Chapter 56: On Old Age

"Probably."

"I drew 'On Friendship,' thank God."

He let out a long breath and tucked his index card into his pocket. "What's your name?"

"Richard Williams, Greenwood School in Briston."

"Simon Haynes, King Edward School in Broom."

He extended a hand. His grip wasn't terribly strong, but it was earnest. "I'm from out of town too. Took the train for two and a half hours."

"Mine took over three."

"Then you had it worse than me." Simon asked cautiously, "Which class?"

"A third-class seat."

"Me too." With that confirmed, he seemed to relax entirely.

"I saw Montagu's carriage earlier. The cabin alone is probably worth more than my house."

"Very likely."

"The world is too unfair." Simon sighed, though he quickly adjusted his attitude.

"But fair or not, once we get on stage, we're all reciting the same thing."

He pulled his index card back out. "I'm going to run through this two more times. Good luck."

"You too."

Richard didn't look at his shorthand notebook again, nor did he try to recite from memory.

Instead, he closed his eyes and adjusted his breathing rhythm.

Inhale for four beats, hold for four beats, exhale for four beats, hold for four beats.

The mural's seal suppressed the local ether field, but the rhythm of Fourfold Breathing didn't rely on ether itself.

It was a rhythm, a framework, an anchor that could return him to peak condition in any environment.

...

The first round began precisely at nine-thirty.

The host was a tall, white-haired old man.

He wore the formal dress of the Classical Society, with a gold laurel brooch pinned to his chest.

Standing at the podium, the old man read out the competition rules: participants would take the stage in the order they drew, each limited to five minutes, with points deducted for going over.

The judging panel was situated directly opposite the podium, with six people seated behind a long row of desks.

Three were professors from the Classical Society. Two had heads of pure white hair, and the third was a Bald Professor.

This gave Richard a brief sense of familiarity; he already had a wealth of observational experience with the bald demographic.

Two were principals from renowned secondary schools in the Imperial Capital, and a woman sat in the seat on the far right.

Her dark brown hair was neatly pinned up, and she wore a dark blue skirt suit.

She looked to be around thirty, appearing exceptionally young amid the row of gray hair and bald heads.

Nameplates were placed in front of the judges. Hers read: Isabella Ashford, Department of Classics at Imperial Capital University.

This had to be the aunt his grandfather and mother had spoken of.

Richard withdrew his gaze after a single glance, his expression utterly unruffled.

His grandfather had mentioned she would be here, and that she held positions in both systems simultaneously.

Today, she was here strictly in her capacity as a judge for the Classical Society. It was purely business, leaving nothing more to think about.

The participants took the stage in the order of their drawn numbers.

The first to go up was a short boy from a local grammar school in the Imperial Capital.

He had drawn a passage from 'On Duties,' a relatively steady and straightforward piece.

But once on stage, he was likely overwhelmed by the sheer space of the chapel and the size of the crowd. His voice trembled badly through the first two sentences, and he mispronounced a vocative declension.

The Bald Professor on the judging panel frowned, his pen scratching across the scoring sheet.

The boy didn't steady himself until the third sentence. He performed adequately through the latter half, but his opening mistakes had already set the tone.

When he stepped down, he was too embarrassed to even look the next contestant in the eye as they passed.

The skill levels of the next few speakers were a mixed bag.

One girl from the central region performed quite well; her voice was clear and bright, and her breathing pauses were natural.

However, her rhetorical emphasis occasionally landed on the wrong beat, flattening the tone of a rhetorical question into a plain statement.

A layman wouldn't catch a mistake like that, but the judges certainly would.

Montagu was the seventh to take the stage.

He had drawn a passage from 'On Old Age.'

It was a relatively mild text with a soothing rhythm, perfect for showcasing recitational fundamentals and a feel for the language.

The blond teenager stood at the podium without glancing at any cue cards.

He positioned himself exactly half an arm's length from the edge of the podium—too far would seem timid, too close would feel cramped. His stance was poised and elegant.

His voice was rich and mellow, scarcely sounding like a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old's:

"Quam ob rem, si sapientiam meam admirari soletis..."

(Therefore, if you are accustomed to admiring my wisdom—and may it be worthy of your estimation and this name I bear...)

The trailing note of every long vowel was drawn out to perfection, dovetailing seamlessly with the emotional peaks and valleys of the text.

The chapel was dead silent. The stone walls fed the sound back into the room, creating natural acoustic amplification.

Montagu was clearly long accustomed to this kind of acoustic environment.

His volume never skewed too high or too low; every sentence was perfectly tailored to the chapel's reverberation.

Over the entire five-minute speech, there wasn't a single superfluous pause or lapse in rhythm.

Being groomed one-on-one from childhood to reach this level was something mere hard work could no longer explain.

This was a foundation forged by a combination of environment and innate talent. It belonged to someone who had been standing in the Roman Senate from the moment he was born.

Among the crowd of over five hundred below, many exchanged meaningful glances the moment Montagu finished.

The championship was likely already decided.

Beside him, Simon muttered under his breath, "Isn't this guy a little too ridiculous?"

Richard didn't respond, silently committing several of Montagu's technical traits to memory.

Superb acoustic control, masterful use of vowel resonance, and precise timing on pauses.

All three were hard skills honed over years of relentless training; they couldn't be matched in the short term.

However, Montagu's speech had a subtle underlying characteristic: every emotional fluctuation was flawlessly measured.

He was standing on stage performing a routine that had been polished thousands of times.

It was perfect, but it lacked a bit of human warmth.

Catherine Blackwood was the twelfth.

The way the red-haired girl took the podium was completely different from Montagu's.

She possessed none of that leisurely grace of pausing to survey the audience; she marched right up and planted her feet.

Her hands hung by her sides, fingers slightly curled, heels snapped together.

She looked like an infantryman ready to charge at any moment.

She had drawn that famous opening monologue from the first oration of 'Against Catiline.'

Her very first sentence made everyone in the first three rows sit up straight.

"Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?"

(How long, Catiline, will you go on abusing our patience?)

Her speaking pace was at least twenty percent faster than Montagu's, but her enunciation was incredibly crisp.

Every consonant was cleanly clipped by her teeth and tongue, without the slightest slurring or ambiguity.

Cicero had been interrogating a conspirator in the Roman Senate, and she resurrected the razor-sharp edge of that interrogation to a degree that sent a chill down the audience's spines.

"Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?"

(To what end will your unbridled audacity flaunt itself?)

Her Latin pronunciation carried a slight Highland accent. In terms of sheer precision, this was a deduction.

But when applied to the emotional intensity of this interrogation, that ruggedness infused her voice with genuine, palpable fury.

By the time the girl delivered her final line, her fingers were fully clenched into fists.

The audience remained quiet for a moment before erupting into thunderous applause.

At the judges' desk, the Bald Professor's pen was scribbling much faster than it had during Montagu's speech.

Sitting on the far right, Isabella rested her pen against her lower lip, looking somewhat bored.