Dame Valeria's battle yard was a long oval of raked sand inside a waist-high timber rail, with stepped wooden benches along two sides and a row of straw targets at the far end, most of them scorched.
I knew whose fault the scorching was.
"Sit," said Dame Valeria.
Everyone sat. All years at once, on the sand: a great many girls, the five of us from the first year, a few more young lords from the years above, and everyone's escorts. Cassian sat on a bench, not the sand. Nobody told him not to.
Dame Valeria stood in the middle of the yard with her arms folded and her practice sword at her hip, and looked at us the way Naomi looks at a new recruit's boots.
"Most of you are here to learn to fight," she said. "Some of you are here because the Queen's law says a lord must learn to stand behind his escorts without getting them killed. Those are different lessons. You'll get both."
Then she looked at Cassian. Then at me.
"And two of you have a match."
Every head turned. I was getting used to it. I didn't like that I was getting used to it.
"Lady Severine says it's three against three," said Dame Valeria. "Lady Severine is right, which I find irritating. So here are my rules. Listen once. I won't say them twice."
She held up one finger.
"Escorts fight with practice weapons. Wood. Blunted. Anyone who brings steel into my yard will find out how fast I am."
Two fingers.
"Lords use what the Eight gave them. All of it. Fire is fire." Her eyes moved to me. "And healing is healing, Lord Fabian. In my yard, a Saint heals whenever he likes, whoever he likes. If you can keep your side standing, that's your weapon. Use it."
I blinked. I'd half expected to be told to keep my pretty light to myself.
Three fingers.
"The match ends when a lord yields, or when I say he's down. An escort I call down leaves the sand and stays off it."
Four.
"Nobody dies in my yard." She didn't look at Cassian when she said it. She didn't need to. "If I say stop, you stop. If you don't stop, I stop you. Ask around about how that goes."
Nobody asked. Several girls had very clearly asked before.
"Questions?"
Cassian lifted a lazy hand. "And if the healer's down before he can heal anything?"
"Then he should have stayed on his feet." Dame Valeria turned. "Which brings me to today. Lord Fabian. Up."
What followed was the longest hour of my life, and I once slept for three weeks.
Dame Valeria didn't let me heal anyone. "First class, nobody bleeds," she said. "First class, you learn to fall." She paired me with the freckled girl from general studies, who put me on the sand in about three breaths. Then with the girl with the ribbons, who took two. Then with the small pink one, who said "Sorry, my lord!" every single time she knocked me down, which was nine times.
"You fall like a sack of flour," said Dame Valeria, standing over me. "A healer who falls wrong can't get up again, and a healer who can't get up heals nobody. Again. Fall, roll, stand. Like a cat."
"I've never been a cat."
"Start now."
By the end of the hour, I could fall like a slightly better sack of flour. Liesel said it was progress. Wren hummed something that might have been agreement.
On the far side of the yard, Cassian's escorts were sparring with each other: Ilse with a wooden sword, the other woman with a long practice spear, held left-handed. Wren watched them the whole time without blinking, like someone memorizing a map.
"Her knee?" I murmured.
"Right one, Young Master," Wren murmured back. "Every time she turns."
Then Dame Valeria lined up the young lords at the targets.
"Show me your tier," she said. "One cast each. Then sit down."
Cassian went first. Of course he did.
He didn't even stand properly. He lifted one hand, lazily, and a Blue circle opened in front of him, and the fireball that came out of it hit the nearest straw target so hard that the target simply stopped existing. There was a whump, a flash, and a soft gray rain of ash drifting down onto the sand where a target had been.
The girls on the benches made a noise like a held breath.
Cassian turned, looked straight at me, and smiled.
Then it was Ambrose's turn. He studied his straw target for a long, thoughtful moment. A White circle opened. The target became very slightly damp.
"...Thank you, Lord Ambrose," said Dame Valeria, after a pause.
"Small," said Ambrose, and sat down.
Dame Valeria looked at me. "Lord Fabian?"
"I don't throw things, Dame Valeria."
"No," she said. "You catch them afterward. Sit."
At dusk, the battle yard was empty.
For once, there was no blue light at the far end. Wherever Cassian was practicing tonight, it wasn't here.
I stood in the middle of the raked sand with Liesel and Wren in front of me, side by side, and checked the pitcher.
Full. Dame Valeria hadn't let me heal anyone all day, and I'd been far too busy falling over to cast anything. Every splash I had was sitting right there.
(Big Sis,) I said. (Full pitcher. Liesel's here. I'm telling you first.)
A pause, nine days away.
(...Go,) said Naomi.
"She said go," said Liesel, who had heard every word, and grinned.
Wren looked from one of us to the other, the way she does, and said nothing.
"Wren," I said. "This might be warm. It might be nothing. Either way, it won't hurt."
"Yes, Young Master."
I held out both hands, one toward each of them, and reached.
The first time, I reached for 「Heal」 and two people, and I got 「Heal」 and one. A White circle opened under Liesel's boots, warm, and gone. Wren stood there with nothing under her at all.
"Warm," said Liesel.
"...Nothing, Young Master," said Wren, a little apologetically.
One splash.
I'd reached for two people as if they were two cups. Two cups was Father's way. A few nights ago, I'd learned something different, about bowls, and folding.
So what did two people need, if you folded them together?
Both of them, standing.
I reached again. Not for Liesel, and not for Wren. For both of them standing on this sand at the end of a fight, with nothing torn in either of them. One thing.
A single White circle opened between my hands. Then it split down the middle, like an apple, and the two halves slid apart across the sand, one under Liesel and one under Wren. They turned in step, side by side, like two dancers who'd practiced for years.
The light went up into both of them at once.
And the pitcher tipped. Not a splash. A pour. I was ready for it this time, and I stayed on my feet.
Four.
Wren's eyes had gone very wide. She looked down at her own hands as if she'd never seen them before.
"Young Master," she said quietly. "That was... warm."
Then she hummed. Not three notes. Four.
I'd only ever heard Wren hum the fourth note over pheasant. I decided to take it as a very good review.
"Four?" said Liesel.
"Four."
She thought about it. "Cheaper than soup."
Then she picked up her practice spear, tapped the butt of it on the sand, and gave me the look she uses right before she makes something difficult.
"Again," she said. "Not that. The other thing. When I get hit, you cast on me. Don't think about it. I say 'hit,' you cast."
"It's a splash every time."
"You were going to throw them away tonight anyway."
That was true. So we practiced. Liesel walked around the yard, and every so often, without warning, she said "Hit!" and I put a White circle under her boots as fast as I could. The first time, it took me three breaths. By the twelfth, it took one.
It was the most useful drain I'd ever done.
That night, after supper, I reported.
(Five,) I told Naomi. (One for the miss. Four for the cast.)
(And it holds?)
(It holds.)
(Good.) A pause. (Now listen.)
We listened. When Naomi says "listen," even Marika listens.
(Tomorrow, you heal no one,) said Naomi. (Not in class. Not after class. And tomorrow night, you don't drain.)
(But if I don't fall into fatigue—)
(Then the pitcher doesn't grow for one night.) Her voice didn't change at all. (One night of growth, or one match. Pick.)
I didn't even have to think about it. (...The match.)
(Good. You walk into that yard full.)
(AND HIT HIM,) said Marika.
(I'm at the back, Sis Marika.)
(THEN HIT HIM FROM THE BACK.)
(Breakfast,) said Hana. (Before the match. Not after. Before. Liesel—)
(I have the page,) said Liesel.
The next day, I healed nobody. It was much harder than it sounds.
In general studies, Lady Amara stopped beside my desk on her way to the slate.
"I understand you have a match tomorrow, Lord Fabian."
"Yes, my lady."
"Against Lord Cassian."
"...Yes, my lady."
She looked at me for a moment, with the smile that never changed. "I'll be watching," she said, and walked on.
Across the aisle, without looking up from his ditches, Ambrose said, "Fire mages always go for the healer first."
"You said."
"Still true."
In the afternoon, the girls of the battle class lined up to be healed.
Not all of them. But a great many, each with a bruise so small I had to take her word for it. They held out their elbows and their wrists and looked at me with enormous, hopeful eyes.
"I'm sorry," I said, over and over. "Not today."
It was awful. Every "not today" felt like stepping on a puppy.
Dame Valeria watched the whole line go away disappointed and gave one short nod.
"Good," she said. "A healer who walks into a match with an empty pitcher is just a very small target."
Then she left us to the far corner of the yard and our own business.
Liesel had a sack of bruised apples from the kitchens. The cook had sent them over with her compliments. She had not sent a cabbage. I checked.
"Fireballs," said Liesel, weighing an apple in her hand. "Dodge."
She threw forty-one apples at me that afternoon. I dodged nine. I fell like a cat twice and like a sack of flour the rest of the time, and every time I got up, Liesel shouted "Hit!" and I pointed at her boots, which was as close to casting as Naomi was letting me come.
Liesel had her own problem.
When it was her turn to drill with Wren, she was trying very, very hard not to hit like Liesel. You could see the effort. Every swing was careful and polite: the swing of a princess who had been training. Very hard. Recently.
The trouble was, all that careful had to come out somewhere. Halfway through the drill, she squeezed her practice spear a little too thoughtfully, and the shaft went crack in her fist and folded in half.
Our whole corner of the yard went quiet.
Across the sand, Dame Valeria turned her head.
"...It was an old spear," said Liesel.
"Hm," said Dame Valeria.
After that, Liesel switched hands and held the next spear left-handed, and Wren practiced going right. Then right again. Then right a third time, until the spear in Liesel's left hand always arrived a beat too late.
At dusk, I went to the trough by the yard gate to wash apple out of my hair.
Liesel and Wren stopped ten paces back without being asked. Ten paces is a lot of room for someone else to walk into.
Someone did.
Ilse came out of the dusk carrying a bucket. She saw me and stopped dead, the way you'd stop if you walked into a room and found a bear in it. Then, very carefully, she came the rest of the way and began to fill the bucket, looking only at the water.
"How's the arm?" I said.
A long pause.
"It holds, my lord."
I checked her light anyway. White, all the way around.
"He's out here every night," Ilse said to the water, very quietly. "Late. Lord Cassian doesn't practice. He never has." The bucket was full. She didn't lift it. "He's practicing."
"Thank you," I said.
"Don't." She looked up, for one breath. "Tomorrow, I won't hold back, my lord. I can't. If I do—"
She stopped.
I knew how that sentence ended. I'd seen her arm.
"I know," I said. "And if you get hurt tomorrow, I'll heal you."
She stared at me.
"Dame Valeria said a Saint heals whoever he likes," I said. "In her yard, it's allowed."
"You'd heal the other side?"
"I heal whoever's hurt. That's the whole job."
Ilse looked at me a moment longer. Then she picked up her bucket and went, fast, back into the dusk, holding it close the way she'd held her arm.
That night, for the first time since Greymark, I went to bed with a full pitcher.
It felt like sleeping in my boots.
I lay in the dark and felt it, all eighteen splashes, sitting heavy and quiet in my chest. No circles. No counting down. No warm, soft slide into fatigue. Just full.
Through the wall, very sleepily: "...Done?"
"Not tonight."
A pause.
"Good," said Liesel. "Sleep."
I didn't, much.
On the morning of the match, Liesel made me eat three bites of breakfast. Hana's page said two. Liesel said the page was a minimum.
Then we walked to the battle yard, and I learned that the Royal Academy could fit more people around one oval of sand than I'd thought possible.
Every bench was full. Girls stood on the benches. Girls stood behind the girls on the benches. Some had climbed the wall of the nearest stone building and were sitting along the top of it like a row of sparrows. Lady Severine stood at the rail with her hands folded. Lady Amara sat near the front in dove gray, smiling her unchanged smile. Ambrose was at the end of a bench with a book open on his knee, which I respected.
Dame Valeria stood alone in the middle of the sand.
Cassian was already at the far end, with Ilse and his second escort behind him. He'd dressed for an audience: black velvet, gold at the cuffs, copper hair swept back just so. Ilse was looking at the sand.
I counted the pitcher one more time. Eighteen.
Wren was humming her three notes, very fast. Liesel was rolling her shoulders. Her practice spear was very, very new.
"Saint," she said. "Whatever happens, stay at the—"
She stopped.
The whole yard had stopped.
It wasn't the quiet from the dining hall, the quiet of girls looking at their plates. This one started at the gate, and it was the quiet of a great many people realizing, all at once, that they ought to be on their knees.
Crimson tabards came through the gate. Then more of them. Then, between two lines of guards, came a tall woman in deep crimson and gold, with golden hair streaked with silver, braided and pinned up beneath a slim crown.
The Queen of Octavia had come to watch.
Beside her, in silver half-plate and a crimson cape, with a single tight braid down her back and a thin gold circlet, walked the First Princess.
Everyone knelt. Liesel and Wren knelt. I bowed lower than I have ever bowed in my life, and even with my head down, I could feel the Queen's eyes find me, and stay.
Behind me, very quietly, Dame Valeria said, "Somebody wrote to the palace."
Lady Severine's spectacles caught the sun. She said nothing at all.
The Queen took the chair that was brought for her at the rail. She didn't speak. She only looked: at Cassian, at me, and last, and for a long time, at her daughter.
Cordelia didn't sit.
She walked along the rail, unhurried, exactly the way I remembered from Greymark, until she reached our end of the yard.
"Lord Fabian."
"Your Highness."
Then she stopped in front of Liesel, who had gone very still.
"I hear," said Cordelia, "you've been training."
Liesel's knuckles went white on her brand-new spear.
"...Very hard," she said.
Cordelia's mouth did something that, on anyone else, would have been a smile.
"Recently?"