CHAPTER ONE
Valyanrend
THE MESSAGE WAS pinned with a knife to the guardhouse roof—a little melodramatic, Marceline thought, but Roger had insisted. It was just some old nearly blunt blade Morgan had only ever used to carve meat, but she had to admit it looked impressive from a distance. Almost worth the trouble she had taken to arrange it that way without being seen.
The morning sun was still gray and weak, but a crowd had already gathered, watching a couple of Imperator Elgar’s men haul a ladder out to take the message down. Marceline was just another unmemorable spectator, come to gawk with everybody else. There was no chance that the soldiers would allow any civilians a look at the parchment’s contents, but identical missives had been left in much more accessible locations in other neighborhoods. Roger’s words would spread, she had no doubt of that.
Ever since she, Roger, Morgan, and Braddock had sworn to one another to kill Elgar and break his hold on their city or die in the attempt, it felt like they hadn’t stopped moving for a moment. But all their movements until now had been in the shadows; this was the first action they had taken that was meant to draw attention. Though Roger had written the letter, they had agreed on its contents together. To our false ruler, it began. That would certainly raise the guards’ alarm. You must think yourself clever, but the depths of your evil designs are revealed to me. You must think yourself safe, but I can unravel the very power that protects you, just as shadow melts away at the touch of light. And soon this whole city will know the truth that you have tried so desperately to hide. You will send all the soldiers of Valyanrend in search of me, yet your eyes will never behold me—not until it is too late. I am the Fang, and your life is mine.
“Why are you writing I?” Marceline had asked him. “It’s from all of us, isn’t it?”
“Aye, but it’s more impressive if he thinks a single person is responsible for it all. And safer, if he should somehow track one of us down.”
“I still think we’re giving away too much,” Braddock had said. “Why not hide the fact that we can undo his magic, and let him think himself invulnerable?”
“Under other circumstances, that might work,” Roger said. “But if Elgar doesn’t know about vardrath steel and its capabilities already, he will soon. Your aristocrat in Issamira knows, and he’ll be gathering as much of it as possible to bring against Elgar in the war to come. Elgar has more than enough spies and informants to hear about that, at least. If he already knows a weapon against him exists, better to make him fear how close to him it might be.”
“Fair enough,” Morgan said. “My only objection is the name you’ve chosen. You don’t think it’s too … revealing?”
Roger had laughed. “Because dragons have fangs? That might be why I chose it, but it’ll hardly lead him to the Dragon’s Head. Most predators have teeth, after all.”
The semicircle of civilians around the guardhouse hadn’t grown any smaller, but it was still mostly silent, only a tentative question or two, and no reaction when they went unanswered. That wouldn’t do. Marceline scanned the crowd, searching for a potential troublemaker, and settled on a broad middle-aged man who’d shouldered his way front and center, arms folded and eyes narrowed in the attitude of one who always thought he could do a better job than whoever was doing it.
Marceline tugged delicately at his sleeve, looking up at him with big wondering eyes. “Do you know what this is all about, sir? Why won’t they let us see that paper?”
The man drew himself up, her implication that she thought he was the one to ask bolstering his own high opinion of himself. “It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is. Elgar’s lot were so eager to assure us that ghastly slaughter in Silkspoint was necessary to destroy Valyanrend’s rebels and traitors. But if the resistance has really been stamped out, what do you make of that? Blasted incompetence.”
“There’s no reason it has to be from the resistance,” muttered a young woman at his elbow. “It could just be some fool playing a prank.”
But Marceline had chosen well; the man wasn’t going to allow anyone to quibble with him now that he’d put himself forward as an authority in front of an audience. “The specific author’s not the point. It’s some malcontent or other, after we’d been promised the malcontents were gone. It’s the principle of the thing. And if it were a prank, would they be taking it so seriously?” He raised his voice. “What’s it say, then? Is it from the resistance, or is it some new threat, upon the still-warm ashes of the old?”
“It’s guard business,” one of Elgar’s men retorted. “Keep your distance.”
“There.” The man fluttered a dismissive hand at the guards. “It’s suspicious, and it’s incompetent, and it’s disgraceful.”
An older boy rolled his eyes. “They haven’t even finished reading it, idiot. They’ve only just fetched it down, and you keep interrupting them.”
“But they got here quick enough, didn’t they?” another woman called from the middle of the crowd, shoving her way toward them. “If they’re that worried about what it might be, about what’ll happen if regular folk get a look at it—”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” the first man crowed. “We shouldn’t just let them tuck it away! If it’s a matter that concerns our safety, we’ve a right to know about it!”
Copyright © 2022 by Isabelle Steiger
