Chapter 10: Beneath the Moon

The old practice yard was empty at midnight, as always.

The round scar where the iron post had stood was still there, a circle of bare stone in the weeds. Aren stood beside it with a stick in his hand, because he did not trust himself with a sword yet, and tried to remember exactly how Vivienne Ashgrave moved.

He had seen her use her technique three times: against the first pack of wolves, against the second, and against Gravemaw. He had been carrying packs or lying in the moss each time, but he had been watching closely, and not the big flashy parts either. He’d watched the small things underneath. How she turned her wrist before the sweep. How she breathed out, slowly, just before the crescents appeared. How her weight shifted onto her back foot, as if she were pulling the moonlight toward her instead of throwing it.

Wrist, breath, weight. He tried it carefully.

Nothing happened.

He tried again and again, twenty times, then fifty, until his arm ached and his ribs started complaining loudly. The stick swished through the cold air and did absolutely nothing.

’Wonderful. The System gave me a Grade S technique and forgot to include the instructions.’

On the sixtieth try, something left the end of the stick.

It was tiny, a thin curve of silver light no longer than his finger, exactly the color of the blades that had filled the clearing. It drifted forward lazily and touched the bare stone where the post had stood.

It didn’t bounce off, and it didn’t leave a thin white mark. It sank into the stone without a sound and kept going.

Aren stared in disbelief. Where it had touched, there was now a cut in the ground as long as his arm and so deep he couldn’t see the bottom in the dark. The edges were perfectly smooth, as if someone had pushed a hot knife into butter.

Vivienne had thrown a hundred of those at Gravemaw and barely scratched its plates. He had made one by accident, smaller than his finger and as slow as a falling leaf, and it had gone through solid rock as if the rock weren’t there.

’Grade C against Grade S. I read the numbers in the window. I just didn’t understand them until right now.’

He dropped the stick and stood there breathing hard, staring up at the dark dormitory windows. Nobody was there. Nobody had seen. His heart was hammering wildly anyway. If anyone at this Academy ever saw a silver crescent leave the hand of the Servant from Class D, they would need about one second to work out where it had come from. And if they saw what it could do, they would never stop asking questions until they had cut him open to find the answer.

[Crescent Moon Blade (Grade S). Mastery: 0% -> 2%.][Warning: Host cannot control output at current mastery.]

Two percent after an hour, and he couldn’t even choose how strong it came out. Every single percent would have to be earned in the dark, alone, far from anyone.

He hastily kicked dirt and weeds over the cut until it was hidden, went to the far corner of the yard away from the dormitory walls, picked up the stick again, and kept going until the bells rang for dawn.

"Look who’s back," said a boy named Fenwick, who had an F-grade Lamplighter class and a voice like a squeaky door. "The great hero of the Training Rift! I heard you slept through the whole thing."

"I heard he fainted before the monster even came out," said someone else.

"I heard Lady Ashgrave had to step over him."

They laughed, and Aren laughed too, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, and took his seat in the back corner. It was the safest place to be. People who were laughing at you weren’t looking at you closely.

Across the room, Mira glared at Fenwick until he suddenly found something fascinating on his desk.

Professor Crane arrived precisely on time, as he always did, and began a lesson on the ranks of the Awakened in his usual bored voice.

"Every Awakened begins at Rank F," he said. "Your class decides how high you may climb. It does not decide how fast. You gain levels by absorbing the cores of monsters. At Level 10, your class will show you its Trial. Common classes ask for simple things, usually a stronger core." He looked around the room without much hope. "Rare classes ask for rarer things. Some of you will never see Level 10. Those who do will learn what their class demands, and most of them won’t like the answer."

Aren wrote every word down diligently, as if he were hearing all of it for the first time, and didn’t look once at the blue window at the edge of his vision where Level 4 sat waiting.

At the end of the lesson, Crane gathered his scroll and stopped at the door as though he had forgotten something.

"Servant," he said, without turning around. "The library needs those old ledgers moved again. Third floor. After lunch."

"Yes, Professor."

Crane left, and Aren sat there after the others had gone, wondering uneasily whether that had meant anything.

The third floor of the library was empty except for her.

Vivienne sat at the same table by the window. The alchemy ledger was gone. In its place were three thick books on Rift monsters and a map of the Training Rift with a small ink circle drawn near the clearing by the stream. She wore the plain white uniform instead of armor, her silver hair tied back in a simple braid, and she looked tired. A thin new scar ran along her forearm where the healer had closed her cut.

Aren put the ledgers on the shelf and turned to leave.

"You." She didn’t look up from the map.

He stopped reluctantly.

"You were on my team. You were thrown into the trees on the east side of the clearing. You were found there, twenty paces from the edge." She tapped the little circle with one finger. "The man I saw came from the east side of the clearing."

Aren said nothing.

"Did you see him?"

Now she looked up, and her grey eyes went straight to his face and stayed there.

He had spent all night on this question, and the best lie, he had decided, was the one closest to the truth.

"I saw the inside of my eyelids, my lady. A tree hit me in the face. Then another tree hit me in the ribs. I think a third one got me somewhere else, but by then I wasn’t really keeping track."

She didn’t smile at all. "You’re making jokes."

"I’m a servant with a combat aptitude of zero. Jokes are most of what I’ve got."

"You’re not afraid of me."

She said it slowly, like someone reading out a strange result in an experiment, and he realized she had been thinking about it ever since that morning in the east garden when he had handed back her pendant and smiled.

"Should I be?"

"Everyone else is." She closed the map. "Every commoner in this Academy steps out of my way in the hall. Half the nobles do too. After what I did to you at the trial, you should be terrified of me. You should look at the floor when I walk past. You should have left this Academy the day they took your scholarship." She stood. She was almost as tall as he was. "Why haven’t you?"

"I don’t have anywhere better to go."

"Then find somewhere." Her voice was unusually quiet. "Go back to the lower city. Take your sister and leave Highcrest. Find a quiet job somewhere far away and live a small, quiet life." She looked at him. "It would be better. For both of us."

Something about for both of us didn’t fit. It didn’t sound like a threat. For one strange second, it sounded almost like a request.

’What are you so scared of, Vivienne?’

Then it was gone, and she was the heir of House Ashgrave again, briskly gathering up her books.

"You’re very kind to worry about me, my lady."

Her eyes went hard. "I am not worried about you."

"Of course not."

[Vivienne Ashgrave. Hostility: 97% -> 98%.]

She walked past him to the stairs without another word, and he listened to her footsteps go down, slow and even, until they were gone.

He was halfway down the stairs himself when he heard her voice again from the landing below. A man answered her, older and very polite. Aren stopped and pressed his back quietly to the wall where the curve of the stairwell hid him.

"You reached Level 9 in a single fight, my lady," the man said. "You’ll reach Level 10 within the week. Your father has already prepared for your Trial."

"Prepared how, Corwin?"

"A Rank E beast, captured alive in the eastern hills. It will be brought to the Ashgrave estate and released in the courtyard on the night of the full moon. Our knights will stand on the walls. You will face it alone, exactly as your class requires, and nothing can possibly go wrong."

"No."

"My lady..."

"My Trial says defeat alone an enemy of higher rank, beneath the moon." Her voice was sharp. "It doesn’t say defeat a chained animal in my father’s garden while forty knights watch." A pause. "They’re saying a ghost with a rag on his face saved my life. Half the Academy thinks I couldn’t have killed that monster myself. If my father arranges my Trial as well, they’ll say every step I’ve ever taken was carried by someone else."

"It’s only rumors, my lady."

"Then I’ll end them. The Old Quarry Rift, outside the north gate. It’s rated E, and its guardian is Rank E." Another pause. "The moon will be full on Saturday night."

The man’s voice changed abruptly. "The Old Quarry is a real Rift, my lady, not a training ground. Students are forbidden to enter without an escort, and your father would never..."

"My father doesn’t need to know until it’s done."

"Then at least take knights to wait at the entrance."

"Alone, Corwin. That’s the whole point."

Quick, light footsteps went down, and heavier, slower ones followed.

Aren stayed motionless against the wall of the empty stairwell.

A real Rift, full of monsters that wouldn’t wait politely for her to reach the guardian. A girl who was strong and proud and exhausted, who had nearly died four days ago, walking in alone because her own class demanded it. If anyone helped her in the fight, her Trial would fail. If nobody helped her before it, she might not live long enough to reach the fight at all.

’I can’t stand beside her. But nobody said I can’t clear the road.’

He started to smile on the cold stone stairs.

Saturday night. Full moon.

He was going to need a new rag.