Chapter 57: Just Have the Tea

Chapter 57: Just Have the Tea

Hugo Brenn checked the message for the fourth time on the stairs.

Five o’clock. Tea. Silas Rooke’s room.

There was nothing threatening in the words. That was the problem. Rooke had approached him outside the practice hall, asked whether he had a free afternoon, and accepted Hugo’s startled answer before Hugo could think to qualify it.

His father would have called it an opportunity to make a useful acquaintance.

His father had not spent the last few weeks listening to students talk about Gareth Rooke’s assault, and about what had happened to Gareth’s sister afterward.

Hugo straightened the cuffs of his jacket. His family had money, enough that a damaged training coat could be replaced without an argument. They owned a stake in a transport business and knew people who mattered at home. At Crownless, several students in his year could have bought that business without asking anyone first.

He was still getting used to that.

He had considered claiming to be ill. Then he pictured running into Rooke the next morning and being asked why he had looked perfectly healthy at dinner.

It’s tea. He asked about training. Just have the tea.

Hugo stopped outside the numbered door and knocked.

Silas had put the dart away before boiling the water.

He wanted his guest uneasy enough to accept an invitation, not so frightened that he fled back into the corridor at the sight of a pointed weapon floating over the table.

Hugo’s name had come from the practice hall’s public student listings. Silas had watched him more than once at the padded striking post, taking glancing blows across his forearms without giving ground. His profile listed the reason as Iron Skin.

A C-Rank defensive Talent would be worth more to him right now than another attack he couldn’t afford to sustain.

Silas opened the door.

"Brenn. Come in," Silas said.

Hugo stepped in holding a small paper-wrapped packet in both hands. His shoes were polished and his collar carefully straightened. His eyes went to Silas’s face first, then darted quickly around the room.

The guest appraisal appeared as he crossed the threshold.

[Soul Talent: Iron Skin.]

[Rank: C.]

The compatibility was high.

Silas recorded it into the slot Split Focus had freed that morning.

[Iron Skin — Temporary recording established.]

[Assimilation: 0%.]

[Duration: 7 days.]

"For the tea," Hugo said, holding out the packet.

Silas took it. Biscuits, from one of the more expensive campus shops.

"You didn’t need to."

"It was no trouble."

Hugo said it so quickly that Silas nearly smiled. Instead, he gestured toward the chair and set the biscuits beside two cups.

"Milk?" Silas asked.

"Please," Hugo said.

Silas poured. He already had what he wanted, but sending the boy straight back out would be rude, and rather difficult to explain.

Hugo sat on the very front edge of the chair, hands on his knees, until his cup was offered. He took it carefully.

"You’re entering the competition?" Silas asked.

"The qualifiers, yes." Hugo glanced up. "I’m not expecting to reach the final rounds."

"Neither am I," Silas said.

That seemed to trouble him. Silas could practically watch him searching for the answer he should have given instead.

Silas took a biscuit and tried again.

"I’ve seen you at the striking post. How long have you been doing that exercise?"

"Since before the academy. My old instructor used to make me stand there after everyone else had finished." Hugo looked down at his forearm. "I kept letting blows land because I knew they wouldn’t hurt much."

"They looked fairly solid from where I was standing."

"The padding helps." For the first time, Hugo answered without pausing. "Iron Skin helps more with the surface. It doesn’t stop someone driving your own arm into your face."

Silas swallowed his tea. That was worth knowing before he tested it on himself.

"You found that out personally?" Silas asked.

"Several times," Hugo said.

The corner of Hugo’s mouth twitched, then flattened, as though he had just remembered who he was talking to.

Silas let the small joke pass without pushing for another. He asked about the qualifying exercises, and Hugo described a balancing drill his group had been assigned. Halfway through, his cup tilted and slopped a little tea into the saucer.

"Sorry." Hugo grabbed for a cloth so quickly that he caught his sleeve on the edge of the table.

"Leave it," Silas said. "I’ll get it."

He used his hand instead of Remote Grasp. A floating cloth probably wouldn’t help the boy relax.

Hugo watched him wipe the table. "Is there something you wanted to ask me, Rooke?"

Silas met his eyes.

The boy was frightened, but he had managed to ask the question straight out. Silas gave him credit for that.

"About training. And I thought we might talk before we end up on opposite sides of a practice ring." He folded the cloth. "You haven’t offended me, if that’s what you’re wondering."

Color crept up Hugo’s neck.

"I wasn’t—"

Silas lifted his cup and spared him the rest of the denial.

They talked for a few more minutes. Hugo’s father wanted him to take a commercial administration course alongside his combat studies. Hugo disliked the accounting section, but admitted he would rather understand the business himself than let his older brothers explain it to him forever.

Silas understood that easily enough. He asked one ordinary question about the transport routes, and Hugo finally finished an entire biscuit.

When his cup was empty, Silas set his own down.

"I have work to finish. Thank you for coming."

Hugo was on his feet almost before the sentence ended, then made himself slow down. "Thank you for inviting me."

Silas saw him to the door. The boy took one wrong turn in the corridor before correcting himself.

Silas shut the door and looked at the expensive biscuits.

The invitation had worked better than kindness would have, and he knew exactly why. Hugo would probably spend the evening wondering what he had missed.

Silas had no intention of demanding a second visit, or a favor to justify the first. He put the packet in the cupboard and cleared away the cups.

Then he called up Iron Skin.

The first change was an odd tightness across his knuckles.

Silas flexed his hand. The skin still moved, but it resisted the pressure of his thumb differently, as though the surface had gained a firmness that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

There was no sheet of metal, no silver sheen. He turned his wrist under the lamp, a little disappointed despite himself.

He used the rounded end of a spoon for the first test. Without the Talent, a firm push against the back of his hand hurt. With it active, the same pressure spread out enough to become bearable.

Pushing harder still hurt.

Hugo’s warning came back to him, and Silas stopped. He wasn’t going to discover the limits by breaking something underneath the protected skin.

Moving the effect around turned out to be surprisingly simple. He focused on one forearm, then the other, following the mana until the firmness went where he sent it. Holding it across a wider area drew more from his reserve and thinned out the patches he’d started with.

He spent the evening on small areas, checking movement and sensation, recovering between attempts. Compared with the faint, slippery impressions of Spirit Communion, this felt almost indecently cooperative.

Over the next two days, his private practice changed shape. He used Split Focus during slow weapon drills, cultivated between sessions, and came back to Iron Skin whenever his concentration was fresh. While the copy was temporary, the Talent stayed inside the studio. He tested it at the threshold once, letting the effect fall away instead of carrying a false sense of protection out into the hall.

By the second evening, he could hold a modest layer across both forearms while opening and closing his hands normally.

Nim watched him press a rounded practice tool against one wrist.

"Does it hurt?" Nim asked.

"Less than before," Silas said.

"Then why keep doing it?" Nim asked.

Silas lowered the tool. "So I know what happens when someone else does it."

Nim considered this and withdrew to the pillow.

He checked his progress before resting.

[Iron Skin — Assimilation: 52%.]

Five days left on the copy.

Silas closed the panel, took one of Hugo’s biscuits, and let himself enjoy it.