Chapter 33: Six Lines of Light

The black glass glowed slowly from the inside like coals under ash.

Aren watched from the courtyard, standing on an upturned crate at the back of the servant crowd so he could see over their heads. Through the open doors the hall was all candlelight and gold, packed with the nobles of Highcrest in their finest clothes, and at the very front the darkness inside the Measure had quietly begun to move.

The front rows were reserved entirely for people who would never be measured. The Duke of Ashgrave, silent and grey-eyed. The commander of the Royal Knights in white and gold, with a scar across his throat. A thin woman in black from the Hunters’ Guild that the servants whispered was Rank A. Even from the courtyard Aren could feel them, a pressure in the air like standing at the bottom of a deep lake.

"The instructors first," Archdeacon Morvane said. "As is tradition."

The first to go up was Sir Bram, the old knight with the scarred face who taught swordwork in the east tower and trained Vivienne every morning. He climbed the steps slowly, stood squarely before the black glass, and pressed his palm flat against it, and six thin golden lines rose up beside his reflection like threads, each one stopping at a different height with a number written in light beside it.

Strength 1,340, Agility 980, Endurance 1,610, Perception 870, Essence 1,120, Will 1,450. Rank C: Core Formed.

The hall burst into applause, and in the courtyard the servants who could see whistled loudly and stamped their feet.

Aren stared. Hearing Crane explain the six stats was one thing, and seeing them was another. Sir Bram’s weakest number was nearly nine hundred, and if Aren stood in front of that glass right now, he would be lucky to reach thirty in anything.

’Fourteen hundred strength! That man could easily put his fist through the wall of this building. And he isn’t even the strongest teacher here.’

There were two Rank B instructors in the east tower, and the Headmaster herself was something nobody seriously dared guess at, but none of them would stand in front of the Measure today. Above Rank B, nobody ever did in public. A Rank A who showed the world his six numbers was handing his enemies a map of where to strike, so the great houses kept their numbers the way they kept their gold, locked away where nobody could count them.

The instructors went up one by one all morning. The quiet woman from the observatory, Rank C, with an essence near two thousand that made the whole hall gasp. A big cheerful man who taught the Rank D students, whose endurance line climbed almost to the top of the frame. A sour little alchemist whose numbers were all low except perception, which was higher than anyone’s.

Professor Crane didn’t go up.

Aren only noticed near the end of the morning, when the clerk read the last instructor’s name and Crane’s wasn’t among them. He found him in the shadow of a pillar beside the platform, arms folded, not watching the Measure at all but its base, where the deacons had painted their small gold marks.

Aren followed his gaze and saw what Crane was seeing. Every time someone laid a hand on the glass, the little gold marks around the platform glowed faintly for a moment, like embers when you blow on them, and then faded. And every time, whoever stepped down looked a little more tired than when they’d gone up. Not by much. Sir Bram had rubbed his eyes. The observatory woman had caught the railing on her way down as if the floor had shifted under her. The cheerful man had laughed loudly and joked that the Measure must be thirsty this year, and everyone had laughed with him.

Aren didn’t laugh.

’It’s drinking. Every person who touches it, it takes a little.’

Seven nails in a ring around the city, and the center of that ring right here, on this hill, in this hall. When the ring is complete and the right song is sung. A song needed a voice, and a voice needed breath, and here was the Church of the Light inviting the strongest people in the capital one after another to lay their hands on a black mirror in the middle of the ring and give it a little of theirs. In front of a thousand witnesses, under the eyes of six Royal Knights, and calling it a blessing.

The Rank D students went up in the afternoon, thirty-one of them, mostly third and fourth years, and the crowd cheered every single one like a hero. Their numbers were a few hundred each, the strongest touching a thousand in a line or two, with their tempering stages written underneath in neat gold letters: Skin, Flesh, Flesh, Bone, Skin, Blood. Every one of them stepped down a little paler, and nobody noticed.

Aren stood on his crate watching the gold marks glow and fade, glow and fade, and felt sick.

He had told the Headmaster. He’d written it in large plain capitals on her desk: the Archdeacon will stand beside the Measure. And she’d sent six Royal Knights, who were standing right there around the platform watching for a man with a knife. They weren’t watching for a mirror that drank, and he had absolutely no way to tell anyone without telling them everything.

The last name of the day was the champion of the upper years.

Leon Harrow was a fourth-year, the son of a minor house nobody had heard of until he arrived at Highcrest and started winning every duel he fought. Tall and fair, with a quiet, polite face, he had beaten nearly every student in the Academy over two years except one, because he’d never been allowed to fight her. On the last night of the Festival, in front of ten thousand people, he would face Vivienne Ashgrave.

Rook’s book had him as a heavy underdog, and Aren had put him there himself. He had watched Leon train carefully for a whole afternoon two weeks ago and seen a good, solid, disciplined swordsman. Nothing brilliant.

Leon climbed the steps and put his hand on the glass, and the six lines rose.

Strength 940, Agility 1,020, Endurance 880, Perception 790, Essence 1,110. Will:

The hall gasped. The first five lines were golden and very high for a student, higher than any Rank D that day and almost level with the instructors. But the sixth line, Will, didn’t stop. It rose steadily, all the way up the glass to the top of the silver frame, and it wasn’t gold. It was black, a thin black thread of light like a crack running through the mirror, and there was no number beside it at all.

Nobody in the Great Hall moved.

Then Archdeacon Morvane spread his hands and smiled his kind, tired smile, and spoke in that warm honey voice.

"Blessed. Truly. A will so strong the Measure cannot count it. The Light has touched this young man." He bowed his head toward Leon. "The Festival is honored to have such a champion."

The hall erupted. People leapt to their feet shouting Leon’s name, and the nobles in the front rows clapped until their hands went red. Leon Harrow stood on the platform with his hand still on the glass and his polite, quiet face turned to the crowd, and he didn’t smile.

The gold marks around the base of the Measure weren’t fading this time. They were glowing steadily, every one of them, like a ring of small fires, and beneath the six lines a stage appeared in gold.

Rank D: Heart.

Aren stood on his crate while the servants around him cheered, and he simply couldn’t move. Heart was the last stage of Rank D, the one right before C. Two weeks ago Leon had clearly been at Bone, Blood at most, and nobody climbed three stages of tempering in two weeks. Not even Vivienne, with her locked boxes of cores.

’Not unless something is climbing for him.’

Before the eyes of ten thousand, the System had said. Stand alone against the one who would end you.

Across the hall, in the shadow of the pillar, Professor Crane had unfolded his arms and was looking straight at Leon Harrow.

And for the first time since Aren had known him, Crane looked afraid.