Chapter 1 — The Ashwright's Son

The village of Cinder's Edge had three rules, the way all villages at the edge of the Cinderlands had rules: do not waste fire, do not cross the Greyveil at night, and do not talk about the old empire to anyone who looked like they might be listening.Kael Ashborn — the surname the village had given him, for the child with no father and a dead mother who seemed magnetically connected to burning things — had broken all three rules by the age of fifteen.The fire rule he'd broken accidentally, repeatedly, and always with the same result: the fire did not waste. Whatever he threw into a flame came back in some altered form. A handful of ash thrown into a dying hearth rebuilt it. A doused torch, touched briefly, lit again. He'd stopped trying to explain this and started trying to ensure no one noticed. He was moderately successful.The Greyveil rule he'd broken on a dare at age twelve, crossing the silver-misted river at midnight and coming back with a stone from the other bank that the local herbalist had looked at for a long time before handing it back without comment. The stone was warm. It had no reason to be warm.The old empire rule he'd broken with the third member of what he thought of as his problem: Maren.Maren Voss was the daughter of the village's record-keeper, seventeen to his fifteen, with the efficient posture of someone who had spent her life around shelves and a habit of reading things she wasn't supposed to. She had, over the course of three years, told Kael more about the history of the Cinderlands than anyone else in Cinder's Edge knew, which was either a great deal or nothing, depending on how much she was making up."The Ashen Throne broke six years ago," she said, one evening in the record-keeper's back room, surrounded by documents that were definitely not for public consultation. "The empire's been fragmenting ever since. Four warlords currently claim the succession. The capital is a mess.""Why are you telling me this?" Kael said. He was sitting on the floor, because the chairs in this room were small and he'd grown considerably in the past year."Because you should know where you live." She turned a page. "Also because you're from here and you don't know anything about here, which is embarrassing.""I know everything I need to know.""You know how to fix fire and charm horses and go where you're not supposed to go." She looked at him over the document. "You don't know why half the villages in the eastern reaches pay tithe to a warlord named Castor Vane who has no legitimate claim to anything except a large army and a talent for intimidation.""Does knowing that change anything?""Knowledge always changes things."He looked at her. She looked back, the way she did — direct and slightly challenging, the way of someone who had long since decided that most conversations were a waste of time unless they were going somewhere."What do you actually want, Maren?"She put down the document. "I want to go to Vardenmoor."He waited.