second day, first bout. I will not go easy on you and I would be insulted if you asked."

"I was not going to ask."

"Good." He nodded to Cassia. "Wren. Your brother says you cheat."

"My brother says a lot of things, Captain. He said the east wing was haunted. It turned out to be him." Cassia smiled with all her teeth. "Tell him the owl will be watching."

Dorian laughed and went on, and the red scarves closed behind him, and Tamsin stood with her hand still faintly warm from his and thought that she had never once in her life been as frightened of a person who had been so pleasant to her.

The Ring opened that afternoon for Ring hours. Fifty merits each, and Tutor Wick Ambrose, the new Ringwarden, stood at the edge of the circle with Crane's keys on his belt and walked the forty white stones before every single hour, out loud, counting, as if saying the numbers would keep them warm. Tamsin had thirty-one merits and no intention of spending fifty. She came to watch.

Cassia had bought an hour. She stood on the black stone with her sleeves pinned and her crystal focus in her off hand, a green water-crystal the size of a thumb that she had carried since her Sorting, and on her third cast the crystal cracked across the middle with a sound like a snapped twig and fell in two halves on the floor of the Ring.

Ambrose stopped counting. Cassia looked at the halves of her focus and did not say anything at all.

"That is a Sorting crystal," said Ambrose, coming across the stone. "They are issued once. The clerk will not issue another before the Trials. I am sorry, Wren. You will have to cast bare-handed."

"Bare-handed against Caius," said Cassia. "He will put me into the dome in the first exchange." She did not pick up the halves. She stood looking at them with her face gone the colour of the white stones.

Tamsin put her hand into the inside pocket of her gown.

The Ashwing feather had been hers since the boathouse, since the morning Marsh had drawn it off the beam and told her it was hers until she decided it should be somebody else's. That was how it worked. Tide students had been passing Ashwing feathers around for twenty years. She had held it on the pier with the lake around her boots when she came up to Flame. It was warm in her hand now, the way it had been warm then.

"Cassia." She held it out across the edge of the circle. "Off hand. It is not magic. It is a feather. But it will remind you to pace, and your mana will settle when you have something to hold."

Cassia looked at the feather for a long moment. "That is yours. Marsh gave it to you."

"He gave it to me until I decided. I have decided. Your focus broke and you are drawn against your brother in two weeks and I am Flame now and I do not need it the way you do. Take it."

Cassia took the Ashwing feather. Her hand closed around it and some of the colour came back into her face, and Tutor Ambrose, who had been watching with the keys in his fist, let out a breath and went back to counting stones.

Tamsin walked back to Tidehall with her pocket empty and found a folded square of paper under her pillow.

It had no name on it. The hand was small and careful and did not belong to anyone she knew. It said: The eleventh stone was not the first. Ask who held the keys in 1410.

She read it four times. Nobody at Ember Academy knew that the eleventh stone had been scraped except the Dean, the Headmistress, Pell Crane and Tamsin herself. Pell had not spoken to her in three weeks and Pell's hand was large and square and nothing like this. The Dean did not leave notes under pillows. The Headmistress did not leave notes under anything. And nobody, nobody at all, had said anything about 1410, the year the Ring wards were laid, the year of the Accord, except Benedek Crane on his knees at the third stone with a brush in his hand, asking what the man who wrote the Old Fire report had seen that made him build the wards the way he did.

Crane had been dead three weeks. His keys were on another man's belt. He was remembered at every Ring hour in the counting of stones, and in the owl chalked beside Caius Wren's name on the merit board, and in the way Pell Crane walked the Stone corridor with her arms folded, speaking to no one. And here was his question, in a stranger's hand, under Tamsin's pillow.

It was the same question she had been carrying since the demonstration, turned over. Not who had scraped the eleventh stone, but what the Ring wards had really been built to hold, and whether the person who cut the sign had known. Someone had wanted the Ring to fail. Someone had known which stone to cut. And someone else, now, wanted Tamsin to go on asking the question that had got the Ringwarden killed.

She put the note inside her gown, in the pocket where the feather had been, and lay in the dark and listened to Cassia across the room turning the Ashwing feather over and over in her fingers.

"Two weeks," Cassia said to the ceiling.

"Two weeks," Tamsin agreed. Six weeks had become two, and she was Flame, and she was drawn against the captain of House Blaze, and somewhere in the academy somebody with a blade and a small careful hand was waiting to see what she would do about it.

"Pace," she said, to herself and to the dark, and for the first time since autumn it did not feel like enough.