The assessment continued for the rest of the morning. Other pairings, other fights. Maris against a second year with a creature class, which he won by abandoning the predictable approach I had called out and making his knight work in short explosive bursts instead of sustained pressure. It worked better than anyone expected including Maris.
He came off the circle looking slightly stunned at himself.
"That actually worked," he said.
"You sound surprised," I said.
"I am a little surprised," he said.
"Don’t be," I said. "You are better than you think you are. You have just been fighting like you need to prove it instead of fighting like you know it."
He looked at me.
"That is annoyingly insightful," he said.
"I have heard that before too," I said.
By midday the assessments were finished and Brev gathered the cohort for his review. Standard observations. Development notes. The things people needed to hear and the things they needed to hear more carefully.
He got to me last.
"Dravenmoor," he said. "Second layer fusion under combat pressure. That is four weeks ahead of the standard development curve." He looked at his clipboard. "You also took a hit you could have avoided."
"The check landed," I said.
"The hit also landed," he said. "Those are both true simultaneously."
I said nothing because he was right.
"Learn to get both outcomes," he said. "The landing and the avoiding." He looked up. "You have the capability. You are still thinking three steps ahead and forgetting that the third step has to account for you as a physical object in space."
"Understood," I said.
He nodded and dismissed us.
Walking to the dining hall for midday break Seraphine was quiet beside me and I was quiet beside her and the quiet was the comfortable kind.
Then she said: "He was right."
"I know he was right," I said.
"I am going to be insufferable about it," she said.
"I assumed," I said.
"Every sparring session," she said. "I am going to remind you that you are a physical object in space."
"Please do not do that."
"I am absolutely going to do that," she said, and there was something light in her voice. The register she had when she was genuinely pleased. The warmth running open and close to the surface.
We turned the corner toward the dining hall.
Evelyne was coming the other way.
She stopped when she saw me. Her eyes went to my back, where the impact mark from the sword was presumably visible even through the jacket.
"You fought Voss," she said.
"News travels fast," I said.
"I was watching from the upper walkway," she said. Direct. Unbothered about admitting it.
I looked at her.
"The shoulder check worked," she said. "The hit at the end was preventable."
"My instructor said the same thing," I said.
"Your instructor was correct," she said. Then, quieter, something that was not quite concern but was in the same building: "Are you hurt?"
"I will be stiff tomorrow," I said. "Nothing significant."
She looked at me for a moment with the measuring attention. Then she looked at Seraphine.
Seraphine was looking back at her with the composed pleasantness and underneath the pleasantness the thing that was always there when Evelyne was present. That specific quality. The awareness that registered Evelyne’s existence with a detail and intensity it did not apply to anything else.
"You were watching the fight," Seraphine said to her pleasantly.
"I was," Evelyne said.
"From the upper walkway," Seraphine said. Still pleasant. Very pleasant.
"Yes," Evelyne said. Holding the eye contact with the calm directness she used when she had decided not to back down from something.
The griffin at her heel made a sound.
A brief silence that had a lot of content in it.
"I left a new note in the red volume," Evelyne said to me, breaking the Seraphine eye contact smoothly. "I found the architect’s correspondence with the third party. There is a third party."
"Who?" I said.
"Read the note," she said. "I want to know if you reach the same conclusion I did before I tell you what I think."
She walked past us toward the academic wing.
The griffin paused beside me for one moment and bumped its head against my hand. Barely. Light and quick, like it had not decided to do it until it had already done it.
Then it followed Evelyne.
I stood there.
Seraphine was very still.
"The griffin touched you," she said.
"I noticed," I said.
"It does not like me," she said. "It actively expresses discomfort in my presence every time."
"Yes," I said.
"And it touched you," she said. In the tone of someone performing a mathematical calculation and being displeased by the result.
"It has good taste," I said, because I had a problem with knowing when to stop.
Seraphine turned her head and looked at me and the expression on her face was a combination of things that genuinely required a moment to parse. Fond. Exasperated. Something that was possessive in the very specific way she was possessive, not controlling exactly, more like the feeling of something that had claimed a thing and was finding other things also moving toward it and experiencing this as both expected and profoundly inconvenient.
"I have feelings about this situation," she said.
"I know you do," I said.
"I am not acting on them," she said.
"I know that too," I said.
"I want credit," she said. "Ongoing credit. Accumulating credit for the number of times per day I choose not to act on my feelings."
I looked at her.
"Noted," I said seriously. "Running total. You are doing very well."
"Thank you," she said. With complete sincerity.
We walked into the dining hall.
I was going to read Evelyne’s note after lunch.
I was also going to figure out the third fusion layer before the end of the month because getting hit by a warrior’s sword was an educational experience I did not particularly want to repeat.
And I was going to think about the way Seraphine had said she could not get to me in time.
The half second she had described.
What it had felt like to be her in that half second.
Not yet. I would think about it later when I had space to think about it properly.
But I was going to think about it.
That much I already knew.