Chapter 123: Ten Words.... Three Times.

I slept on Sunday night.

Two nights in a row, which is not a sentence I expected to be proud of at any point in fifteen years of a life largely constructed around the activity.

Nothing looked at me.

No gold. No lines. No five points and nothing turning its head somewhere underneath the floor of the world.

Just sleep. Ordinary and unremarkable and free, the way mortals have it every night without once stopping to notice what they are being given.

I woke on Monday feeling almost human.

That lasted until roughly nine o’clock.

***

They put all one hundred and eighty-seven of us in the orientation hall.

That was the first thing I did not like.

The notice had been read separately, in five rooms, on Friday. Whatever was coming had been deliberately kept out of any space where five classes could look at each other while they heard it.

Now they wanted us in one room.

Which meant somebody wanted us watching each other’s faces.

’That’s not a good sign.’

[No.]

’Do you know what this is?’

[No.]

’Would you tell me if you did?’

[...]

’That’s a yes-shaped silence.’

[It is a silence.]

***

Class Five arrived in something resembling order, which was new.

I noticed that, and I noticed that I did not entirely understand why, and I filed both observations somewhere I intended to examine later and did not.

Penelope walked at the front.

She looked exactly as she always looks, which is to say immaculate and slightly annoyed about something, and she did not say a word to me between Sanctuary and the hall.

"You slept," she said, once we sat down.

"Twice."

"I know. I checked."

"That’s alarming."

"It’s efficient," she said, which is a thing I have said to her approximately four hundred times and which I recognised on the way past.

She did not tell me anything else.

I would like it noted, for reasons that became relevant considerably later, that she had the opportunity.

***

Theoran Vale came in at nine exactly with Selene on one side and Darius on the other, and did not use the raised platform, which meant this was going to be short.

He does not use the platform for short things. I had worked that out during orientation and had not yet found an occasion to be pleased about it.

"Five classes," he said. "One arena. One day."

The hall went very quiet.

"You will be given the conditions once. They will also be posted. I recommend you listen anyway, because the posted version does not contain the part where I explain what we are actually asking you."

He tapped the cane once against the floor.

"Read it."

Selene stepped forward with a single sheet.

***

ZENITH ACADEMY

FIRST-YEAR INTER-CLASS COMPETITION

CONDITIONS

All five first-year classes will enter the Crucible simultaneously at dawn tomorrow.

***

She did not get any further for some time.

Tomorrow.

The hall did not gasp.

That is not what a hall does.

What a hall does is produce a low collective noise somewhere between a breath and a word, and then a rustle, and then one voice near the front saying "tomorrow" out loud as a question that nobody answers.

Selene waited for it with the patience of a woman who had known this was coming and had probably suggested the sheet be read in a smaller room.

I was not looking at her.

I was looking at Elizabeth Aurelius, four rows across, in the Class One section.

Thirty-seven people around her had just moved.

She had not.

Not her hands, not her shoulders, not her chin.

She sat through the entire reaction the way a person sits through weather they checked for that morning, and I understood, watching her, that she had already worked this out at some point over the weekend and had spent the intervening days being correct about it in private.

I made a note to ask her how.

I did not, in the end.

There were reasons.

Selene continued.

Distributed through the arena are twenty-nine Wellsprings.

Minor Wellsprings may be claimed by a single class. Low value.

Major Wellsprings cannot be opened by fewer than three classes present at once. High value.

A Major Wellspring, once opened, is awarded in full to the class that seals it.

Not divided. Not shared.

In full.

The hall took about four seconds.

Then it made the other sound.

Not the tomorrow sound.

Worse.

The specific low noise of one hundred and eighty-seven people performing the same piece of arithmetic simultaneously and all arriving at the same unpleasant place.

You cannot open the valuable ones alone.

You must bring two other classes.

And then only one of you is paid.

Somebody behind me said, "That’s..."

And did not finish, because there is no word for it that a fifteen-year-old has.

’That’s the orientation exam,’ I thought. ’Inverted.’

[Yes.]

’The Hermit’s was about needing each other.’

[Yes.]

’And this one is about what you do once you know you need each other and it costs you.’

[Yes. You may stop congratulating yourself.]

***

Selene was not finished.

"Class leaders will not enter the Crucible."

Nobody reacted.

We had known that since Friday.

"Class leaders will observe from the Gallery."

Still nothing.

"The Gallery overlooks the entire arena. Every Wellspring. Every route. Every class position, at all times, including the positions of classes other than your own."

And there it was.

The hall did not understand it yet.

I could hear people not understanding it, which is a genuine sound if you have spent enough time in rooms where information arrives at different speeds.

Five of us understood immediately.

I know that because I looked.

Elizabeth moved for the first time that morning.

James went very still.

Sophie’s hands stopped, which for Sophie is a violent event.

Daphne did not change at all, which from Daphne is the same thing.

We would be able to see everything.

Our classes would see nothing.

And we would be the only people in that arena who knew where every other class was standing.

"The Gallery is sealed," Selene said. "You will not be heard from it. You may shout for the entire day if it assists you emotionally. Nobody will hear you, including the four people standing beside you."

Somebody laughed.

It stopped quickly.

"Each class leader will be permitted three Interventions."

The hall leaned forward.

"An Intervention transmits one message to your class’s acting leader. Written. Delivered immediately."

A pause.

"Ten words or fewer."

***

Ten words.

I sat in a hall with one hundred and eighty-six other people and thought about eleven.

You do it. Whatever it turns out to be. You’re better.

Eleven words.

On a Friday evening.

To a girl sitting four feet away from me, delivered like that because I could not manage anything longer.

Now I was going to be given ten, three times, across a wall I could see through and could not speak past.

That is either a coincidence or somebody in this academy has been reading me for longer than I am comfortable with.

’Which?’

[I would like to know that as well.]

"Three Interventions," Selene repeated. "Ten words. Written."

She lowered the sheet very slightly, which in Selene means the next part is the one she disagreed with in a room somewhere and lost.

"Each Intervention deducts points from your own class’s total."

I want to describe what happened next accurately.

Nothing happened.

That was the part I kept returning to.

There was no gasp.

Nobody stood.

One hundred and eighty-seven people sat in a hall and quietly worked out, individually and at slightly different speeds, exactly what they had been told.

Your leader can see everything.

Your leader cannot tell you any of it.

And every time your leader helps you, it costs you.

The person watching you walk into something is the only one who can see it coming, and warning you will make it worse.

Three rows behind me, Cedric said "Wait," to nobody, in the voice of a boy who has just understood something he would have preferred not to.

I did not move.

I could not, for a moment.

There is a version of my body that stops working properly when I am shown something like this, and it has been there since a forest, and I have never managed to train it out.

Green mana already gathering in my hands.

Fingers closing hard on my shoulder.

Stay here.

Except that this time, nobody would be holding me back.

This time I could go whenever I liked.

It would simply be charged to the thirty-six people I was going for.

’System.’

[I am here.]

’Say something.’

[There is nothing useful available.]

’Say something anyway.’

A pause.

[You are going to spend all three.]

’I know.’

[Within the first hour.]

’I know that too.’

Theoran took the sheet from Selene and did not read from it.

"That is the arithmetic," he said. "Now the part that is not written down."

The hall was extremely quiet.

"You are being asked one question tomorrow, and it is not who is strongest."

He looked along the rows, unhurried, the way he does.

"The question is what a group of people does when cooperation is necessary and only one of them can be paid for it. That is not an academy problem. That is the problem. It is the shape of every treaty, every alliance and every border arrangement any of you will be responsible for in twenty years, and most of you will get it wrong at least once with real consequences."

A pause.

"We would prefer you get it wrong here."

Somebody near the front said, "Sir, we’ve had no time to prepare."

"Correct."

"That’s..."

"Deliberate." Theoran did not raise his voice. "You were given a weekend of nothing and one morning of rules, and if any of you had used that weekend to rehearse a strategy, you would be walking into tomorrow committed to a plan built on no information. Several of you did it anyway. You will find out in approximately twenty hours how much that cost you."

He tapped the cane once.

"Your leaders will watch you. That is deliberate. They will see what you cannot and they will be charged for telling you, and that is deliberate as well, and if any of you believe it is cruel then I encourage you to raise the matter with somebody who has actually held a border."

Nobody raised the matter.

"One final condition."

Selene again.

"Each class leader will submit one name before noon today. That student will act in their leader’s place for the duration and will receive the Interventions."

She folded the sheet.

"The name cannot be changed after submission. Not for injury. Not for illness. Not for any reason at all."

I did not hear the dismissal.

Around me one hundred and eighty-seven people began making noise about Wellsprings and thirds and whether three classes could agree on anything for longer than eleven seconds, and somewhere inside it Roland said my name twice before I registered it.

"Leader."

"Yes."

"Noon."

"I heard."

"Have you..."

"No."

Roland did not say anything else, which is one of the better things about Roland.

Across the hall Elizabeth was already walking toward the door with Adrian behind her, not hurrying, because she had a name and had had one since Saturday.

James had a name.

Sophie had a name.

She had apparently held a public vote about it, which had gone the way public votes go, and had then chosen somebody nobody voted for.

Daphne had a name and seven pages.

Four people had spent the weekend deciding.

I had spent the weekend asleep.

***

Penelope was waiting in the corridor, because of course she was.

She looked at my face for about two seconds.

"You don’t have a name."

"No."

"It’s half past nine."

"I am aware of what time it is."

"You have until noon. And they go in at dawn."

"I am aware of that as well."

She did not lecture me.

That was the part that undid me slightly, standing in a corridor at half past nine on the worst Monday of my mortal life.

She had every possible right to, and she has never once passed up the opportunity in five years, and instead she simply stood there holding a folder I had not noticed and did not ask about.

"Alash."

"Mm."

"Whoever you choose," she said, "choose them for what they will do at four in the afternoon when everything has gone wrong and nobody is watching."

She turned to go.

"Not because you can bear it."

***

I went outside and sat on the low wall by the west path and did not move for some time.

Twenty-nine Wellsprings.

Three classes to open the valuable ones and one class paid.

A sealed gallery with a view of everything.

Three messages of ten words each, every one of them billed to the people I was sending it to.

One name, before noon, written down and unchangeable, for injury or illness or any reason at all.

And dawn tomorrow.

’System.’

[Yes.]

’If I choose wrong.’

[Then you will have chosen wrong.]

’That’s not comfort.’

[You did not ask for comfort. You asked a conditional and I completed it.]

I sat on a cold wall with a pillow under one arm and two and a half hours, and thought about thirty-six names I had spent eleven days quietly collecting without ever once admitting that was what I was doing.

And I did not know.

I genuinely did not know.