Fabian — Sanctara
The morning after the match, I learned that winning is much louder than losing.
I'd lost to every girl in the battle class at least once. Nobody had ever lined the path to the dining hall to tell me about it.
They lined it now. Both sides, all the way from the residence door.
"Congratulations, my lord!"
"Well fought, Lord Fabian!"
"My lord, you were wonderful—"
I hadn't fought at all. I'd fallen over and got up again, mostly. But one girl I had never seen before burst into tears, pressed a handkerchief into my hand, and ran away before I could give it back, and after that I stopped trying to explain.
Liesel walked one pace in front of me. Wren walked one pace beside. Between the two of them, I felt like a very small parade.
Then came the envelopes.
They were cream, and pale blue, and one of them, alarmingly, was pink. They all had seals. Proposals in Octavia come from houses, not from girls, but apparently a great many houses had written to their daughters overnight, and a great many daughters had decided not to wait for the post.
"My lord, my mother asked me to give you—"
"He's spoken for," said Liesel, and took it.
"Lord Fabian, House Mereworth would be honored if—"
"He's spoken for." She took that one too.
"By whom?" asked a brave girl with the pink envelope.
Liesel gave her a smile. It was the smile she'd given Cassian, right before she put him on his back in the sand.
The girl looked at the smile. Then she looked at Liesel's hands. The whole Academy had seen what Liesel's hands could do yesterday.
"...I'll come back another time," said the girl, and fled.
By the time we reached our classroom, Liesel was carrying a stack of envelopes against her chest like a shield. I counted them, because of course I did.
"Fifteen," I said.
"I noticed," said Liesel darkly. "I think they're doing it on purpose."
"What are you going to do with them?"
She thought about it. "Your eldest sister has a very good fireplace."
I sat down on my cushion. Across the aisle, Ambrose looked up from his book. He looked at me for exactly as long as it takes to turn a page.
"Congratulations," he said.
Then he went back to his ditches.
I sat there for a moment, counting on my fingers under the desk.
Fifteen letters. Exactly as long as extraordinarily. I suspected he'd chosen it on purpose.
Everything that week came in fifteens.
After that, the days went the way days do, which turned out to be a strange thing to get used to.
General studies in the mornings. Lady Amara's smile was back, exactly as it had been before the match: warm for every girl, and exactly the same for Ambrose and me. Whatever had knocked it off her face that day, she'd found it again. I was glad. It had been strange, seeing her without it.
The battle class in the afternoons.
On the first day after the match, the girls lined up to be healed again. The line was longer than ever, and every bruise in it was smaller than the last.
Dame Valeria looked at the line. Then she looked at me.
"Ten," she said. "You choose."
So I chose. Under 「Eyes of Elysia」, it was easy: a girl with a wrist gone yellow from a bad fall, a girl whose shoulder was more orange than she was admitting, darkest first, the way Hana taught me. Ten circles, ten splashes, every afternoon. Ten a day was believable. Ten a day was ordinary.
Everyone in that yard had watched me count to fifteen. Nobody mentioned it. Dame Valeria had told them not to, as far as I could tell, with a single look on the morning after, and in that yard, a look from Dame Valeria is law.
Nobody would spar with Liesel anymore. Girls who had once lined up for the honor of being knocked down by a princess suddenly discovered urgent business at the far end of the sand.
On the second day, Dame Valeria paired Liesel with herself.
They went three bouts. I didn't see all of it; I was busy with a girl who had sprained her ankle trying very hard to impress me. But I saw the end of the third, when Dame Valeria stepped back, shook out her sword hand, and looked at it as if it belonged to someone else.
"Sorry," said Liesel.
"Don't be," said Dame Valeria. "Again. Tomorrow."
She walked off. A few steps later, without turning round, she added: "Hm."
Liesel came back over to me looking as pleased as I'd ever seen her.
Cassian didn't come to the battle class for two days. On the third, he came back. He sat on his bench and threw fire at straw targets and said nothing, and did not look at me once. I recognized that. I'd done it to him in the dining hall.
Ilse stood behind his bench. Her light was white. Once, across the yard, when he was busy with a target, she caught my eye and gave me the smallest nod I had ever seen.
Cassian didn't see it. I made very sure not to look at her again.
On the fourth day, Ambrose put a book on my desk without a word.
On the Proper Management of Ditches.
I hadn't asked for it. I read it anyway, that night, mostly to be polite.
It was, I am forced to admit, extraordinarily good.
The henhouse, that first week, came from a different place every night: the side of a road, a field, the back of an inn that Marika described as "structurally disappointing." My sisters were on their way, and I could feel them getting closer, a little more every evening, like a fire you're walking toward in the dark.
(Report from Sanctara,) Liesel announced, on the first night. (Fifteen proposals.)
(BURN THEM,) said Marika.
(File them,) said Naomi. (Near the fireplace.)
(That's the same thing,) said Hana.
(It's the polite version.)
(Did he eat?)
(Two bites,) said Liesel. (I made it three.)
(Thank you, Liesel. Fabian, you have to eat more than three bites, you're a growing—)
(I know, Sis Hana.)
(Where are you?) I asked, mostly to change the subject.
(Past the river,) said Naomi. (Marika raced the ferry.)
(I WON.)
(The ferry wasn't racing.)
(It was racing in its HEART.)
Then Naomi said, in a different voice: (Liesel. What did the Queen say?)
A pause. Through the wall, I heard Liesel's bed creak, as if she'd sat up.
(...Mother things,) said Liesel.
Another pause. A longer one.
(Noted,) said Naomi.
(WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?) said Marika. (What's a mother thing? Fabian, what's a mother thing?)
(I don't know,) I said honestly. (She told me the same.)
(It means leave it,) said Naomi.
(You ALWAYS say leave it!)
(And you never do.)
Liesel didn't say anything else that night. But through the wall, much later, I heard her laugh once into her pillow, very quietly, as if something had just occurred to her that she couldn't tell anyone.
I decided it was probably about the ferry.
On the seventh evening after the match, I sat down for the henhouse and checked the pitcher, the way I always do before anyone starts talking.
Then I stopped, and checked it again.
It had been eighteen since the last night of the road. Eighteen all through the match, all through the fifteen, all through the week. I'd stopped expecting anything else.
It wasn't eighteen.
(Nineteen,) I said, before anyone else could start.
There was a short, delighted silence.
(Nineteen!) said Hana. (I'm writing it down. Fabian, that's two since the tide. Two.)
(I'm still faster,) said Marika.
(Nobody asked,) said Naomi. Then, more quietly: (Good.)
And then, from the other side of the wall:
(...Nineteen what?)
The bond went very still.
I realized, all at once, that in all the nights she'd been part of the henhouse, through the road and the Academy and the match, nobody had ever actually told her.
(Tell her,) said Naomi.
So I did.
(Splashes,) I said. (The pitcher. It grows. Every night I fall into fatigue, it grows a little. Not much. You can't feel it from one night to the next. It was seventeen after the tide, and eighteen on the last night of the road, and tonight it's nineteen.)
Silence.
(It grows?) said Liesel.
(A little.)
(Every night?)
(Every night I fall into fatigue. That's why I drain. That's why I count.)
Another silence. I could practically hear her putting it together on the other side of the wall: the pitcher every night, the splash-by-splash in the dark, a boy lying in bed with the door shut, grinning at the ceiling.
(So that's what "I'm counting" meant,) she said slowly.
(What did you think it meant?)
(I thought you were just strange.)
(I'm also strange.)
(I know.)
(We ALL know,) said Marika.
Then Liesel said, in a smaller voice: (Does the Queen—)
(No,) said Naomi. (And she won't.)
A pause.
(...She won't hear it from me,) said Liesel.
(I know,) said Naomi. And for once, she didn't sound like a sword at all.
(Two more days,) she went on, briskly, before anyone could make anything of that. (We'll be at the gate in two days. Fabian, eat. Liesel, make him.)
(I packed you new socks,) said Hana.
(I have six pairs, Sis Hana.)
(Now you'll have twelve.)
That night I drained what was left of all nineteen, splash by splash, and slid into the warm dark grinning at the ceiling.
Through the wall, very quietly: "...Done?"
"Done."
A pause.
"Nineteen," said Liesel, to nobody in particular, as if she were trying the word out.
Then, more quietly still: "Good."
Severine — Sanctara
I do not hurry. I have never needed to. I simply arrange to be wherever I will be needed, a little before anyone needs me there.
So I was already standing at the Academy gate, an hour past midnight, when the headmistress's carriage came up the hill.
It was not the carriage she had left in. That one had been lacquered and crested. This one was plain, dusty and hired, and one of its wheels complained at every turn.
The door opened before the driver could reach it. She climbed down by herself, as she always does: small and very straight, with white hair scraped into a knot so tight it looked like a decision, and a walking cane of pale ash that I have never once, in all the years I have served her, seen her lean on.
She was thinner than when she left. Her cloak was torn at the hem, and the tear had been mended badly, by someone in a hurry.
"Headmistress," I said. "You were expected before term."
"I was detained." She looked past me, at the dark rows of the Academy, the way a general looks at a wall she means to hold. "Report."
I reported. I am good at it.
Term had begun. The young lords' residence was full. Lord Cassian Ardane had burned his own escort in the dining hall. The Saint of Greymark had knelt in the stew and healed her, and had not once looked at Lord Cassian while he did it. There had been a match, three against three, at which the Queen herself sat at the rail. The Saint had healed fifteen times in a single morning. The Second Princess had struck a Blue fireball out of existence with a wooden spear, thrown an escort three paces with one hand, and her burned palms had been smooth by supper.
The headmistress listened to all of it without interrupting once. She has never done that before.
When I had finished, she was quiet for a long time.
"Fifteen," she said at last.
"Fifteen."
"And the princess."
"Smooth by supper."
She nodded slowly, as though I had confirmed something she had either been afraid of or hoping for. With her, it is very often impossible to tell which.
"Good," she said. "We'll need them both."
I adjusted my spectacles. "Need them for what, Headmistress?"
She turned to look at me then, and the lantern by the gate caught what the dark had been hiding. There was dried mud on her boots, up to the ankle. And on the cuff of her glove there was a stain that was very dark, and was not mud.
"Severine," said the headmistress. "The demons are back."