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Chapter 1
Chapter One: Ash and Fog
Night pressed close to Greybridge. Fog gathered in the elbows of alleys and lay thick over the water where the bridge arced a narrow back. Tamsin fed the bridge lantern with steady hands. She tipped the oil, kept the wick trimmed, and watched the blue-white heart of the flame blink, struggle, and catch.
It caught, then stuttered. The light sank low, as if a cold thumb pressed it down.
“Steady,” she said to it. The word made a little cloud in the air. She set her shoulders and added one more measured drop from the canister. Old habit kept her movements calm, though the tiny hairs on her arms lifted. The night-creatures in the reeds felt when the flame faltered. They edged closer unseen, lifting sleek heads, tasting the air.
Corrin came jogging up the bridge steps with his usual grin and a loaf wrapped in cloth. “If I bring bread, will you let me tell everyone I saved us?”
“You can tell them you saved your sister from starving,” Tamsin said. She took the loaf. He had split it and tucked a smear of butter inside. He always remembered the butter. It was the sort of care he hid under jokes.
“They’re whispering in the square,” he said. The humor softened. “About the price. Alden says the Guild will hold a meeting. Midwinter’s almost here.”
“He would,” Tamsin said. The wick hissed. The lantern’s glass was warm under her palm. The flame leaned toward her, then away, unsteady as a boat.
Corrin looked toward the black mass of the river. “You never do fear, do you?”
“I do,” she said. “I just don’t let it steer.”
He bumped her shoulder with his, and for a time they stood together, watching fog curl off the water. When the hour bell chimed, Tamsin closed the lantern door. The flame seemed smaller than yesterday. In the copper frame of its base, the old sigil was tarnished and thin.
“Go home,” she told him. “I’ll come off watch in an hour.”
“You promise?”
She looked at him, at the goose-feathered edge of his hair, at the cracked knuckles he never kept balm on. She smiled. “I promise.”
She did not tell him that she had heard, too, the whispers in the square. When the flame failed, the old rule said the river must be paid with a life.
The fog curled tighter, as if the river listened.
