"Breathe," Osk said, not unkindly. He lifted the kettle by its stand and set it on the cooling slate. "You insulted it. You can apologize tomorrow. No more Bloom until you can spell 'contain' without looking."
Quill strode up as the last of the steam curled away. He looked at the pot, the thread, the wind-wisp's gentle wall, and lifted one eyebrow in a shape that meant: yes. "No one clapped," he said to the first-years hovering like sparrows. "Good. You don't clap when the roof doesn't fall in. You thank the mason."
He looked at me—at my hands—at the emberling, which had not ashed but shook as a spent coal trembles. "Riven. Sand did its work?"
"Some," I said. "The eighth channel sulked less."
"Good." He flicked his lens out and peered at the emberling's ribs. "You grew a spine."
I blinked. The emberling had always had a suggestion of one. Now a brighter thread ran down its middle—denser, steadier—a coal-bone that hadn't been there this morning.
"Minor evolution," Quill said, so casual you could forget the word mattered. "Level four." He nodded at the first-year. "And note: growth often happens when you are doing something useful, not when you are staring at yourself and hoping."
"Write it down," Osk called as he turned away. "If you don't write it down, it didn't happen."
We wrote it down. We ran again because Osk insisted fear leaves the body best through the lungs. We fed our partners because Quill said gratitude tastes like iron and charcoal. When the block ended, the green smelled like steam and pride and the faint bitter of scorched chalk.
On the way to the dormitory turn, Aureline fell into step beside me. She didn't offer her hand or her name, which would have been a kind of kindness I wouldn't know what to do with. She looked ahead, not at me.
"Your vent line," she said, "was crooked."
"I drew it in a hurry."
"Haste," she said, "is for mouths. Next time, put it here." She sketched a correct V in the air, a small insertion that would have spared me a tug in the chest. "It will breathe better."
"Thank you," I said, and meant it.
She nodded once—the ghost of a bow—and peeled away. The salamander's wing brushed her shoulder like a cloak. Brann watched her go and then watched me. His expression had no smirk to it. It was worse: curiosity.
Sera caught up and bumped my arm with the back of her hand. "You realize we were almost competent."
"I'm trying not to faint from the novelty."
She grinned, then sobered. "There'll be inspectors in the stands tomorrow," she said. "Heard it from a third-year who heard it from a mender who heard it from a marshal: the Trium Council sent two watchers to sit through public exhibitions. They like to remind the Academies who holds the leashes."
"Perfect," I said. "I always perform best when watched by invisible power."
"Good," she said. "Because we're on the sheet again. Afternoon block, lane five."
I shook my head. "How did we earn that?"
"By not letting a kettle explode," she said, and her pot made a pleased little thrum.
I took the tram home with the emberling tucked against my chest and my thoughts three steps ahead, writing and rewriting runes that would not embarrass me in lane five. The city ran by in late afternoon flat gold: laundry flags strung between second stories, a dog on a roof, a child arguing with a door-knocker spirit that had decided it liked to sing.
My mother had set two bowls and a loaf on the table and left a note in her tidy hand: Market run. Don't feed Lark ash. Lark is offended by ash. If you must mix them, supervise.
I put the emberling on the hearth and Lark on the sill, then considered. "We can try," I told them, "if we're polite."
I pinched the smallest bead of iron sand between finger and thumb and held it where Lark's leaves could feel the glint and the emberling's heat could warm the bead without taking it. Lark's petals trembled and shed a drop of dew that slid over the bead and into my palm. The bead hissed as the dew touched it, not from heat but from something like agreement. The emberling leaned close and took the bead in a slow inhalation.
The eighth channel held without complaint.
"There," I said. "Polite."
Lark brightened. The emberling pressed its forehead to my knuckles, and the seal over my heart felt like a candle behind a door.
After supper, I lifted heavy things until sweat had me tasting salt. I wrote runes until chalk dust chalked my nails. I sketched a cleaner vent line, a firmer latch, a cut I could trust when someone kicked a pole. I practiced Bank until the emberling could store heat without my hand hovering like a fretful parent. When the city settled into its night noises—the tram's last bell, a far-off laugh, a kettle that had learned better—I let the emberling curl at my knees and fell into a sleep made of steady drums.
Morning came damp and mild. Crownspire's flags hung at half-fuss. The green had been re-chalked: lanes bright, fences mended, benches ready to pretend they were only for decoration. Professor Quill, under the shade of the awning, shuffled a stack of slates and tried to look uninterested in the possibility of joy. Two strangers sat behind him—gray coats with lapels too sharp, faces too smooth—Trium Council, if Sera's rumor had roots.
Osk's voice did the work of five bells. "Pairs. You know your hour. No heroics. No apologies. If something goes to pieces, you say, 'I meant that,' and you are convincing."
Sera and I warmed in the shade. Our pot breathed steam like a polite dragon in a temple mural. The emberling sat the way cats sit when they have chosen a spot and will not be moved by the gods of chairs.
"Latch, Bank, Vent," Sera said. "You cut if Neri throws. If Brann cuts, you bind."
"Bones," I said, and she flashed me the grin that meant: don't get clever until you must.
We watched a pair perform a series of competent exchanges. No one gasped. Good work often looks like nothing. Then Quill called our names with the offhanded tone of a man reading the menu.
"Riven and Tallow. Calder and Neri. Lane five."
The stands—not full, not empty—tilted their attention toward us the way a field of sunflowers follow light. Brann and Neri were already at their mark. Brann's smile sat on his face like a polished coin. Neri didn't look at it. Her wisp hovered, humid and intent.
"Control under motion," Quill said. He lifted a finger, let it fall. "Begin."
Sera cued the pot with a tap; I opened the latch; the heat thread slid into place like a practiced lie that had decided to be honest. We walked—slow, then quick, then stop-step—as if the ground wanted to trick us. The thread held through a pivot where it had slipped yesterday. I thanked the vent line for doing what lines should do: make room.
"Task under pressure," Quill said. He nodded at a rope hung above our lane this time—higher than yesterday's banner. "Cut. Catch. Keep."
Brann's ant leaped. The mandibles glowed, even as the heat wanted to wander into the carapace. He had improved: the glow stayed at the edges where it was needed. He sliced the rope. Neri's wisp lunged and, gentler this time, cupped the drop, fed it back like a ball. Sera tipped in a tiny handful of lentils we'd smuggled under the brick to make the boil unforgiving.
"Perturbation," Quill said, glancing at Osk.
Osk did not kick a pole this time. He simply clapped once, sharp, on the far side of the awning. The sound arrived late and loud. The emberling wanted to flare; it did not. The pot wanted to burp; it did, and recovered. My hand wanted to shake; it chose not to.
Quill's mouth twitched. "Add a cut," he said to me, as if ordering tea. "Air."
I drew the cut along the edge of my own thread—surgical, as Osk had prescribed—and bit into the small eddy Neri's wisp could not help making. The cut parted it without tearing. The thread did not lose heat.
The gray-coated strangers made no notes I could see. That did not mean they were not tallying us in columns too neat for chalk.
"Enough," Quill said, when my shoulder started to tell my hand a story about fatigue. "Trade places."
We did. Neri called wind that ran instead of leapt; Brann cut it with care, shockingly careful. The ant's mandibles glowed and did not scorch the rope it severed. We caught the drop with the soft wall and held our boil. When Osk clapped far away again, the ant flinched and cut wide, nicking the edge of the wisp. Neri caught the spill and smoothed; you could see the moment she decided to ignore Brann and trust her own grammar.
Quill lifted a hand. "Done."
We retreated, breath steady enough to fake, hands only a little slick. Brann passed close enough to murmur, "Not a candle, then."
"Not a footstool," I said.
Neri surprised us both by smiling without sides. "Not done," she said, and went to sit with people who clapped at competence.
We didn't win anything because there was nothing to win yet. We received no praise because the work was the praise. Osk nodded once at my chest as if to salute the banked ember. Quill scrawled something on a slate and then, without looking up, flicked me a small brass token: an Academy chit.
"Work detail," he said. "Foundry. Evening shift. You've a bricklayer's hand and a fire that learns. They need both."
Sera bumped my shoulder hard enough to make the emberling hiccup. "Look at you," she said. "Gainfully employed."
"I'll frame the chit," I said, deadpan.
"Don't," she said. "Spend it on filings and bread."
The foundry squatted in Crownspire's eastern yard like a creature asleep between breaths: big furnace doors shut, chimneys idle, racks of tools laid out in rows like soldiers who would rather be cooks. Spirits lived in everything there: the bellows, the molds, the traveling crane that creaked when you apologized badly. The master of the place, a woman named Jes Toller with arms like braided rope and a living hammer bound to her wrist by a band of black iron, looked me over with the quick assessment of someone who knows where bodies fail.
"Elemental?" she asked.
"Fire," I said, and the emberling peered out of my coat like a polite lantern.
"Good. You'll mind the tempering baths and do what you're told. If you write into my furnace without my leave, I'll have your seal suspended for a week and make you recite poetry to the tongs."
"Yes, Master Toller."
She grunted. Approval. Or humor. With masters, the two often share a bench.
The evening passed in work that emptied the head of everything but heat and care. I banked the furnace when Jes said bank; I vented when she said vent; I cut air when a twist of smoke put its finger in the wrong place. The emberling learned the rhythms the way you learn the steps of a dance by watching the shoes of someone who won't slow down.
When we finished, Jes wiped her face with a rag that had been white once and pressed a shard of slag into my palm. It glittered, like night caught in glass. "For your Bank," she said. "Pocket it. Teach your spirit to hold heat with something that remembers having been fire and decided to be stone."
I tucked the slag beside my iron pouch and felt the emberling reach toward it like a child toward a story.
The city had gone dark when I walked home. Under the streetlamps—each one bound to a little light spirit that had learned to listen to bells—moths danced like runes that had escaped the board. The Trium Council's watchers had gone wherever watchers go. Osk's voice haunted the stones in a way that made me straighten my shoulders and lengthen my stride.
At the door, a note waited on the latch in an unfamiliar neat hand:
Second-years Riven and Tallow,Report to the west ring tomorrow dawn for supplemental instruction.— M. Quill
My mother stuck her head around the kitchen doorway before I could pretend surprise. "He came himself," she said, eyes alight. "Professor Quill. He looked at Lark as if he were about to write an apology for not being a plant."
"What did you tell him?"
"That you'd be there," she said. "And that you know the way to the west ring as if you built it."
I held the slag up for Lark to see. Dew jeweled at the petal tips. The emberling pressed close. The three of us—leaf, coal, and the human who would have to learn to be both—stood in our small kitchen and felt, for a breath, like a forge that had remembered it was also a garden.
"Dawn," I told them. "Bones. Before bolts."
Lark chimed. The Emberling pulsed. The house, which had seen worse days and better bread, agreed.