Chapter 63: She’ll Be Watching

Chapter 63: She’ll Be Watching

The academy’s public broadcast page was surprisingly easy to navigate.

Silas sat at his desk that evening and found it in a few minutes. First-Year Combat Rankings, public viewing, open to anyone with a standard account. The qualifiers would run across four parallel courses, each with its own channel. Competitors were assigned to courses by lot, and the assignments had been posted that afternoon.

He was on Course Three. Scheduled run window: mid-morning, the second block after the written assessment.

He copied the details into a message.

Crownless Public Broadcast. First-Year Rankings, Qualifiers, Course Three. Search "Crownless rankings" on the academy’s public page and choose the channel marked 3. I’m in the second block after the written assessment, around mid-morning. I don’t know my exact slot, but they’ll show names.

He sent it, then called.

Mara answered with a dishcloth over one shoulder and her hair tied up out of the way. The moment she saw him, she put the cloth down.

"I got your message," she said. "Course Three. I’ve written it down."

She held up a scrap of paper to the screen. She had, in fact, written it down, in careful handwriting, with the word mid-morning underlined twice.

"You didn’t have to write it down," Silas said.

"What if the link breaks?"

"Then you’d search for it again," Silas said.

"I’ll have the paper." Mara folded it and tucked it into her apron pocket with great finality. "Will they show your face?"

"Probably," Silas said. "They show the competitor on the display while the run is going."

"And your name?" Mara asked.

"On the screen, yes," Silas said.

Mara nodded. She was smiling so broadly now that Silas had to look away from the screen for a moment.

"I’ll be watching," she said. "The whole time."

"It’s only a few minutes," Silas said.

"The whole few minutes, then," Mara said.

She asked what the course looked like, and he described the walls and targets and moving posts. She asked whether it was dangerous, and he told her about the mana screening and the officials standing at every section. She asked what he would do if he fell over, and he said he would get up.

"Good," Mara said. "That’s the right answer."

When the call ended, he sat for a while with the communicator in his hand.

She still couldn’t leave that house for a morning. He wanted her in the stands, where he could look up and find her after his run.

He reopened the message and checked the channel number once more. At least this much he could arrange.

He laid out his gear before bed.

Practice shortblade in its approved sheath, blue tag on the hilt. Bracers on the chair. Competition jacket folded on top. His communicator on the charger. The written assessment started early, and he wanted everything within reach so there was nothing to hunt for in the morning.

The dart case sat on the shelf above the desk. He looked at it once, checked the catch was closed, and left it there.

Nim watched all of this from the pillow.

"You’re going out tomorrow," the spirit said.

"All day. It’s the competition." Silas finished checking the bracer straps. "You’ll stay here. I’ll leave the window latched but not locked, so you can get out if you want, but it’ll be crowded and loud and there’s nothing there you’d like."

"How do you know?" Nim asked.

"Because it’s all shouting and people hitting things," Silas said.

Nim considered this. "You like it."

"I’m one of the people hitting things," Silas said.

Nim’s tail moved once against the pillow. He didn’t say anything else, which Silas took for agreement.

He turned off the light.

Nim waited until the morning.

Silas got up while the window was still gray and ate standing up. Once he had put on the jacket, fastened his bracers, and packed the sheathed blade, he came over to the bed and rubbed Nim’s head with two fingers.

"Stay," he said. "I’ll tell you everything when I get back."

Nim let him.

Silas picked up his bag and went to the door.

Nim thought about staying. The pillow was warm. The dish on the windowsill had his spoon in it, and the sunlight would come through the window soon and land exactly on the part of the bed he liked best.

But Silas was going somewhere loud and full of people, and he was going to hit things, and he was going to tell Nim about it afterward instead of Nim seeing it.

Nim wanted to see for himself.

He reached into the air beside his paw. His little space opened, dark and soft and smelling faintly of feathers. His bead was there, along with both feathers and a bottle cap he had found under the desk last week. Silas hadn’t seen that one yet.

He fetched the spoon from the dish and put it in too. It was his spoon.

Nim put his head through the opening. There was room for the rest of him, if he curled up. But he didn’t want to stay beside the bed.

He tried what he had been thinking about ever since the bond settled. He could feel Silas across the room, the warm line between them that had been there every day since the first offering. He took the edge of his little space and pressed it against that line, the way he pressed himself against a warm stone.

It stuck.

Nim stepped inside.

The space closed around him, snug and quiet. He curled up next to the bead. He could still feel the line, very close now, and when Silas opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, the line moved.

So did Nim.

It felt like being carried. Nim put his chin on his paws and listened to the muffled sound of Silas’s footsteps going down the stairs and out into the morning.

He was not going to be left behind.

The third question on Silas’s written assessment asked him to calculate the refinable mana from a stabilized circulation.

Silas read it, looked at the figure for circulation loss sitting quietly in the second line, and felt something close to affection for Tobin Hale.

He accounted for the loss first.

The rest of the paper went more or less the way he had expected. He knew two questions cold and half-guessed another. His long answer on reinforcement channels came more easily than it would have a month ago. When the proctor called time, he set his pen down with the pleasant, faintly smug feeling of someone who had paid for help and actually used it.

Across the hall, Maelin was rubbing her temples. She caught his eye and mouthed something that looked a great deal like the fourth one.

Silas shrugged helplessly. He had also struggled with the fourth one.

Then they were herded outside, and the stands were full.

The noise hit him first.

When he had first walked the course, the stands had been metal frames and protective sheeting. Now they were packed with people, students and visitors and staff, and the sound of them rolled across the east lawn like surf. Display panels on tall poles showed the four courses from above, each one labeled in bright numerals. Under the blue canopy, the guest chairs had filled with people in expensive coats who were not cheering at all. They were watching and writing.

Silas found Course Three and joined the competitors waiting at its starting line.

The course was laid out the way he had walked it: a sprint section of low walls and narrow beams, then a row of training constructs, then the accuracy plates and rings. Officials in gray stood at each section. The mana screen along the edge hummed faintly. A board beside the start showed the times of everyone who had run so far.

The first competitor in his block went off the line. Silas watched her clip the second beam, lose half a second recovering, and keep going. The crowd made a sympathetic sound.

He checked his bracers. He checked the tag on his practice blade. He did not think about Mara holding a folded piece of paper somewhere far away.

That took more effort than the bracers.

"Rooke," the starting official called. "Course Three, second block."

Silas stepped up to the line. The display above him changed, and he saw his own face, slightly too pale, with his name underneath.

Well. Too late to look dignified now.

The starting light went green.