Chapter 110: partners by accident

Chapter 110 — Partners by Accident

Pack History was held in the long room on the second floor, where the windows faced the northern ridge and the radiators clanked like unhappy ghosts. Professor Aldous Wren stood at the front with a stack of cards in his hand and the expression of a man who had planned something cruel and called it educational.

"This term’s first paired assignment," he announced, "concerns the ways different packs preserve their traditions. Each pair will research, compare, and present. To encourage cooperation between territories, partners have been assigned at random."

A groan travelled around the room. Roxanne tucked her pen behind her ear and prepared for whoever she might be given. Isla sat two rows ahead, and Tessa was beside her. Perhaps luck would be kind.

"Silver," Professor Wren read, "with Thornclaw."

The room went silent.

It was not the silence of surprise so much as of anticipation. Heads turned. Someone near the back drew a breath, as if the next sound might be a chair hitting the floor. Roxanne kept her face perfectly still and turned her head toward the far side of the room.

Arabella sat with her notebook already open and her pen in her hand. She did not look surprised. She did not look anything. She simply turned a page, crossed the aisle with unhurried steps, and set her bag down on the empty desk beside Roxanne’s.

"When would you like to meet?" she asked. "I’m free this evening, or tomorrow after the second bell."

Roxanne stared at her. Then she raised her hand. "Professor, I’d like to request a different partner."

"Request denied," said Professor Wren cheerfully, without looking up. "The point of random assignment is that it is random. Please do not make me explain it twice."

"But—"

"Miss Silver, you are an adult and a scholar. I have every confidence you will cope."

The class turned back to its own business, visibly disappointed. Roxanne lowered her hand.

"You can stop pretending this is amusing," she said quietly.

"I’m not pretending anything."

"That’s new."

Arabella looked up from her notebook. Her expression was calm, almost tired. "Do you want to finish the assignment, or spend the whole period reminding me you hate me?"

Roxanne opened her mouth to answer and found, irritatingly, that the question was reasonable. She closed her mouth again.

"Tomorrow after the second bell," she said. "Library."

"Library," Arabella agreed, and wrote it down.

They met at a table in the far corner of the library, beneath a window that did not quite close. Roxanne had arrived early, partly to claim the seat nearest the wall, and partly because she wanted a few minutes to compose herself. She had not managed it. Arabella arrived exactly on time, carrying a satchel and a flask of tea.

"We should set rules," Arabella said, sitting down.

"Rules."

"Two. We divide the work evenly, and we leave our history out of it. Neither of us brings up what happened. Not as a jab, not as an apology, not as anything. It’s a school assignment."

Roxanne considered it. She wanted to say that her history was not something Arabella could simply set aside like a pencil. But she also had no wish to spend a week of evenings arguing in a library, and the offer, grudgingly, made sense.

"Agreed," she said. "I’ll take the research on pack traditions. You find historical examples and interviews."

"That seems fair."

"And if you try anything—"

"I won’t."

"You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it."

"I’d think less of you if you did," said Arabella, and began unpacking her notes.

It was strange to work beside her. Roxanne spent the first hour waiting for a trap, glancing up each time Arabella reached for a book, certain that something would slip out. Nothing did. Arabella read, took notes, and occasionally murmured to herself in the tone of someone checking a sum.

Their methods clashed almost at once. Roxanne wanted the facts laid out in plain order, claim then evidence then conclusion, with no decoration. Arabella kept pausing to ask how a certain passage would land with the room, which stories would hold attention, and which would make a listener feel lectured.

"It doesn’t matter how it lands," Roxanne said, tapping a page. "It matters whether it’s accurate."

"It matters whether anyone listens to it long enough to find out it’s accurate."

"That’s manipulation."

"It’s presentation." Arabella didn’t raise her voice. "You can have the most correct argument in the room and still lose everyone in the first minute."

Roxanne scowled and returned to her notes. But an hour later she found herself reading a paragraph she had written and winced, because it was indeed accurate and indeed unreadable. She quietly revised it. Arabella said nothing and did not look smug, which was somehow worse.

By the third evening, a pattern had emerged. Roxanne dug out the details, and Arabella shaped them into something that made sense to the ear. Neither mentioned it. Neither said thank you. But the pile of finished pages grew taller, and it was better than either of them would have managed alone. Roxanne noticed this and put the thought away firmly. Competence was not forgiveness. She would not let it become confused with it, and Arabella, to her credit, never asked her to.

On the fourth evening, they went down to the academy archive.

It was a low, dusty vault beneath the east wing, smelling of paper and damp stone. The librarian let them in with a lantern and a warning about the lower shelves. Roxanne found the student records of past pack histories, written by trainees from different territories over the previous century.

"Look at this," she said, frowning. "The northern accounts say the Midwinter Oath was sworn at dawn. The southern accounts say dusk."

"And the eastern ones?"

"Noon." She turned another page. "They can’t all be right."

"Do they have to be?" Arabella said slowly. She had crouched beside Roxanne, a loose page in her hand. "Think about it. Every territory remembers the ceremony differently. Perhaps the differences are the point. We could build the whole presentation around them, instead of trying to decide which version is correct."

Roxanne turned the idea over. It was good. It was annoyingly, genuinely good. It would give the class something to argue about, which would make the presentation memorable, and it respected each territory’s record without ranking them.

"That works," she said.

Arabella’s eyebrows rose very slightly. "Does it?"

"Yes. We’ll use it." Roxanne stood and brushed dust from her knees. "But understand that this is for the assignment. It doesn’t extend past it."

"I understand."

"I mean it."

"I know you do." Arabella tucked the page into her folder. "I’m not asking for more than this."

Roxanne looked at her for a moment, searching for the angle and finding none. Then she picked up the lantern and led the way back up the stairs.

By lunch the next day, the whole academy knew.

Someone had seen them crossing the courtyard together, heads bent over the same folder, and that was all the rumour mill needed. Roxanne carried her tray to the table with half the hall watching.

"Is it true?" asked a girl from the year below, appearing at her elbow. "Are you and Arabella friends again?"

"No."

"But you were working together—"

"We have an assignment," Roxanne said. "That is all. We are working on it. Please do not build a novel out of it."

The girl retreated. Within minutes, another took her place, and Roxanne repeated the answer in exactly the same words, until it was a kind of chant. Isla and Tessa watched with sympathy and a great deal of interest.

Liam arrived late, dropped onto the bench opposite, and clasped his hands under his chin. "I have heard rumours," he said gravely. "Should I begin preparing for a historic friendship reunion? I could write a speech. There would be music."

"Prepare for historic silence instead," said Roxanne.

"That’s a tragedy."

"It’s peace."

"I shall mourn quietly." He stole a roll from her tray, and the conversation moved on, as it always did.

They presented on Thursday morning.

Professor Wren sat at the back of the room with his arms folded. Roxanne stood at the front, Arabella a pace to her left, and they laid out their case: that the packs had not forgotten their traditions, but remembered them differently, and that the differences revealed as much as the ceremonies themselves.

It sparked an argument within a minute. A northern boy insisted the dawn version was obviously authentic. A girl from the south defended dusk with startling passion. Roxanne answered each question steadily, drawing from her notes, and when someone asked how the records had been compiled, Arabella stepped smoothly forward and explained the archive’s cataloguing system, the dates, and the likely sources.

"An excellent balance," said Professor Wren when they had finished, and he sounded almost surprised. "Original, well argued, and generous to every side. Well done, both of you."

"It was Arabella’s idea to centre the differences," Roxanne said.

"It was Roxanne’s research that made it stand up," Arabella said at once.

Professor Wren raised an eyebrow, and made a note.

Afterwards, as the class filed out, Arabella lingered by the desk. "You were good," she said. "At explaining the differences without making anyone feel stupid. That’s harder than it looks."

Roxanne studied her. "Don’t make me regret agreeing to work with you."

Arabella nodded. "I won’t ask you to trust me because we got one assignment right."

It was an honest answer. Roxanne gave a short nod and walked out.

Lucien was waiting in the corridor, leaning against the wall with a folder under his arm. He fell into step beside her.

"I wished to discuss the library schedule," he said. "But it can wait. Was working with Arabella difficult?"

"Uncomfortable," Roxanne said. "But finished."

"And was the arrangement fair?"

She thought about it honestly. "Yes. It was."

He nodded and did not tell her what to feel about it. He did not tell her to forgive, or to keep her distance, and she was grateful for it.

"Being fair to someone," she said, "doesn’t mean letting them back into my life."

"No," Lucien agreed. "It doesn’t."

Her phone buzzed as she reached the stairs. It was a notice from Professor Wren, sent to the whole class.

*A second collaborative project will be assigned later in the term. Partners will again be selected at random.*

Roxanne groaned aloud, and a passing first-year jumped. She slid the phone into her pocket and started down the steps, hoping with all her heart that next time the draw would be a little less complicated.