by Amie Kaufman
“Can we go to the apothecary first?” Viktoria asked as they cleared the gates, stepping out into a brisk cold that seemed almost to threaten snow, later on.
Sakarias and Lisabet groaned, but the four of them turned right along Ulfarstrat, and Viktoria gave a little skip of excitement that was as animated as Anders had seen her.
“Just remember we’re hitting the sweet shop afterward,” Sakarias reminded her, falling into step with Anders. They walked down the street as a group, passing by a pair of adult Wolf Guards on patrol, inspecting everyone who made their way down the busy street. Everyone stopped obediently, but Anders noticed many of them scowled when they were safely past the wolves.
He and Rayna had always dodged the patrols, worrying their shabby clothes and dirty faces might land them back in an orphanage, but it looked as if Holbard’s honest citizens had their own frustrations.
The four students made their way past the patrol without being checked at all, and where a few weeks ago Anders would have been carefully weaving through the crowd, now he found they gave way for him—now, when a woman in a dark green dress and coat bumped into him, she apologized, stepping out of his way.
She caught his eye and stared a moment too long, and he found he couldn’t look away, backing after the others so he could keep his gaze on her. Why was she staring?
Did she recognize him?
She was digging in her pocket, and as Anders watched her, she pulled something out, holding it up as if to show it to him. She was ten steps away now, and a man passed between them, but she was still waiting when he was gone. She had something in her hand, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was. And then the sun glinted on copper between her fingers.
All the air went out of him. Was that one of Rayna’s copper hairpins?
Rayna would never have given anyone her hairpins.
They must have taken them from her.
He opened his mouth to shout the alarm—this woman had to be a dragon spy, and if the wolves could capture her, she might be able to tell him where Rayna was. This woman confirmed everything the wolves suspected—that dragon spies were in Holbard every day, walking unseen among the humans.
But the next moment, he snapped it shut. What could he possibly say? He couldn’t admit he knew Rayna, let alone knew what her hairpins looked like. If that even was one of her pins the woman was holding.
So how could he explain he knew this woman was a dragon? One half of him wanted to find a way to talk to her alone, to find out the truth and demand she give him news of his sister. The other half was terrified of letting her near him.
The woman stared at him, and he stared back. Then Sakarias grabbed his arm to stop him from walking into another pair of adult Wolf Guards. “What are you looking at?” his friend asked cheerfully.
Anders glanced across at his friend, and when he looked back, the woman was gone.
His head was still spinning when they reached the apothecary, and he kept one eye out for the woman in the green dress even as he talked to the others. Maybe he could get away if he saw her again—she seemed wary of groups of wolves. She had reddish-brown hair and light brown skin, and didn’t look much older than the final-year Ulfar students. If he saw her again, he’d recognize her.
He, Sakarias, and Lisabet waited out of the wind as Viktoria ducked inside the low-ceilinged shop, wooden beams strung with dried bunches of herbs. Huge, stoppered bottles filled with liquids and colorful powders were shoved onto every possible inch of the shelves.
“Does she need something we don’t have at the Academy?” Anders asked, risking looking away from the street for a moment to press his nose against the window, where faded gold lettering spelled out the name of the shop. Inside, he could see an artifact machine pressing out new batches of pills without anyone touching it or directing it, then tipping to pour them into a couple of the hundreds of wooden drawers that lined the wall of the shop.
“She just likes to look,” Lisabet said. “The apothecary shows her the new shipments of herbs and medicines, if she comes in when things aren’t too busy.”
“And then we like to visit the sweet shop,” Sakarias said, jingling the coins in his pocket. “Where we do a lot more than just look at what’s on the shelves.”
After a few minutes Viktoria emerged. “His plant pressing machine has broken,” she said with a frown of concern. “It was an artifact.”
“They’re breaking everywhere,” Lisabet said quietly.
“He did have some new arrivals, though,” Viktoria said.
“Only you could find a shriveled-up plant interesting,” Sakarias told her, but she linked her arm through his, and he stopped teasing her after that.
Anders craned his neck, looking for the woman in the dark-green dress as they made their way along Jurtirstrat, dodging piles of half-melted snow. If he saw her again, he’d make an excuse to get away from the others, find some way to speak to her.
He had to—she was the best lead he could possibly get on Rayna. And, he suddenly realized, if he could just get Rayna’s hairpin from her, he could try and use it with the locator frame.
They reached the confectioner’s, where they bought chunks of salted chocolate the size of their fists, wrapped up in waxed paper. “Pack and paws, we earned this, running those endless laps around the combat hall,” Lisabet insisted around a huge mouthful.
Anders could have laughed, if he dared. The idea that you got what you earned—that working hard meant you automatically got something—could only have come from a wolf.
He and Rayna knew that some days you worked hard and ate nothing, and nobody showed up to make sure you got the things you deserved. Lisabet had been lucky never to learn that lesson, he supposed. He shouldn’t begrudge her that luck.
Now, with his curls cut short, in his gray uniform with the Ulfar crest on his chest, he was as lucky as she was. He was pretty sure that if any of his old acquaintances saw him, they’d walk straight past without a second glance. Unless you were keeping out of their way, you paid no attention to wolves—it wasn’t worth drawing their attention.
Sakarias led them down Sykurstrat next, to see if the new drawing pencils he wanted had arrived on the latest ship from Allemhäut, and Anders racked his brain for a plan to get away from his friends and go hunting for the woman in the green dress. And then when he glanced over his shoulder, there she was.
She was still trailing him, but as a group of older students made their way along the crowded street, she faded back into the crowd. He thought for a heart-stopping moment he’d lost her, but as soon as they were gone, she was there again. She was wary of the wolves, he’d been right.
Of course she was—she was a dragon. And no doubt she was supposed to be reporting on them, not revealing herself to them. Except for him. For some reason, she clearly didn’t mind his seeing her. She seemed to want his attention, in fact. Surely that meant that if only he could talk to her, she’d have some news of his twin.
That realization confirmed it. He had to get away from the others if he was going to chase her down.
“I’m getting such a headache,” he said as they approached the corner with Ulfarstrat, which led up to the Academy.
“Did you drink enough water?” Viktoria asked, immediately sympathetic. “Maybe you needed more after yesterday’s Combat class, it probably left you dehydrated.”
“That’s probably it,” he agreed.
“Do you need to go back?” Sakarias asked, and though the other boy didn’t hesitate to offer, Anders knew he wanted to go and buy his pencils. It was starting to get dark, and if the others had to walk Anders back and then find a new fourth party member, it would be dusk before they could make it to the shop.
“Just a moment,” Lisabet said. “I think I spy a solution.”
There were a group of final year students making their way up Ulfarstrat toward the Academy, and when Lisabet asked, it turned out one of them was happy to switch groups and stay out a little longer, so Anders could
walk back with her companions.
“There,” said Lisabet. “Everybody’s happy.”
“Go to the infirmary if it doesn’t go away,” Viktoria said.
“And definitely go to the infirmary if your head suddenly explodes,” Sakarias said, causing Viktoria to elbow him in the ribs.
Anders let the final years talk around him as they made their way back up to the Academy, keeping his head down and trying to stay at the back of the group, so he could get away right after they entered the Academy gates.
He was still twisting his head around every chance he got, looking for the woman as they made their way up Ulfarstrat. The gates loomed in the distance.
He dropped to one knee, tugging his bootlace undone, then slowly tying it in a knot, letting the gap between him and the others grow. They kept talking as they walked away.
It was just as he prepared to come to his feet that the siren atop the Academy walls started wailing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE FINAL YEARS ALL WENT STILL AHEAD of him, staring up at the Academy gates at the end of the street. Then the tallest, a slim girl with short-cut brown hair and dark brown skin snapped into action. “It’s an alert, we have to go!”
“What about the first year?” the boy beside her asked, whirling around to jog back toward Anders, grabbing his arm to pull him to his feet.
“Don’t care,” she said. “We’re on the ready list, do you want to explain where we were?”
Other wolves were already pouring out the gate, all transformed, a sea of gray fur in every possible shade rolling down the street toward them, humans jumping out of the way. There must have been a hundred of them.
“Quick, transform,” the girl ordered Anders. “There’s an emergency.”
His three companions became wolves in the blink of an eye, and Anders threw himself into wolf form faster than he ever had before. The scents of the city rushed up to meet him, and then the wave of wolves from the Ulfar gates was upon them, and he was running with the pack.
Somewhere nearby had to be the woman in green, but there was no possible way he could extricate himself from the pack of wolves that surrounded him. What was the emergency? Dragons? Some tiny part of his mind wondered if there would be a way to follow them back to Drekhelm, or at least to see which direction they flew in.
His body seemed to take over, knowing just how to steer him along with the wolves all around him, and he knew that even after just a few weeks with Professor Ennar, he was stronger and fitter than he’d ever been before. His wolf’s body, which at first had felt so strange and terrifying now felt right, and as he swung his tail to help him turn a corner, he felt a wild kind of joy at being with his pack. It was almost dark now, and the air was cool as it rushed past him.
They ran the length of Ulfarstrat, the pack narrowing when the streets did, and he realized they were heading for the docks.
A growl rolled through the wolves around him—were there dragons ahead? Anders shivered but didn’t break stride. They raced past humans who were running on foot, some toward the docks and some away, who smelled of sweat and desperation and fear. For a moment a whiff of wood smoke drowned out everything else, and Anders’s heart thumped harder, and then they were arriving at the port.
And it was like his nightmare come to life.
The tall, colorful houses along the edge of the port were burning, pure white flames racing along the wooden shutters and window ledges, and even as Anders watched, the fire jumped from one house to the next like a living thing. Golden sparks showered from it.
Howls came from the pack, and though to the humans they must have sounded like a chorus of discordant notes, to Anders the word was perfectly clear: Dragonsfire!
The pack slowed as it entered the square, many heads lifting to scan the skies, though it was too dark to know if dragons were circling above them.
They had been here, that much was certain—the pure white flames and golden sparks replacing the red and yellow of everyday fire told him that. The dragonsfire had taken hold now, and it wouldn’t relinquish its grip on the docks without a fight—without the essence-infused ice spears of the wolves.
There was a howl from the rear of the pack, and Sigrid came pushing through, growling orders, snapping her teeth to get her troops moving. There were some human firefighters gathered around, lowering huge hoses down into the harbor and setting up pumps, but they fell back at the arrival of the wolves—water was a poor weapon against dragonsfire, but the ice of the wolves might be enough.
The wolves spread out in a semicircle around the burning buildings, Anders stumbling back out of their way, his ears flat with uncertainty, tail low. He had no training, and he didn’t belong to any of the squads here. Suddenly, he was realizing he shouldn’t be here, no matter what the final years had said.
He swung around, scanning the crowd, hoping against hope the woman in green had come this way too—but he was low to the ground, and his wolf vision dimmed the colors, and dark had fallen completely by now. It was impossible to tell. Could he get away, try to track her from where he had last seen her? But how would he know which scent was hers?
Ideas and questions jostled for space, but his thinking became clearer, crisper, as around him the wolves pounded their paws against the ground, sending ice spears hurtling toward the heart of the fire.
With a great hissing the spears immediately began to melt, sending up steam, creating billows of white smoke against the night sky as golden sparks rained down on the cobblestones of the square.
“They’ll never put it out!” a voice screamed behind him—a soot-stained woman, no doubt watching her house go up in flames. “The dragonsfire has a grip, they’ll never—”
Before anyone had a chance to respond, there was a high, metallic squeal from behind her in the darkness—from the direction of the wind arches.
Brace yourselves, Sigrid howled, and an instant later, a huge gust of wind came barreling through the port. The humans hadn’t understood her message, and they staggered against it, the wolves crouching low to the ground, eyes squeezed tight shut. The wind brought with it all the force that had been pent up behind the arches, and in the heartbeat before it was gone again it fanned the flames higher. Screams rang out around the square and bright golden sparks fell like rain.
The fire was fiercest at the lower stories of the houses, where perhaps it had started. Up above, families were appearing through the windows, and as the wolves cast ice spears again, the humans around them were finding ladders, pulling scaffolding from the cranes by the docks, doing anything they could to build a path down to the ground for the ones trapped above.
Anders paced behind the wolves, helpless—useless, without an ice spear to throw. Abruptly a stack of wooden crates that had sat in a thin alleyway between two houses collapsed, their bottoms burned out, sending a cascade of smoldering wood and embers out into the dock square itself.
Anders leapt out of the way, a pile of timber landing so close behind him the fur on his tail was singed, and as he whipped around to check nobody was caught beneath the debris, he yelped his horror.
He knew these boxes. There was a wide street behind the houses around the port, so the street children needed their own makeshift ladder to make it all the way up to the roof of these particular buildings, where many of them liked to sleep. They’d climb down the wall, and then use the boxes for the final descent—but now the bricks of the wall were burning hot, and the boxes were alight.
He backed up several steps, craning his neck, whining softly under his breath as he tried to see past the people, the flames, the smoke. Please no, please, nobody be up there. The words beat a rhythm inside his head.
But now he was looking, the picture suddenly came into focus, and he realized there were familiar shapes up on the roof. He could see Jerro up there, two figures that were probably his little brothers, and half a dozen others behind them, all children he’d grown up with on the streets. They were waving wildly, and he could see th
eir mouths moving, but the noise of the square drowned them out.
On the roof! he howled, trying to make himself heard over the noise. But the wolves were busy fighting the fire, and none of the humans could understand him. A scream came from above as the flames licked higher, clouds of smoke enveloping the children.
Hurriedly he forced himself back into human form, pain shooting down his arms and legs as the heat of the fire made the change almost impossible. Almost, but not quite. He ran forward to where two men were positioning a ladder, pushing it up against the house and nearly knocking a second ladder out of the way in their haste. He grabbed at the nearest man’s arm. “We need it to go higher,” he shouted, pointing up.
The man’s eyes widened, and he looked up, squinting through the smoke. But a moment later, he shook his head. “They have their ways down,” he said. “They always have a way down. Otherwise how’d they get up?”
“They don’t,” Anders protested. “There’s nothing behind these buildings—if they could, they wouldn’t still be up there!”
But the man shook him off, sending Anders staggering back as the crowd swirled around him. He had to do something! There were two ladders jostling for position to help the people at the windows, and only one was needed. If he didn’t find a way to help Jerro and the others, they’d burn.
He straightened his back and marched back up to the man. “Listen,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t trembling as hard as his insides were. “I’m from Ulfar, and this is an order. Get that second ladder up to the roof!”
The man looked at him again, this time taking in his uniform. He opened his mouth like he wanted to protest, and Anders glared at him, thinking as hard as he could of Sigrid, of Ennar, of Viktoria, of Rayna in a bad mood, and putting it all into his gaze.
And it worked.
The man turned away, speaking to his neighbor, and the two of them pushed the ladder in closer to the wall, so the top rungs would reach higher. In an instant a string of children were climbing down it, half sliding in their haste to reach the ground.
