Chapter 62: Two, Either Way

Chapter 62: Two, Either Way

On the way back, he passed the section of the course beside the guest canopy.

A girl was standing there alone.

She was pale in a way that had nothing to do with illness, with black hair falling straight past her shoulders and eyes the color of dark wine. She wore the Star Class jacket like it had been cut for her specifically, which it probably had. Several students standing nearby were talking about her in low voices. Silas caught the words vampire and SS-Rank and Arvane and something about her family.

She ignored the whispers and read the placards on the cushioned chairs. At the fourth chair from the end, she stopped. Her shoulders settled, and she leaned a little closer to read the name again.

Then she turned and walked away, straight through the cluster of whispering students, who parted for her without her seeming to notice they were there.

Isolde Celestine Arvane. Silas remembered the name and the Talent. Blood Dominion. He remembered she had been terrifying in the game.

He did not know which name was on the fourth placard, or why she cared. He found he wanted to.

Gareth was on the far practice field.

Silas saw him before Gareth saw him. His cousin was alone in a lane, working a drill that Silas didn’t recognize, over and over. Step, strike, reset. Step, strike, reset. An instructor stood nearby, and every few repetitions she said something, and Gareth stopped, listened, and adjusted his feet before starting again.

He wasn’t glaring at anyone. He wasn’t holding court with friends. Lucan was nowhere in sight.

He was just working.

Gareth reset once more, and his eyes came up, and found Silas at the edge of the field.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Gareth’s jaw tightened. His glance dropped briefly to Silas’s bracers, then returned to his face. Silas stopped well short of the lane.

Are we doing this again?

Then Gareth turned back to his lane, set his feet, and struck.

Silas walked on.

That evening, he sat at his desk with the competition roster open on his communicator.

The list ran for pages. Star Class names clustered at the top of the projected seedings: Solvain, Korr, Arvane, and several others he half-recognized. Gold Class names sat below them, and further down came Bronze, a long column of names nobody expected much from.

His own was near the middle of that column.

He pulled up the course map and marked the section with the angled plates. If a ball struck his bracer there, it could bounce into the neighboring lane just as easily as it could from Dagna’s shield. He drew a small arrow toward the ground.

Then he moved the roster aside and set the map where he could see it while he practiced.

On the last day before the qualifiers, the equipment inspection queue stretched out of the office door and halfway down the corridor.

Silas joined the end of it with his practice gear in a canvas bag over one shoulder. Every competitor had to have their declared equipment checked, weighed, and tagged before the qualifiers. Apparently, every competitor had also waited until the last day to do it.

Three people ahead of him, a familiar pair of short, backward-curving horns turned around.

"You too?" Maelin asked.

"I thought I’d beat the rush," Silas said.

"So did everyone." She stepped out of line and let the two students behind her move up, falling in beside him instead. "There. Now we can be late together."

"That’s generous of you," Silas said.

"It’s selfish. I didn’t want to stand here alone listening to him." She tipped her head toward a boy near the front, who was explaining to his friend, at length, why his family’s heirloom sword should be exempt from weighing.

Silas listened for a moment. "He’s going to lose that argument."

"He’s been losing it for ten minutes," Maelin said.

The queue shuffled forward a step. Maelin had her own bag, a slim practice dagger wrapped in cloth and a pair of light arm guards poking out of the top. She had tied her hair back more tightly than usual, and there was a crease between her brows that hadn’t quite gone away since she arrived.

"Nervous?" he asked.

"Busy." She shifted the bag. "The written assessment is first. Then the course. Then I have to find out whether I’ve done well enough to make the duels worth my time."

"What would make them worth your time?" Silas asked.

Maelin glanced at him, as if deciding whether he actually wanted to know.

"The resource tiers," she said. "The middle placements get cultivation allotments. The higher ones get field credit, which counts toward survey prerequisites." She shifted the bag to her other shoulder, warming to the subject. "If I place well enough, I can take the short course next term instead of waiting a year."

Silas thought about the prospectus she had spread across his table, the photograph of students standing under a broad canopy with their measuring equipment.

"Then you should place well," he said.

"That’s your advice?" Maelin asked.

"It’s very strategic," Silas said.

She laughed, short and surprised, and the crease between her brows eased a little.

The queue moved again. The boy with the heirloom sword finally surrendered it to the scales and stalked off.

"Where will you be once the duels start?" Silas asked. "The day after tomorrow, if we get through."

He adjusted the strap of his bag, trying to make the question sound casual.

Maelin gave him an odd look anyway. "Depends when my duel is, if I have one. Probably getting food. The stalls outside the main gate open early for visitors." She tilted her head. "Why?"

So I don’t have to search the whole damn academy when it happens.

"I’d like to know where to find you," Silas said. "To see how you did."

Maelin studied him a moment longer. Then her mouth curved slightly.

"Outside the main gate," she said. "Somewhere near the stall with the flatbread. If I lose, I’ll be the one eating two."

"And if you win?" Silas asked.

"Then I’ll be eating two because I earned them," Maelin said.

The official at the desk called for the next competitor. Maelin went forward, set her dagger and arm guards on the scale, and signed the declaration. The official clipped a small blue tag onto each item.

Silas followed. Practice shortblade, approved. Bracers, approved. The official ran a reading wand over the bracers, raised an eyebrow at the adamantite channels, checked his notes, and waved them through.

Remote Grasp went on the form as his declared Talent. The dart case stayed at home, on the shelf above his desk, exactly where it belonged.

When they reached the corridor again, Maelin hitched her bag onto her shoulder.

"Good luck tomorrow," she said.

"You too," Silas said.

She hesitated, then added, "Don’t do anything stupid."

"That’s very specific," Silas said.

"You have a reputation." She was already walking away, but he saw her smiling.

Silas stood there a moment longer than he needed to. Then he went to find out about the broadcast.