Chapter 17: Not Up to Standard

Chapter 17: Not Up to Standard

The practice dummy struck Silas on the shoulder while he was congratulating himself on getting past its shield.

It wasn’t a hard blow. The padded arm folded on contact, leaving a blue mark on his sleeve and a much larger injury to his mood.

"Again," Ferrow said.

"I had the opening."

"Yes. Use it this time."

Silas retrieved the wooden practice knife from the sand. Around him, the other students were working through the same short drill, interrupting a target’s guard and landing a clean touch before its counterstroke. He could hear someone’s third successful bell from the next lane.

His own bell remained silent.

He sent the knife forward with Remote Grasp. At the same time, he pulled the dummy’s shield aside, just far enough to expose the painted circle beneath its collar. Its training ward resisted the pull. He put more force into it, felt the shield give, and brought the knife around.

The shield closed before the point arrived.

Silas caught the knife on the rebound. The padded arm swung toward him, and he stepped back too quickly, dragging his heel through the sand.

Ferrow steadied his elbow before he fell.

"Rest a moment."

"I can do another."

"You can do another after you rest." She pointed to the bench.

He sat, annoyed enough to welcome the excuse to look away. The knife hovered over his knee until Ferrow held out her hand for it.

"You’re spending most of the opening moving your weapon into position," she said. "Bring it closer before you pull the shield."

"Then it catches the blade."

"Sometimes. Work out where it won’t."

She turned to stop a boy two lanes over from charging his target bodily. Silas examined the red scrape on his wooden knife. Its broad guard had caught the rim of the shield twice. He couldn’t blame that for all of it; he had also hesitated when the target came back at him.

Alden would have kept coming.

And there wouldn’t be a nice line to shove him over.

By the end of the session, Silas had managed two clean touches. Both required him to begin with the knife already beside the target, a position he doubted anyone intending to kill him would politely allow.

He returned the equipment without mentioning that concern to Ferrow. She had watched every attempt. There was little chance it had escaped her.

Outside the practice grounds, students were gathering around a notice board. Silas glanced at a girl standing near its edge, then continued toward his dormitory without slowing.

His shoulder hurt when he reached for the door.

Inside, he put water on, changed out of the marked shirt, and lowered himself carefully into his new chair. The padding was still worth every coin. Unfortunately, he had started finding things he needed that weren’t chairs.

Four objects were manageable outside. He could move more when they were light and the work was slow, especially here, but he wasn’t going to fight someone while trying to hold six different instructions in his head. Four knives ought to give him enough choices. One near each side, another ready to attack, and a fourth to bring back if the first missed.

He tried the arrangement with spoons above his lap. When he sent one toward the desk, another dipped. He corrected it before it touched his knee.

Practice first. Obviously.

Daggers were small enough to accelerate without spending half his strength dragging them around. He could change direction quickly, threaten someone from several angles, and keep the fight close enough to see what he was doing. A sword in his actual hand would mostly give an opponent something to knock out of it.

He preferred having a little distance between his fingers and other people’s blades.

Eventually, Boundary Ward could cover the gaps. For now, it was still a temporary Talent tied to this room. He spent a few minutes maintaining the practice boundary around his chipped dish, then put the chalk away. The record remained at sixty-five percent.

Silas opened his terminal and messaged Evan.

Where do you buy tools?

The reply arrived while he was eating.

Depends on the tool.

Daggers.

There was a longer pause.

Holt’s, east service court. He makes ordinary steel equipment as well as the expensive stuff. Don’t buy from the front display before asking him.

Silas checked the route. It was on academy grounds, which helped, though he still resented how far everything had been built from his room.

He finished his meal before leaving.

Holt’s had a narrow shop in front of a workshop whose open doors let heat into the lane. A man with gray hair and leather sleeves was arguing with a delivery driver about a cracked crate. Silas waited beside a rack of practice spearheads until the driver left.

The smith came in carrying a bill he looked ready to eat.

"What do you need?"

"Four daggers. Similar weight."

"Throwing?"

"Remote control."

The man’s eyes moved over his uniform. "Talent?"

"Remote Grasp. Here—may I?" Silas indicated the two daggers lying on the counter.

The smith moved his bill aside. "Keep them over the counter."

Silas lifted both blades into the air. He sent one a short distance to the left while the other turned slowly above the cleared space, then brought them back together and lowered them onto the wood.

"I want four I can use like that," he said.

Holt examined where the daggers had landed. "Can you keep the point steady when something hits it?"

"Depends how hard. I can turn a light blow aside."

"All right. Case on your left. Take a look."

Silas opened the case. The first dagger had an attractive dark hilt and a silver price tag large enough to discourage him from touching it again. The second cost less, though buying four would still require money he didn’t have.

He moved toward the back of the case.

Holt set down the disputed bill. "Those last ones are plain steel. No channel work. You won’t get much reinforcement through them."

Silas picked one up. The handle felt good in his hand, which was largely irrelevant. He turned it over, studying the broad guard, then put it beside another with a slimmer blade.

"I expected a better selection."

Holt looked up fully.

That came out worse than I meant.

Silas continued before the man could respond. "For my purposes. These seem rather clumsy."

"Clumsy where?"

"The guard. The handle. I don’t need all this."

"Then say you don’t need a handle." Holt took the dagger and balanced it across a finger. "There’s nothing wrong with the balance."

"For someone holding it."

"Which is how most people use knives."

Silas reached for the slimmer one. "And this?"

"Also generally held by the handle."

He gave the smith a flat look. Holt returned it without difficulty.

Silas had hoped to spend ten minutes selecting something inexpensive and another five pretending the cost didn’t matter. Instead, he could already feel sweat collecting beneath his collar.

"Let me show you where it catches," he said, lifting the dagger slightly.

The smith hesitated, then pointed through the workshop. "Testing recess. Keep it over the bench."

Silas followed him past an unlit forge and a row of unfinished fittings. He raised the dagger above the bench, turned it point-first, and brought it sideways around an empty wooden stand. The guard clipped the stand.

Holt folded his arms.

"I saw you do that deliberately."

"To show you what I mean. I need a narrow piece. No hilt sticking out, no broad blade that has to turn before I can move it through a gap."

"Then you’re asking for a spike."

Silas looked down at the dagger. A spike would be cheap. It would also leave him buying four objects with one useful purpose each, and if he was paying for a weapon, he wanted something he could keep using as his control improved.

An old sketch came back to him: four curved segments spread across a screen, a note from production asking whether he understood what another transformation animation would cost.

He had understood perfectly. He’d drawn the extra forms at home anyway.

"Do you have paper?" Silas asked.

Holt glanced toward a roll beside the bench. "For what?"

"Something closer to my standards."

The smith’s mouth tightened. Silas wished, briefly, that he had waited until after getting the paper to say that.

Holt tore off a sheet and pushed a pencil across to him.

"Go on, then."