I didn’t fail to notice the academy kept ‘please’ out of its waters no matter who was doing the summoning.
Combat assessment soon.
Salle atfive.
Hale.
At Zenith Hall, warning and reprieve seemed to arrive in the same handwriting.
I left my room in my ordinary clothes.
The wool coat. The uniform underneath. Boots that were already worn out before Zenith’s stone floors.
I tied my hair back with string from my coat lining and hoped Hale had low standards.
I reached the salle at three minutes past five.
Jonah Hale was crouched at the center of the floor, drawing a fresh chalk line over an older one.
Two staves lay beside him. One long. One short.
For me, then.
The salle was longer than I remembered from the other times I had met him here, and quieter. A wooden floor rubbed dull with years of feet. More chalk lines at the center. The faint smell of oil and dust.
Hale kept his back to me.
“You’re late.”
“By three minutes.”
“The assessment will not care why.”
“This isn’t the assessment.”
“Treat it like it is if you want to survive it.”
That took the sarcasm out of my mouth.
He turned then.
His eyes moved over the wool coat. The dress. The boots.
Then back to my face.
“You came in that?”
“I was summoned by a magical bowl in my bedroom. It didn’t indicate a dress code.”
“Did you check the bottom drawer of your wardrobe?”
The bottom drawer.
I used the wardrobe for the uniform Zenith had supplied that hung there. I hadn’t explored the other drawers.
The bag I’d arrived with still sat on the floor next to my bed,because the bag was mine. The room was only a place I had not yet been removed from.
“There are drawers?”
