Lunday, 12th of Frostember 1788

  Wylan’s workshop had been organised once, briefly, in 1784. It had never forgiven him for it.

  The space occupied the ground floor of the east wing: thoroughly, and with a structural philosophy that alarmed anyone who thought about it too long. Workbenches lined three walls. A fourth had been sacrificed to shelving at some point and now held bottles, vials, coiled tubing, and a taxidermied owl that Wylan insisted was “load bearing.” The air carried its permanent cocktail of reagent, machine oil, and something faintly sweet that was either burnt sugar or Divina’s soldering flux.

  The bronze decoys were still where he’d left them. One propped against a bookshelf. One half-buried in a crate of copper tubing. A third balanced on a stack of manuscripts, where it had acquired a fine layer of dust and an air of quiet resignation. Somewhere among them, in the hidden cavity behind the workbench, sat Caliburn.

  Wylan knelt at the workbench, ran his fingers along the underside, and found the catch. The panel clicked open. The felt lining held its cargo.

  There it was: leaf-shaped, bronze, waiting.

  He did not touch it. Nobody in the family had, not since the Dungeon. The velvet stayed between skin and blade.

  He lifted the sword out with a pair of brass tongs, clamped it into the bench vice, and adjusted the angle until the blade sat level under the apparatus. The vice gripped it indifferently. It had held better.

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”

  Divina was already at the secondary instrument panel she’d built from three of Wylan’s unfinished projects. Her goggles sat on her forehead, magnifying lenses folded up like insect wings. Her toolbelt bristled.

  “The oscillograph,” Wylan said. “I want a full oscillation spectrum.”

  “The oscillograph,” Divina repeated, “which you told me last week was ‘a stopgap until something better presents itself’?”

  “Something better has not yet presented itself.”

  “Evidently.” She pulled her goggles down and began adjusting dials. There were fourteen of them. Wylan had built the device with fourteen dials because seven had felt insufficient and twenty-one had felt indulgent. Divina had added two more without telling him.

  ? The relationship between a luminary and their assistant was not unlike a marriage, in that both parties were convinced the other one was doing it wrong, and neither was entirely mistaken.

  The apparatus coughed, hummed, and settled into a rhythmic ticking. Wylan pressed his ear to the casing, listened, adjusted a valve.

  “Calibrating,” Wylan murmured. “Give me a baseline on ambient aetheric discharge.”

  “Point three. Stable.” Divina’s fingers moved across the instrument panel. “Which is odd, given there’s a legendary holy sword sitting two feet from the array.”

  “It’s not odd. It’s patient.” He slotted a lens into the apparatus and aimed it at the blade. “Solar energy, obviously. It’s permeating the whole thing. However, there’s a deeper energy underneath.”

  He changed the lens. The third lens was one he’d ground himself, from a mineral Divina had sourced from a trader who had sourced it from someone who had almost certainly stolen it. It saw what the standard lenses missed.

  The readings shifted. Beneath the solar signature, something else. A frequency he didn’t recognise.

  “There’s definitely some kind of heat in here, but I want to say the heat is... angry? Hungry?” He adjusted the lens. “Does fire have an appetite?”

  Divina stopped and huffed. “It does when it’s dragon fire.”

  “Seems like Seraphina was telling us the truth,” Wylan said. “Looks like Valère might be connected to Aeloria after all. Honestly, I’m not sure which is more shocking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the balance of probabilities, which did you rate more likely: the Church being artificed by Aeloria, or Seraphina being honest with us for no reason?”

  He crossed to the far bench, where a jar sat sealed with elaborate runes. Inside, a black ooze shifted lazily. Not hungry yet, but keeping its options open.

  “Stand back,” he said.

  He unlatched the jar. A tendril of ooze reached outward, tasting the air, and found the blade.

  The ooze hissed, convulsed, and was obliterated. The acrid smoke dissipated before it reached the ceiling. The jar was empty. The sword was clean.

  Wylan stared at the empty jar. Divina stared at the empty jar.

  Divina looked at the sword. “What just happened?”

  “Dragon fire,” Wylan said. “Antithetical to the Umbra. Not resistant. Annihilating.”

  It contained fire, and then called to more fire, making it louder.

  Wylan carried Caliburn to the parlour wrapped in its velvet, held at arm’s length. He set it on the low table between the teacups. Nobody was drinking.

  The parlour fire had been lit but not tended, giving it the apologetic air of a flame that knew it wasn’t the main event.

  Lambert stood at the mantelpiece. Isabella occupied the chair nearest the door, her boots on the floor, her weight forward. Laila had taken the largest chair by the fire, which was clearly too big for her; she filled it anyway. Wylan sat cross-legged on the settee with his notes in his lap. His shoes were somewhere under the furniture. They’d find their way back eventually.

  “There are a few things we need to discuss,” Wylan said, “but the two at the top of my list are these: I’m fairly confident this is Caliburn. And if it is, then Aeloria is probably in some way behind the Church.”

  Lambert was quiet for a moment. “It seems the worldview I’ve been building keeps being confirmed,” he said. “That the Church is itself a fiction. That Espérant is indeed Valère, who founded it.” He straightened. “Which brings me back to my earlier position that we were right to align ourselves with Seraphina. She has been the only one to tell us the truth on these matters.”

  “Oh, come on,” Wylan said. “You know Seraphina isn’t telling us anything. And you already saw Espérant — or Valère — use tactical truths to tell us what we wanted to hear.”

  Nobody spoke. Somewhere in the house, a clock was running slightly behind another clock, producing the quiet anxiety of time disagreeing with itself.

  Laila raised a hand. The room settled. “We know what the sword is. The question is what we do about the man who wants it back.”

  “If it’s truly him,” Lambert said, “then the fresco in the Dungeon wasn’t apocryphal. Valère was imprisoned. His sword was taken. R?zvan, or R?zvan’s agents, separated him from it during the Eclipse.”

  “Meaning he’s been diminished for centuries,” Wylan said. “And we’re holding the thing that makes him whole.”

  “The thing that makes him a dragonborn,” Laila corrected. “There’s a difference between whole and dangerous.”

  “Is there?” Isabella said. “For someone like him?”

  The question hung. Lambert turned from the mantelpiece.

  “I understand the concern,” he said. “But consider what it means that Caliburn came to us. We found it in a Dungeon that bore our family’s name — a Dungeon that Alexios built, or sealed, or was connected to in ways we still don’t fully understand. It was placed there for a reason.”

  He said it in his sermon voice. He’d never quite learned to turn it off.

  Laila’s fingers stilled on the armrest.

  “Lambert,” she said. “We’ve had Aurora’s curse for two years. Two years of scholars, of Church resources, of every avenue I could pursue. And in those two years, the one person who has claimed he can lift it is the man standing at our gate asking for that sword.”

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  “He believes he can wield it,” Wylan said. “He hasn’t proved it. If he wants Caliburn badly enough to reveal himself after all this time, he’ll ask again. He’s not going to knock once and walk away.”

  “You don’t know that,” Laila said.

  “I know arithmetic. We have fourteen years before the curse reaches its crisis. That’s fourteen years of leverage. Every month we hold Caliburn is a month Valère has reason to negotiate.”

  Isabella shifted in her chair. “I don’t trust him. I don’t trust Seraphina either. Both of them have been careful with what they share. Both of them want something from us, and both of them frame it as generosity.”

  “Seraphina is family,” Lambert said.

  “Mirembe was family,” Wylan said.

  “Mirembe was only human,” Lambert said.

  The room went quiet in a different way.

  “These are trials,” Lambert said. “The path to purpose has never been comfortable. Terrible things must happen for good things to transpire.”

  “She’s two, Lambert,” Isabella said. “She’s not a bargaining chip and she’s not a test of faith. She’s two years old. Whatever doctrine you’re reaching for, make sure it can survive that.”

  Laila’s gaze had not left Lambert. “I am deeply uneasy about Aurora,” she said. “No amount of reassurance is going to change that. We’ve had two years. What if the next fourteen are just as fruitless?”

  When he spoke, his voice carried the register he used for oaths.

  “I give you my word. Before the gods. Aurora’s curse will be broken before it reaches its greatest danger. I will see to it personally. The sword need not be sacrificed.”

  Laila looked at him for a long time. The parlour was very quiet.

  “You always sound so sure, Lambert,” Laila said. “I just wish it was ever the same thing twice.”

  Wylan spoke first.

  “We have two leads,” he said. “Esteban in the Sepulchre, and the egg trail through Elara. We can’t chase both at once.”

  “The Pontifarchy window is closing,” Laila said. “If Vaziri takes the seat before we find Esteban, we lose our only chance to challenge her from within.”

  “Agreed,” Lambert said. “Esteban at the helm is how we prevent a true schism. Reform from within, not rebellion. The egg will wait.”

  “The Sepulchre, then,” Wylan said. “Seraphina’s mentioned it. She might know how to find Esteban.”

  “Which means we need to talk to Seraphina,” Isabella said.

  “Which means we need to decide what happens to Caliburn while we’re inside,” Laila said. “We can’t take it. If Valère is what Lambert thinks he is, bringing the sword near him would be handing it over.”

  “We can’t leave it with Maximilian,” Lambert said. “His reaction to it wasn’t reverence.”

  “It was avarice,” Laila said, and left it there.

  Lambert was looking at the sword.

  The velvet held its shape. Bronze underneath, leaf-shaped, patient. Everyone in the room was talking about where to put it. Lambert was thinking about what it was for.

  “It’s not avarice,” he said.

  The room turned to him.

  “Maximilian felt what Caliburn is. He just didn’t understand what he was feeling.” Lambert’s voice had found its register. “We keep talking about this sword as though it’s a problem. Something to hide, to contain, to lock away behind decoys and dampening housings. But what if it’s not a problem? What if it’s the answer?”

  “Alexios sealed it away for a reason,” Wylan said.

  “Alexios didn’t know what we know. He didn’t have your readings. He didn’t know about Aeloria, or Valère, or what the Church actually is.” Lambert turned from the mantelpiece. “We’ve spent the last hour talking about installing Esteban. Finding him, rescuing him, putting him on the Pontifex’s seat and hoping he can reform the institution from within. But reform takes decades, and truth be told we don’t even know if Esteban is alive.”

  “So what are you proposing?” Isabella said.

  “I’m proposing that we stop hiding and start leading. With Caliburn.”

  “I don’t trust Max to wield that sword,” Laila said.

  “Not Max. Someone connected to Invictus. Someone trained in divine service. Someone who’s already committed to reforming the Church.”

  The room understood him.

  “Invictus, sanctity.”

  The prayer left his lips before the room could answer. He felt the warmth of it settle through him first, then outward, the familiar calm of Invictus’s grace smoothing every sharp edge in the room. No hostility, no alarm. Just peace, and the quiet certainty that he was right to speak and they were right to listen.

  Isabella’s hand, which had been moving toward the table, settled back into her lap.

  Wylan opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

  “Think about what we could do,” Lambert said. “The Church can’t defy a wielder of Caliburn. Vaziri’s political manoeuvring, the tribunal, the Inquisition. None of it matters if we hold the sword of the faith’s own founding. Not as a threat. As a mandate.”

  He was already moving as he spoke.

  “I have sworn several oaths in my life, to Invictus and to this family, and I will not turn aside a chance to keep those oaths.”

  His fingers found the velvet. Folded it back. The bronze caught the firelight.

  “Lambert,” Laila said, quietly. The boon didn’t need to suppress what she was feeling. It was sadness, not hostility.

  “You always sound so sure.”

  Lambert’s hand closed around the hilt.

  The room fell away.

  Not literally. They were all still there: Laila in her chair, Isabella by the door, Wylan on the settee. But his awareness expanded beyond them, beyond the walls, and what he sensed was fire.

  His own Brand first. It always is. A polished mirror, catching the radiant light of the Pendulum and casting it back.

  Then the others, not distant but right here. Three fires in the same room.

  Laila’s: scintillating, cloaked in swirling smoke and shadow.

  Wylan’s: the steady heat of a chemical furnace, contained, pressurised, nothing wasted.

  Isabella’s: a campfire in the dark. Watchful. Always there when you turned toward it.

  Further. Divina, in the workshop below: precise, bright, the clean flame of a soldering iron.

  Elariana, in the servants’ wing: the ferocity of a warrior’s forge.

  And Maximilian. Even from the far end of the estate, a conflagration pulsing in eerie harmony with the sword under Lambert’s hand, their rhythms locked.

  The sword makes you more of what you already are. He could feel it working. Every Brand in the house singing louder, and his hand on the instrument.

  And then something else.

  Faint. So faint he almost missed it. A pulse, gentle and uncertain, not yet a fire. A warmth so small it barely registered, flickering with a stubbornness that was distinctly de Vaillant. It refused to go out.

  One floor up. Thirty paces east.

  Laila’s hand moved. A trace of colour bloomed at her fingertips, soft and violet, and she drew it across the air between them. It wasn’t a command. It was a lens. Lambert’s awareness, which had been spread across the house like a net, collapsed to a single point: the colour, and the woman behind it, and nothing else.

  The distant Brands vanished. The nursery spark — gone. There was only the parlour, and the soft violet fading from the air, and his mother’s eyes.

  She was standing. He didn’t remember her standing.

  “Put it down, Lambert.”

  His hand opened. Caliburn settled on the table.

  The room was very quiet. The boon had faded. Lambert looked at his hands.

  “Aurora,” he said. “She has a Brand. I felt it. One floor up.”

  Laila did her best to keep up, but even in his terrible sandals, Lambert had outpaced her. The others were faster, and Laila had paused only a moment to fold the velvet back over Caliburn and pick it up. It was not aiding her speed.

  So she was the last to arrive, which meant the nursery had already received four de Vaillants before Greta had received any warning.

  “Vy are you all charging in here like galuts? I just got Aurora to settle down, and I don’t care if you are big Heroes, the baby needs her sleep.”

  Laila stepped between her children diplomatically to take the lead.

  “Greta, I apologise. We need a moment with Aurora. Would you give us the room, please.”

  Greta’s needles stopped. She looked at the child, then at Laila, then at the room full of people who were clearly about to have a conversation she did not want to be part of. She set her knitting in the chair and left without a word.

  “Isabella, would you stand outside.” She handed her the sword. “And hold this.”

  Isabella took it, nodded, and pulled the door shut behind her.

  Laila lifted Aurora gently from the crib. Aurora stirred, murmured something that wasn’t a word yet, and settled against her grandmother’s collarbone without waking. Lambert stepped close and laid a palm on her forehead. He closed his eyes.

  “There’s something there,” he said. “Not a fully fledged Brand. But a spark, and it’s growing.”

  Aurora’s hand opened and closed against Laila’s collar. Dreaming, maybe. Or reaching for something none of them could see.

  “How?” Laila said.

  “Probably the same way Max did. She’s got the same Umbral taint inside her that you both do.”

  Wylan had already produced his lenses from somewhere. Laila had long since stopped asking where he kept them. “The hypothesis seems to be confirmed,” he said, fitting them on. “It’s literal exposure to monstrous forces that produces Heroic potential. When it’s present at birth, like a vampiric strain, it can produce spontaneous Heroes.”

  “Was this the same for Max?”

  “Yes and no.” Lambert hadn’t moved his hand from Aurora’s forehead. His eyes were still closed, and there was a stillness to him that Laila recognised from the chapel, the listening posture, the one that meant his attention was somewhere his body wasn’t. “Max didn’t develop any kind of powers until he was twelve, but even then that was a chore.” His eyes opened. “I was performing miracles before I even arrived here. And Wylan — there’s a reason your workshop is blast resistant.”

  “I resent the implication,” Wylan said. “But yes.”

  “All of you wielding inordinate power,” Laila said, “and half the time you didn’t understand what you were doing.” Aurora’s weight was warm against her chest. Two years old. The same age Max had been when the nurse came to Laila with burned hands and an expression that said she would not be staying.

  Lambert withdrew his hand slowly. “I can see something. The fire in her is showing an affinity to the sword.”

  “I think I know why it’s getting stronger.” He glanced back toward the door, as if Caliburn might hear him from the parlour. “It seems to be reacting to the sword in some way. And if Lambert is correct, that Caliburn builds on or amplifies Brands, it’s probably affecting her. Caliburn’s been stoking it since we brought it home.”

  Wylan moved closer. “Let me look.” He leaned in as though over his apparatus, not touching, reading. The lenses caught the lamplight and for a moment his eyes were unreadable behind them.

  He was quiet for too long.

  “It’s the same fire,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think there’s a touch of draconic fire in her. It has to be related to whatever Aeloria did to her.”

  “So what, she’s a dragonborn?” Lambert said.

  “Maybe. Like I have all the answers.”

  “Then keep Caliburn away from her,” Laila said. “Whatever this is, whatever Aeloria intended, we don’t feed it.”

  “The Church has always taught us that our Brands are blessings from Invictus,” Lambert said. “Gifts of the divine. But if what’s inside Aurora is dragon fire...”

  “You don’t have to solve that tonight,” Laila said.

  “I’ll build something,” Wylan said. “A housing. Something that dampens the resonance. And I’ll move it daily. Different location each time. No one will find it unless I want them to.” He paused. “That sounded more confident than I feel.”

  The lamp flickered. Aurora slept on. Laila could feel her heartbeat, quick and light, a bird’s rhythm against her own.

  “So what does it mean for her?” Laila said.

  “Remember what Valère said.” Lambert looked at Aurora, then at Laila. “She wouldn’t survive her sixteenth birthday.”