Tavi focused on the gates. They were made of stone sheathed and woven with steel. They weighed tons and tons, but they were balanced so perfectly on their hinges that a single man, unassisted by furies, could push them open when their locks were not engaged. Even so, they were stronger than the stone siege walls that framed them. Fire would not distress them. A steel ram could batter them for days with no effect, and the swords of the finest Knights Ferrous in the Realm would shatter upon them. The thunderbolts held ready by the First Aleran’s Knights would do little more than scar the finished steel surface. The earth itself could not be shaken around them.

In Tavi’s experience, though, very few people had sufficient respect for the destructive capacities of the gentler crafts.

Wood and water.

He had a come a long, long way from the Calderon Valley, from being the scrawny apprentice shepherd without the ability to so much as operate a furylamp or an oven. In that time, he had known peace and war, civilization and savagery, calm study and desperate application. As a boy, he had dreamed of finding a life in which he proved himself despite the fact that he had no furycraft at all—and now his furycraft might be all that kept him alive.

Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.

But some part of him, the part that was little enamored of walking the more prudent avenues of thought, was quivering with excitement. How many times had he suffered at the hands of the other children at Bernardholt for lacking furies of his own? How many childhood nights had he lain awake, attempting simply to will himself the ability to furycraft? How often had he shed private, silent tears of shame and despair?

And now, he had those abilities. Now he knew how to use them. Fundamentally speaking.

No matter how much danger he knew he was in, there was a part of him that wanted simply to throw back his head and crow defiant triumph at those memories, at the world. There was a part of him that wanted to dance in place, and was wildly eager to show his strength at last. Most of all, there was a part of him that wanted to face his enemies for the first time upon his own talent and strength and no one else’s. Though he knew he was untested, he wanted the test.

He had to know that he was ready to face what was to come.

So it was with both wary tension and absolute elation that Tavi reached out to the furies spread about the world before him.