Chapter 24: Conflict of Interest

I gave it one full day of thinking before I went to the obvious person, which I feel was very responsible of me.

Sabine’s office door was open. She was at her desk grading papers with a red quill, hair pinned up, and she didn’t look at me when I came in.

"Miss Sakana."

"Professor. I have a proposal."

"Oh I doubt that. You probably have a request. Proposals involve something I want." She marked an X on some poor first-year’s paper. "Say it."

So I said it.

I gave her the whole pitch. Lily Everdawn, top of the combat practical, contracted spirit, spotless conduct record, and the only reason she can’t enter the Duel Festival is a signature line. One name. Thirty seconds of Sabine’s afternoon. I even threw in a bit about how it would reflect well on her department, which is the kind of thing I’ve heard nobles say to each other.

Sabine put the quill down and finally looked at me.

"No."

"...You didn’t think about it."

"I thought about it while you were talking, which is a skill you’ll develop eventually." She leaned back in her chair. "I have a policy. I don’t sponsor students I’ve been compromised with."

"Oh. No, no, you misunderstood, I meant Lily. Not me. Lily."

"Miss Sakana, I have been compromised with you. Very, very compromised." She said all of this at conversational volume, with the door open. "You share a bed-sized room with the Everdawn girl. If my name goes on her slip, the entry board asks a very reasonable question about why a faculty member is signing paperwork for that particular dormitory, and then someone with too much time reviews the rest of my signatures this term."

"Oh, come on. Nobody reviews anything at this school."

She tapped the desk.

"My camp is compromised. That includes you, your roommate, and, at the current rate, anyone else who walks in here holding your hand. Find an unrelated sponsor."

[Okay. Fine. Fine! It was worth a shot. Plan B exists. Plan B has to exist, I just haven’t written it yet.]

"Understood," I said, with dignity.

"Good." She stood up and came around the desk, and I made the mistake of turning to leave with her behind me.

Her hand landed on my ass and squeezed, hard enough to lift me onto my toes.

"Professor?!"

"Verifying the recovery," she said, and squeezed again, and I felt her thumb dig in right where my tail meets my back, which is a spot she has no business knowing about. My tail went straight up. It just went up, like a flag, entirely without my permission.

"That wasn’t a recovery area."

"Everything is a recovery area." She let go and gave me a light smack that echoed off the filing cabinets. "Out. I have thirty of these to grade and you’re distracting me."

I left the office walking a little strangely.

---

Here’s the thing about sponsors:

A ranked sponsor is faculty or a noble house in good standing. Faculty won’t sign for a commoner scholarship student unless the student’s their apprentice, which is exactly why I wrote the rule, because it created drama.

Noble houses will sign, but a signature from a house is a favor, and favors get called in, and no house is calling in a favor on a first-year nobody in exchange for nothing.

So I went down the list in my head while I walked.

Currently, I had two options:

Odette, which wasn’t happening, since she was a commoner too, and Serena Frostfall, who would sponsor Lily approximately one day after the sun sets in the east.

[There’s got to be someone. There’s a whole academy of them. Somewhere in this building is a ranked idiot with a pen.]

I was so deep in the list of random people I’d invented that I didn’t notice the person coming the other way until I walked directly into their shoulder.

"Sorry," I said.

They didn’t say anything. Grey hood, head down, and they were past me and around the corner before I finished turning to look, moving fast at a sort of jogging speed. I stood there in the corridor for a second.

[Weird. Nice cloak, though.]

I got about ten more steps before I put my hands in my coat pockets and found paper in the left one.

I stopped walking.

It was a folded slip. Academy stock, the good kind, with the wax seal of the entry office pressed at the bottom and a sponsor’s signature already scrawled across the line in dark ink. The signature was illegible, just a slash and a loop, but there was a house sigil stamped beside it that I didn’t recognize at all.

My heart sped up.

[HOLY SHIT. Someone’s looking out for me. Someone in this school actually saw the problem and just handled it. This is the mysterious benefactor beat! I love the mysterious benefactor beat! I wrote nine of them! Oh, thank you, whoever you are, I take back every mean thing I’ve thought about this world’s plot conveniences, you have saved Lily’s entire...]

I unfolded it the rest of the way and read the entrant line.

ENTRANT: Sakana, Kohaku. First Year, Commoner Scholarship.

I read it again.

Then I read it a third time, standing alone in an empty corridor, holding a fully valid, fully sealed, completely useless piece of paper.

[THAT’S THE WRONG NAME.]

I nearly tore the thing in half.

[WHY WOULD YOU SPONSOR ME?! I’M RANK E! I HAVE THE STRENGTH OF A MEAN HOUSECAT! DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME IN A BRACKET? I’M NOT A COMBATANT, I’M A CONSULTANT!]

I looked back down the corridor. It was empty in both directions, obviously, because that’s how the beat works. I know how the beat works. I’ve written the beat.

[WHAT DID YOU THINK I NEEDED, RANDOM PLOT PERSON?!]

I stood there breathing for a while.

Then I folded the slip back up, put it in my pocket, and started walking, because there was one useful fact buried under all of that.

Somebody in this academy had a ranked signature, a house I couldn’t identify, and a specific interest in seeing me in that arena.