Assassin’s Fate

He is your enemy just as much as the others are. If an opportunity arises, you must kill him, just as you would any of them. If any of them come to touch you, you must bite and kick and scratch as much as you are able.

I hurt all over. I have no strength. If I try to defend myself, they will beat me.

Even if you do only a little damage, they will learn that touching you has a price. Some will not be willing to pay it.

I do not think I can bite or kill Vindeliar. Dwalia, I could kill. But the others …

They are her tools, her teeth and claws. In your situation, you cannot afford to be merciful. Keep chewing on your bonds. I will tell you of my days as a captive. Beaten and caged. Forced to fight dogs or boars that were just as miserable as I was. Starved. Open your mind to my tale of how I was enslaved and how your father and I broke the bonds of our captivities. Then you will see why you must kill when you are given the chance.

He began, not a telling, but a remembering that I shared. It was like recalling things I had always known, but in scalding detail. He did not spare me his memories of his family killed, of beatings and starvation and a cramped cold cage. He did not soften how much he hated his captors, or how he had first hated my father, even when my father freed him. Hate had been his habit then, and hate had fed him and kept him alive when there was nothing else.

I was not even halfway through the twisted fabric that bound my wrists when Dwalia sent Alaria to fetch me to the fire. I played dead until she was hunched over me. She put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Bee?’

I flipped, lunged and bit. I caught her hand in my teeth, but only for a moment. My mouth was too sore and she ripped her hand free of me with a cry and sprang back. ‘She bit me!’ she cried to the others. ‘The little wretch bit me!’

‘Kick her!’ Dwalia commanded, and Alaria made a feint at me with her foot, but Father Wolf was right. She feared to get too close to me. I rolled away from her and, despite the screams of my abused body, managed to sit up. I glared at her from my one good eye and lifted my smashed lips clear of my teeth. I did not know how much of that she could see in the firelight’s dance, but she did not come near me.

‘She’s awake,’ Alaria informed them, as if I might have bitten her in my sleep.

‘Drag her here.’

‘She’ll bite me again!’

Dwalia stood. She moved stiffly. I held still, poised to avoid her kick or to attack with my teeth if I could. I was pleased to see that I had blacked her eyes and split the flesh on one of her cheeks. ‘Listen, you little wretch,’ she snarled at me. ‘You can avoid a beating, but only if you obey me. Is that clear?’

She bargains. That means she fears you.

I stared at her wordlessly, letting nothing show on my face. She leaned closer, reaching for the front of my shirt. I bared my teeth soundlessly and she drew back. She spoke as if I’d agreed to obey her. ‘Alaria is going to cut your ankles free. We’ll take you over by the fire. If you try to run, I swear I will cripple you.’ She did not wait for a response. ‘Alaria, cut the bonds on her ankles.’

I thrust my feet toward her. Alaria, I noted, had a very nice belt-knife. I wondered if I could find a way to make it mine. She sawed and sawed at the fabric that bound me, and I was surprised at how much it hurt. When finally she cut through, I kicked my feet to free them, and then felt a very unpleasant hot tingling as they came back to life. Was Dwalia tempting me to try to escape, to have an excuse to beat me again?

Not yet. Gather more strength. Appear weaker than you are.

‘Get up and walk!’ Dwalia ordered me. She stalked away from me, as if wanting to demonstrate to me how certain she was of my obedience.

Let her be certain of my surrender. I’d find a way to get away from her. But the wolf was right. Not yet. I stood, but very slowly, taking my time to get my balance. I tried to stand straight as if my belly were not full of hot knives. Her kicks had hurt something inside of me. I wondered how long it would take to heal.

Vindeliar had ventured closer to us. ‘Oh, my brother,’ he mooed sadly at the sight of my broken face. I stared at him and he looked away. I tried to appear defiant rather than hobbled by pain as I stalked toward the fire.

It was my first chance to have a good look at my surroundings. The pillar had brought us to an open dell in the heart of a forest. There were dwindling fingers of snow between the trees, but it was inexplicably missing in the plaza and on the roads leading to it and away. Trees had grown large alongside those roads and their branches arced over it and interlaced in some places. Yet the roads were largely clear of forest debris and snow. Did no one else recognize how peculiar that was? Evergreens with low, swooping branches surrounded the dell where Dwalia’s folk had built their fire. No. Not a dell. I scuffed my feet against some sort of paving stones. The open area was partially bounded by a low wall of worked stone set with several pillars. I saw something on the ground. It looked like a glove, one that had spent part of the winter under snow. Farther on I saw a scrap of leather, perhaps from a strap. And then a woollen hat.

Despite my aching body, I slowly stooped to pick it up, feigning to take a moment to cradle my belly. Over by the fire, they pretended not to watch me, like cats hunched near a mouse hole. The hat was damp, but even damp wool is warm. I tried to shake the spruce needles from it but my arms hurt too much. I wondered if anyone had brought my heavy fur coat back to the camp. Up and moving, the chill of the early spring night reminded me of every aching bruise. The cold reached in and fingered my skin where they had torn strips from my shirt.

Ignore that. Don’t think of the cold. Use your other senses.

I could see little beyond the reach of the fire’s dancing light. I drew breath through my nose. The rising moisture of the earth brought rich scents with it. I smelled dark earth and fallen spruce needles. And honeysuckle.

Honeysuckle? At this time of year?

Breathe out through your mouth and slowly in through your nose, Wolf Father advised me.

I did. I turned my head slowly on my stiff neck, following the scent. There. A pale, slender cylinder, half-covered by a scrap of torn canvas. I tried to stoop down, but my knees folded and I nearly fell on my face. With my bound hands, I awkwardly picked up the candle. It was broken, held together at the break only by the wick, but I knew it. I lifted it to my face and smelled my mother’s handiwork. ‘How can this be here?’ I asked the night softly. I looked at the nondescript scrap of canvas. Nearby there was a lady’s lacy glove, sodden and mildewed. I did not know either of those things, but I knew this candle. Could I be mistaken? Could other hands have harvested the beeswax and scented it with honeysuckle blossoms? Could another hand have patiently dipped the long wicks over and over into the wax pot to form such an elegant taper? No. This was my mother’s work. Possibly I had helped to make this candle. How did it come here?

Your father has been here.

Is that possible?

It is the least impossible answer that I can imagine.

The candle folded in two as I slid it into my shirt. I felt the wax chill against my skin. Mine. I could hear Vindeliar shuffling toward me. From the corner of my eye, I saw Dwalia holding her hands out to the fire’s warmth. I turned my good eye toward them. Reppin had my big fur coat. She had folded it into a cushion and was sitting on it by the fire next to Alaria. She saw me looking and sneered at me. I stared at her arm and then lifted my eyes to smile at her. Her exposed hand was a fat pad with sausage fingers. Blood was dark between her fingers and in the lines of her knuckles. Had she not had the sense to wash out the bite?

I moved slowly to the biggest gap in their circle and sat down there. Dwalia rose and came to stand behind me. I refused to look back at her. ‘You’ll get no food tonight. Don’t think you can run away from us. You can’t. Alaria, you will take the first watch. Wake Reppin to take the second. Don’t let Bee escape or you’ll pay the price.’

She stalked away to where they had piled the packs and supplies they’d brought with them. There wasn’t much. They had fled Ellik’s attack with whatever they could hastily seize. Dwalia made herself a lumpy cushion from the packs and reclined on them with no thought for the comfort of the others. Reppin looked around slyly, and then spread out my opened coat before lying down on it and wrapping the excess around herself. Vindeliar stared at them, and then simply flopped down like a dog. He pillowed his broad head on his arms and stared dolefully at the fire. Alaria sat cross-legged, glaring at me. No one paid any attention to the Chalcedean. Hands over his head, he was dancing a sort of a jig in a circle, his mouth wide in mindless enjoyment of the ghost music. His brain might be dazed, but he was an excellent dancer.

I wondered where my father was. Did he think of me? Had Shun gone back to Withywoods to tell him that I’d been taken into a stone? Or did she die in the forest? If she had, he would never know what had become of me or where to look. I was cold, and very hungry. And so lost.

If you can’t eat, sleep. Rest is the only thing you can give yourself right now. Take it.

I looked at the hat I’d salvaged. Plain grey wool, undyed but well spun and knitted. I shook it to be sure there were no insects in it and then, with my hands still tied, struggled to get it onto my head. The damp was chill but slowly warmed from my skin. I manoeuvred myself into a reclining position on my less-painful side, and faced away from the fire. The warmth of my body had wakened the candle’s scent. I breathed honeysuckle. I curled slightly as if I were seeking sleep but brought my wrists up to my face and began again to chew at my bonds.

TWO
The Silver Touch

There is a peculiar strength that comes to one who is facing the final battle. That battle is not limited to war, nor the strength to warriors. I’ve seen this strength in old women with the coughing sickness and heard of it in families that are starving together. It drives one to go on, past hope or despair, past blood loss and gut wounds, past death itself in a final surge to save something that is cherished. It is courage without hope. During the Red-Ship Wars, I saw a man with blood gouting in spurts from where his left arm had once been yet swinging a sword with his right as he stood protecting a fallen comrade. During one encounter with Forged Ones, I saw a mother stumbling over her own entrails as she shrieked and clutched at a Forged man, trying to hold him away from her daughter.

The OutIslanders have a word for that courage. Finblead, they call it, the last blood, and they believe that a special fortitude resides in the final blood that remains in a man or a woman before they fall. According to their tales, only then can one find and use that sort of courage.

It is a terrible bravery and at its strongest and worst, it goes on for months when one battles a final illness. Or, I believe, when one moves toward a duty that will result in death but is completely unavoidable. That finblead lights everything in one’s life with a terrible radiance. All relationships are illuminated for what they are and for what they truly were in the past. All illusions melt away. The false is revealed as starkly as the true.

FitzChivalry Farseer

As the taste of the herb spread in my mouth, the sounds of the turmoil around me grew louder. I lifted my head and tried to focus my stinging eyes. I hung in Lant’s arms, the familiar bitterness of elfbark suffusing my mouth. As the herb damped my magic, I became more aware of my surroundings. My left wrist ached with a bone-deep pain, as searing as frozen iron. While the Skill had surged through me, healing and changing the children of Kelsingra, my perception had shrunk but now I was fully aware of the shouting of the crowd surrounding me as the sound bounced from the lofty walls of the elegant Elderling chamber. I smelled fear-sweat in the air. I was caught in the press of the mob, with some Elderlings fighting to step away from me as others were shoving to get closer in the hope I might heal them. So many people! Hands reached toward me, with cries of ‘Please! Please, just one more!’ Others shouted, ‘Let me through!’ as they pushed to get away from me. The Skill-current that had flowed so strongly around me and through me had abated, but it wasn’t gone. Lant’s elfbark was the milder herb, Six Duchies-grown and somewhat stale by the taste of it. Here in the Elderling city the Skill flowed so strong and close I did not think even delvenbark could have closed me to it completely.

But it was enough. I was aware of the Skill but no longer shackled to its service. Yet the exhaustion of letting it use me now slackened my muscles just when I had most need of them. General Rapskal had torn the Fool from my grasp. The Elderling gripped Amber’s wrist and held her silvered hand aloft, shouting, ‘I told you so! I told you they were thieves! Look at her hand, coated in the dragons’ Silver! She has discovered the well! She has stolen from our dragons!’

Spark clung to Amber’s other arm, trying to drag her free of the general’s grip. The girl’s teeth were bared, her black curls wild around her face. The look of sheer terror on Amber’s scarred face both paralysed and panicked me. The years of privation the Fool had endured were betrayed in that stark grimace. They made her face a death-mask of bones and red lips and rouged cheeks. I had to go to the Fool’s aid, and yet my knees kept folding of their own accord. Perseverance seized my arm. ‘Prince FitzChivalry, what must I do?’ I could not find the breath to reply to him.

‘Fitz! Stand up!’ Lant roared right next to my ear. It was as much plea as command. I found my feet, and pressed my weight against them. I strained, shuddering, trying to keep my legs straight under me.

We had arrived in Kelsingra just the day before, and for a few hours I had been the hero of the day, the magical Six Duchies prince who had healed Ephron, the son of the king and queen of Kelsingra. The Skill had flowed through me, as intoxicating as Sandsedge brandy. At the request of King Reyn and Queen Malta, I had used my magic to set right half a dozen dragon-touched children. I had opened myself to the powerful Skill-current of the old Elderling city. Awash in that heady power, I’d opened throats and steadied heartbeats, straightened bones and cleared scales from eyes. Some I’d made more human, though one girl had wished to embrace her dragon-changes and I’d helped her do that.

But the Skill-flow had become too strong, too intoxicating. I’d lost control of the magic, become its tool instead of its master. After the children I’d agreed to heal had been claimed by their parents others had pushed forward. Adult Rain Wilders with changes uncomfortable, ugly or life-threatening had begged my aid and I had dispensed it with a lavish hand, caught in the vast pleasure of that flow. I’d felt my last shred of control give way, but when I’d surrendered to that glorious surge and its invitation to merge with the magic, Amber had stripped the glove from her hand. To save me, she’d revealed the stolen dragon-Silver on her fingers. To save me, she’d pressed three scalding fingertips to my bare wrist, burned her way into my mind and called me back. To save me, she’d betrayed herself as thief. The hot kiss of her fingers’ touch still pulsed like a fresh burn, sending a deep ache up the bones of my left arm, to my shoulder, to my back and neck.

What damage it was doing to me now, I could not know. But at least I was again anchored to my body. I was anchored to it and it was dragging me down. I’d lost track of how many Elderlings I’d touched and changed, but my body had kept count. Each one had taken a toll from me, each shaping had torn strength from me, and now that debt had to be paid. Despite all my efforts, my head lolled and I could scarcely keep my eyes open amidst the danger and noise all around me. I saw the room as through a mist.

‘Rapskal, stop being an imbecile!’ That was King Reyn adding his roar to the din.

Lant abruptly tightened his hug around my chest, dragging me more upright. ‘Let her go!’ he bellowed. ‘Release our friend, or the prince will undo every cure he has worked! Let her go, right now!’

I heard gasps, wailing, a man shouting, ‘No! He must not!’ A woman screamed, ‘Let go of her, Rapskal! Let her go!’

Malta’s voice rang with command as she cried out, ‘This is not how we treat guests and ambassadors! Release her, Rapskal, this moment!’ Her cheeks were flushed and the crest of flesh above her brow bloomed with colour.

‘Let go of me!’ Amber’s voice rang with authority. From some deep well of courage, she had drawn the will to fight back on her own behalf. Her shout cut through the crowd’s noise. ‘Release me, or I will touch you!’ She made good her threat, surging toward Rapskal instead of trying to pull her hand free. The sudden reverse shocked him and her silvered fingers came perilously close to his face. The general gave a shout of alarm and sprang back from her as he let go of her wrist. But she was not finished. ‘Back, all of you!’ she commanded. ‘Give us room and let me see to the prince or, by Sa, I will touch you!’ Hers was the command of an angered queen, pitched to carry her threat. Her silvered forefinger pointed as she swung it in a slow arc around her, and people were suddenly stumbling over one another in their haste to be out of her reach.

The mother of the girl with dragon feet spoke. ‘I’d do as she says!’ she warned. ‘If that is truly dragon-Silver on her fingers, one touch of it will mean slow death. It will seep down to your bones, right through your flesh. It will travel your bones, up your spine to your skull. Eventually, you will be grateful to die from it.’ As others were falling back from us, she began pushing her way through the crowd toward us. She was not a large person but the other dragon-keepers were giving way to her. She stopped a safe distance from us. Her dragon had patterned her in blue and black and silver. The wings that weighted her shoulders were folded snug to her back. The claws on her toes tapped the floor as she walked. Of all the Elderlings present, she was most heavily modified by her dragon’s touch. Her warning and Amber’s threat cleared a small space around us.

Amber retreated to my side, gasping as she sought to calm her breath. Spark stood on her other side and Perseverance took up a position in front of her. Amber’s voice was low and calm as she said, ‘Spark, retrieve my glove if you would.’

‘Of course, my lady.’ The requested item had fallen to the floor. Spark stooped and cautiously picked it up in two fingers. ‘I will touch your wrist,’ she warned Amber, and tapped the back of her hand to guide her to her glove. Amber was still breathing unsteadily as she gloved her hand, but weak as I was, I was horribly glad to see that she had regained some of the Fool’s strength and presence of mind. She linked her unsilvered hand through my arm and I was reassured by her touch. It seemed to draw off some of the Skill-current still coursing through me. I felt both connected to her and less battered by the Skill.

‘I think I can stand,’ I muttered to Lant and he loosened his grip on me. I could not allow anyone to see how drained I was of strength. I rubbed my eyes and wiped elfbark powder from my face. My knees did not buckle and I managed to hold my head steady. I straightened up. I badly wanted the knife in my boot but if I stooped for it I knew I would not stop until I sprawled on the floor.

The woman who had warned the others stepped into the empty space that now surrounded us, but stayed beyond arm’s reach. ‘Lady Amber, is it truly dragon-Silver on your hand?’ she asked in quiet dread.

‘It is!’ General Rapskal had found his courage and took up a stance beside her. ‘And she has stolen it from the dragons’ well. She must be punished! Keepers and folk of Kelsingra, we cannot be seduced by the healing of a few children! We do not even know if this magic will last or if it is a cheat. But we have all seen the evidence of this intruder’s theft, and we know that our first duty is and must always be to the dragons who have befriended us.’

‘Speak for yourself, Rapskal.’ The woman gave him a cold stare. ‘My first duty is to my daughter, and she no longer totters when she stands.’

‘Are you so easily bought, Thymara?’ Rapskal demanded scathingly.

The father of the child stepped into the circle to stand beside the woman called Thymara. The girl with the dragon feet rode on his shoulder and looked down on us. He spoke as if he scolded a wilful child, rebuke tinged with familiarity. ‘Of all people, Rapskal, you should know that Thymara cannot be bought. Answer me this. Who has it harmed that this lady has silvered her fingers? Only herself. She will die of it. So what worse can we do to her? Let her go. Let all of them go, and let them go with my thanks.’

‘She stole!’ Rapskal’s shout turned to a shriek, his dignity flung to the wind.

Reyn had managed to elbow his way through the crowd. Queen Malta was right behind him, her cheeks pink beneath her scaling and her eyes fiery with her anger. The dragon changes in her were amplified by her fury. There was a glitter in her eyes that was not human, and the crest of flesh in the parting of her hair seemed taller; it reminded me of a rooster’s comb. She was the first to speak. ‘My apologies, Prince FitzChivalry, Lady Amber. Our people forgot themselves in their hopes of being healed. And General Rapskal is sometimes—’

‘Don’t speak for me!’ the general interrupted her. ‘She stole Silver. We saw the evidence, and no, it’s not enough that she has poisoned herself. We cannot let her leave Kelsingra. None of them can leave, for now they know the secret of the dragons’ well!’

Amber spoke. She sounded calm but she pushed her words so that all could hear. ‘There was Silver on my fingers before you were born, I believe, General Rapskal. Before your dragons hatched, before Kelsingra was found and reclaimed, I bore what we of the Six Duchies call Skill on my fingers. And your queen can attest to that.’

‘She is not our queen and he is not our king!’ General Rapskal’s chest heaved with his emotion and, along his neck, patches of his scales showed a bright scarlet. ‘So they have said, over and over! They have said that we must rule ourselves, that they are but figureheads for the rest of the world. So, keepers, let us rule ourselves! Let us put our dragons first, as we are meant to!’ He shook a finger at Lady Amber, from a safe distance, as he demanded of his fellows, ‘Recall how difficult it was for us to find and renew the well of Silver! Will you believe her ridiculous tale that she has carried it on her fingertips for scores of years and not died of it?’

Queen Malta’s rueful voice cut through Rapskal’s rant. ‘I am sorry to say that I cannot attest to such a thing, Lady Amber. I knew you only briefly during your time in Bingtown, and met you seldom during the negotiations of your loans to many of the Traders.’ She shook her head. ‘A Trader’s word is all she has to give and I will not bend mine, even to help a friend. The best I can say is that when I knew you in those days, you always went gloved. I never saw your hands.’

‘You heard her!’ Rapskal’s shout was triumphant. ‘There is no proof! There can be no …’

‘If I may speak?’ For years, as King Shrewd’s jester, the Fool had had to make even his whispered comments heard across a large and sometimes crowded room. He had trained his voice to carry, and it now cut through not only Rapskal’s shout but the muttering of the crowd as well. A simmering silence filled the room. He did not move like a blind man as he stepped into the space his threat had cleared. He was a performer stepping onto his stage. It was in the sudden grace of his movements and his storyteller’s voice, and the sweep of his gloved hand. He was the Fool to me, and the layer of Amber but a part of his performance.

‘Recall a summer day, dear Queen Malta. You were but a girl, and all was in turmoil in your life. All your family’s hopes for financial survival depended on the successful launch of the Paragon, a liveship so insane that thrice he had capsized and killed all his crew. But the mad ship was your only hope, and into his salvage and refitting the Vestrit family had poured the last of their resources.’

He had them–and me. I was as caught up in this tale as any of them.

‘Your family hoped that the Paragon would be able to find and restore to you your father and your brother, both missing for so long. That somehow you could reclaim the Vivacia, your family’s own liveship, for it was rumoured that she had been taken by pirates. And not any pirates, but the fabled Captain Kennit himself! You stood on the deck of the mad ship, putting on such a brave face in your made-over gown with last year’s parasol. When all the others went below to tour the ship, you stayed on the deck and I stayed near you, to watch over you as your Aunt Althea had requested.’

‘I remember that day,’ Malta said slowly. ‘It was the first time we had really spoken to one another. I remember … we talked of the future. Of what it might hold for me. You told me that a small life would never satisfy me. You told me that I must earn my future. How did you put it?’

Lady Amber smiled, pleased that this queen remembered words spoken to her when she was a child. ‘What I told you is as true today as it was then. Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.’

Malta’s smile was like sunlight. ‘And you warned me that sometimes people wished that tomorrow did not pay them off so completely.’

‘I did.’

The queen stepped forward, unwittingly becoming part of the performance as she took her place on Amber’s stage. Her brow furrowed and she spoke like a woman in a dream. ‘And then … Paragon whispered to me. And I felt … oh, I did not know it then. I felt the dragon Tintaglia seize my thoughts. I felt she would smother me as she forced me to share her confinement in her tomb! And I fainted. It was terrible. I felt I was trapped with the dragon and could never find my way back to my own body.’

‘I caught you,’ Amber said. ‘And I touched you, on the back of your neck, with my Skilled fingers. Silvered, you would say. And by that magic, I called you back to your own body. But it left a mark on you. And a tiny tendril of a link that we share to this very day.’

‘What?’ Malta was incredulous.

‘It’s true!’ The words burst from King Reyn along with a laugh born of both relief and joy. ‘On the back of your neck, my dear! I saw them there in the days when your hair was as black as a crow’s wing, before Tintaglia turned it to gold. Three greyish ovals, like silver fingerprints gone dusty with age.’

Malta’s mouth hung open in surprise. At his words, her hand had darted to the back of her neck beneath the fall of glorious golden hair that was not blonde. ‘There was always a tender place there. Like a bruise that never healed.’ Abruptly she lifted her cascading locks and held them on the top of her head. ‘Come and look, any that wish, come and see if what my husband and Lady Amber says is true.’

I was one of those who did. I staggered forward, still leaning on Lant, to see the same marks I had once borne on my wrist. Three greyish ovals, the mark of the Fool’s silvered hand. They were there.

The woman called Thymara stared in consternation when it was her turn to see the nape of the queen’s neck. ‘It’s a wonder it did not kill you,’ she said in a hushed voice.

I thought that would be an end of the matter, but when General Rapskal had taken three times as long to stare at the marks as any had, he turned away from the queen and said, ‘What does it matter if she had the Silver then? What does it matter if she stole it a few nights ago, or several decades ago? Silver from the well belongs to the dragons. She must still be punished.’

I stiffened my back and tightened my belly. My voice must not shake. A deeper breath to make my words carry. I hoped I would not vomit. ‘It didn’t come from a well. It came from King Verity’s own hands, that he covered in Skill to work his great and final magic. He got it from where a river of Skill ran within a river of water. Name it not dragon-Silver. It is Skill from the Skill-river.’

‘And where might that be?’ Rapskal demanded in a voice so hungry it alarmed me.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied honestly. ‘I saw it but once, in a Skill-dream. My king never allowed me to go there with him, lest I give way to the temptation to plunge myself into it.’

‘Temptation?’ Thymara was shocked. ‘I who am privileged to use Silver to do works for the city, feel no temptation to plunge myself into it. Indeed, I fear it.’

‘That is because you were not born with it coursing in your blood,’ the Fool said, ‘as some Farseers are. As Prince FitzChivalry was, born with the Skill as a magic within him, one that he can use to shape children as some might shape stone.’

That struck them dumb.

‘Is it possible?’ This from the winged Elderling, a genuine question.

Amber lifted her voice again. ‘The magic I bear on my hands is the same that was accidentally gifted to me by King Verity. It is rightfully mine, not stolen any more than the magic that courses through the prince’s veins, the magic you joyfully allowed him to share with your children. Not stolen any more than the magic within you that changes you and marks your children. What do you call it? Marked by the Rain Wilds? Changed by the dragons? If this Silver on my fingers is stolen, why, then, any here who have been healed have shared in the prince’s thievery.’