kitchen door and Steiner shouldered his way into the room, a little unsteady on his feet.
‘Did you see a ghost on the walk home?’ Kjellrunn was sitting at the table in her nightshirt, hands clasped around a mug of hot milk.
‘Not a ghost, but it turns out Romola is a storyweaver as a well as a pirate. She told a story that was unsettling.’
‘Which story?’
‘Bittervinge and the Mama Qara.’
‘That’s not a scary story. Not really.’
‘It depends who’s telling it, I suppose,’ said Steiner quietly.
‘What else did she say?’ Kjellrunn’s eyes were bright with curiosity.
‘No stories, only that Imperial soldiers are in town, and there’ll be an Invigilation tomorrow.’
Kjellrunn sat up straighter in her chair, then set her eyes on her mug.
‘I hate it,’ was all she said.
‘So did I,’ replied Steiner.
She remembered being inspected by the Synod, how her palms had sweated and her stomach knotted like old rope, wondering if she would be taken away for bearing the taint of dragons.
‘But this is the last time you have to do it,’ said Steiner. ‘You’ll be fine, Kjell.’
She struggled not to tremble and said nothing.
‘There’s been no witchsign in Cinderfell for twenty years,’ said Steiner. ‘And you’ve always passed without a problem before. This year won’t be any different.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ she said, her mouth a bitter curve of worry.
‘Kjell, is there anything, any reason … Do you doubt you’ll pass this year? If there’s anything you wanted to tell me …’
‘Of course not!’ She stood up and marched past him, climbing the stairs without a backward glance.
‘Good night then,’ he called after her, but there was little good about it.
Though many Imperial scholars argue there is no proof linking the emergence of the arcane with our former draconic masters, the Holy Synod takes it as a matter of faith. Ours is a double poisoning; ash and smoke have tainted the sky just as young children manifest unearthly powers. How else to explain the unexplainable?
– From the field notes of Hierarch Khigir, Vigilant of the Imperial Synod.
Steiner looked up into the skies from the porch and watched the grey snow drifting down, obscuring roof and road. It lay along lintels and windowsills, a hushed drabness for the gloomy town. The chill wind, so often a feature in Cinderfell, was absent that day.
‘The snow will cover everything if it keeps up like this,’ whispered Kjellrunn, joining him in the porch, a shawl wrapped about her shoulders. Her breath misted on the air and for a moment Steiner’s mind wandered to Romola’s tale of dragons from the previous night. ‘Perhaps the Vigilants will forget we’re here,’ added Kjellrunn.
‘Small chance of that.’ Steiner forced a smile at his sister. ‘Still, they might catch a cold and go home.’ He knew exactly how she felt; he had stood for six Invigilations and was glad he’d not have to do so again. Each time he’d wondered if some glimmer of the arcane would see him taken by the Synod.
‘Last night, you said you hoped you’d pass the Invigilation. You haven’t …’ Steiner struggled for the words.
‘Started casting spells that summon the winds and make people burst into flames?’ said Kjellrunn.
‘I think I would have noticed that,’ replied Steiner with a smile, but Kjellrunn didn’t return it, looking away to the falling snow. ‘You and Father are all I have. I don’t know what I’d do if they took you, Kjell. I don’t know what Father would do.’
‘No one is going take me,’ replied Kjell, but Steiner couldn’t miss the way she looked off to the horizon as she said it, not meeting his eyes.
‘You’ll walk your sister to school today?’ said Marek from the kitchen, as if Steiner would refuse.
‘Of course.’
‘And wait until she can come home.’ Steiner couldn’t miss the guarded tone in his father’s voice. There would be no lessons today. There would be no teachers. It was impossible to spare a thought for anything else at times like these.
‘We’d best get to it,’ said Steiner, slipping an arm around Kjellrunn’s shoulders.
‘Wait now.’ Their father’s voice was soft, softer than the snow falling outside. Marek pulled a brooch from a pocket. He took a step towards Kjellrunn with a sad smile on his lips. ‘This was your mother’s. You should have it.’
Kjellrunn blinked, then her expression fell as she saw the brooch, styled in the shape of a sledgehammer. It had been cast in black iron; hardly the jewellery a young woman yearned for.
‘Wear it today.’ Marek pulled open her shawl and reached for the tunic beneath, pinning the brooch in place. ‘If you get scared at the Invigilation, remember your mother.’
‘But … but I don’t remember my mother,’ said Kjellrunn in a whisper. ‘I don’t remember her at all.’ The pain of that absence was written across her slender face in that moment, as tears blossomed at the corners of her eyes. Steiner did not share her pain, only nursed a resentment that the woman who’d birthed him had fled to gods knew where.
‘She loved you,’ said their father. ‘Be brave.’ Marek waved them off and closed the door, leaving Kjellrunn and Steiner with the long walk ahead, surrounded by drifting grey motes of snow.
‘Do you have one?’ asked Kjellrunn, when they were a few streets away. Steiner was glad of the question, for the distraction. Anything was preferable to the endless din of anxiety in his mind, like a smithy consumed with work.
‘No,’ he replied, glancing at the hammer brooch. ‘But I’d rather have the real thing anyway. I couldn’t do much in the smithy with a hammer that small.’ He nudged her with an elbow and was rewarded with a smile which faded as they drew closer to the bay. The menace of the red ship was not lessened by the cheerless weather. Three soldiers idled on the pier, waiting for a smaller boat that ferried indistinct figures across the water.
‘That’s the ship.’ Kjellrunn’s voice was a whisper. ‘That’s the ship that will take all those poor children away for cleansing.’
Every year the Synod arrived in Cinderfell with around two score of children, gathered up from across Vinterkveld. Every year those children were piled on a ship and never seen
