The road to Athosea was busy.
Caelan watched travellers move around them in both directions. Merchants with loaded wagons, families on foot with bundles on their backs, a pair of riders who passed at a trot without slowing. The Prypetha, which was the annual celebration held at the start of every new year, drew people in from the surrounding towns and villages across the province.
Caelan could see the walls from here. Pale, almost white in the midday light, the stone quarried from the same coastal cliffs the city had been built against. Athosea had started as a fishing settlement, so he had been told. A small port with a good harbour and not much else to recommend it. What changed it was the Empiric Wars. Supply lines, troop movements, the need for a port that could be held and defended on the northern coast. Athosea had been in the right place at the right time, and the city that existed now was the result of three generations of House Blackthorne understanding what that meant and building accordingly.
Alfor walked slightly ahead of them, his pace unhurried.
"The rope work." He didn't even look back. "We'll be returning to it."
Faris let out a breath beside Caelan. Not quite a groan, but close.
"I want clean coils and controlled release before the end of the month," Alfor continued. "Both in stillness and in movement. You'll practice until it isn't something you have to think about."
"We did catch the bird," Merida protested.
"You managed to catch the bird and Caelan's leg, which resulted in him being removed from the exercise entirely and thrown around a forest." Alfor's tone remained perfectly even. "Calling that a success would be generous."
"I'd call it controlled chaos," Faris offered.
"It was not a success."
Faris flashed a grin.
"Caelan survived."
Alfor finally turned, pinching the bridge of his nose before answering.
"Caelan surviving things he should not have survived is not a metric I intend to build a curriculum around." His gaze swept across the three of them. "You are children of Riders. One day, each of you will stand before your own beast. When that moment comes, a tangled rope won't become a funny story you'll tell afterward." He paused. "It'll simply be the end of the story."
Without another word, he turned and continued down the road.
The three of them were quiet for a moment.
Caelan kept his eyes on the road ahead and felt the familiar shape of a thought trying to form and deliberately didn't let it. He knew where it went.
His own beast. His own day. Like his brother. He was the second son, and then he wasn't, and there was nothing to be done about that. Thinking about it served no purpose, so he did his best not to.
Merida and Faris began to talk about that day. Their Trial. When they would be taken to the World's End and attempt at becoming a Rider. It was tradition after all.
Caelan let them talk and focused on breathing evenly through his wrapped ribs, which was easier now than it had been this morning but still required a small ongoing effort.
The gates were close. He could see the guards on the approach, the lanterns on either side of the arch that were already lit even in daylight, the slow-moving press of people funnelling through.
One of the guards saw him at fifty meters. Caelan saw the moment of recognition, the slight straightening, the elbow to the man beside him. By the time they reached the gate both guards had their posture right, and the one on the left, Renwick, an older guard, had the expression he always had, which was the expression of a man who had known Caelan since he was five and was doing the required formality Caelan despised.
"My lord," he said. His eyes went to the cut on Caelan's cheek, the wrapped arm. It was something the guards around the city were used to seeing. Caelan didn't train in the safest of conditions after all.
It was nothing new to them.
"Renwick." Caelan nodded at him and kept moving.
It was like that everywhere he went, not ceremonial, just the quiet and continuous acknowledgment of people who knew who he was and acted accordingly. A woman with a basket paused and dipped her head. A man outside a carpenter's shop straightened and nodded. Two children looked at him with wide eyes and one of them waved with her whole arm, and he waved back, and she looked as though this had made her day, which made him feel slightly guilty about how much he disliked his.
The city itself was beautiful, which was the honest truth of it regardless of everything else. White stone buildings with ashen coloured tiled roofs and broad grey streets, the whole thing kept clean and well-maintained in a way that spoke to how seriously his father took the running of it. Today the streets were busier than usual, the festival preparation visible everywhere you looked. Paper lanterns were being strung between buildings, garlands of dried flowers were going up above doorways, a merchant was arranging coloured cloth across the front of his stall, most likely knowing this festival alone would make a significant portion of his year.
"You know," Merida said after a long silence, falling into step beside Caelan, "I've been thinking about something."
"That's rare."
Faris didn't even look up when he said it.
Merida pulled a face at him before continuing.
"The city's all grey stone and white walls."
"You don't say," Celan pretended to act surprised.
"And your hair's grey."
He glanced at her, waiting.
"And your eyes are..." She narrowed her eyes as if studying him for the first time. "...well, not grey."
"Amethyst," Faris cut in helpfully. "That's the word you're looking for. It's in every formal portrait, if you'd ever bothered to look."
She nodded, "I've seen them."
"He looks very serious in them."
Merida laughed.
"He's serious all the time."
Caelan looked between the two of them.
"You know I can hear you."
"We know," Merida replied, "If we wanted to gossip, we'd wait until you left."
She looked back up at him, smiling and giving him a wink.
"I'm just saying. You match the city."
"That's not the compliment you think it is," Caelan sighed.
"I never said it was."
"Then what is it?"
She shrugged.
"An observation."
Faris smirked.
"She's been trying to tell you you're handsome for the past three years."
Merida rounded on him.
"One more word and I'm throwing you into that merchant's stall."
"The one with the cloth?" Faris asked innocently. "You'd ruin his display."
"Eventually I'd apologise."
"How thoughtful."
His grin widened.
Caelan wisely chose not to answer. Instead, he stole a quick glance towards Merida.
She was laughing.
Does she really think that? He couldn't help but think of a possibility of her liking him.
He shook the thought away.
"The tavern by the port," Faris said, changing the subject as effortlessly as he always did. "The Anchor. Daven reckons he'll have the back room this time if we get there early."
"That's exactly what he said last year," Merida rolled her eyes.
"And eventually he got us in."
"In the back back room."
"The ceiling wasn't that bad," Caelan said.
Merida stared at him.
"You could see the sky."
"It was a small hole."
"It rained through the ceiling!"
Caelan considered that.
"...Still dramatic about it"
She began to rant on about how long it can take girls to put on makeup and do their hair for such events.
Caelan turned his gaze to Alfor, who had moved to a slightly greater distance ahead of them, his attention apparently entirely occupied by something in the middle distance. A cart. A stretch of road. Something Caelan couldn't identify and suspected his master was just giving them some space.
"I'll be there," Caelan said. "Before the moons rise, if I can manage it."
Merida gave him a doubtful look.
"Your father's people will have every minute of your evening planned."
"Be that as it may," he replied, "I'll be there anyway."
"The east garden exit?" Faris asked, already knowing how Caelan was going to sneak out of the palace.
"Probably."
"Has anyone noticed you using it?" Merida raised a brow.
"If they have, they haven't mentioned it."
He glanced toward Alfor, who was now several paces ahead of them, pretending very convincingly not to listen.
His pace never changed.
His hands remained clasped behind his back.
Not a single reaction.
Which, somehow, was a reaction in itself.
Faris watched him for a moment.
"He's a good teacher."
Caelan nodded, "Indeed he is."
They walked in silence for a stretch. The outer district began to give way to the wider streets and taller buildings of the middle city, the Spire visible above the roofline ahead, appearing and disappearing as the road curved. It was closer now, the stacked stone arches of it rising toward the high clouds, the uppermost tier lost in the white.
Then, a shadow came.
It passed over the street like a cloud but wrong, too fast, too defined, the edges of it sharp. Then another, crossing the first. Then a third. Someone ahead of them stopped walking and looked up and pointed, and then someone beside them did, and then the street was full of people with their faces turned to the sky.
Caelan looked up.
Three dragons moved across the blue, high enough that the details were lost but the shapes were unmistakable. The long bodies, the wide wings beating in slow and massive strokes. All three heading in the same direction, the same destination.
The Spire.
"That's my mother's dragon," Merida said. Her voice had gone quiet.
"The rear one on the left," Faris said. He was shading his eyes with his hand. "I'm sure that's Zekyr, my father's."
Caelan looked at the lead dragon. The one slightly ahead, slightly higher than the other two, and a lot bigger.
He said nothing, but he recognised the dragon immediately. He had seen it so many times, both close and from afar, he could draw it with his eyes closed.
"Go."
All three of them turned.
Alfor had stopped walking.
His expression was plain, stripped of the dry humour he'd worn moments before.
"Your parents are returning after being away for some time." His eyes moved from one student to the next. "That takes precedence."
He let the words settle.
"Sand Pits. Dawn tomorrow."
There wasn't the slightest doubt that it was an order.
Merida didn't wait for another word.
She was already moving.
Faris instinctively straightened his collar before catching himself and letting it fall.
Caelan looked back toward the Spire.
The dragons were circling now, beginning their descent, sunlight flashing across vast wings.
A heartbeat later, he was already sprinting.