Chapter 79: She Had Learned the Wrong Lesson

Dante had almost reached the courtyard again when Jett remembered his bag. It waited on a hook near the practice annex, where he had left it after helping move the relay pieces. Dante followed him down the public hall, still thinking about Evan’s question and disliking how much space it occupied after one pleasant evening. The annex door stood open. Inside, a bench ran beneath the window, with stacked training pieces against the inner wall and a notebook lying beside a folded roster. Nell’s voice reached the hall before either man looked in.

"He made sure you still had the time," she said. "You could stop trying to make him look stupid."

"I thanked him. Asking a question didn’t make me an enemy." Dante slowed. Jett glanced toward him, then toward the room, and neither of them had time to say anything before wood scraped against the bench.

A padded practice bar rose across Evan’s upper chest. A pale line joined Nell’s hand to its middle, holding the wood almost level except for the far end, which dipped under its own uneven weight. Evan caught that end with one hand. His other palm struck the bench behind him as he tried to keep his balance. The pressure turned him sideways, trapping his supporting wrist at an awkward angle. He made a short, sharp sound and told her to put it down.

Nell held the line. "I just wanted you to listen." Dante crossed the doorway. He could see both ends of the bar, Evan’s trapped balance, and the open floor behind Nell. It was an ordinary lift being used for something it had never needed to do.

"Lower it now," he said. "All the way to the floor." Nell turned toward him. The line trembled, then the bar dropped several inches before she caught its descent and settled it on the boards.

Jett reached Evan as Dante moved between the fallen bar and the doorway. He kicked nothing, cast nothing, and left the exit clear. The ordinary shape of his own body was enough to keep Nell from reaching the equipment while his friend helped Evan stand. For one unwanted second, Dante felt the pleasure of having been obeyed immediately. Then Evan tried moving his wrist and the pleasure had something ugly beside it.

"Can you walk?" Jett asked, keeping the route into the hall clear.

"Yes. I wanted to walk before she did that."

Nell’s face changed as she looked from him to Dante. "I wasn’t trying to hurt him."

"You were holding him against a bench," Dante said. "What did you think would happen if he moved?"

She looked at her empty hand as though it had carried out an instruction more harshly than she remembered giving. A student appeared in the hall with a phone raised. Others had heard the voices and stopped behind him, drawn by the useful possibility of somebody else’s evening becoming interesting. Dante faced them before they could fill the doorway.

"Give him room. Someone get the event supervisor." The phone remained raised. Dante recognized the waiting expression behind it, the interest that would turn into a clip somebody watched without knowing who had wanted to leave.

"Put it away," he said. "He didn’t ask you to keep this."

The student lowered the phone. Dante guided the others back far enough for Jett to bring Evan into the hall, then accepted the ordinary relief of having done something useful without an audience left to reward it. An event worker came from the equipment store after hearing the raised voices. She sent for the supervising staff member and asked Jett to stay while she found the first-aid attendant. Dante returned to the annex doorway. Nell had not moved from beside the bench. The notebook remained where Evan had come to collect it, with his name visible on the cover.

"What did you tell him?" Dante asked, stopping beside the fallen bar.

"That he should stop making you defend yourself."

"I can answer him," Dante said, remembering the question at the party.

"I know, but you shouldn’t always have to." Her voice shook. "You said people expecting your help should learn some manners."

He remembered the courtyard door, the laughter, and the satisfaction of making Evan’s smile disappear. He had said it. He had not pictured a bar against the man’s chest, which was easier to think about than the smaller, crueler part of him that had wanted the laughter to stop.

"That wasn’t an instruction to do this," he said.

Nell nodded quickly, wanting an answer she could use. "Then I misunderstood."

Dante looked at the fallen bar. The explanation offered him an easy place to stand, separate from everything that had happened after his words. "You still chose to lift it," he told her. "He told you to stop."

She did not answer. Outside, the attendant asked Evan where the pain had started, and Jett gave the part he had actually seen. Jett asked the gathering students to move farther along the hall, giving the attendant room to work. Dante stayed near the annex entrance until Nell stepped away from the loose training pieces. She was no longer casting, and he did not use that as an excuse to put a spell around her in return.

Evan asked for a moment without questions. They gave it to him. Dante found the silence difficult because it offered no useful way to explain himself, but wanting an answer did not make the injured man ready to supply one. He watched Jett accept that without argument and followed his example. The supervisor arrived and separated their accounts. Dante described the line, the bar, and the order he had given on entering. He did not supply the start of an argument he had only heard from the hall.

Evan said Nell had asked him to stop questioning Dante. He had reached for his notebook and tried to leave before the bar rose. Nell confirmed that she had wanted him to listen. The supervisor asked why leaving had not been an option, and the room remained quiet. By the time the initial check finished, the music from the courtyard sounded much farther away. Evan’s wrist had been supported, and he was being taken for a proper assessment rather than told to sleep it off.

He looked toward Jett. "I can’t guide the carrier with this tomorrow."

Jett offered to contact the event office about a replacement. Evan nodded, then asked for his notebook. Dante brought it from the bench and placed it in his uninjured hand. Evan thanked him without making the words friendly. Behind Dante, Nell waited beside the door with the expression she had worn after changing the practice roster. She looked frightened now, but some part of her still expected him to understand what she had been trying to give him. His follower had taken another student’s chance to compete, and she was waiting for her good intentions to be enough.