A CRIPPLED MAN marries THREE CURSED PRINCESSES and gains each of their POWERS! transcript

The emperor's decree gave the house of Arvane exactly 7 days for Chairen to marry the three cursed princesses, or else the entire house would be stripped of its lands and title. Refusal meant execution for Chairen and exile for his entire branch of the family. Consent meant marriage to three monsters who had killed all of their previous suitors. Thus, the court solved two problems at once. The empire rid itself of the emperor's three dangerous daughters and of the whom the house of Arvane had been ashamed of for 9 years.

Kairen was 19. At the age of 10, an explosion in an alchemical furnace in the family laboratory had destroyed his spiritual channels. Since then, he had been unable to retain even a drop of spiritual power in his body. Energy flowed through him like water through a torn net. Healers examined his meridians and shook their heads. His father stopped inviting him to family councils. His younger brother took his place as heir.

The servants called him an empty vessel. Kirn remained silent and read. Over the course of 9 years, he read the entire family library. He knew the structure of the meridians better than any healer in the house. He simply could not apply any of this knowledge to his broken body. When the messenger brought the decree, his father didn't even pretend to fight for his son. He signed the consent form that very evening. His stepmother ordered that Kairen's belongings be packed into two trunks.

His younger brother came to say goodbye and told him he was envious. He said that at least Kirn would die as the emperor's son-in-law rather than as a nameless Kairen replied that he would remember those words. His brother laughed and left. No one in the house wept. The wedding was held at the exiled estate of Northern Spire, a 3-day journey from the capital. The estate stood on a cliff above a frozen gorge. The wind howled through the empty galleries. 12 servants lived there, all of whom were either offenders or had been sentenced to exile.

The steward Gen met the wedding procession at the gate and didn't even bow. He said that a fourth groom in 2 years was already a tradition. He said that a coffin for Kirn had been ordered in advance so they wouldn't have to drive a cart in the winter. Kairen asked about the coffin's dimensions. Grossen was taken aback. Kairen said that given his height, he needed a coffin a palm's length longer than the standard size and that he didn't want to lie curled up.

For the first time during the conversation, Grossen looked him in the eye. The ceremony was conducted by an exiled priest. The three brides stood in three different corners of the hall, as far apart from one another as the walls would allow. The first was named Aah. She was 20. She stood within a ring of frost that spread from her feet across the stone floor. Her hands were bound with chains of celestial iron, and even the chains were covered in frosty patterns.

Eternal ice had flowed through her blood since birth and killed everything she touched. Two of her former fiances had frozen to death, trying to take her hand during the ceremony. The second was named Nery. She was 18. Her eyes were covered by a thick silk blindfold. She could see the death of every person she looked at. Not a possible death, but the exact one, the day, the hour, and the manner. People she looked at for more than a minute went mad from her descriptions.

The third groom hanged himself a week after she removed the blindfold during dinner. The third was named Sapphira. She was 17. She looked the most ordinary of the three, dark-skinned, short with golden eyes. But at sunset, her bones would break and reform, and by dawn, a dragon the size of a warhorse would roam the estate. The dragon had no control over itself and set fire to everything that moved. A cage made of the same celestial iron had been built for her in the cellar.

The priest was in a hurry and spoke hurriedly. He tied a ritual ribbon around the arms of Chirn and the three princesses, keeping them at a distance and not daring to bring them close to one another. He declared the union sealed and left so quickly that he forgot the ritual bowl. There was no wedding feast. Grossen served dinner for four in the cold dining hall. No one touched the food. A said, staring at the table, that Kirn would be better off choosing a room in the far wing and locking himself in there forever.

Nery said she already knew the date of his death and that it was very close. Sapphira said nothing and left because the sun was setting. Kairen finished his soup and asked for seconds. The three women and the steward looked at him as if he were mad. He said that dying on an empty stomach was foolish and that the soup was good. That night, he didn't go to the far wing. He studied the layout of the rooms and went to Aah's chambers because of all three curses, the eternal ice was described in the most detail in the books.

He knocked. There was a long silence behind the door. Then Ara said that if he entered, he would die before dawn. Kairen entered. The room was an icy cave. Frost covered the walls. Icicles hung from the ceiling. Era sat on the bed in chains and stared at him with wide eyes. She had been sleeping in chains for 9 years because in her sleep the ice would surge forth in waves and had once frozen half the palace wing along with seven maid servants.

Kairen sat down at the table three steps away from her and began to ask questions. He asked how the ice behaved in the morning and in the evening. Did it grow stronger with anger? Did it weaken in the heat? At first, Ara answered in mono syllables, then in more detail. No one had ever asked her about the mechanics of the curse. Everyone had only asked how to protect themselves from it. After an hour of conversation, Kirn stood up and held out his hand to her.

Ara recoiled and screamed that he was crazy. Kairen said that his energy channels were severed and that energy didn't linger in his body. He said that according to all the laws of spiritual mechanics, her ice should pass right through him as if through a hole. He said he'd been reading about this for 9 years and wanted to test it. A cried and refused. Kairen took her bound hand himself. The cold struck his palm like a spear.

A white wave ran up his arm toward his shoulder. His skin turned blue. And then something happened that no one had expected. Kairen's torn channels sucked in the ice like a parched riverbed draws in water. The cold didn't kill him. The cold filled the void inside him and settled there, coiling into a calm, heavy force. Kirn stood there, holding the hand of the princess of eternal ice and did not die. Frost began to form on the walls.

For the first time in 9 years, Ara's room became simply a room. A looked at her palm in his hand and could not utter a word. The ice she had held back her entire life was slipping from her hand. The pressure that had lived beneath her skin since birth was fading. She burst into tears the way people do when years of pain are finally lifted from their bodies. Kairen held her hand until midnight until the flow subsided.

A coldness spread through his body, but it was an obedient cold. He mentally reached out to it and frosty patterns formed on his fingers. He commanded them to vanish and they vanished. The torn channels could not hold ordinary spiritual energy. But the curse was of a different nature. The curse was denser and heavier. It got stuck in the tears just as thick resin gets stuck where water flows. His injury turned out to be not a hole but a filter.

In the morning, Gen came to check if the fourth husband was still alive and dropped the tray. Kairen was sitting in the dining hall eating breakfast. Next to him sata, free of chains, holding a cup of hot tea with her bare hands. The cup didn't freeze. It was the first time Ada had drunk hot tea since she was six. Grossen shifted his gaze from her to Kirn, and his expression changed so slowly and so completely that Chairen would remember it for the rest of his life.

The steward, who had ordered the coffin in advance, stood amid the shards of crockery and looked at the living husband and the healed wife. He asked in a whisper what had happened that night. Kairen replied that there had been a wedding, but by evening the joy was over. Nery came out of her chambers. She had heard about the miracle from a maid and had come on her own. She stood in the doorway of the dining hall, removed her bandage, and stared intently at Kirn.

She stared for a long time. Then her face turned as white as a wall. She said that yesterday she had seen his death in 3 days time at the claws of a dragon. She said that this death had now vanished and in its place another had appeared. She said that now Chirn would die in a month and that it would not be a curse or a beast that would kill him. She said that in her vision, Chairen was killed by a man with the Emperor's seal on his hand.

Kirn looked at Neryes and remained silent just long enough to process what he'd heard. Then he asked if the death he'd seen could be changed. Nery replied that death changes based on one's actions. Yesterday he was supposed to die at the dragon's hands in 3 days. He changed his fate by healing Ada and death was postponed by a month. So fate is not a sentence but a calculation. Chiron said that a month is much longer than 3 days and that he intended to keep bargaining with fate.

Nery put on her headband and asked why he wasn't afraid. All her previous suitors had either fled or broken down after hearing her words. Kairen replied that a man who had lived 9 years with a sentence of crippling disability gets used to bad news. He said he wanted to understand her curse just as he had understood Ira's ice. Nery refused. She said her curse could not be touched by hand. The ice lives in her blood and her eyes are windows into a dead place.

If Kairen looked inside, he would never return. Kairen didn't argue. He started with something else. For three days, he studied her curse from the outside. He questioned the maid who had served Nery since childhood. He discovered that the visions come only through direct eye contact, that reflections don't work, that in the dark, the gift weakens, that after every vision, Nara stays awake all night because the death of another lingers beneath her eyelids.

For 18 years, she had carried hundreds of deaths in her memory. Every glance added a new one. She hadn't gone mad only because since the age of 12, she had worn an eye patch almost constantly. Kairen listened and realized that her curse was more terrifying than ice. Ice killed others. Her gift was slowly killing her. On the fourth evening, he came to her and said he was ready to test his theory. He said that Ira's curse had entered him through touch because ice is transmitted through the flesh.

Nery's gift is transmitted through the gaze. So the bridge must also be a gaze. He asked her to remove her eye patch and look at him for as long as she could without looking away until the very end. Nara said that a long gaze like that turns people's hair gray and makes them howl. Kairen sat down across from her, placed a candle between them, and said he was ready. Ara stood behind him, clutching his shoulder with fingers icy with excitement.

Nery removed the blindfold. Her eyes were silver without pupils. She looked at Kairen. At first, nothing happened. Then Kirn felt something stretching from her eyes to his. Cold, but not like ice. Ice was an element. This was knowledge. Images began to flow into his mind. His own body in the snow. A man with the Imperial seal. Blood. He didn't look away. Torn channels awoke and drew the stream toward them. Silver light streamed from Nery's eyes through the air into his pupils.

Nery cried out. She tried to look away but couldn't. The current held them both. 18 years of accumulated deaths poured out of her through this bridge. Hundreds of strangers ends. Drowned, suffocated, fallen, burned. All of this poured into Chairen and settled in the fissures of his channels. Coalescing into a heavy silver power alongside the power of ice. Kairen gripped the armrest of the chair so tightly that the wood creaked.

He saw the deaths of the entire court. He saw the emperor<unk>'s death, but didn't have time to make out the details. The stream cut off. Nery would have fallen from her chair if Aah hadn't caught her. The silver vanished from her eyes. Her irises turned dark gray like those of an ordinary person. She opened her eyes, looked at Kirn, then at A, then at the candle, and she saw nothing but people and fire. Not a single death.

For the first time since she was born, she looked at a living person and saw simply a living person. She touched her face and laughed and cried at the same time. A hugged her and cried too. Kairen sat motionless, examining what had taken root within him. The gift had curled up inside him as obedient as ice. He reached for it mentally, looked at the candle's flame, and saw a silver thread leading from the wick to the moment the candle would burn out.

He looked at Grossen, who had entered at the sound of the commotion, and through an act of will, opened the gift. He saw Grossen's death. The old man would die in his sleep 22 years from now. Kirn closed the gift in a single motion, just as one closes a book. He could look, or he could choose not to. What had been an eternally open wound for Nery had become a weapon with a hilt for him. At night, he lay awake, piecing the picture together.

His body absorbed the curses, restoring freedom to the women while leaving him with strength. But Nerys's vision said that in a month, a man bearing the emperor's seal would arrive. Kirn began to understand why. The court had sent the three cursed princesses here to die in the wilderness. If word reached the capital that the princesses had been healed, the plan would fall apart. A healed Ara with her lineage would become a coveted bride for the rebellious houses.

Nery, who knew the fates of all the dignitaries, would become the most dangerous person in the empire. Someone in the palace would be very keen to see them dead. In the morning, he gathered everyone in the dining hall, Ara Neris Grosa, and the estate's senior guard, a veteran named Vorggan. Vorggan had been sentenced to exile for striking a capital officer, and for 10 years he had considered his service in northern Spile a living hell.

Kirn laid it all out plainly. In a month, death, bearing the Imperial Seal, would arrive from the capital. They had a month to turn the ruins into a fortress. Vorggan smirked and said he had eight guards, half of whom were old men. He said that a and two young women weren't an army. He spoke lazily and made no secret of the fact that he considered his new master a naive boy. Kiran didn't bother arguing with him. He led everyone out into the courtyard, walked over to the well, and lowered his hand into it.

The water in the well froze to the bottom in three heartbeats. Then he looked at the old shed that Wargan had been planning to tear down for a year and said that the shed would collapse on its own today before sunset because the silver thread holding it together was shorter than a finger. Wargan snorted. That evening the shed collapsed inward under the weight of snow on a rotten beam. Vorggan stood over the rubble for a very long time.

Then he went to Chairen, took off his helmet, and asked permission to speak frankly. He said he had served three generals and had never seen any of them possess two gifts at once. He asked what needed to be done. Kairen replied that they needed to prepare the estate for a siege and that this was only the beginning. That same night, as the sun set, a roar echoed from the basement. Sapphira was transforming. Kirn went down to the cage made of celestial iron and watched the dragon thrash about.

A and Nery had been set free. The third remained, the most dangerous one. A curse that could not be touched by hand, nor caught by the eye. A curse that every night broke the bones of a 17-year-old girl's bones and eroded her mind. The dragon slammed into the bars and stared at Kirn with a golden mad eye. Kairen opened the silver gift and looked at the beast, and he saw something that sent a chill down his spine, even without any ice.

Sapphira had two threads of death. One was human, thin and long. The other was a dragon's, thick as a rope. and the dragon's thread would end in 26 days on the very same night as his own. In the vision, both deaths converged at a single point. The man bearing the emperor's seal had not come for him. He had come for the dragon, and Kirn simply stood in his way. In the morning, Sapphira came out of the basement on her own.

After a night of transformation, she always emerged pale with pain and went to her room to sleep until noon. Kairen was waiting for her by the stairs with a cup of hot broth. Sapphira took the cup in silence and stared intently at him with her golden eyes. She said she'd heard about her sisters. She said she was happy for them and that nothing would ever come of their relationship. You can take ice by the hand. You can meet a gaze with a gaze.

But the dragon isn't a power within her. The dragon is her very self, a second soul fused with the first. Healers had been observing her since childhood, and they all said the same thing. You cannot separate the girl from the beast. The only option is to kill them both. Kairen asked if she remembered anything from those nights. Sapphira was silent for a long time. Then she said she remembered one thing. Hunger. Not in her stomach, but throughout her entire body.

Every night, the dragon searches for something, finds nothing, and drives itself mad because of it. Kairen asked what the dragon was looking for. Safhira replied that if she knew, she would have brought it to the cage herself long ago. Kairen thought about this all day while the estate around him turned into a construction site. Preparations for the siege were underway amid a series of short, grim days. Vorggan was hurting the guards and a dozen men hired from the village.

The walls of the eastern gallery were bricked up in three days. Ara would go out to the gorge at dawn and at Chairen's command freeze the only road, turning the ascent to the gates into an icy rink that could be melted and refrozen within an hour. Kairen discovered that the ice inside him wasn't being depleted, but was growing. Every time A released excess power while holding his hand, the fissures in his channels absorbed a new portion and consolidated it.

Nery sat pouring over maps of the empire and recalled all the deaths of dignitaries she had witnessed over the years at court. Kairen took notes. The dates of illnesses, poisonings, and falls from horses suffered by the empire's most prominent figures were recorded in a notebook that was worth more than any army. Gen took inventory of the supplies and bargained with the village for grain for the winter at a price he himself called robbery with a bow.

By the end of the first week, the estate was unrecognizable. And every night, Kairen would go down to the cellar and sit by the cage. He would gaze at the dragon with his silver vision for hours on end. He wasn't studying the beast. He was studying the beast's hunger. And on the ninth night, he understood. The dragon paced back and forth in its cage, always in the same way. It lunged at the bars precisely when Chairen drew closer, not to attack.

The beast was reaching out. The dragon's hunger had a direction, and that direction was Chiren. More precisely, it was what already lived inside Chirn. Two absorbed powers. The dragon sensed the place where it could cast off the unbearable burden of the second soul and rushed toward it as a dying man parched with thirst rushes toward water. The curse itself wanted to enter him. The question remained, how to take the power from a creature that would bite off any outstretched hand.

Kairen solved it the way he solved everything, through knowledge and through precisely measured madness. On the 10th night, he ordered Vorggan to open the cage. Vorggan refused. Kairen repeated the order. Era stood between him and the stairs and said she wouldn't let him through. Nery silently stood beside her sister. Kairen told them what he had realized by the cage. Safira's dragon threat of death would run out in 16 days.

If they left things as they were, the man with the seal would kill the beast and the girl inside it. Their only chance was to hand the dragon over to him before that day. He said the beast didn't want to kill him. The beast wanted to enter him. The risk was that a second soul might not fit into the riffs and could tear him apart from the inside. But his death was already destined for that very night anyway. He would lose 16 days of his life, but gain four lives in return.

It's a good deal. Era cried and called him a calculating machine, but she stepped back from the stairs. The cage was opened with chains attached to the gate. The dragon flew out of the opening in a single bound. The Wargan and the guards pressed themselves against the walls. Chairen stood motionless in the middle of the basement with his palms open. The dragon struck him in the chest, but didn't tear him apart. The beast crashed into him and froze.

Its golden eye met his human eyes. Heat radiated from its maul. And then the dragon did what Kirn had seen with his silver vision, but hadn't fully believed possible. The beast pressed its forehead against his chest, and it began to flow. The scales radiated golden light. The fire of the second soul surged into the torn channels with such force that Chairen screamed. The ice and silver inside him contracted, making room.

The fire filled the riffs, melting their edges, and accomplished in an instant what 9 years of treatment had failed to do. The dragon's flame rewelded the torn meridians. Kirn burned from within, and through the pain, he sensed the impossible. His channels were fusing together, not into their former shape, into a new one. three times wider than before, lace acting as reservoirs where there had once been ruptures. His disability was becoming architecture.

The flow ended at dawn. Sapphira lay naked on the stone floor of the cellar, and her bones did not shatter as the sun rose. Kairen took off his cloak and covered her with it. His hands glowed golden from within. He clenched his fist, and fire danced over his knuckles. He thought of ice and the fire turned to frost. He thought of silver and saw the threads of death of everyone who had stood in the basement. The three forces lay in their new channels as straight as blades in a scabbard.

Sapphira opened her eyes around noon. She was lying in bed for the first time in 10 years, having slept through the night as a human. She whispered, "Where is the dragon?" Kirn lit a golden flame in the palm of his hand. Sapphira stared at the fire for a very long time. Then she said that her hunger had vanished and that for the first time she wasn't afraid of sunset. That evening she came out for dinner, ate enough for three, laughed at Grossen's jokes, and fell asleep right at the table, resting her head on Nery's shoulder.

The Wargan gazed at the sleeping princess whom he had locked in a cage every sunset for 10 years, and the old soldier's chin trembled. And 2 days later, a new problem knocked at the gate, right on schedule, as fate would have it. A caravan flying Imperial flags appeared on the road. Capital Inspector Revan Dalch with 20 soldiers and a document ordering an inspection of the exile's condition. Nery recognized the name and turned pale.

Revend Dalch did not serve the treasury. Revend Dalch served the third prince, Casser, the very same prince who 3 years ago had personally signed the order exiling the sisters. And Kairen watching the approaching caravan from the wall, opened his silver vision and saw a ring on the inspector's right hand, the small seal of the imperial house. There were 14 days left until the day of the vision. Death had arrived ahead of schedule to scout the situation.

Kirn ordered the gates to be opened. Wargan looked at him as if he were mad and suggested freezing the road and maintaining the siege. Kairen replied that 20 soldiers were not an invading army, but eyes. Those eyes needed to be shown the right picture. If the inspector did not return to the capital within a month, it would not be 20 men who came, but two legions. Therefore, the inspector had to return and report exactly what Kairen needed to hear.

He gathered everyone an hour before the caravan's arrival and assigned their roles. Era slipped chains of celestial iron over her sleeves without touching her wrists. Nery blindfolded herself. Sapphire was led down to the basement to an open cage. Grossen carried a coffin prepared in advance out to the gate and placed it against the wall as if expecting it to be put to use soon. Within 2 hours the estate had undone all the changes it had managed to conceal.

Revan Dah rode into the courtyard without dismounting. He was thin with the face of a man who had spent his entire life counting others mistakes. He surveyed the courtyard, pausing his gaze on the coffin, and allowed himself a smile. He said he was glad to see the estate in the expected condition. He said that the capital had been placing bets on whether the fourth husband would live to see the first snow. Kirn came out to meet him, stooping and coughing.

He was playing the part of a dying man. For 9 years he had watched the dying hopes of his own home. He said that his wives hardly ever left their wings and that he thanked the heavens for every day he had lived. Dah stayed for 3 days. For 3 days he wandered the estate, sticking his nose into every nook and cranny. He saw Era in chains behind the frosted window of her wing. He heard the nighttime roar from the basement where the Wargan rattled his chains against an empty cage and the roar came from Chirn himself directing the dragon's throat of power into the stone well beneath the staircase.

He saw Nery, who at the communal dinner removed her blindfold, looked at him, and said in a flat, lifeless voice that she could see his death by poison in his own cup. doll turned pale and did not touch his wine for the rest of the meal. Nery was not lying about her gift. She was merely relaying what Kirn had foreseen and whispered to her. Doll's true fate led to poison. But 6 years later and at the hand of his own master.

Nery did not mention this. Let fear, not knowledge, accompany him to the capital. On the third evening, Dah did what he had come to do. At dinner, he raised a toast to the host's health and swapped out Kairen's goblet with a deaf movement, that of a man who had done this before. Kairen saw the switch twice, with his eyes and with the silver. The thread of his own death didn't even flinch when he took the poisoned goblet.

The poison was meant for a without spiritual protection. For a body in which dragonfire burned, this poison was no more dangerous than sour wine. Kairen drank it down to the dregs and asked for another. As he did so, he looked Doll in the eyes and smiled with the most innocent of his expressions. Doll poured a second cup, and for the first time in 3 days, his hand wavered. That night, the inspector didn't sleep. Kairen knew this because he was sitting on the roof above his window listening.

Doll was writing a report and muttering to himself. He muttered that the poison was supposed to take effect within an hour. Either the apothecary had cheated him or at that point he would stop and start the letter over again. In the morning, just before departure, what Kairen had planned as the show's grand finale happened. A village wagon train carrying grain drove into the courtyard, and one wagon broke its axle right at the gate.

The horse panicked, bolted, and overturned the wagon onto the stable hand son who was playing by the gate. The crowd screamed, and right before Doll's eyes, the dying, consumptive husband of the three cursed princesses darted across the courtyard faster than a healthy soldier should be able to move, lifted the edge of the heavily loaded cart with one hand, and pulled the boy from under the wheel. The courtyard fell silent.

Doll stared in wideeyed amazement. Kairen straightened up, looked at his hand with theatrical bewilderment, coughed, and collapsed to the ground unconscious. Grossen, shouting about his master's last ounce of strength and his broken heart, carried him into the house. From the window, Kairen watched them leave. Doll was leaving Northern Spill with the look of a man who was carrying not a report, but a puzzle to the capital.

A dying man who drinks poison like water. A lifting a cart, a sear who sees cups. Kirn analyzed this clash of facts dispassionately. A report of a miracle would provoke an immediate strike by the legions. A report that everything was in order would be shattered by the failure of the poisoning because D was obliged to explain to his master why the poison hadn't worked. But a report of a mystery would force the third prince to do what all men of his kind do.

Send not an army, but a trusted assassin with broad authority, a man bearing the seal. Just one, exactly as in the vision. Kirn did not alter the prophecy. He laid the tracks for it. That evening, after the caravan had departed, the estate breathed the sigh of relief. Sapphira emerged from the cellar and over dinner mimicked Dalha's gate with her facial expressions until Grossen began to sob with laughter. Ara removed the hated chains and flung them into a corner of the dining hall.

It was a brief respit and Kairen allowed it to last exactly one evening because that morning Nery sat down across from him with a map and the death ledger and said they needed to talk about what everyone was keeping quiet about. She said that the killer with the seal was not the end, but the beginning. Even if Kairen defeated him, the third prince would send the next one. The capital would never leave them alone because a mistake had already been made.

They had been spared. Kirn replied that he'd been thinking about this since the very first night. He unfolded the map and placed his palm over the northern part of the empire. He said there was only one way to end the war with the dragon, to become a greater dragon. Northern Spire stands on a cliff above the only pass connecting the three northern provinces to the capital. Whoever controls the pass controls northern trade.

Whoever controls northern trade controls the northern houses. And for 20 years, the northern houses have been swallowing the humiliation inflicted by the third prince and his faction. Nery looked at the map and her eyes, which had recently grown dark, brightened with understanding. She said he was talking about a rebellion. Kirn replied that he was talking about the dynasty, four unwanted heirs who were cast out to die in the north, the exiled son of a great house, the emperor's three healed daughters, each with a claim to the throne.

He said that the court had forged this alliance with its own hands and now the court would have to find out exactly what it had created. But first they must deal with the man bearing the seal. 11 days remained until his arrival. And on the 10th day a Vorggan century sounded his horn from the tower. A single man walked along the frozen road toward the gates without a banner, without an entourage, and without fear. He walked across the ice of Ara as if on dry stone, and the ice melted beneath his boots.

Kairen opened his silver vision, looked at the guest, and for the first time since the night of the first devouring, felt a chill run through his new channels. The man on the road had no threat of death at all. The Wargan suggested greeting the guest with arrows from the walls. Kirn forbade it. A creature without a threat of death can either not be killed by arrows or cannot be killed at all. And in either case, the arrows would only reveal everything about the defenders to him.

Kirn ordered the small gate to be opened and went out to meet him alone. More precisely, he went out first. Behind him on the wall stood Ada with her palms open, Nery with her eyes open, and Safira whom he had asked for the first time not to hide. The guest stopped 10 paces away. Up close, he looked like a man in his 40s with a gray, impassive face. On his right hand, the seal of the imperial house glowed dimly. Not a small one like Dalhuz, a full one.

He spoke in a voice as even as a stone floor. He identified himself as the guardian of the seal and said that he had served not a prince nor an emperor but the throne itself for 140 years. He said he was summoned whenever something appeared in the empire that disrupted the established balance of power. The three curses of the house were part of that balance. Their disappearance was not. He had come to see where the curses had gone and to eliminate the disturbance.

Kirn asked what eliminate meant. The guardian looked at him with empty gray eyes and replied that the disturbance was neither the estate nor the women. The disturbance stood before him. The vessel that had contained the three powers must be emptied. After that, Kirn said nothing. He struck first because his silver vision had shown him the guardian's swing a fraction of a second before the swing itself. The courtyard exploded.

The guardian moved in a way that humans do not. His palm sliced through the air where Kairen's head had just been, and the stonework behind him crumbled, cut by an invisible blade. Kairen rolled out of the way and countered with a spear of ice as thick as a pillar. The guardian shattered the ice with his forearm. Shards were still hanging in the air when a jet of dragonfire passed through them. The guardian shielded himself with his hand bearing the seal, and the fire flowed around him like water flows around a stone.

The seal was draining the power. Kairen realized this on the third exchange of blows. Everything he hurled at the guardian was partially extinguished by the seal, which grew brighter. For 140 years, this creature had fed on others violations of order. It could not be defeated by brute force. Kairen retreated across the courtyard, keeping the rhythm of the fight at its limit, while the cold part of his mind worked as it always did in the worst of times, separate from fear.

Everything has a thread. The guardian has none because the seal prevents him from dying. So he mustn't focus on the guardian. He must focus on the seal. He ducked under another slashing blow, closed the distance, and midbreath opened his silver vision, not on the man, but on the artifact on his arm, and he saw it. The seal had a thread as thin as a hair hidden in its core. The seal wasn't eternal. It was very old and very weary, and it held itself up on the flow of absorbed power, just as a spinning top holds itself up on its rotation.

If it were allowed to swallow more than it could handle, the top would come crashing down. Kirn shouted a single word, a name. They had practiced this signal during 11 days of preparation, not knowing against whom it would be used. From the wall, Ara unleashed upon the guardian all the excess of eternal ice she had accumulated over the week, holding nothing back for the first time in her life. A white storm engulfed half the courtyard.

The guardian raised the seal, and the seal began to drink in the storm. And at that very moment, Chairen poured into it from the other side all the dragon fire that his new channels held down to the last golden drop. Two elements of opposing nature surged into the artifact simultaneously. The seal flared so brightly that the walls screamed. It tried to conjure ice and fire within itself at once and failed. A single thread in its core snapped.

The seal cracked across its surface with the sound of a bursting bell. And the guardian of the seal, who for 140 years had lacked a thread of death, found it. A thread as long as a single heartbeat. Kairen was nearby, and his icy spear pierced exactly where the silver had pointed. The gray body crumbled onto the courtyard stones as ash and dust just as something that had died long ago and forgotten how to fall crumbles.

Silence hung heavy for a long time. Then the courtyard screamed so loudly that snow fell from the roofs. The guards embraced one another. Groen sat right in a snowdrift and laughed. Sapphira flew down from the wall and hung around Kairen's neck. Ara walked toward him across the courtyard, pale as blue from utter desolation, and smiled as she had never smiled before. The foretold night had come and gone, and he was alive.

Fate had accepted a new price. But Nery did not come down from the wall. She stood above the crumbling ashes and looked down with a strange gaze. Then she called out to Kirn. Among the ashes lay a broken seal and beneath it a folded sheet of paper, an order. The guardian carried it with him as one carries a travel document. Kairen unfolded the sheet by the fire in the refactory once the courtyard had quieted down. The order instructed the Guardian to verify the integrity of the three state seals of damnation imposed on individuals of imperial blood and in the event of their destruction to eliminate the perpetrator of the violation.

The date was written at the bottom. Kairen read it twice. The order had been issued 17 years ago, the year Sapphira was born. Nery took the sheet from his hands, reread it, and said aloud what they had both already realized. State seals of damnation, imposed. The sister's curses were not a whim of the heavens or a taint of the blood. They had been imposed intentionally, just as dangerous goods are branded. Someone in the palace 17 years ago had sealed the emperor's three daughters, turning the ayses into monsters, and that someone had the authority to issue orders to the guardians of the throne itself.

A sat very upright, and her fingers slowly frosted over for the first time in many days, not from the curse, but from the rage that had found its old path. She asked quietly who in the palace held such power. Nery replied that there was no signature on the order. There's only an impression. And she placed the sheet on the table, the impression facing up. In the sealing wax from 17 years ago was the imprint of the great state seal, the one and only that never leaves the hand of the reigning sovereign, their father.

Ara didn't sleep until dawn. She sat in the refactory, staring at the seal impression while frost spread from her feet across the floor, covering the stone with white cracks. Kairen did not disturb her. He knew that her rage had to subside before she could be reasoned with. Nery sat next to her sister and said nothing. Sapphira went to the wall and gazed into the darkness of the gorge with her golden eyes until morning.

The three women whom their father had turned into monsters were each processing the truth in their own way. A through the cold, Nery through silence, Sapphira through distance. By morning, Chairen had gathered them together again. He placed the order on the table along with Nery's death ledger and a map of the northern provinces. He said that anger was fuel and fuel must be burned wisely. He said he knew why the emperor had cursed his own daughters and he recounted what he had gathered from the books of the ancestral library over the past 9 years. 20 years ago, the imperial house began to lose control over the bloodlines.

Spiritual mutations arose in every third generation, and each mutation was a power the throne could neither predict nor control. Eternal ice, eyes of death, dragon soul. Each of these powers could upset the balance of the court. The emperor solved the problem the way one deals with dangerous cargo. He sealed them away. He placed curses upon his daughters that transformed their gifts into torments and turned the bearers into outcasts, living prisons for dangerous powers.

Then he exiled them to die in the wilderness and assigned guards in case the seals were broken. Kairen said this meant two things. First, the emperor knew that his daughters were not cursed, but gifted, and he deliberately turned the gift into a curse. Second, he feared them so much so that he created a mechanism of destruction in case they were ever freed. This meant that the sister's three powers combined posed a threat that the throne considered real.

Nery asked what he suggested. Kirn replied that the guardian was dead, but the third prince Casar was still alive and awaiting a report. When the report didn't arrive, Casar would send men. Not just one, many. And by then, it would be too late to flee. So, they had to act first. By the time Casar sends his troops, the Northern Spire must not stand alone. Nery unfolded a map. In the north of the empire, there were four major houses.

House Torven, which controlled the iron mines, House Kan, which traded in gunpowder and timber across the pass. House Marin, which owned the only northern shipyard on the frozen lake, and House Sa, which controlled the mountain outposts. All four had been paying the third prince Casar a tribute in addition to the imperial tax for 12 years. All four hated this tribute, but none was strong enough to refuse it on its own.

Kairen said he needed one of the four, one ally who would stand up first and show the others that resistance was possible. He chose House Torven. The reason was practical. Torven was closest to the Northern Spire, a two-day journey, and Torven had something the estate lacked, blacksmiths and iron. Both were needed to fortify the pass. Three days later, Kirn and Vorggan, accompanied by four guards, set out for Torven Castle.

Kairen left his sisters to defend the manor. Era kept watch over the icy road. Sapphira stood on the wall during the day. At night, the manor was guarded by the memory of the guardian, which spread through the villages faster than any messenger. Torven Castle stood in a rocky crevice above the mine and looked like a stone cork jammed into the neck of a bottle. The head of the household, old Garrett Torven, received his guests in the smithy because the reception hall had not been heated for three winters.

There wasn't enough money for firewood. Everything went toward the tribute to Kasar. Garrett listened to Kairen with the expression of a man hearing a beautiful lie. He said that a without a home was offering him war against the empire's third prince. He said that even if the cursed princesses were healed, even if the guardian were dead, it wouldn't change a thing. Kasar would send an army and wipe Torven off the map.

He said he believed this because he had feared Kasar for 12 years. And over those 12 years, that fear had seeped into his very bones. Kirn didn't argue. He asked Garrett to name his best blacksmith. Garrett pointed to a broadshouldered man with a scarred face named Davar. Kairen walked over to the forge, took the sword blank from the apprentice's hands, and infused it with dragonfire. The metal glowed white hot in the time it took for his heart to beat twice.

Then Kirn gripped the hilt and sent a wave of ice courarssing through the blade. The tempering process, which usually took hours, was completed in seconds. He laid the finished blade on the anvil. Davar picked it up, turned it over in his hands, struck a test post with it, and watched as the blade sank halfway into the oak post, and emerged without a single chip. Davar turned to Garrett, and his son's scorched face contorted in such a way that Kairen could see the fear of a 12-year-old cracking away.

Davar said that no one in the empire had ever forged metal like this. He said that if this man could forge like this, then Torvven didn't need an army. Torven needed a contract. Garrett was silent for a long time. Then he asked how many blades Kirn could make. Kairen replied that he had enough dragonfire in him for 20 blades a day. He said he was ready to forge for Torven if Torven stood beside the Northern Spire when Kasar arrived.

Garrett replied that 20 blades a day meant 40 in 2 days and 600 a month. He did the math and as he did his expression changed not from fear to bravery but from fear to greed. Greed proved to be the stronger of the two. Garrett held out his hand and said that Torven's house stood with the northern spire. Kairen shook his hand, gripping it a little tighter than necessary, just enough for Garrett to feel the cold of ice beneath his skin, so he would remember that a handshake is not just about business.

They stayed at Torven Castle for 4 days. Kairen forged without a break. Here's how those days played out. First scene, the blacksmith's courtyard is crammed with blanks, and Davar commands six apprentices who can't keep up with feeding him the iron. Second scene, Kairen stands at the anvil, his hands white from the flames, and behind him rises a rack of finished blades that glow from within as if alive. Third scene, Garrett leads him to the armory and shows him the empty shelves.

By the end of the fourth day, the shelves are full. Fourth scene. A sentry on Torven's wall holds a new blade and smiles on duty for the first time in 3 years. Garrett's younger brother, Andis, witnessed the result. He had come from the trading town on the lake to check out the rumors and saw the armory full of impossible weapons. Andis traded with the southern houses and knew the prices. He calculated the value of the arsenal in his head and sat down on a step because his legs gave out.

He said that a single blade like that was worth a year's tribute to Kasar. On the way back to Northspire, Vorggan rode in silence. Then he said that for the first time in 10 years of exile, he felt like he was on duty rather than in punishment. Kirn replied that the punishment wasn't over because the House of Torven was just one ally and they needed four and because Kasar must have already noticed the guard's silence.

He turned out to be right. When they returned, Nery met them at the gate with a letter, a bird from the capital. The letter was addressed to Inspector Dah and contained an order from the third prince. Dah was to return to Northern Spire and retrieve the body of the fourth husband for reporting purposes. Kasar considered Kairen dead. The guardian was supposed to have carried out the task and vanished, but the guardian had not returned and had not reported back.

The letter meant that Kasar did not yet know the guardian was dead. The window of opportunity was narrow and Kairen decided to make the most of it. He wrote a reply in Dallas handwriting, which Nery had copied from his old notes left at the estate. The reply stated that the fourth husband was dead, that the cursed princesses were being held under guard, and that the guardian had carried out his task and left as usual.

The bird flew back to the capital. Kirn had bought himself a few more weeks, but the price for each week was rising. The window of silence from the capital lasted 19 days. Kairen made the most of every one of them. He didn't wait for his allies to come to him. He went to them and gave each one a reason to rise up. House Kan traded in timber and furs across the pass and paid Casar double the duty. The head of the house, Willen Kregan, was younger than Garrett and more ruthless.

He wasn't afraid of war. He was afraid of losing. Kirn came to him not with a weapon, but with a map. He laid the map on the table and showed that Northspire stood directly above the pass. Whoever controls Spire decides who passes and who doesn't. Right now, the Spire belongs to Chirn, and Chairen is ready to open the pass to Crean for free. The Casar toll is waved for those who stand with the Spire. Villain took two days to consider it.

Then he agreed. He said that free passage through the pass was worth a war. House Marin owned a shipyard on the frozen lake and built barges for transporting ore. The lake froze over for 8 months of the year, and the shipyard lay idle. The head of House Cidra Marin was the only woman among the northern lords. She inherited the house after her husband's death and ruled it with an iron fist. Casar left her alone because he needed the barges himself.

But he didn't give her any money either. The shipyard was falling into disrepair. Kirn came to see her with Aah. A stood on the shore of the frozen lake and at Kirn's command melted the ice along a strip 300 paces long. In an hour, the black open water glistened in the winter sun. Cidra stood on the shore and looked at the open water in the middle of winter with the expression of someone who had just been shown that the wall they thought was made of stone was actually made of paper.

Kairen said that AA could clear a strip every day and the shipyard would operate 12 months a year instead of four. He said that in exchange he needed barges to transport Torven's ore to the pass and Marin's men to the walls of Shill when the time came. Cidra replied before Villain could. She said that a woman who had waited 10 years for the ice to melt would not wait for a second invitation. House Cila controlled the mountain outposts and was the poorest of the four.

The outposts stood high in the mountains and in winter the people of Cela went hungry. The head of the house, Orin Sila, was old and sick. He hadn't left his bed in 2 years, and his son, Trick, ran the house. Trick was cautious to the point of cowardice. He refused Kairen three times in a single conversation. He said that Cila was too small to take sides. He said that if Casar won, Cila would be the first to be wiped out.

He said that the mountains were no place for heroes. Kirn neither tried to persuade him nor threatened him. He asked permission to visit old Orin. Trick reluctantly let him go. Orin lay in bed thin as a skeleton. Kairen opened his silver vision and looked at his thread. The thread led to death from an internal illness in 4 months. The organ rotting inside the old man cast a thin black line in the silver light. Kirn asked permission to touch his hand.

Orin allowed it. Kairen could not heal. His channels absorbed curses, not illnesses. But he could do something else. He sent a thin thread of dragon's warmth into the old man's body. Not a flame. Warmth like embers in which the heat still lingers. The thread wrapped around the diseased organ and slowed the decay. It didn't heal it. It merely postponed the end. Kairen went out to Trick and said that his father would live not four months, but a year and a half if Kirn came once a month to maintain the warmth.

He said this wasn't a bargain with life, but an offer from the emperor's son-in-law, who knew how to calculate time. Trick stood there white with rage and realization. He said Kairen was playing dirty. Kairen replied that those who have nothing to lose play fair. Trick agreed the next morning after his father had eaten on his own for the first time in 2 years. Four houses were built. Kairen returned to Northspire and found changes there he hadn't planned for.

In his absence, Nery had organized what she called a network. She sent Grossen to three nearby villages with a simple proposal. The estate would buy food at double the price and provide protection from bandits whose numbers had grown since the start of winter. The money came from the reserves that Chairen had brought back from Torven. Iron ingots were valued as highly as gold here. The three villages agreed and a week later the village elders from two more villages came to see Grossen.

Nery drew a new map for Kairen. Northern Shiel stood at the center. Five villages were arranged in a ring around it. Beyond them were four houses. The pass was under control. Trade was in full swing. The shipyard operates year round. Mountain outposts covered the flanks. Kairen looked at the map and for the first time thought of a word that had previously seemed foreign to him. Territory. He thought about it for exactly one minute.

Then Vorggan ran into the dining hall and said that the southern patrol had intercepted a messenger. The messenger was carrying a letter not to northern spiel but across the pass. The letter was from Kaser to all the northern houses. The third prince announced the appointment of a new imperial governor for the north. The governor had already left the capital with a full legion of 3,000 soldiers. His name was Revan Dah. the very same inspector whom Kairen had tricked, poisoned, and then let go.

Kairen read the letter twice. Then he sat down and laughed for the first time in a long while. Nery asked what was so funny. Kirn replied that Doll was the perfect opponent. A man who had already lost to Kairen once and didn't understand how. A man who drank poison and didn't notice the switch. a man who would bring not victory to the capital, but a second riddle. But 3,000 soldiers aren't a riddle. They're a wall of iron and flesh.

And they'll be here in 20 days. 20 days for four desperate houses to become a single army. Kirn knew that wasn't enough. He knew the houses had rallied to his side for gain, not for loyalty. Torven for weapons, Cregan for the pass, Marin for water, SA for her father's life. The first real blow would test each of these motives. But first, he had to resolve the issue he'd been putting off. Sapphira, her curse was gone.

The dragon lived within Kirn. But Sapphira was not simply a free girl anymore. She was left empty. Her two sisters had retained the remnants of their powers. A could control the cold, though less effectively than before, but she could still do so. Nery sometimes sensed flashes of others threads nearby. Sapphira had lost everything. 10 years of her life had been a cage and a dragon, and now she stood in the midst of war as an ordinary girl without a single drop of spiritual power.

She didn't talk about it, but Kairen saw how she looked at her sisters when they were training in the courtyard. She would watch and clench her fists. Kairen began by convening a war council in the Spire's refactory. The Vorggan sat at the table. Garrett Torven had sent his eldest son, Bran, with 40 swordsmen. Willen Kregan had come in person with 30 lumberjacks whom he called a militia. Cidra Marin had sent 20 bargemen with axes.

Tar Sila brought 10 mountain archers, and he looked as though every step from the outpost to the spire felt like a step toward the gallows. A total of 108 fighters against 3,000. Vorggan spread out a map of the pass and pointed out the only road. The ascent wound its way up the mountain in seven switchbacks. Each bend was a point where the column could be delayed. But delaying did not mean stopping. 3,000 would crush a 100 men in a day if they attacked headon.

Kairen said they wouldn't attack head-on. He circled three points on the map and said the legion wouldn't reach the gates at full strength. He laid out a plan and the plan was simple to the point of being insulting. Don't fight. wear them down. A mountain pass in winter is an enemy in itself. 3,000 soldiers are 3,000 mouths to feed on the march along a frozen mountain road. The Legion supply train will stretch out over 2,000 paces.

Kan's men, who know every trail, will cut the supply train to pieces. No heroic attacks. Quiet nighttime raids. Ropes on the packs cut. Horses stolen at dawn. Flour dumped into the snow. A hungry legion, angry but weak. The first bend in the Ira serpentine will freeze over so that the horses cannot pass. The legion will leave its cavalry behind. At the second bend, Sila's mountain archers will shower them with stones, not to kill them, but to force them to clear the road in the cold for half a day.

The third bend is the narrowest. There, Chairen will erect an ice wall and take up position behind it with Marin's bargemen. Not to hold them to the death, hold them for 3 hours, then retreat to the next bend and repeat. Seven bends, seven delays. 3 days for an ascent that usually takes 5 hours. 3 days in the freezing cold without a warm camp, without hot food, without shelter. Tar said the plan looked good on paper, but Doll isn't a fool, and after the second bend, he'll send scouts along the mountain trails to bypass us.

Kairen turned to him and smiled for the first time. He said that this was exactly why he needed Sailor's men. The mountain rangers know every bypass and every goat trail. They won't defend the turns. They'll be waiting on the bypasses. Trick was silent for about a minute. Then, for the first time since they'd met, he said it was clever. Preparations to defend the pass took 8 days. Every hour of those days was worth it.

First cut. Kan's men went down the serpentine road and scattered through the forest like shadows. Willin personally checked every position and marked the trees for nighttime sorties. Second cut. Ira stood at the first bend and breathed on a rock. The ice built up in layers. The road glistened like glass for 200 paces. It froze and thawed three times a day as she practiced her speed. Third take. Kirn was forging on a portable anvil at the third bend.

Not swords, iron spikes that the bargemen drove into the rock across the road beneath a layer of snow. Each spike was a finger's length long, 200 spikes per bend. The fourth section. Sailor's mountain rangers were heading off in pairs onto the side trails. Trick walked with them, and his face was no longer that of a cowardly heir. It was the face of a man doing what he did best. On the 13th day, lookout spotted a column of dust on the southern plain. 3,000 soldiers under the governor's banner were marching toward the pass.

Dah led the legion in a column of four with the supply train bringing up the rear. Imperial discipline, a steady march. Their armor glinted in the winter sun. Kairen watched from the highest point of the Serpentine Road and counted 3,000 infantry, 400 cavalry, no siege engines. So Dah hadn't expected a fortress. He'd expected a ruin with a and three damned maidens. The first night went according to plan. Kan's men had cut the harnesses from 30 pack horses. 200 sacks of flour lay in the snow by dawn.

Dah awoke to the reports, and the face that Kirn saw in his silver vision from a distance of 400 paces was that of a man recognizing a familiar hand. Dah remembered the northern spire. He remembered the miracle he could not explain, and he was afraid. Fear drove him to make a mistake. Instead of sending out a reconnaissance party ahead, he ordered the march to be accelerated. 3,000 men nearly ran toward the first bend and crashed into the sheet of ice.

The front ranks fell. Those behind pressed forward. Horses slipped and winnied. 20 minutes of chaos on the ice until the officers stopped the stampede. Dah ordered them to chop the ice. The soldiers chopped at it for 4 hours because era lay higher up the slope and was freezing new layers faster than they could chop away the old ones. By evening, Dah led his men back and set up camp. But a camp missing a third of its supplies, exposed to the mountain wind, is no rest.

It's a slow freeze. The second night cost him another 17 horses. The Kunoff loggers worked like ghosts. During the day, Dah left the cavalry behind and ordered the infantry to climb in marching formation. They made it through the first bend on the bare ice, clinging to the rocks. At the second, they were met by a rockfall. Sailor's mountain archers had pushed boulders prepared in advance off the ledge. It wasn't a deadly avalanche.

The road was blocked, and clearing it took half a day. Doll sent a hundred men to bypass the blockage via a goat trail. Two of Cleric's archers were waiting on the ridge. They didn't shoot at the men. They shot at the rocks above the trail. The trail crumbled, and the hundred returned empty-handed, having lost eight men in the crevices. The legion reached the third bend on the fifth day. Not on the third day, as Kairen had planned, but on the fifth, because Dah had grown cautious. 3,000 had dwindled to 2,600.

He left 400 men below with the wounded and the remnants of the supply train. Those who made it up the mountain were angry, frozen, and hungry. At the third bend stood an icy wall, three men tall. Behind the wall stood the Marin bargemen with their axes and Kirn with a golden light in his palms. Dah ordered them to ram the wall. The soldiers pounded the ice with iron for 3 hours. Kirn listened to the blows and froze the wall from the inside.

When a crack finally appeared, he retreated to the fourth bend and erected a new wall within 40 heartbeats. Dah stood before yet another wall of ice, and Kairen saw the moment when the inspector's resolve broke. Dah shouted at the officers. His voice cracked. 5 days for an ascent he'd planned to complete in one. Half the supplies were lost. A quarter of the men were incapacitated by the cold and rocks. and there were still four bends ahead.

Kairen had been waiting for this very moment. He stepped onto the wall and offered to talk to Dah. Dah agreed to the conversation because he had no other choice that wouldn't mean disgrace. Kairen climbed down from the wall alone. Doll came out of formation alone. They stood between the icy wall and the frozen Legion, five paces apart. Doll looked different than when they first met. His gaunt face was weatherbeaten and darkened.

His eyes were sunken. He looked at Kairen and Kairen could see that the inspector turned governor no longer believed he was facing a Dah said that Kirn could hold the pass for another week or two, but sooner or later the Legion would get through. Kairen replied that he could hold the pass until spring. He said that every day of defense cost him a handful of ice while it cost the legion 40 sacks of grain. He said the math was on his side.

Dah said that if the legion didn't return, Kaser would send a second one. Kairen replied that the second legion would have to go through the same pass and through the same seven turns and across the same ice. He said that Doll could choose. lose the legion here and bring defeat to Casser or withdraw the legion and bring Casser a deal. Dah asked what kind of deal. Kairen pulled a scroll from his belt. He had been preparing this document for 10 days.

The scroll read as follows. The northern provinces declare themselves a special trade zone under the administration of the council of the northern spire. The council consists of four houses and a governor. Taxes to the imperial treasury are to be paid in full. The tribute to the third prince Casser is abolished. The governor is to be appointed not by the capital but by the council and the council appoints reven as the first governor.

Dah read the scroll for a long time. Then he looked up. In the minute it took him to read it, his face went through so many expressions that Kairen could have described each one. Surprise, distrust, calculation, fear, and finally greed. The very same greed that had driven Garrett. Dah asked why Kairen needed a governor who had just tried to kill him. Kairen replied that he needed a governor who knew how the capital worked and a governor whom the capital would not forgive for failure.

Dah was bound to the north more tightly than any rope because returning in defeat meant death, but remaining governor meant life and power. Dah was silent. The wind howled on the pass. 200 paces below stood 2 and a half thousand frozen angry soldiers awaiting orders. Dah asked what would happen to the soldiers. Kairen replied that the legion would become the pass's garrison. The soldiers wouldn't have to storm the walls.

They would live behind the walls. Warm barracks, hot meals, pay from northern trade. Better conditions than in the capital. Dal said that Casar wouldn't accept this deal. Kairen replied that Casar wasn't supposed to accept it. Casar had to see that the North was no longer his. That the Legion had voluntarily defected to the North. That retaking four provinces in winter via a single pass is more costly than leaving them.

He said that Casar would do the math and decide it's easier to wait until summer. And in the summer, Kirn would give him new reasons to wait. And so it would go time and again until waiting became a habit and the habit became a fact. Dal rolled up the scroll. He said one word. Agreed. That evening, the legion set up camp at the foot of the northern spire, not as besieures, but as a garrison. >> [snorts] >> The soldiers were given hot porridge from the village's supplies and placed on the council's rations.

The legion's commanders swore an oath to Dal as governor, not as Casar's puppet. Three officers refused. Dal offered them safe passage south, and the three of them set off along the frozen road. Kairen knew they would reach Casar in 2 weeks. two weeks to consolidate the new order. But establishing order requires more than just walls and swords. It requires people who believe that order will endure. Kairen convened the first council of the Northern Spire 3 days later.

Seated in the dining hall, which had already become cramped, were Garrett Torven and his son Bran. Will Kregan was the only one who had come without an entourage. Cidra Marin was there with two senior barge masters. Trick Sila sat upright in his chair, no longer resembling a frightened heir. Revend wore a new cloak tailored for him from the spire's stores and the three princesses. Ara sat to Kirn's right, and the frost on her fingers no longer frightened anyone in the hall, because everyone there had seen what that frost did to enemies.

Nery sat to his left with the book of death, which she no longer hid. Sapphira sat silently at the end of the table. Kairen spoke briefly. He said that the council was not an alliance against anyone. The council was about trade, protection, and the law for the northern lands. He said that the tribute to Casar went into the pocket of a single prince, while the council's taxes would go toward roads, outposts, forges, and shipyards.

He laid out the figures he had prepared together with Grson. Gren had proven to be a brilliant treasurer once he was entrusted with a task larger than managing a crumbling estate. The figures were simple. The four houses paid Kaser a total amount sufficient to maintain three legions. The council takes half of this sum as a general tax. The rest remains with the houses. Each house's wealth would double. Garrett counted on his fingers and his greed once again overcame his caution.

Vil nodded without counting because the words free pass were enough for him. Cidra nodded because her shipyard was already operating year round. Tariq nodded because his father had eaten on his own that morning and asked for seconds. Dah nodded because he had no choice. The council was established. Kirn was the last to sign the charter and set down his quill. Nery looked at him and said quietly that now the hardest part would begin.

Kairen nodded. He knew. The four houses stood together out of self-interest. The Legion remained out of desperation. The first blow of real force would expose every crack in this alliance. And that blow was closer than he thought. Sapphira came to him that night. She sat on the edge of his desk and remained silent until he looked up. She said that at the council, she was the only one who had been sitting idly by. Ara holds the ice.

Nery holds the knowledge. She holds nothing. Kairen began to speak, but she cut him off by raising her hand. A tiny golden spark glowed in her palm, dime, uneven, flickering, but alive. She said that ever since the dragon had left her, a void had remained within her body. A void that achd. She didn't complain because complaining was pointless. But three nights ago, the void began to fill itself. The spark appeared out of nowhere, small but brighter with each passing day.

Kairen took her hand and looked at it with his silver vision. Inside Sapphira's body, where the dragon's second soul had lived, something like an imprint remained. A hollow shaped like a flame. And this hollow was slowly filling with a new power. Not a dragon's her own. Like a riverbed filling with water after the river has receded. The water is different, but the riverbed remembers its shape. Kairen didn't yet know what kind of power this was.

Sapphira didn't know either, but the spark was growing, and that changed everything. Kairen gave the council 7 days to set up the garrison. Dalha soldiers were given warm barracks in the expanded eastern wing. The blacksmiths of Torven sent a second batch of blades and Kairen armed every soldier in the garrison with a double-tempered sword. Dah commanded with discipline and Kirn watched over him with his silver vision every evening.

Doll's thread remained unchanged. Poison in six years at the hands of Kaser. As long as this thread led to Kaser, Dah was bound to the north more tightly than chains. On the eighth day, a messenger arrived on horseback from Tak Sa. A mountain patrol had intercepted a small group on the Western Trail. Not soldiers, not merchants. Four men in traveling cloaks bearing the seals of the Gray Scales Guild. Kairen knew that name from books.

The gray scales were not a guild, but a network of informants that the capital's houses used for covert operations. Murder, blackmail, theft of documents. If Kaser had sent the scales, it meant he no longer believed in open force and had resorted to a knife in the back. The four were brought to the spire. Kirn interrogated the first one himself. The man remained silent. Kairen activated his silver vision and looked at his thread.

The thread led to death by strangulation in two years. Kairen described his own death to him in detail. A room, a rope, the color of the walls. The man turned pale. He began to speak. The quartet of gray scales had two assignments. The first to poison the wells in three villages around. the second to kidnap one of the princesses and deliver her alive to the capital. Which one exactly was to be decided on the spot? Kairen asked who the client was.

The man replied that the contract had passed through three intermediaries, but the seal on the advanced payment was that of the third prince's chancellory. Kairen handed the four over to Dah. Dah interrogated them again according to imperial procedure and drew up a report. He did so with the expression of a man who understands that every such report is yet another brick in the wall between him and the capital. Nery read the report and said that the second assignment was more dangerous than the first.

Kaser wants to bring back one of the princesses alive. That means he doesn't want her dead. He wants her as a tool. The Emperor's healed daughter with a claim to the throne is a weapon that can be directed anywhere. Kirn nodded. He had understood this long ago. The three princesses aren't just his wives. The three princesses are three claims to the throne. That is precisely why the emperor sealed them away rather than killing them.

A dead Ays creates martyrs. One who is alive but cursed poses no danger. One who is alive and healed is three times as dangerous. Kairen summoned the sisters to a war council and for the first time spoke to them not of defense but of offense. He said that Casser would not stop. New scales would arrive every week. New spies, new attempts to break up the council from within. We cannot defend ourselves forever. We must give Casser a problem bigger than the north.

A problem that will force him to look not at the pass, but over his own shoulder. Nery took out the book of deaths. She said she remembered the threads of the 12 members of the Imperial Council. Four of them would die at the hands of Casser's men in the coming years. This meant that Casser was already planning a purge of the council. If these four learned of their fate before Casser struck, they would become his enemies.

Kairen looked at his wife with an expression that Vorggan later described as the look of a man who had found a second blade where he had been searching for a stone. He said that Nery had just turned the book of deaths into the Empire's most powerful weapon. Knowledge of future murders is not mere information. It is leverage. Any dignitary shown his own death at Casser's hands would become an ally, not out of self-interest, but out of sheer terror.

Nery said that to achieve this, the information had to be delivered to the capital in person. They wouldn't believe a letter. They needed someone who would sit across from a dignitary and describe his death in such detail that no doubt would remain. Kairen looked at Doll. Dah understood without words. He turned pale and said that returning to the capital would mean certain death for him. Kairen replied that returning as the rebels governor meant certain death, but returning as a man bearing evidence to the four council members of Casser's conspiracy against them was an entirely different matter.

Dah asked what evidence there was besides the Sears words. Kairen placed the gray scales interrogation transcripts on the table bearing the seal of Casser's chancellory. He placed the guard's order bearing the imprint of the great seal proving that the curses had been imposed by the emperor. And he placed the book of deaths, three documents, three blows. Casser is persecuting the dignitaries. The emperor maimed his own daughters.

And the seer knows who will die next. Dah took the documents and his hands trembled, not out of fear, but because he was a professional and had seen how this scheme worked. He said that with this they could overturn the council in a single session. Kairen replied that there was no need to overturn the council. All they needed to do was crack it. The crack would spread on its own. Doll left two days later with a small entourage of five soldiers disguised as merchants.

Kairen watched him ride off over the pass and thought about the fact that he had sent to the capital a man controlled only by fear. Fear of Casar and fear of the Silvervision. Two leashes, thin but strong. While Doll was riding south, Sapphira came to Chairen in the courtyard where he was training the bargemen. She asked for a moment. Then she raised both hands. The spark that a week ago had been a dim point on her palm now burned with an even golden flame enveloping both her hands up to her wrists.

But this was not a dragon's flame. Kirn could feel the difference with every fiber of his being. A dragon's fire was destruction. Sapphire's flame was something else entirely. She placed her hand on the wall of the spire. The stone beneath her palm glowed, and the crack running through the masonry closed. The stone dust fused back into a monolith. She removed her hand. The wall where she had touched it was stronger than the new masonry.

The Bargeik stopped training and watched. One of them poked the wall with the handle of his axe and pulled his hand back because the handle cracked. Sapphira looked at her palms with the expression of someone who had been in empty space for 10 years and suddenly realized that the space wasn't empty but full of life. She said she could repair things, stone, wood, iron. She tried it on a broken chair and it became stronger than a new one.

She tried it on a cracked sword and the crack disappeared. Kairen thought about this all evening. The dragon destroyed. The dragon's imprint restored. Like negative and positive, like inhaling and exhaling. For 10 years, the dragon's soul had been breaking Sapphira's body every night. Her body had memorized the destruction and developed a response. A power that does the opposite. The power of restoration. Not healing the living, but repairing the inanimate. stone, iron, wood, walls, weapons, fortifications.

Kairen realized he had gained a fourth power for his arsenal. Not within himself, in an ally. Sapphira was no longer an empty seat on the council. She was a master who could transform a stone ruin into an impregnable fortress with a single touch. And the northern spire, which had been crumbling for 9 years, suddenly gained a builder who needed neither stone, nor mortar, nor time. All she had to do was lay a hand on it.

For 3 days, Sapphira walked through the spire, repairing everything. The sequence of those days looked like the destruction being rewound in reverse. First cut. She touches the foundation of the eastern wall and a 20-year-old crack closes with a sound like a sigh. Second cut. She runs her palm over the gate and the wood swells and hardens and the hinges that had creaked for 10 years fall silent. Third cut. She picks up the shield that the bargeman was about to throw away.

And in her hands, the shield becomes a monolith. The bargeman strikes it with an axe and the axe bounces off. Fourth cut. The wargan stands on the restored wall and touches a stone that an hour ago was crumbling beneath his fingers. He looks down at Sapphire and his face is that of an old soldier who has served in a dozen fortresses and has never seen a fortress grow younger. Northern Spire is no longer a dilapidated exile's ruin.

It has become what it was built to be 200 years ago, a fortress on a cliff that could be held by a hundred against thousands. 18 days after Doll's departure, his messenger returned. Not D himself, but a boy on a worn out horse carrying a sealed letter. Kairen broke the seal and read it while standing by the window. Nery stood beside him and read over his shoulder. Dah wrote that he had met with two of the four dignitaries.

Both believed him. Both were terrified. One immediately moved his family out of the capital. The other began gathering evidence against Casser. But Dah wrote something else as well. Casser had learned of the legion's loss. Not from the three officers who had left. They never made it to the capital. They were found dead on the southern road. Casser learned from the grayscales, whose network extended deeper than Chairen had thought.

Casser declared the northern provinces rebellious and received the emperor's authorization to suppress them. Dah wrote that two full legions were marching out of the capital. 6,000 soldiers with siege engines led by Senior General Iban Colt, whom the army nicknamed the Nail for his habit of driving fortresses into the ground. The two legions would reach the pass in a month. Kairen finished reading the letter and handed it to Nery.

Nery read it again and said quietly that a month wasn't enough time for what needed to be done. Kairen replied that a month hadn't been enough last time either. Then he turned to the map. He needed to find a way to stop 6,000 men, and he already knew that the ice and rocks at the pass wouldn't work a second time. General Gavosdi wasn't an inspector who'd become a governor. General Gavosdi had been breaching fortresses his entire life.

For him, Northern Spire was just another nail. Kairen stood over the map and did the math. 6,000 soldiers, siege engines, a general who wouldn't stop. One month. He wasn't counting people. He was counting time. Time was the only resource that could not be forged or frozen. He convened the council that very evening. The same faces sat around the table, but their expressions were different. Garrett Torven was silent, his greed hidden behind caution.

Willen was biting his nail. Sid Marin sat upright, but her bargemen outside the door were already packing. Tariq Sailor was the only one who hadn't changed because he'd been expecting the worst from the very beginning, and the worst had finally come. Kirn made no attempt to reassure them. He said that General Nail had taken 11 fortresses in 20 years, and that Northspire would be the 12th if they defended it the same way they had last time.

The pass wouldn't hold against 6,000 with siege towers. Gavdi would set the ice at the bends ablaze with oil. The engineering corps would dismantle the rockfalls. The ice walls would be breached by battering rams. Garrett asked what Kairen was proposing. Kairen replied that he was proposing not to defend. He was proposing to attack. The silence in the refactory was such that one could hear Era breathing in the night air outside the window, and the air itself seemed to freeze.

Kirn unfolded the map on which Nery had marked the legion's route. Two legions were marching from the capital in parallel along the southern road. In a week, they would join forces at the gates of Highland, where the southern road enters the mountains. From there, it would be a single march to the pass. Kirn pointed his finger at the gates of Highland. He said that this was the point where the two legions had not yet become one.

If they struck one of them before they joined forces, 6,000 would become 3,000, and they had already stopped 3,000 on the mountain road. Will raised his head. His eyes lit up because Kregan's lumberjacks fought in the forest rather than behind walls and an attack was closer to their hearts than a siege. He asked how many men were needed. Kairen replied that few men were needed. All that was needed was one night and a plan was as follows.

The gates of Highland are a gorge 600 paces long. The southern road runs along the bottom of the gorge. The walls are sheer. When the First Legion enters the gorge, Ira will seal both entrances with walls of ice. 3,000 men will find themselves trapped in a stone bag, without supplies, with no way out. Out in the freezing cold. No battle, a trap. The Wargan said he liked it, but he asked how to get A to the gates unnoticed. 12 days journey through the mountains in winter.

Kairen replied that there was a shorter route, the mountain trails of SA. Tar knows a route that runs along the ridge and descends to the gates in 6 days. Tar didn't argue or refuse. He stood up and said he would lead the way himself. Kairen assigned the roles. Tar with 10 mountain archers leads Ara to the gates. Villain with 30 lumberjacks leads the second detachment down the slope to cut off the first legion's supply train.

Kirn goes with TK because without him, Ara won't have enough power to seal off the entire gorge. His own ice combined with hers creates a wall that no battering ram can breach. Nery remains in spile and commands the defense alongside Wargan and Dalch in case the second legion strikes first. Sapphira remains behind and fortifies the walls to the limit. The detachment's departure is scheduled for 2 days from now. Kairen did not spend this evening playing cards.

He spent it with his three wives in the dining hall over dinner. It was a quiet evening. A sat next to him, holding his hand. Her fingers were cool, but not icy. Nery ate soup and recounted how Grossen had dropped a barrel of honey on the cat that morning, and the cat still hadn't forgiven him. Sapphira repaired a cracked bench with a single touch and boasted that yesterday she had fixed the bridge over the stream outside the gates.

Kairen listened and took it all in. He didn't know if he'd return. His silver sight wouldn't show him his own thread. The gift didn't work on its owner. The only one who could see his death was Nery, and the gift had left her. She could catch glimpses of others threads nearby, but his thread was no longer visible to her. He was walking blindly. At dawn on the third day, the detachment set out through the western gate. 22 people, 10 archers, A in a fur cloak, Trick in the lead, Kirn in the middle of the column.

The mountain trail was as narrow as a knife's edge, and the wind on the ridge knocked them off their feet. Trick walked with confidence. He knew every rock and every crevice. His archers moved through the mountains as if they'd been born there. Kairen looked at Trick and saw a transformation that had been completed somewhere between their first meeting and this march. The cowardly heir had become a commander on his own turf.

The six days of the march were grueling. The montage of those days was not heroic, but agonizing. First scene, they spent the night in a rocky crevice that could fit six people, while the rest slept standing up, leaning against the rock. Second scene, crossing an icy ridge where one archer slipped and hung from a rope over the abyss until Kairen pulled him up with one hand because his other hand had frozen to the rock.

Third scene. During a rest stop, A warmed water for the entire squad, drawing the cold from the pot into herself with a touch. The archers looked at her not as a cursed princess, but as a comrade. Fourth scene. The descent to the gates of Highland at dawn on the sixth day. The gorge lay below, dark and empty. The first legion was two days march away. They had made it in time. Kairen deployed his men. Terra's archers took up positions on the upper edges of the gorge.

Villain and the lumberjacks approached from below and took cover in the forest near the southern entrance. A and Chirn stood at the northern entrance to the gorge where the walls were highest and they waited. The wait lasted 31 hours. At dawn on the eighth day, dust rose on the southern road. General Guvo's first legion was entering the gates of Highland in columns of four. Kairen counted the ranks. 3,100. Cavalry in the front, infantry in the middle.

The supply train brought up the rear outside the gorge. When the last row of infantry entered the gorge, and the supply train had not yet entered, Kirn gave the signal. A struck. The southern entrance to the gorge closed with an icy wall stretching from wall to wall in eight heartbeats. Chairen struck from the north. His ice was rougher than Az, but thicker. The northern entrance closed in 12 heartbeats. 3,000 men trapped in a stone bag.

The legion's cry struck the gorge's walls and echoed back. The supply train, cut off from the Legion, found itself face to face with 30 of Villain's lumberjacks, who emerged silently from the forest and stood between the wagons and the wall. The wagon drivers did not fight. They dropped their reigns and sat down in the snow. Villain took the wagon train without a single blow. Inside the gorge, the legion battered against the ice.

Kirn heard the blows of the battering rams and the cracking sounds. He was freezing the wall solid, preventing it from thinning. Arrow was doing the same from the south. They held the pass for 6 hours. By noon, the blows had grown less frequent. By evening, they had ceased. 3,000 men in the freezing cold, without food, without fire, and with no way out. Kirn climbed to the ridge and shouted down. He offered the legion commander the same choice he'd given Dalhoo.

Surrender their weapons or be granted safe passage south without armor or freezing to death. The legion commander was a colonel named Garin. He shouted back that General Gavosdi was a day's march away with the second legion and that the ice would break in a day. Kirn replied that in a day half his men would suffer frostbitees so severe they wouldn't be able to hold a sword and that when General Gavosdi arrived he would find not a legion but a hospital ward.

Garin remained silent until midnight. Then he gave in. By morning 3,000 unarmed soldiers were marching south along the road. They carried the frostbitten on stretchers. They had left 3,000 sets of armor and weapons at the bottom of the gorge. Villain counted the spoils, and his face was that of a man who had struck gold. Kairen did not celebrate. General Gavo with the second legion was a day's march away. 3,000 fresh soldiers with siege engines.

And now Gavo knew that what lay ahead was not a ruin, but a trap. General Gavo did not enter the gorge. Kairen watched from the ridge as the second legion set up camp a mile from the southern entrance to the gates of Highland. The camp was built according to all the rules of imperial fortification. A moat, a palisade, and sentry posts on all high ground. Gavdi knew what awaited him and prepared not for an assault but for a siege.

In fact, the opposite. He had trapped the hunters in their own trap. The gorge was the only way back north. Trick could lead his men along the mountain trails, but Era wouldn't be able to make the return trip quickly. 6 days to get here. 6 days ago. 12 days in which Gvos would find a detour to Shiel, Kairen thought as he sat on a rock, the wind blowing in his face. His silver vision showed him the threads of 3,000 people in the camp below.

A whole forest of threads stretching toward different deaths in different places. Kairen was looking for one, General Guvosh's thread. He found it in a large tent in the center of the camp. The general was a large man who ate his supper standing up because 20 years of campaigning had ingrained in him the habit of never sitting down when the enemy was nearby. His thread led to death from old age in 14 years. No violence, no poison.

General was destined to die in his bed. Kairen took note of this. A man whom war cannot kill is a man with whom one can talk. But first, he had to show the general that negotiation was more advantageous than an assault. Kirn decided to act at night. He took only Trick and two archers with him. He left Ara at the northern entrance to maintain the ice wall. The four of them descended the western wall of the gorge, circled around the camp, and approached the general's tent from the rear.

The mountain archer silently took out the two centuries. Trick handled his knife so quietly that Kirn finally understood why the Salahis had controlled the mountain outposts for 10 generations. Not because they were brave, because they were invisible. Kirn entered the general's tent alone. Gvoj stood over a map with a cup of tea and made no move for his weapon. He looked at the man who had entered and said he'd been expecting this.

He said that a commander who had trapped an entire legion in the gorge without a single casualty would not just sit and wait. He said he was listening. Kairen sat down without being invited. He said he hadn't come to bargain. Bargaining was for Dah because Dah was an official. Gos was a soldier. A soldier needs facts. Kairen gave him three facts. Fact number one, he unfolded the guardians order bearing the great seal and described the document to the general.

The emperor had deliberately cursed his own daughters. Gvoj read it slowly. His expression didn't change, but the cup in his hand stopped halfway to his mouth and didn't move for the rest of the conversation. Fact number two, Kairen recounted the contents of the book of deaths. Four members of the Imperial Council whom Kaser would kill in the coming years. Two had already been warned and were gathering evidence. Gosdi knew all four personally.

One of them was his former commander. Fact number three. Kirn opened his silver vision and described to the general his own death in 14 years in bed in a house by the southern sea with a wife who would outlive him by 7 years. Kavosdi sat down his cup. For the first time during the conversation, his hand trembled. He asked how Kirn knew about the house by the southern sea. Kairen said he had bought it 3 years ago in secret under a false name so he could retire there once he'd served out his time.

No one knew about this except his wife. Kairen replied that a vision doesn't ask for permission. He said the general would die an old man in comfort if he lived that long. And he'll only live that long if he doesn't go to war with the man who knows the date of his death and can change it. It was a threat. but a threat cloaked as a promise. Kirn wasn't threatening murder. He was threatening to alter that quiet, peaceful thread that led to the house by the sea.

He said that war changes the threads. Every decision shifts the date and the manner. Cavosdi is standing at a fork in the road right now. One path leads to the house by the sea. The other leads to a nameless grave on the pass. Kairen didn't know if this was true. He couldn't see the alternative threads. He could see only the current one. But Nail didn't know how the gift worked and the threat was real to him. The general was silent for 4 minutes.

Kirn counted the seconds. Then Gavvost asked what Kairen wanted. Kairen replied that he wanted the same thing he'd proposed to Dalhoo. The legion would remain in the south near the gates and not enter the mountains. The general would write to the capital that the pass was impassible in winter and that the assault was postponed until spring. By spring, Kairen would give him reasons for the next postponement. Gavosi said that Kaser would not accept a postponement.

Kairen replied that Kaser had no time for postponements right now. Two members of the council were already undermining him. Evidence of his conspiracies against the dignitaries was spreading throughout the capital. By spring, Kaser would be preoccupied with surviving at court rather than with the mountain pass. Gavvos looked at him for a long time. Then he said that Kirn was either a genius or a madman, and that the difference between the two was only apparent in hindsight.

He said he would not attack the pass until spring, but not out of fear, out of calculation. He said that if Casser fell by spring, the general would recognize the council of the Northern Spire. If Casser held out, the general would carry out the order. Kairen accepted the terms. He shook the general's hand and stepped out of the tent into the night. The return journey took 7 days. Trick led the detachment along the northern ridge, and this time they carried Era on a stretcher for the last two days because she had exhausted herself supporting the ice wall.

Kairen carried her himself for the last 3 hours, and his hands glowed gold with the strain. When they entered the gates of Shil, Nery ran out to meet them. She did not embrace Kairen. She grabbed him by the shoulders and said that while he had been in the mountains, news had arrived from the capital. Dah had done more than was expected of him. The two dignitaries he had warned had demanded an open investigation against Casser.

The Imperial Council was split. Six votes in favor of the investigation, five against, one abstension. Casser publicly accused the dignitaries of treason and demanded their arrest. The emperor remained silent. The emperor's silence was the most terrifying sign of all because silence meant he did not support Casser for the first time in 20 years. Nery said there was something else. In his last letter, Dolch wrote that talk of the Aeryses had begun at court.

Three healed princesses with claims to the throne. The court had remembered that they existed and that they were married to a man who controlled the northern pass and two legions. Winter was drawing to a close. The snow on the path had settled to a depth of two elbows. The days were growing longer and the air smelled of dampness. Kirn made use of every day. Sapphira fortified the spire to a state that Vorggan called absurd.

The walls became a monolith without a single seam. The gates would withstand a battering ram for a full day. She visited all five villages, repairing houses, bridges, and wells. The peasants, who a year ago had no idea that exiled princesses lived on the cliff, now called Sapphira goldenhanded and brought her broken plows. Kairen watched this and thought that Sapphira had found her place in the Alliance, more precisely, the place that suited her best.

Ara was the shield. Nery was intelligence. Sapphira had become the foundation. She wasn't building a fortress. She was building loyalty. News from the capital came in. Each report more alarming than the last. Dah wrote that the investigation against Casar was gaining momentum. Two dignitaries had presented evidence to the council that Casar had been secretly diverting imperial taxes into his own coffers. The evidence was genuine and had nothing to do with the book of deaths.

Dah had simply shown the dignitaries where to dig, and they knew how to dig on their own. Casar was losing ground. His supporters on the council were distancing themselves from him one by one. Three had openly sided with the investigation, but Casar was neither a fool nor a coward. He struck back with a move that Kairen had not anticipated. A messenger arrived from the capital toward the end of the third week of spring.

He brought not a letter, but a decree, an imperial decree bearing the full imperial seal. The decree stated that the three princesses of the imperial house were to be summoned to the capital to participate in the succession ceremony. The emperor was old and ill. The council had demanded that an heir be designated. According to imperial law, all of the emperor's children had the right to participate in the ceremony, including his daughters.

Casar could not block this demand because he himself had insisted on the ceremony, hoping to become the sole candidate. But now the three healed sisters had the right to stand beside him before the throne. Kirn read the decree and set it aside. He understood the trap. If the sisters travel to the capital, they would find themselves on Casar's territory. If they did not go, they would forfeit their rights to the throne and remain northern exiles forever.

He gathered the sisters in the refactory and placed the decree on the table. Era read it first. She said she would not go. She said that the capital was the place where she had been put in chains at the age of six, and that she would sooner freeze the pass shut forever than return. Nery read it second. She said they had to go. She said that if they didn't go, Casar would become emperor in a month and the new emperor's first decree would be the destruction of the north.

Sapphira read the last one. She was silent for a long time. Then she raised her hands and the golden flame on her palms was brighter than ever before. She said she would go and that the capital should take a good look at her golden hands. Kirn made his decision that very night. They would go, all four of them. But they would not go as supplicants. They would go as a force. He summoned Grosen and ordered him to organize a convoy.

Preparations for the journey took a week. Kairen left Vorgan in command of the spire. Tariq Sila remained at the mountain outposts. Villain Kregan took charge of the mountain pass. Garrett Thorin sent Bran with 50 swordsmen in the finest double-tempered armor to serve as an escort. Cidra Marin sent 20 bargemen dressed in the livery of House Marin. The convoy assembled at the gates of Shpiel at dawn. Three carriages, 70 armed men, the flag of the Northern Spy Council, which Nery had painted herself.

Three crowns on an icy rock. Ada was the last to climb into the carriage. She turned to look at the walls of the spire and said quietly that this was the first home where people weren't afraid of her. Kairen sat down beside her and said they would return. The journey to the capital took 14 days. The procession passed through the gates of Highland where General Guvo personally came out to the road. He looked at the carriages at the armed escort and at Chairen on horseback beside the first carriage.

Gvo saluted not to Chairen, to the council's flag. It was a gesture that spoke louder than words. The general had chosen a side before spring decided the outcome. Kairen responded with a brief nod, and the procession passed. At the entrance to the capital, Dah met them. He had grown even thinner, and dark circles from sleepless nights lay beneath his eyes. He explained that this was the situation. Kasar controlled the palace guard, 2,000 men within the palace walls.

But the council is divided and half the dignitaries are on the side of the investigation. The emperor won't get out of bed and makes decisions through the first chancellor. The first chancellor, whose name was Tonin Rice, was one of the four whose deaths Nery had witnessed at Kaser's hands. He had been warned and he was angry. Dah said that Tunnan was ready to open the palace gates for the princesses if Kairen guaranteed his safety after the ceremony.

Kairen replied that he would guarantee it. He opened his silver vision and looked at Doll. The viceroyy's thread had changed. The poison would vanish in six years. The new thread led to death by old age in 23 years. Dah had made the right choice and fate had recalculated his end. Kairen told him this. Dah listened and for the first time in months his haggarded face formed something resembling a smile. The capital came into view around a bend in the road.

White walls, golden domes, flags on every tower. Ada looked out the carriage window and her fingers were covered in frost. Not from a curse, from memory. Nery sat with her eyes closed, breathing steadily. Sapphira pressed her palms against the carriage's wooden sides, and the wood glowed beneath her fingers. They entered the capital through the western gates under the gaze of thousands. The crowd was silent. The three princesses, whom people had believed dead or mad for 10 years, were returning home.

The palace was enormous. Kairen walked through its corridors, counting the guards at every turn, 12 at the main gates, eight at the throne room, six at the emperor's chambers. All wore the colors of the third prince. Kasar held the palace as a commander holds a fortress. Chancellor Tunnin met them in the small reception hall. He was a heavy set man with heavy eyelids and hands accustomed to signing death warrants. He looked at the three princesses and his eyelids fluttered.

He said the last time he'd seen them, Ada was 10 and Sapphira was seven. He said he remembered the day they were taken away. He said he hadn't stopped it and that he wasn't asking for forgiveness because forgiveness is worth nothing from a man who could have acted but did not. Ada looked at him. No frost appeared on her fingers. She simply looked at him. That turned out to be enough. Tonin looked away first. The succession ceremony is scheduled for tomorrow.

By law, all heirs must appear before the council and the throne room. The emperor personally announces the candidates. The council votes. The majority decides. Kairen asked Tunnin how many votes Kaser had. Tonin replied that of the 12 council members, six were in favor of the investigation and five remained loyal to Kusser. One abstained. This meant that if all six voted against Kusser, he would need the abstaining member's vote to lose.

The one who abstained was the old Marshall Ilanar, who hadn't taken anyone's side in 20 years and was proud of it. Kairen asked if he could see the emperor before the ceremony. Tunnin replied that the emperor was not receiving anyone except his personal healer. Kairen nodded and a plan took shape in his mind, though he chose not to voice it. But the night before the ceremony was quiet, too quiet. Kairen couldn't sleep.

He sat by the window and gazed at the palace with his silver vision. Strings of guards flickered behind the walls. Everything was calm and that was wrong. Kaser knew the sisters were in the capital. He knew the council was divided. He knew that tomorrow his power would come under attack and he was doing nothing. The silence was not peace but a taut bowring. An hour before dawn, Nery knocked on his door. She said she couldn't sleep because the remnants of her gift were pulsing.

She said she was catching fragments of threads through the walls, weak and blurry. But one thread caught her attention. A short thread leading to death in a few hours. The emperor's thread. Kairen jumped up. He activated his silver vision at full power and looked through the palace walls toward the imperial chambers. He saw the thread. The emperor's thread led to death by poison before noon before the ceremony. Kaser had no intention of waiting for the vote.

He intended to kill his father before the ceremony began. In the chaos of patraside, the law of succession would cease to apply. As the eldest son, Kasra would take the throne by right of blood without a vote. The three princesses, exiles who had just returned, would be unable to challenge the takeover if it happened quickly enough. Kairen had roused everyone, Ara, Nery, and Sapphira, along with Bran and Torven's swordsmen.

He said they had a few hours before Kaser killed the emperor. Bran asked if it wouldn't be easier to just let it happen. The emperor was a man who had cursed his own daughters. Why save him? Kairen replied with a single sentence. Kaser needs a dead emperor. We need a living emperor. They made their way through the palace until dawn. Bran and 30 swordsmen took up positions in the corridor leading to the throne room. Kairen along with Aah and Sapphira headed for the emperor's chambers.

Nery stayed with Douch at the council chamber doors to rouse the dignitaries ahead of schedule. Six of Kaser's guards stood watch at the chambers. Kairen said nothing. A placed her palms on the stone floor of the corridor. Ice spread across the stone and froze the guard's legs up to their ankles in the blink of an eye. While they struggled to break free, Kairen walked past them and pushed open the door. The emperor's bedroom was dark.

It smelled of medicine and old age. Lying on the bed was a man Kairen was seeing for the first time. Thin, salow, with his eyes closed. On the nightstand stood a cup of medicine. Kairen activated his silver vision and looked at the cup. The thread connecting the cup led to the emperor's thread and severed it. There was poison in the medicine. The healer whom Kaser had assigned to his father was slowly killing him and was supposed to administer the final dose today.

Kairen knocked the cup out of the healer's hands just as he was entering with a tray. The healer cried out and recoiled. Sapphira stepped between him and the door. The healer tried to flee. Sapphira placed her hand on the door frame and the wood grew into the frame, sealing the exit shut. The healer sat down on the floor and began to cry. He said that Kaser had threatened to kill his family if he refused. Kairen wasn't listening.

He stood over the emperor's bed, staring at the man who had cursed his three daughters. The emperor was 60, but he looked 80. The poison had been eating him from the inside for months. Kairen could have let him die. That would have been just. He looked at Ira. She stood in the doorway, staring at the father she hadn't seen in 10 years. Her face was stony. Her fingers were free of frost. She said quietly that she would not forgive him, but that he must live long enough to look her in the eye and explain why.

Kairen placed his hand on the emperor's chest and sent a thin thread of dragon's warmth into him. The same warmth that had sustained old Orin Sa. Not a cure, a reprieve. The warmth enveloped the poisoned organs and slowed their decay. The emperor's thread quivered and lengthened. Death by poison before noon had turned into death from old age in three years. The emperor opened his eyes, cloudy, faded eyes in which there was nothing imperial.

He saw Ara and his lips trembled. He whispered her name. A did not answer. She turned and left. The clang of swords echoed from the corridor. Kaser had struck. The clang of swords came from the throne room. Bran was holding the corridor with 30 of Torven's swordsmen clad in double hardened armor against 120 of Kaser's palace guards. The blades that Chairen had forged with dragonfire and ice hardening cut through Imperial steel like wood.

Wave after wave of guards crashed against Bran's defense, but the corridor was narrow and sheer numbers were of no use. Kirn ran through the palace with A and Sapphira. He heard the sound of footsteps behind him. Kaser had sent a second group toward the emperor's chambers. 40 soldiers in heavy armor marched down the corridor in tight formation. Kairen spun around. He raised his hand and ice shot up from wall to wall, blocking the passage in a matter of seconds.

The 40 men ran into the wall of ice and began hacking at it. Kirn knew the wall would hold for about 10 minutes. That was enough. They reached the throne room via a side corridor that Tunnan had pointed out. The hall was enormous. Black marble columns lined the room. The throne stood on a sevenstep deis. Kaser stood before the throne. The third prince was tall and broadshouldered. He wore battle armor over a ceremonial robe.

The seal of the chancellory glowed on his right hand. An imperial-made sword hung from his left side. 20 elite guards stood beside him. Kaser saw Chairen and his sisters and his face twisted with contempt and rage. He said that the had brought three freaks to his ceremony. He said it would be a brief visit. The doors of the throne room swung open from the other side. The council members entered. Tunnan led the way. Behind him were six supporters of the investigation.

Behind them were five of Kaser's supporters. Marshall Ilanar entered last. The old man walked with a cane, his face inscrable. Dah and Nery had managed to bring them in earlier. The hall filled with people, counselors, guards, bran swordsmen who had fought their way through from the corridor. Marren's bargemen, two forces facing each other with the throne room between them. Kaser shouted that he was summoning the guards and that the traitors would be executed.

Kairen did not shout. He stepped into the center of the hall and pulled two documents from his belt. He held them up so that everyone could see them. The first document, an order from the keeper of the seal, bearing the impression of the great state seal, proof that the emperor had personally ordered his daughters to be cursed. Kairen read the contents aloud, loud and clear, so that the entire hall could hear. He said that the three princesses had not been cursed by fate.

They had been betrayed by their own father who feared their power and turned their gift into torment. The hall fell silent. The second document, the interrogation transcript of the grayscales bearing the seal of the Kasar chancellory in order to poison the villages and abduct the princesses. Kairen recounted this as well. He added that this morning the emperor's healer had been captured while attempting to administer a final dose of poison to his majesty.

The healer had been appointed by Kaser. The poison had been supplied through Kaser's chancellory. Kaser turned pale. He stepped toward Kyen and his sword slid from its sheath. He said he would not listen to slander from a who had married the scum of his family. He swung his sword. Kairen did not move. Era stepped forward and raised her hand. Ice wrapped around Casser's blade and bound his hand at the wrist. Casser jerked but could not free himself, his face contorted.

He growled that Ero was a cursed creature and that her place was in chains. Safira approached him from the other side. She placed her palm on his breastplate. A golden flame touched the metal and the armor fused with his body. Casser howled. The armor didn't burn him. It simply could no longer be removed. Every strap, every rivet, every plate had fused with the metal into a single monolith. Casser stood in the middle of the throne room, bound by his own armor like a statue.

His 20 guards stared at the princesses, whom they had considered helpless outcasts for 10 years. Not a single one raised a sword. Nery entered the hall last. She walked straight toward the throne carrying a notebook. She stood before the council and began to speak. She wasn't repeating rumors. She was recounting what D had gathered over months of work in the capital. Names, dates, and sums. Evidence that Casser had been stealing from the treasury for 15 years.

That he had had undesirabs eliminated by others. that he had bribed judges and bought off generals. Neryes spoke without pause, and the hall listened because every word she uttered was backed by a document that Dah laid out on the council table, one after another. Tunnin put the matter to a vote. The removal of the third prince, Casser, from the line of succession. The vote was swift, six votes in favor. Three of Casser's five supporters had switched sides after seeing the evidence.

Two remained loyal. Marshall Ilanar was the last to rise. He leaned on his cane and looked at Casser in his fused armor. Then he looked at the three princesses standing shouldertosh shoulder, then at Kyen. He said that he hadn't voted for anyone in 20 years because he saw no future in anyone. He voted in favor. 10 to two. Casser was removed. He was led out of the hall in the armor that Safira had only melted back down once the escort had brought him to the prison tower.

The hall emptied slowly. The counselors dispersed, whispering among themselves. Tonin lingered. He approached Kyen and asked what would happen next. Kairen replied that next they needed to see the emperor. An hour later, they were led to the bedside of the father of the three princesses. The emperor was conscious, weak, but conscious. He looked at Kirn for a long time, then asked for his daughters to be brought in. A entered first.

She stood by the bed and didn't say a word. The emperor spoke first. He spoke softly and his voice broke. He said he was afraid of them, that their bloodlines gave rise to a power capable of destroying the throne, and that he had chosen the throne. He said it was not the father, but the sovereign, and that the sovereign had made a decision his father would never forgive himself for. A listened. Then she said she would not accept his apology.

She said she would accept his abdication. The emperor closed his eyes. Then he nodded. The abdication document was drawn up by evening. The emperor signed it in the presence of the council. The question of succession arose immediately. Tonin asked which of the three princesses would take the throne.