Chapter 36: The Sword Case

On the morning of the third day, Aren showed his pass at the door of the Ashgrave wing.

The steward who opened it was Corwin, the old man with the polite voice he had overheard on the library stairs a lifetime ago. Up close, Corwin was thin and grey and tired, with the face of someone who had not slept properly since the Night of Bells. He held Crane’s pass up to the light and checked the seal with his thumb before he looked at Aren.

"The Servant. From Class D."

"Yes, sir."

"Lady Ashgrave has refused two Royal Knights, twelve of her father’s guards, and her own cousin." Corwin handed the pass back. "She will refuse you too. But I’m under orders to let you try."

He led Aren up a long spiral staircase to the top of the east tower.

The room at the top was round and full of light. Tall windows looked out over the city in every direction, and the wind came in through one that stood open, smelling of the river. There was a narrow bed, a desk covered in books, and a rack of practice swords. On the desk, lying open, was a thin grey book with a cracked spine.

Aren knew that book very well. He had put it in the library himself.

Vivienne stood at the window with her back to the door.

"Send him away, Corwin." She didn’t even turn.

"Professor Crane sent him, my lady. With the Headmaster’s seal."

Nobody said anything for a few seconds, and then Vivienne turned slowly around.

She looked tired too. There were faint grey shadows under her eyes that had not been there a week ago, and her silver hair was braided so tightly it pulled at her temples. She looked at Aren, standing in the doorway with his pass, and her face showed nothing at all.

"Leave us, Corwin."

Corwin hesitated, then bowed stiffly and went down the stairs, and his footsteps faded away.

"Crane." Vivienne drew the name out slowly. "Of all the people in this Academy, Crane chose you."

"I didn’t ask him to, my lady."

"I know you didn’t. You’re not stupid enough." She walked to the desk and laid one hand protectively on the grey book. "Do you know what tomorrow night is, Servant?"

"The final duel. In the arena."

"My Trial." She said it flatly, like a line she’d repeated to herself a thousand times. "Rank D. The Silver Moon Empress must stand before ten thousand eyes, alone, against the one who would end her." She looked at him. "Every person in this city who wants to protect me is a person who can make me fail. If a knight steps onto the sand, my Trial is broken. If my father’s guards interfere, it’s broken. If anyone so much as throws me a sword, broken." Her voice stayed exactly the same. "And if it breaks, I’ll never reach Rank D. Not next year, not ever. Do you understand what that means?"

He understood far better than she knew. She had climbed fast, on locked boxes of cores from her father, and every one of them had made this gate a little narrower. If she failed it now, it might easily close for good.

’And at least some of that is my fault.’

"Yes, my lady."

"So I don’t want anyone at the edge of the sand who might try to help me." She folded her arms. "Crane says you’re the most useless student he has ever taught. A Servant with a combat aptitude of zero. A boy who falls down when a sword looks at him." Her grey eyes held his. "That suits me perfectly. Useless people don’t interfere."

"No, my lady."

"You’ll carry my sword case to the arena and stand at the edge of the sand, where the servants stand. When I hold out my hand, you give me my sword. You won’t speak and you won’t move. You won’t step onto the sand for any reason, even if I’m bleeding, even if I fall, even if I’m dying." She paused. "If you do, I’ll have you whipped until you can’t stand. Is that clear?"

"Very clear, my lady."

She kept looking at him, and he thought she was going to say something else. Her mouth moved slightly, exactly as it had at the top of the library stairs.

Then she turned back to the window.

"Get out."

[Vivienne Ashgrave. Hostility: 97%.]

’Ninety-seven. Still! At this rate she might like me when I’m sixty.’

He went down the spiral staircase with the empty sword case on his shoulder and thought about the grey book open on her desk, and the shadows under her eyes, and the words even if I’m dying, said in the same flat voice as everything else.

The upper-year duels were held in the arena that afternoon.

The arena was huge, a great bowl of white stone cut into the hill below the Academy, with rows of benches climbing its sides and a wide oval of white sand at the bottom. Today it was only half full. Tomorrow, for the final, every seat would be taken.

Aren watched from the servants’ gallery at the very top, a narrow walkway along the rim where vendors sold roasted nuts and stable boys waited to collect the horses.

Leon Harrow fought in the third duel.

His opponent was a Rank D girl from the fourth year, a spear fighter at the Blood stage of tempering and one of the best in the Academy. Aren had given her good odds in Rook’s book against anyone except Vivienne.

The duel lasted barely forty seconds.

Leon fought nothing like the solid, careful swordsman Aren had watched two weeks ago. The only way Aren could describe it was that he fought like two people. His sword moved one way and his body moved another, as if someone else were inside him, guiding his feet while he guided his hands. The girl’s spear never once touched him. His sword touched her three times, lightly, almost gently, on the arm, the shoulder and the chest.

She fell to her knees after the third touch.

There was no wound and no blood. But her face had gone the color of old paper, and when the healers ran onto the sand and lifted her, her arms hung limp and her eyes stared at nothing. They carried her out on a stretcher.

The crowd cheered. Leon Harrow stood in the middle of the sand with his sword lowered and his polite, quiet face turned toward the stands, and he didn’t smile.

Aren had Street Fighter’s Instinct. He could watch anyone for five minutes and see where they were weak. He watched Leon Harrow now, alone on the white sand, and for the first time since he’d taken it from Rook, the instinct showed him nothing. No weak side, no bad habit, no old wound. It was like looking at a door with no handle.

’That’s new. I don’t like new.’

He went to the warehouse that night. Rook was sitting up on his narrow bed with his book, and Tiller was cracking nuts in the corner.

"Harrow." Tiller answered before Aren could even ask. "Minor house from the far west. Their land’s right on the old Valdris border. Poor as dirt, the lot of them. Nobody had heard the name until the boy turned up in Highcrest." He cracked a nut. "His fees are paid four years in advance. By the High Cathedral. A gift from the Archdeacon himself, to a promising young believer."

"Naturally," Rook said, without looking up.

Aren sat down on a crate. "The girl he fought today. The spear fighter."

"Still in the Academy infirmary. Alive. Can’t stand up. The healers say her essence is half gone, like someone drank it."

The little room was quiet. Even Tiller stopped cracking nuts.

"You have a pass for the arena," Rook said at last. "You’ll be at the edge of the sand when she fights him."

"Yes."

"And you’ll do nothing. Because if you do anything, her Trial fails."

"Yes."

Rook closed his book and looked at him. "Then why are you going?"

Aren took his time answering. "Because if something goes wrong that isn’t the duel, somebody should be close enough to see it."

Rook studied him a little longer, then nodded slowly.

"My men will be in the stands. Forty of them, spread out. Tiller will sit on the cathedral steps and watch your treasurer." He opened his book again. "Consider it interest on my rib."

[Rook. Hostility: 86% → 83%.]

He walked back up the hill alone after midnight, with a strip of black cloth folded in his pocket for tomorrow.

The Academy was dark, and so was the scholarship dormitory. He was halfway up the path to the door when the System opened a window at the edge of his vision that he’d never seen before.

[Warning: Hostile observation detected.]

He kept his head down and kept walking calmly at the same tired pace, a servant coming home late, and let Street Fighter’s Instinct tell him what his eyes couldn’t.

Across the path, in the deep shadow under the old oak by the stables, a thin man in a brown coat stood perfectly still, looking up at the dark windows of the scholarship dormitory.

Looking up at his window.