I put on the training clothes I’d found in the bottom drawer, right where Hale had said they’d be, and tied my hair back with a new string. The knot was ugly and tight, but deeply committed to staying where I put it.
Hale would approve of that, at least, no matter how badly I screwed up the rest.
At eleven-fifty, I left Room 114.
The training ring was not the salle.
No one had told me that.
Naturally.
I found it by following the students who were trying not to look as if they were going anywhere interesting.
They led me past the salle, past two lower practice rooms I had not seen, and toward a noise I recognized before I had a name for it: wood striking wood, bodies shifting, people gathered to watch someone else be tested.
The training ring sat behind a wide door that opened onto a sunken square of sand and packed earth. A railing ran around the upper edge. Students stood behind it in rows: first-years in linen like me, second and third-years in darker training coats, upper-classmen leaning on the rail as if they had seen this go badly before and had no qualms about watching it again.
Faculty lined the far wall.
Aldric stood at the center of the ring with a staff in one hand.
Hale stood behind the rail near the faculty line, arms folded, face unreadable.
Of course he was there.
Of course that made my grip worse before it made it better.
The first-year pairings had been written on a slate beside the door. I found my name on the third line.
Astra Verita.
Marcus Venn.
It took me a moment to place him.
The boy with the Mark on the back of his hand.
He stood on the other side of the ring, a head taller than me, with his shoulders squared and his Mark uncovered on the back of his hand.
Dark. Settled. The opposite of mine.
He saw me notice it and lowered his hand to his side.
He looked at me once, then down at his stave.
If he felt sorry for me, he had the decency to keep it off his face.
Mostly.
Aldric called the first two pairings.
Not us. Yet.
The first ended quickly. A block. A pivot. A pin. Polite applause from no one, because apparently even approval had rules here.
The second took longer. The girl slipped in the sand. Her opponent stopped short of striking her ribs, and Aldric said, “Mercy is not a form.”
The girl was a shade paler when she rose.
