Heir of Fire (9 page)

“Like I said,” Rowan sneered down at her, “you have a lot to learn. About everything.”

Her lip already aching and swollen, she told him exactly what he could go do to himself.

He sauntered down the hall. “Next time you say anything like that,” he said without looking over his shoulder, “I'll have you chopping wood for a month.”

Fuming, hatred and shame already burning her face, Celaena got to her feet. He dumped her in a very small, very cold room that looked like little more than a prison cell, letting her take all of two steps inside before he said, “Give me your weapons.”

“Why? And no.” Like hell she'd give him her daggers.

In a swi
ft
movement, he grabbed a bucket of water from beside her door and tossed the contents onto the hall
fl
oor before holding it out. “Give me your weapons.”

Training with him would be absolutely wonderful. “Tell me why.”

“I don't have to explain myself to you.”

“
Th
en ­we're going to have another brawl.”

His tattoo seeming impossibly darker in the dim hall, he stared at her beneath lowered brows as if to say,
You call
that
a brawl?
But ­in­­stead he growled, “Starting at dawn, you'll earn your keep by hel­ping in the kitchen. Unless you plan to murder everyone in the fortress, there is no need for you to be armed. Or to be armed while we train. So I'll keep your daggers until you've earned them back.”

Well, that felt familiar. “
Th
e kitchen?”

He bared his teeth in a wicked grin. “Everyone pulls their weight ­here. Princesses included. No one's above some hard labor, least of all you.”

And didn't she have the scars to prove it. Not that she'd tell him that. She didn't know what she'd do if he learned about Endovier and mocked her for it—­or pitied her. “So my training includes being a scullery maid?”

“Part of it.” Again, she could have sworn she could read the unspoken words in his eyes:
And I'm going to savor every damn second of your misery.

“For an old bastard, you certainly ­haven't bothered to learn manners at any point in your long existence.” Never mind that he looked to be in his late twenties.

“Why should I waste
fl
attery on a child who's already in love with herself ?”

“We're related, you know.”

“We've as much blood in common as I do with the fortress pig-­boy.”

She felt her nostrils
fl
are, and he shoved the bucket in her face. She almost knocked it right back into his, but decided that she didn't want a broken nose and began disarming herself.

Rowan counted every weapon she put in the bucket as though he'd already learned how many she'd been carry­ing, even the hidden ones.
Th
en he tucked the bucket against his side and slammed the door without so much of a good-­bye beyond “Be ready at dawn.”

“Bastard. Old stinking bastard,” she muttered, surveying the room.

A bed, a chamber pot, and a washbasin with icy water. She'd debated a bath, but opted to use the water to clean out her mouth and tend to her lip. She was starving, but going to
fi
nd food involved meeting people. So once she'd mended her lip as best she could with the supplies in her satchel, she tumbled into bed, reeking vagrant clothes and all, and lay there for several hours.

Th
ere was one small window with no coverings in her room. Celaena turned over in bed to look through it to the patch of stars above the trees surrounding the fortress.

Lashing out at Rowan like that, saying the things she did, trying to
fi
ght
with him . . . She'd deserved that punch. More than deserved it. If she was being honest with herself, she was barely passable as a human being these days. She
fi
ngered her split lip and winced.

She scanned the night sky until she located the Stag, the Lord of the North.
Th
e unmoving star atop the stag's head—­the eternal crown—­pointed the way to Terrasen. She'd been told that the great rulers of Terrasen turned into those bright stars so their people would never be alone—­and would always know the way home. She hadn't set foot there in ten years. While he'd been her master, Arobynn hadn't let her, and a
ft
erward she hadn't dared.

She had whispered the truth that day at Nehemia's grave. She'd been running for so long that she didn't know what it was to stand and
fi
ght. Celaena loosed a breath and rubbed her eyes.

What Maeve didn't understand, what she could never understand, was just how much that little princess in Terrasen had damned them a de­cade ago, even worse than Maeve herself had. She had damned them all, and then le
ft
the world to burn into ash and dust.

So Celaena turned away from the stars, nestling under the threadbare blanket against the frigid cold, and closed her eyes, trying to dream of a di
ff
erent world.

A world where she was no one at all.

9

Manon Blackbeak stood on a cli
ff
beside the snow-­swollen river, eyes closed as the damp wind bit her face.
Th
ere ­were few sounds she enjoyed more than the groans of dying men, but the wind was one of them.

Leaning into the breeze was the closest she came to
fl
ying these days—­save in rare dreams, when she was again in the clouds, her ironwood broom still functioning, not the scrap of useless wood it was now, chucked into the closet of her room at Blackbeak Keep.

It had been ten years since she'd tasted mist and cloud and ridden on the back of the wind. Today would have been a
fl
awless
fl
ying day, the wind wicked and fast. Today, she would have soared.

Behind her, Mother Blackbeak was still talking with the enormous man from the caravan who called himself a duke. It had been more than coincidence, she supposed, that soon a
ft
er she'd le
ft
that blood-­soaked
fi
eld in Fenharrow she'd received a summons from her grandmother. And more than coincidence that she'd been not forty miles from the rendezvous point just over the border in Adarlan.

Manon was on guard duty while her grandmother, the High Witch of the Blackbeak clan, spoke to the duke beside the raging Acanthus River.
Th
e rest of her coven had taken their positions around the small encampment—­twelve other witches, all around Manon's age, all of them raised and trained together. Like Manon, they had no weapons, but it seemed that the duke knew enough to realize Blackbeaks didn't need weapons to be deadly.

You didn't need a weapon at all when you ­were born one.

And when you ­were one of Manon's
Th
irteen, with whom she had fought and
fl
own for the past hundred years . . . O
ft
en just the name of the coven was enough to send enemies
fl
eeing.
Th
e
Th
irteen did not have a reputation for mercy—­or making mistakes.

Manon eyed the armored guards around the camp. Half ­were watching the Blackbeak witches, the others monitoring the duke and her grandmother. It was an honor that the High Witch had chosen the
Th
irteen to guard her—­no other coven had been summoned. No other coven was needed if the
Th
irteen ­were present.

Manon slid her attention to the nearest guard. His sweat, the faint tang of fear, and the heavy musk of exhaustion dri
ft
ed toward her. From the look and smell of it, they'd been traveling for weeks.
Th
ere ­were two prison wagons with them. One emitted a very distinct male odor—­and perhaps a remnant of cologne. One was female. Both smelled wrong.

Manon had been born soulless, her grandmother said. Soulless and heartless, as a Blackbeak ought to be. She was wicked right down to the marrow of her bones. But the people in those wagons, and the duke, they smelled
wrong
. Di
ff
erent. Alien.

Th
e nearby guard shi
ft
ed on his feet. She gave him a smile. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.

Because she could, because she was growing bored, Manon cocked her jaw, sending her iron teeth snapping down.
Th
e guard took a step back, his breath coming faster, the acrid tang of fear sharpening.

With her moon-­white hair, alabaster skin, and burnt-­gold eyes, she'd been told by ill-­fated men that she was beautiful as a Fae queen. But what those men realized too late was that her beauty was merely a weapon in her natural-­born arsenal. And it made things so, so fun.

Feet crunched in the snow and bits of dead grass, and Manon turned from the trembling guard and the roaring brown Acanthus to
fi
nd her grandmother approaching.

In the ten years since magic had vanished, their aging pro­cess had warped. Manon herself was well over a century old, but until ten years ago, she had looked no older than sixteen. Now, she looked to be in her midtwenties.
Th
ey ­were aging like mortals, they had soon realized with no small amount of panic. And her grandmother . . .

Th
e rich, voluminous midnight robes of Mother Blackbeak
fl
owed like water in the crisp breeze. Her grandmother's face was now marred with the beginnings of wrinkles, her ebony hair sprinkled with silver.
Th
e High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan ­wasn't just beautiful—­she was alluring. Even now, with mortal years pressing down upon her bone-­white skin, there was something entrancing about the Matron.

“We leave now,” Mother Blackbeak said, walking north along the river. Behind them, the duke's men closed ranks around the encampment. Smart for mortals to be so cautious when the
Th
irteen ­were present—­and bored.

One jerk of the chin from Manon was all it took for the
Th
irteen to fall in line.
Th
e twelve other sentinels kept the required distance behind Manon and her grandmother, footsteps near silent in the winter grass. None of them had been able to
fi
nd a single Crochan in the months they'd been in
fi
ltrating town a
ft
er town. And Manon fully expected some form of punishment for it later. Flogging, perhaps a few broken
fi
ngers—­nothing too permanent, but it would be public.
Th
at was her grandmother's preferred method of punishment: not the
how
, but the humiliation.

Yet her grandmother's gold-­
fl
ecked black eyes, the heirloom of the Blackbeak Clan's purest bloodline, ­were bent on the northern horizon, toward Oakwald Forest and the towering White Fangs far beyond.
Th
e gold-­speckled eyes ­were the most cherished trait in their Clan for a reason Manon had never bothered to learn—­and when her grandmother had seen that Manon's ­were wholly of pure, dark gold, the Matron had carried her away from her daughter's still-­cooling corpse and proclaimed Manon her undisputed heir.

Her grandmother kept walking, and Manon didn't press her to speak. Not unless she wanted her tongue ripped clean from her mouth.

“We're to travel north,” her grandmother said when the encampment was swallowed up by the foothills. “I want you to send three of your
Th
irteen south, west, and east.
Th
ey are to seek out our kith and kin and inform them that we will all assemble in the Ferian Gap. Every last Blackbeak—­no witch or sentinel le
ft
behind.”

Nowadays there was no di
ff
erence—­every witch belonged to a coven and was therefore a sentinel. Since the downfall of their western kingdom, since they had started clawing for their survival, every Blackbeak, Yellowlegs, and Blueblood had to be ready to
fi
ght—­ready at any time to reclaim their lands or die for their people. Manon herself had never set foot in the former Witch Kingdom, had never seen the ruins or the
fl
at, green expanse that stretched to the western sea. None of her
Th
irteen had seen it, either, all of them wanderers and exiles thanks to a curse from the last Crochan Queen as she bled out on that legendary battle
fi
eld.

Th
e Matron went on, still staring at the mountains. “And if your sentinels see members of the other clans, they are to inform them to gather in the Gap, too. No
fi
ghting, no provoking—­just spread the word.” Her grandmother's iron teeth
fl
ashed in the a
ft
ernoon sun. Like most of the ancient witches—­the ones who had been born in the Witch Kingdom and fought in the Ironteeth Alliance to shatter the chains of the Crochan Queens—­Mother Blackbeak wore her iron teeth permanently on display. Manon had never seen them retracted.

Manon bit back her questions.
Th
e Ferian Gap—­the deadly, blasted bit of land between the White Fang and Ruhnn Mountains, and one of the few passes between the fertile lands of the east and the Western Wastes.

Manon had made the passage through the snow-­crusted labyrinth of caves and ravines on foot—­just once, with the
Th
irteen and two other covens, right a
ft
er magic had vanished, when they ­were all nearly blind, deaf, and dumb with the agony of suddenly being grounded. Half of the other witches hadn't made it through the Gap.
Th
e
Th
irteen had barely survived, and Manon had almost lost an arm to an ice cavern cave-­in. Almost lost it, but kept it thanks to the quick thinking of Asterin, her second in command, and the brute strength of Sorrel, her
Th
ird.
Th
e Ferian Gap; ­Manon hadn't been back since. For months now there had been rumors of far darker things than witches dwelling there.