by Amie Kaufman
Anders was waiting at the bottom to help them. Jerro was in Lisabet’s old cloak, now dyed black, and he came first. He nearly ran straight past Anders before he did a double take. “Anders!”
He flung his arms around Anders, and a moment later, two other pairs of arms wrapped around the pair of them, then more, and more, with Anders at the middle. He felt something at his hip, and he was pretty sure someone was picking his pocket, but he knew it was just habit, and he didn’t mind.
“You should get out of here,” he said quietly. And they all knew he was right—next thing, somebody would be asking where their families were.
With whispered thanks, they peeled away in ones and twos and disappeared into the dark. When Anders was alone, he realized the wolves were winning the fight—the buildings were badly damaged, but the fire was nearly out.
Perhaps this was his moment to slip away—to make one last attempt at tracking the woman in green. At finding out what she knew about Rayna, and why she had Rayna’s hairpin. If he followed his own tracks back the way he’d come, she might be somewhere along that route.
He could hear Sigrid’s voice ringing in his ears, her words from the night he’d arrived at Ulfar: Fleeing once is understandable. I would not be so sympathetic a second time. If he ran and didn’t make it back to Ulfar in time, what would happen?
He didn’t know, and it felt wrong to leave the pack, but he had to try.
But when he turned, he found himself ringed by a dozen townspeople. He was the only wolf in human form, and they were all watching him, waiting for him to say something.
“Our home,” a woman cried, as a girl rocked her back and forth. “Everything’s in there, everything’s lost!”
The girl’s mouth was set in a hard line, and Anders could see all of them were struggling not to give way to panic or despair or both. “I’m sorry,” he said helplessly. “We came as fast as we could.”
“We know,” she wept. “Isn’t there anything to be done? Everything we owned was inside. We have nothing. What will we do now?”
She stared at Anders, her words hanging in the air, and Anders wished desperately he knew what to say in reply.
He knew what it was like to have nothing.
Sigrid’s voice sounded behind him. “The mayor’s office will provide for you.”
Anders turned his head, and there she stood, back in human form, her white face smeared with soot, her immaculate blond hair turned gray with ash. “I’m sorry we were too late,” she said, her voice more gentle than he had ever heard it before. “We’ll save what we can. Perhaps some of your belongings will still be inside. This was dragon work, make no mistake. This was dragonsfire.”
Her voice lifted so all those in the crowd could hear, and they gathered close. “What they want is for us to be afraid. But we will not fear them. The ice wolves will protect you!”
The crowd murmured, a sound that was half fear, half gratitude, most of them gathering closer, some of them looking up at the sky.
Her voice was hard again, but there was a note of compassion there that Anders wasn’t used to. Sigrid truly cared for the people of Holbard. She shared their anger.
And, he realized, so did he. What could drive the dragons to do a thing like this?
One thing he knew for sure—Lisabet was wrong. She was trying to understand the dragons, and there was clearly only one thing that needed to be understood. The dragons meant to harm the people of Vallen any way they could.
Leaving behind wolves to watch the embers of the fire and make sure it didn’t return, and to start salvaging what they could of people’s belongings, the rest of the pack left to return to Ulfar. Anders fell in with them, but though he knew both Sigrid and Professor Ennar had spotted him, neither had come to ask him what he was doing there.
The group of final years he’d been with before the alarm came to find him, and all three of them walked with him. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t get in trouble for dragging you along,” one of the girls said. “We’re certainly not losing you now.”
Which meant he’d lost his chance to hunt for the woman in green. Or to slip away and find something else of Rayna’s he could use to try and locate her.
He wanted to howl his frustration. He had been so close to the woman with the hairpin, so close to finding out more. And tonight, he’d been so close to slipping away to find something, before Jerro and the others had needed him.
How was he supposed to be both a wolf and her brother?
The pack approached Ulfar, some human, many on four legs. He found he could understand most of what they said, even when they were in wolf form.
A man with curly gray hair and a grim expression spoke louder than most. Like Sigrid, he was covered in ashes, his skin turned nearly as gray as his hair. “I’ve never wished so hard there was a way for us to find Drekhelm. To find the dragons. Those cowards, setting a fire and running, attacking at night.”
A murmur of assent went through the group, the wolves growling and snapping their agreement, but Anders was watching Sigrid and Ennar, who were just a little way ahead of him. The two women turned their heads to look at each other, their eyes locking.
It wasn’t just a look they exchanged. It was a look.
One that had Anders stumbling over a cobblestone, catching his breath in shock. Did they know something the others didn’t? Something even Hayn didn’t?
Did they have a way to track down the dragons?
He had to find out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HE LAY AWAKE MUCH OF THE NIGHT, AND by breakfast, he’d made up his mind. He grabbed a seat opposite Lisabet and spoke quickly, before Sakarias and Viktoria finished arguing about the amount of bacon on his plate and came to join them. He’d come up with an idea just before dawn—a way to get Lisabet’s assistance without lying to her about what she would be doing, but without telling her exactly why she would be doing it. It was as honest as he could figure out how to be.
“Lisabet,” he said quietly. “I need your help.”
He immediately had her attention.
“Do you remember the locator frame in the library?” he said. “The one in the glass case?”
“Yes,” she said, puzzled.
He told her about needing something belonging to the person he wanted to find, and she listened intently. The only place he changed his story was the name of the person he was looking for. “I have a friend called Jerro,” he said. He’d had the idea after seeing the other boy last night during the fire. “He’s the one who helped me get away, the first day I transformed, when I was afraid. We always looked out for each other on the streets, and I’m really worried about him.” He at least didn’t have to fake his expression when he said that part—he had plenty of worries, and he was sure they showed up on his face more often than not. “Last night, at the fire, I saw some of the kids I used to know. And they said . . . nobody knows where he is. And I’m trapped in here, so there’s nothing I can do—not that I’d know where to look anyway. They’ve tried all the obvious places.”
“And you want to try the frame,” she said, leaning in to keep her voice down. “But we’d need something of his. It’s worth a shot. It would be difficult to break out of the Academy at night and go searching for something he owned, but not impossible. Before we take the risk, though, I think we should see if there’s any chance it works. Try it on someone whose belongings we already have.”
Anders stared at her. He felt like a fool for not thinking of that himself—of course, they could use something belonging to one of them, or a friend, and find out quickly enough if the locator frame was completely broken or just unreliable. He’d gotten ahead of himself, trying to find something of Rayna’s to use first.
They had to stop talking then, when Sakarias and Viktoria slid in next to them, and Sakarias began a long and involved story about a time he got chased by a cow at his family’s farm.
Anders thought it was meant to make him laugh—that his friend could see he wa
s worried—and he tried to pay attention as best he could. Viktoria said it was a classic example of Sakarias not paying attention and paying the price, but Anders saw a hint of her smile as she told Sakarias this.
That evening, Anders and Lisabet slipped away to the library after class. Everyone was used to them going there to do their homework together, so nobody seemed to notice. They took with them Lisabet’s favorite bracelet, a scarf of Viktoria’s, and a couple of Sakarias’s pencils.
“If it matters how much time the person spent with the thing, the pencils will be a good test,” Anders said as they made their way in through the big double doors.
Lisabet’s job was to distract the librarian, so she wished him good luck and went off to get started.
Anders took his time unpacking his books, and soon Lisabet and the librarian had set off on a long and complicated search of the far shelves, for obscure books that only Lisabet would know how to ask about.
He waited until he could hear Lisabet’s voice at the far end of the library, and then picked up the pencils, the scarf, and the bracelet, hurrying over to the glass case. He just had to hope nobody came in for the next minute or two, and that the lock was as easy as he’d hoped. Lisabet hadn’t thought to ask how he was going to handle it.
But when he got to the glass case, he stopped short. The metal locator frame and its blank canvas were gone.
In its place was a small, folded white card, with a message neatly printed on it. He read it as quickly as he could. This artifact has been temporarily relocated to Hayn’s workshop.
His heart sinking, he went back to sit with his books and wait for Lisabet. The same question he’d had last time he left the workshop was echoing in his mind again. If there was no way to repair artifacts, why would Hayn take this one?
When Lisabet came hurrying back a few minutes later he slowly shook his head, and her face fell.
“It didn’t work?”
“I didn’t get to try,” he said, and told her what had happened. It was one thing to ask her to distract a librarian, and completely another to ask her to help him break into a workshop. But Lisabet didn’t hesitate.
“We’ll have to figure out how to pick the lock on the door,” she said. “It’ll be much more complicated than a simple glass case. I’m sure I can look it up.”
There was an awkward pause before Anders made himself speak. “Uh, I can probably do it,” he admitted, reaching into his pocket to feel the hairpins he’d taken from Viktoria’s bedside table. His cheeks felt hot. It was as good as telling Lisabet he’d been a criminal before he came to Ulfar.
But she didn’t say anything, and they wasted no time, heading straight for the workshop. When they arrived at Hayn’s workshop, Anders quietly knocked, then knocked again more loudly when there was no answer. All was silent inside, so he crouched in front of the lock while Lisabet stood guard.
He’d never felt quite right about pickpocketing, or about stealing out on the street so they could eat, though Rayna had always reassured him. Now, though, he didn’t feel the slightest hesitation. What he was doing was important, and it was the only way to save his sister.
Usually Rayna did this job, though never with her precious copper hairpins, for fear of breaking them. He wasn’t nearly as quick as she was, but he bent the first pin and carefully slid it in, finding the spot he wanted and pressing down as he inserted the second. Out of the corner of his eye, he could tell Lisabet was still keeping watch, but he couldn’t help wondering what exactly she was going to do if somebody did come around the corner and catch them.
And almost as if the thought had conjured up company, he heard Lisabet suck in a quick breath. His head snapped up, and he saw their classmate Jai rounding the corner, red hair unmistakable, followed a couple of steps later by Hayn.
It was like time slowed down. And it couldn’t have been more obvious what Anders was doing.
He didn’t even have time to think—he just lifted his right hand, made a fist, and extended his thumb to touch his ear. The street signal for help me, it’s urgent—the signal nobody could ignore. The signal he’d taught his classmates at the table in the dining hall.
He didn’t imagine for a moment Jai would remember it, but their eyes widened, and without a moment’s hesitation, they whirled around and smacked straight into Hayn.
“Hayn!” Anders heard Jai’s voice ring out with false cheer down the hallway, as they herded Hayn back around the corner, not giving the big wolf even the tiniest chance of resisting. “I have something to show you, I was just looking for you! Uh, come this way!”
“Wow,” Lisabet whispered, looking at the place where they’d vanished. She hadn’t been at the dinner when Anders had taught Jai that signal, but she knew a distraction when she saw one. “Nice one, Jai. Hurry, they won’t be able to keep Hayn away for long.”
Anders did, and a second later the lock clicked. At last, something was going his way.
They slipped inside the workshop, which looked just as it had the last time they’d been there, dimly lit by the strings of lights. The Skraboks they’d carried in had been replaced by a new stack of books on Hayn’s desk, and beside them sat the metal locator frame they’d come looking for. They hurried over.
Anders started with the pencils, which he thought had the best chance of success, placing them under the frame and watching it intently.
It did absolutely nothing.
He ran a finger around the rim of it, tracing over the runes, but they might as well not have been there for all the difference it made. The surface didn’t so much as swirl, let alone show him a picture of where Sakarias was.
Grimacing, he removed the pencils, and tried with Viktoria’s scarf, checking the frame from every angle for a message that would tell him his roommate’s location.
Nothing.
Finally he tried the bracelet. Lisabet was standing right beside him. He held his breath, hoping against hope to see an image of her freckled face inside the frame. Even if it was weak, if it had any life in it at all, it should be able to tell him where she was.
But again, it was still and silent as they both stared down at it.
“Perhaps it wasn’t forged well enough, and the essence slowly left it,” Lisabet said quietly.
“We should go,” he said, trying to ignore the pressure in his chest. He’d wasted so much time waiting to get out into the city and retrieve something of Rayna’s, and he’d never had any chance of succeeding.
“Just a minute,” she said, looking down at the papers on Hayn’s desk. “He’s making notes on the locator frame.” She began to flip through the books, opening them to pages Hayn had marked with little scraps of paper. Most of them were ancient, sending up clouds of dust every time she moved them. Anders coughed, wondering just how far into the library Hayn had gone to find them.
He shoved the scarf and the pencils into his pockets and walked over to stand by the huge, broken communicator mirror by the door, straining his ears for the sound of approaching footsteps. The lack of reflection in the mirror was unnerving.
“Listen, Anders.” Lisabet was reading out loud from one, the handwriting on its pages spindly and ancient.
The essence in weaker artifacts may be boosted at the times of the solstices and the equinoxes, for at those times essence floods the natural world and can be channeled in the greatest amounts.
Anders closed his eyes. He couldn’t afford to wait for the equinox to try the frame again—Rayna could be dead by then.
He pressed his ear to the door. If the locator didn’t work, there was no point in being here—though his curiosity at the work Hayn was doing still tugged at him. “Lisabet, if Hayn catches us here—” he said.
“Anders.” She had turned another page, and her voice was a whisper. He hurried over to see what had shocked her. “This is a picture of the chalice Hayn told us about, the one he said was broken.” Her finger rested on a sketch of a large goblet. The base was flared, decorated with round medallions on which
intricate runes were engraved. It had a thick metal stem, and what looked like a wooden cup at the top, braced with bands of engraved metal. Still more runes circled the rim of it—it was one of the most complicated artifacts Anders had ever seen, and its name was written beneath it.
Fylkir’s chalice.
Her voice got softer and softer, until he could barely hear her. “Look here, this is Hayn’s writing, he’s written on the actual book, he must have been very excited. He’s written ‘Can it be made to work?’ What do you think that means?”
“I think it means he’s wondering if he can make the chalice work,” Anders replied, trying to sound casual, though his heart was doing backflips. He’d told her he was only looking for Jerro—Lisabet was the one who wanted to know more about dragons, and he had to pretend he wasn’t interested.
“But you can’t fix broken artifacts,” she whispered.
“Then the answer is no,” he made himself say. “It can’t be made to work.” He couldn’t afford to give away how hard his heart was thumping. “We should go, before Jai runs out of excuses.”
She nodded, and together they carefully put everything on the desk back where it had been when they arrived, working as quickly as they could. “This means something,” Lisabet said quietly. “This means there could be a way.”
Anders was close on her heels as they hurried out, but the words were echoing over and over in his head.
There could be a way. There could be a way to find the dragons.
It confirmed his suspicions about the look he’d seen pass between Sigrid and Ennar after the fire.
If there was a way, he was determined to find it.
The bell rang overhead, and they were both quiet as they walked to the dining hall for dinner, lost in their own thoughts. Anders barely noticed what he put on his plate or where he was sitting, until Jai slid in to sit opposite him, blushing almost as red as their hair.
