Valanya, the 18^th day of Coirë

      The pen skitters off the table and rolls across the floor, coming to a rest barely an inch from where Maltariel sits on the sill, looking out of the window at the dawn. She looks up at the sound, uncurling lithely to pick it up and walk slowly across the room, eyes on me as she holds it out. I grimace apologetically, pushing the ruined piece of parchment towards her as she drops into a chair opposite me.

       Smoke was beginning to drift up through the streets, spreading from the fires on the plain. From where she was on the upper levels, Maltariel could see the glows from vineyards and planted fields burning – plots that had flourished in the sheltered, hidden plain for generations, nurtured and passed on as labours of love, now little more than ashes.

It began with barely a whisper – a trail of smoke unfurling across the sky, rising from outside the walls of the city, where they now stood.

Alassien broke off her conversation with Belfaer to point, wondering aloud, “What's that?” Maltariel leaned across Orien to see, looking in confusion at the smoke, a cold finger of dread uncoiling inside her.

To the forges I went, and there I did find several people of the House of Vanimar waiting, Master Elloen among them, who was also taking his Oath.

It had begun as a day full of such promise. A snatched meeting, a kiss stolen under the gaze of the rising sun. She had never felt so beautiful as on that quiet morning, when Aranto had laughed at the flowers woven into her hair, and then claimed one for himself, pinned inside his tunic. He had grumbled again about their secrecy, and they had finally accepted the inevitable: he would tell his friends, his brothers, after the feast, and then they would go to Maltariel's parents and tell them.

“So what will you do with him?”

I shrug, inadvertently jostling my hand so that Maltariel’s neat strapping falls loose. She gives me a reproachful look and reaches for the ends of the cloth, her deft hands tying it up again with quick, sure movements. Although it is only bruised, my wrist is stiff and sore still when I come to lift a sword, and she has decreed that it must be strapped, for now, until it is recovered. While she reties the cloth, I look up across the river, enjoying the peace for a moment.

Continued from Reunion.