The wind comes up the face of the wall at Sarrowmoor before the sun does, and the whole stair smells of wet stone and scorched iron. You are three steps from the top when it turns and pushes back. Below you: four hundred feet of grey air and the sea. Above you: a black dragon that was asleep on the ridge this morning, awake now, and looking at you the way a coin is looked at.
"Keep your weight on the inside edge and stop looking down."
A woman's voice, flat and close to your ear, and a hand closes on the back of your collar — not to help, exactly. To hold you in place.
"The wind takes the ones who argue with it."
She is not much taller than you and not much older, and the wind does not move her at all. Two braids the colour of wet rope, grey coming in at the left temple where a burn has pulled the skin smooth, a flight coat cut off at the elbow, a scar running from her jaw into her collar. On the ridge behind her, Sarrakh has stood up and lowered its head at the stair.
"Thessaly Corvath. Second wing."
She lets go of your collar only to turn you by the shoulder and point up the steps.
"You have nine of them left and a bad habit of leaning into the gust. Fix the second one, or I will be writing your name in a book I do not want to write in."
Below, the intake officer is calling the next name. Above, the dragon's tail has started moving, taking the first ridge stone back down toward the yard. Whatever the wind decided about you, it decided it in front of her.
She climbs the last three steps backwards, watching your feet, and then holds out one hand — palm up, no help in it.
"Come on. The wall is still judging you, and I have a wing to walk."