Starsinger

Down and Up

Aaron stomped out the campfire embers until they were a pile of ash. Thin trails of smoke curled into the branches above. A shaft of pink broke across the clouds above. It was dawn.

Sapphire emerged from her tent, already dressed. The morning light reflected strangely off her deep blue hair. She moved to sit across from Aaron.

"You killed the fire," she said.

"Good morning to you too."

She raised an eyebrow. "Morning. Cold breakfast today, then?"

He hadn't thought about breakfast. "I'm sick of oatmeal," he lied. "Nothing like cold bread and cheese to break the routine."

"Nice of you to make the decision for everyone."

"Well, that's just the kind of fellow I am."

She stared at the fluttering ash. Aaron watched her face. She revealed almost nothing in her expressions, but sometimes in her eyes he imagined he could catch glimpses of shifting thoughts and feelings hidden just beneath the surface. When she met his gaze Aaron pulled a face and looked away. They could hear the faint crackle of sparks as the embers gasped their last breaths. The silence was making him uncomfortable.

"So," he said. "How long have you been in the squads?"

"Almost ten years," she said.

Aaron tried to conceal his surprise. The scout couldn't have been more than twenty. "Seems strange we never crossed paths."

She shrugged. "I'm an Extra. I keep to myself."

"A solitary soldier. A lone wolf." He smiled.

"If you say so." She stood. "I'll refill the water skins."

That went well. Sapphire disappeared into the trees and Aaron ran a hand through his hair. Maybe I touched a nerve? He couldn't predict what would make her smile and what would make her sullen. Maybe she was sneaking off with the amber again. Should I follow her? No, bad idea. Then he'd run the risk of being spotted and having to explain himself.

Seeing the amberglass had sparked a nagging worry in his gut. In the Old World, mages had devised a way to bind magic to stones – crystals and gems especially. Most of those stones had been lost in the chaos of the Division. But not all.

By the time Sapphire returned, Jace and Aaron had begun their drills. The crack of wooden practice swords rang out in the clearing. Aaron felt the sweat beading at the tips of his ash brown hair, threatening to drip into his eyes as he spun to block Jace's uppercut.

Jace was the striker. The drills were to keep him sharp. He moved with the sword like a dancer with his partner, in perfect synchronization. The brass bands on his wrists jingled as he ran through his attacks and parries, but Aaron knew not to listen to them. Jace had long ago learned to manipulate their sounds with the slightest twist, signaling movement when he planned none and stillness just before he struck. An auditory feint.

On the first day of kyrsquad training, the drill leaders had mocked Jace. Told him he should leave his shiny Yanish superstitions back home in the mountains where they belonged.

"A man can't fight in bracelets," one of them sneered as he squared up with Jace. "They tell his enemies everything. If you're lucky, you'll make a fellow laugh himself to death."

But when a few minutes later the drill leader was sitting smack in the dirt, disarmed, with Jace's practice blade pointed at his throat, he had done very little laughing.

And that was with a practice blade. After facing the first brutal blows of the Division and the Sorcerers' Wars, many of the Yanish tribes in the west had retreated into the foothills of Rhea's Teeth. Isolated but largely untouched by the decades of war that followed, the Yanish passed on ancient metalworking traditions that most of Re Vlynn had long forgotten. Jace had trained at his father's smithy along with the rest of his brothers and forged his own blade. The heavy Yanish steel was smooth to the touch, but in certain lights it rippled like the surface of a lake, not quite still. The edge cut sharper than a winter breeze. Yanish lore stated that those who forged their own blade stored a piece of their soul in the steel. Aaron could well believe it. Jace wielded the blade like it was a part of his own body.