Chapter 89 Semester Board

Halcrest posted the year-end Ascension Board at ten across every hall display, all the uniform cuffs, and one enormous crystal above the central quad.

Eleven hundred students stopped moving together, something the academy arranges four times a year, and it never once stops being strange to watch.

’Nine months ago that board said four hundred and twelve, with this body’s stomach dropping while I read it, yeah, that memory belongs to somebody who is not here anymore.’

The rank-threading on his cuff changed while he was crossing the quad, silver piping rewriting itself into a number he watched arrive one digit at a time.

[Ascension Board, overall standing: 6]

[First-Year Ascension Board: 2]

Damien remained sixth academy-wide and stood second among the first-years, behind exactly one name in his own year.

Lucas held the top of the first-year table at a registered seven hundred and eighty-two, grown across nine months on a curve nobody in Halcrest history ever matched.

Above both of them the senior table sat unmoved, with Rhea Kestrel holding number one overall from before either boy enrolled.

’Second in my year and nowhere near her, yeah, and she told me to collect at four digits, so that number stops being decoration soon.’

’And every point of that curve was fed by somebody else’s bad day, damn, the registry has no column for that.’

The quad did the thing Damien had stopped expecting and would never quite get used to.

Somebody in the third-year rows started it, four hundred students picked it up inside eleven seconds, and nobody was chanting his name.

They chanted the title instead, handed to him by the system at the gala, branded into public use across the academy, it filled the quad over the official announcement.

Bram stood beside him with all three phones out, recording from every angle, weeping openly and without shame.

"Man, they are shouting it directly at a registry document like it can hear them," he said.

"Then the registry is going to have an extremely interesting year," Damien answered.

’Nine months ago four hundred students watched a Sterling get his engagement cancelled, yeah, and now the same rows are chanting the title that came out of it.’

Mina’s number went up on the same display, and hers was the one Damien watched for.

[Mina Park - registered Level: 271]

[Prior recorded ceiling: 148]

[Ceiling: removed]

Her thread ran through the top four hundred for the first time, she stood beneath it, arms folded, jaw set in a way that had nothing to do with pride.

"That cap sat on me for two years and every instructor in this academy told me artificers plateau," she said.

"They told you that since the plateau was written into you rather than into artificers," Damien replied.

"Ah, and now I get to spend the next four decades being extremely annoying about it," Mina answered.

’She has not slowed since the re-anchor, yeah, the numbers are only going to keep embarrassing people.’

Vivienne held fourth among the first-years, with a footnote under her name that had not been there in the spring.

Two House Ashe security commands remained suspended and publicly listed, since the academy records every family appointment, suspensions included.

She read her own footnote in front of six hundred people with absolutely no expression, and then went to breakfast.

’Her house published the punishment on the academy board so everyone could see it, damn, she ate eggs about it.’

Isolde appeared on the housing register that same morning, third floor of the eastern annex, entered under her own full name with no affiliation beside it.

That blank space was the most-discussed thing in Halcrest for about four hours, until the Crown Trials format went up at two in the afternoon.

The format came out worse than the leak suggested, designed by somebody who understood exactly what it would do.

[Crown Trials: team event]

[Four students per team]

[Five days, national broadcast]

[Draft order by Board standing]

[Number one seed selects first, without restriction]

’Without restriction, shit, so he can call any name in the year and the academy will read it out on national television.’

The draft rules did the rest of the work, since a student called by the number one seed had to answer publicly, on camera, in front of the country.

A refusal was permitted. A refusal was also a thirty-second clip of somebody turning down the academy’s golden boy, and everybody in Averill would have an opinion about it by dinner.

"Tch, he makes your allies choose between you and the hero on live broadcast, where both answers cost them," Vivienne said, reading the rules over his shoulder.

"He gets to make it look like the choice is about him, which is the actual weapon," Damien answered.

Bram had run the numbers by four in the afternoon and they were not good.

The unassigned pool held eleven students strong enough to matter, the first seed would take four, the second inherited whatever remained.

’And the three I want are exactly the three he needs to take from me, yeah, he is not even doing it maliciously, which somehow makes it worse.’

Damien went to find all three separately that evening, saying the same thing to each of them, badly, on purpose.

"If he calls your name and you want to say yes, then say yes, since I will never think about it again," he told Mina in her workshop.

"You walked over here to give me permission to leave you," she answered, not looking up from the bench.

"I am telling you the door is open, since a door somebody is standing in front of is not a door," Damien replied.

He said a version of it to Vivienne on the training hall steps, she listened to the whole thing before answering.

"You have arranged this so that nobody can accuse me of being kept," she said. "That is thoughtful, also completely unnecessary, you should know I noticed both."

He said it to Isolde last, in the annex corridor outside a room with forty percent of the ventilation she needed.

"You are the fourth man this year to explain my options to me, though you are the first one who did it before rather than after," she answered.

’That is a yes from all three and none of them said it, damn, I still have to sit through the draft pretending I do not know.’

The system posted its last entry of the day at eleven that night, unprompted, which had stopped being rare.

[Crown Trials venue registered: Crown Basin]

[Correction density: anomalous]

[Comparison: Averill rift shelf, day two]

’Shelf-level density in a building with eleven thousand seats, shit, the Trials are not a tournament, they are a room where something is going to be waiting.’

Blank had been asleep on the workshop’s high shelf all evening, came down when he opened the venue map, then stared at the paper for four seconds.

Then it went back up onto the shelf, turned around twice, and refused to come down again for the rest of the night.