“What’s that?”
“Would you consider being my best man?”
Max was taken aback. He glanced at Miss Boon, whose jaw had come unhinged.
“And what do you need a best man for, William?” she interjected.
“Because I’m getting married,” replied Cooper matter-of-factly.
Miss Boon’s eyebrows nearly shot off her forehead. “My God, he’s still possessed,” she said. Leaning forward, she stroked Cooper’s hand and spoke to him as though he were a very sweet and dense child. “William, who exactly are you marrying?”
The man’s pale, ruined features broke into a grin as he kissed her hand. “I’m marrying you, Hazel.”
The teacher flushed fire red. “W-well,” she stammered, blinking rapidly. “I’m hardly an expert, but aren’t you supposed to
“But I have,” explained Cooper, placing her hand over his heart. “In here, I’ve asked you a thousand times. And you almost always said yes.”
The woman’s glasses promptly fogged. “I shall have to consider it,” she replied, primly wiping their lenses. “But it might be prudent for Max to clear his calendar should he be needed to serve in that capacity.”
“I’m all for prudence,” said Max, smiling. “In any case, we should probably get going.”
“Yes,” said Miss Boon, rising and smoothing her robes. “Yes, you should. It’s going to be an absolutely historic afternoon, and the Director would never forgive me if I kept you. You should both go at once. No need for ceremony.”
They had almost escaped when Max heard Cooper call his name. He stopped and turned to see the Agent pointing decisively at
“Take that with you.”
At nearly four o’clock that afternoon, Max stood beneath the arched, interlacing canopy of branches that formed the Sanctuary tunnel. He wanted to watch the crowds gathering in the orchard and all along the garden paths to the Manse, but he could not take his eyes off Tweedy. The Highland hare was a nervous wreck, pacing back and forth and addressing his clipboard as though it were his personal assistant. When David sneezed, Tweedy gave a start and snarled his medals on his shawl.
“Look what you made me do!” he grumbled, untangling them.
“Sorry,” sighed David.
“Well, come on,” said the hare, beckoning impatiently. “Let me have a look at you.”
“You have looked me over eight times,” growled David. “I look fine.”
“A sneeze can wreak havoc on the fringe,” said Tweedy knowingly. He stood on tiptoe to examine the silver mantle over David’s navy robes.
“This entire outfit is a sham,” David declared, flapping his sleeves throughout the hare’s careful inspection. “These are instructor’s robes. The school expelled me over a year ago. I should just wear my regular clothes.”
“You will not,” gasped Tweedy, outraged. “I’ll not have you looking like some penniless friar for the greatest moment in Rowan’s history! Do you have any idea what’s about to transpire?”
“I do,” said Max drily. “You’ve made us recite the program twenty times.”
“That is because practice makes perfect,” retorted the hare, hopping over to reinspect Max’s dress. When he could find no fault in the armor’s gleam, the tunic’s drape, or the boots’ polish, he stabbed a paw at Max’s spear. “And remember that you are to keep that blade sheathed, McDaniels! We don’t want an untimely scream to spoil the ceremony and cause a general panic. It is because I pay attention to these details that the Director—”
“—trusts you with matters of highest importance.”
Tweedy’s whiskers twitched as the boys finished his sentence.
“You two can stand there grinning like imbeciles, but this is no laughing matter. Oh, why can’t you be more like Mina?” he moaned. “She’s quiet and well mannered and—dear me—she looks like an absolute angel!”
“Thank you, Tweedy,” called Mina, peering down from atop YaYa.
“Don’t lean, child,” pleaded the hare. “Your robes must remain just so. Now, take a deep breath, all of you, and wait for the signal.”
When Old Tom finally began to chime the hour, Tweedy held up a paw and counted the beats.
“And one … and two … and three … and
Thrusting out his chest, Tweedy led them out of the leafy tunnel and into the sunshine. Max blinked at both the sun and the enormous crowds. He and David were walking on either side of YaYa, each holding one end of a golden sash that was draped over the ki-rin’s shoulders. Mina was perched atop the saddle, looking uncharacteristically clean and scrubbed in white silk robes trimmed in silver lace. Tweedy had tried to explain that a magechain was not a proper accessory for an Ascendant’s robes, but the girl had refused to part with it. It glittered around her neck, resplendent but for its lumpish centerpiece; a wax-dipped acorn crudely wrapped with copper wire. Apparently teleportation was such a rare ability that there was no official gemstone or token to commemorate it. David had improvised. Privately, Max thought he should have commissioned the dvergar.
But Mina’s magechain was not her most interesting accessory. That honor belonged to a thick golden rope that was coiled around the girl’s arm from her shoulder to her wrist. As they proceeded through Rowan’s orchard, Max occasionally gazed up at it.
And it gazed back at him.
The golden rope was a dragon.
After the battle, Mina had found him amid the carnage on the beach, resembling a muddy eel, half choked with sand and seaweed. According to David’s account, the girl had identified it as a dragon right away, but he had been skeptical. No true dragons had existed for a thousand years, and even those comparatively meager specimens were more like spiny serpents and scaly bats than the godlike creatures of antiquity. The ancient dragons had been of the Old Magic, wild spirits of terrible power.
But when Mina washed the creature in the bloody shallows, David spied a glint of gold and tiny claws folded flat against its snakelike body. When the creature arched back and revealed whiskerlike spines along its chin, all doubts evaporated. It was indeed a dragon. Only time would reveal its kind or purpose. Mina had not seemed to care. Once it coiled about her arm, she named him Ember and announced that he was her charge.
As intriguing as Mina’s dragon might be, most eyes were on the girl herself. Thousands of people lined the paths through Old College and many were straining to get even a glimpse of the wondrous child who had appeared before Prusias, broken his seven crowns, and sent him fleeing over the sea.
In truth, the assembly’s numbers and proximity made Max more than a little nervous. He disliked crowds ever since the Atropos had targeted him, but it was not his own safety that concerned him: it was Mina’s. A cultlike fervor was starting to gather around the girl. Some had taken to calling her St. Mina and people of various faiths were starting to project their own beliefs and prophecies upon her. Max had experienced some of this himself, but it had never reached such a groundswell of intensity or zeal. Once the Promethean Scholars had declared Mina the first Ascendant since Elias Bram, even some of Rowan’s senior faculty seemed to regard the girl as a holy object.
Max could not regard her in this light. For all her astounding and mysterious power, she would always be his little Mina—a girl who liked to play marbles and cook inedible stews and explore tidal pools after a rain. When she grinned down at him, he returned it and dearly hoped that some part of her would remain free from the incredible hopes and expectations settling on her shoulders.
Bram never wore those robes and, indeed, never even answered to the title on those rare occasions when an awestruck scholar had the opportunity to address him. David said his grandfather had given up both long ago and had advised Mina to do the same when he’d heard of the pronouncement. But in this, as in many things, Mina was stubborn and took her own counsel.
Max had looked for Bram, but he never saw the Archmage during their slow procession through Old College. He had not even seen him since Prusias’s attack. When pressed, David would only say that his grandfather was “gathering himself” and that Max might not see him again for a very long time.
The Archmage might have been absent, but Ms. Richter and just about every other member of Rowan’s leadership were gathered at the cliffs nearest the spot where Gravenmuir had once stood. As they rounded the Manse’s pluming fountain and proceeded toward the Director, Max recognized some familiar faces.
Nigel Bristow waved and cheered with his wife and daughter. So did the Tellers and even Thomas Polk and
