Rebellion (Chronicles of Charanthe #1)

  Chapter 26

  Eleanor added a little powdered charcoal to her beaker, but it just formed lumps floating in the liquid, which was almost certainly not what was meant to happen. She cursed under her breath, and promised herself that once she'd graduated she'd get someone else to prepare her poisons for her. It was all very well that they needed to learn how to use the different mixtures, but if she had to make them herself she'd just be condemned to perpetually amateur results.

  Daniel, to her left, was too engrossed in his own perfect concoction to pay attention to her troubles. She scanned the room and caught Fred's eye, the only other person who didn't have his head bent over the desk in quiet concentration. He mimed falling asleep, and she had to bite her lip to stop herself laughing.

  With an exaggerated sigh, she turned back to breaking up the little black clumps floating in her beaker. By the end of the class she had something resembling a paste, though it was still lumpy, and looked nothing like Daniel's smooth mixture. She wondered briefly whether she could salvage it, but she didn't want to waste time trying if it was irrecoverable, so she tipped it away when Albert wasn't looking.

  "Are you coming out with us again tonight?" Fred asked as they left the classroom.

  "Maybe." Raf hadn't mentioned it, but then he hadn't given her much notice last time.

  "Well, we'll be meeting downstairs after dinner, same as usual if you fancy it."

  "Thanks." Well, it wasn't as if she'd had any other plans.

  She made her way to the hall after dinner, where Fred, Greg and Nate were already waiting when she arrived. A moment later Raf sprinted down the stairs.

  "Ellie, there you are! You weren't in your room."

  "You must've just missed me."

  "Well, you've got the hang of this, obviously... same every time we've got a day off, so I probably don't need to fetch you anyway." He turned to Fred. "I suggested Ivan should come out, so we should wait a while at least. Where's Jorge this evening?"

  "He's getting crazy about this contest," Fred said. "He'll do anything to win, and right now that seems to mean conning Charles into practice sessions any time he can."

  Ivan came round the corner at that moment, and clapped his hand onto Fred's shoulder. "But we're expecting you to win – you're way ahead of him."

  Fred rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't say that to him unless you want an earful. He's getting pretty wound up about it."

  "So, are we expecting anyone else?" Ivan asked, looking round the group. His eyes rested briefly on Eleanor but he didn't say anything to acknowledge her.

  "Maybe Jon," Greg said. "I heard he's just got back from wherever-it-was."

  "Are the council really determined not to fix that bloody mess over the summer contest?" Fred asked, directing his question mostly to Ivan.

  "The decision was made."

  "But it's not too late. Couldn't they have a re-run or something?"

  "We can talk about it later," Ivan said, as Jon rounded the corner. "Not tonight."

  "What are we not talking about tonight?" Jon asked.

  "Nothing. Come on, let's go."

  They went to the tavern where Raf and Eleanor had danced, though it was still early and the music hadn't started yet.

  "So how was your trip?" Nate asked Jon as they settled down with their drinks. "Anything exciting?"

  "Easy enough," he said. "Nice to be back, though. I hope Vic's looking after you lot alright, is he? He said he wouldn't come out this year 'cause of all his responsibilities."

  "I'm glad someone's setting a good example for our new students," Ivan said. "I do wonder if I should really be encouraging you lot."

  "We don't need much encouragement," Greg said.

  "Oh, I know that, but even so. It probably doesn't look good."

  "It's great to see you again, though," Raf said. "It's been too long."

  "Two years too long, kid. You got very lost."

  "Not how I would've chosen to spend my time either." He glanced at Eleanor and she squeezed his hand. "I would've much rather been here."

  "At least you made it," Eleanor said. "We'd all but given up."

  "And I never thought you'd fall back into my year," Nate said, laughing. "Never thought we'd catch you up – did we, Greg?"

  "I think you'll find you've nowhere near caught me," Raf said. "I've had two years in the real world while you were still at school. You kids have a long way to go to catch up."

  Eleanor yawned; it had been a long day, and she was feeling decidedly sleepy.

  "Tired?" Raf asked.

  "A little, yeah. I might not stay out that long."

  "Do you want to go now?" He drained the last drops from his drink. "I'll walk you back."

  "I can take care of myself, you know, if you want to stay out. I don't need a minder."

  "A girl out on her own, this late and in this part of town? Who knows what kind of trouble you might get into? I wouldn't want you having to explain to some Imperial jailer why you killed a man in some dark alleyway."

  She rolled her eyes but she was secretly glad of the company; the walk would feel even longer if she was alone. They walked in comfortable silence through the city's dark streets, until they turned to cut across the Grand Square and were surprised to run into a crowd who were mostly dressed in their nightclothes. They stood in small groups, huddling together against the cold of the night, whispering and muttering.

  Raf lifted Eleanor onto his shoulders so she could see above their heads.

  "Looks like a fire," she said. Orange flames flickered in the darkness. "It might even be the palace."

  "Rebels, then." Raf lowered her to the ground again. "Come on, we'll be better off going round."

  She nodded, eyes flickering across the crowd. "We don't want to get caught up in anything."

  "Oh, this lot are harmless – they must be the palace staff. But you're right, trouble's never far away from rebels."

  "Do you think it's getting worse?" Eleanor asked as they turned into a quieter street. "We never used to hear of things like this."

  "They're getting bolder," Raf said. "And maybe more organised. But there've been rebels causing trouble since the Empire was formed."

  "I don't get it. I thought I hated the system when I was at school, but I just wanted to run away – I don't see the point of setting fires and starting fights."

  "There is no point," Raf said. "It's just stupid."

  They fell into silence again as they made their way back across the fields and into the academy's grounds. They were about to part ways to go to their respective rooms, but Eleanor put her hand on Raf's arm to stop him.

  "I asked Ivan about you, you know," she said when he turned to see what she wanted. "Last year."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said you might be his brother." She looked steadily into his eyes as she spoke, waiting for a reaction, but his face betrayed nothing. "Is that what you think?"

  "What would you think, if you grew up at school with someone who mirrored your features so closely?"

  "I'm not sure. We're not supposed to ask that kind of question... I doubt I'd even have thought of it. It's been three generations since anyone was allowed to think things like that."

  "Did Ivan explain how the school selects its children?"

  She nodded. "Briefly."

  "Then you'll understand that you're not supposed to wonder if one of the teachers is your father, either, but for everyone at Venncastle it's an unspoken question. You go through a phase where you think it might matter."

  "Doesn't it?"

  "No. You spend a while monitoring how every one of the teachers treats you and your classmates, and eventually you realise there are no clues. No-one gets special treatment. Your first loyalty is to the school, and so is theirs. It's as if everyone who's been through the school before you is your father... or your older brother. Why worry about blood?"

  "He's fond of you, though." She thought back to her conversations with Ivan, and the way his eyes had m
oistened whenever they'd talked about Raf, the only affectionate emotion she'd really seen since arriving at the academy. "For whatever reason."

  "Are we going to get some practice in tomorrow?"

  The change of subject caught her by surprise, and it took her a moment to work out what had happened. "Probably. I'm supposed to be doing some running with Mikhail, but I could come round after that."

  "Do that, then. And if you really want to talk about families, we can talk more tomorrow."

  Her run with Mikhail ended up using up the whole of the following day, a thirty-mile circuit through the forest and around the lake, with intervals of climbing and swimming, and it was dark by the time they returned to the academy.

  Eleanor knocked lightly at Raf's door and let herself in, wondering if she was too late to talk him into some sparring, and no sooner was she through the door than he put a large glass of spring nectar into her hands.

  "Drink this."

  She looked suspiciously at the drink. "I thought we were going to practise."

  "We are."

  "I don't understand."

  "One of the things you need to practise is keeping your balance after a couple of drinks. Drink up!"

  She wasn't entirely convinced, but she couldn't think of any good arguments against him so she emptied the glass in two large gulps. "Aren't you having any?"

  He shook his head, but refilled her glass. "I've had plenty of practice with that stuff already."

  He led her out into the darkness, across to the practice frame, and hopped up onto one of the beams before offering his hand to help her up. Once she was on her feet he backed away from her and she wobbled uncertainly, toes gripping the edges of the beam as she shuffled towards him.

  "This isn't very fair," she said, pulling out her dagger and pointing it towards him. "You've made me all dizzy, everything's spinning, and now you expect me to fight up here."

  "No, put the knife away."

  She tilted her head to look at him, puzzled, and almost lost her balance, recovering herself into a crouching position on the beam.

  "Seriously, Ellie, put it away. I don't want you hurting yourself."

  It took her three attempts to get the blade back into its sheath. "Remind me again what we're doing? I thought we were going to practise."

  "This is practice." He stepped away from her again and climbed onto the next-highest beam. "Not everything has to be about fighting. You're going to have enough trouble with your balance, but see if you can keep up with me."

  She pushed herself to her feet again, standing with her feet across the beam, and edged sideways towards him. As soon as she got almost close enough to reach out and touch him he moved away, leaving her to negotiate the climb to the next beam on her own as he scrambled up to higher levels of the frame.

  Her legs wobbling with every step, she hurried to try and match his pace, but whenever she thought she was getting close, he simply moved to somewhere harder to reach. She was trying to swing herself up to a much higher beam when she lost her balance and toppled onto the sand below, crying out with surprise as she hit the ground.

  "Oh, Ellie!" Raf somersaulted down, scattering sand across her belly as he landed beside her, and offered his hand to help her up. "That was pretty good, though."

  "It was awful."

  "No, it would've been awful if you were sober, but you're not. That's the whole point. Come on, let's try again."

  "I don't want to."

  "C'mon, Ellie, don't get upset. I'm just trying to teach you a new skill."

  "But this is silly," she pouted. "I wanted to practise for the contest."

  "Tomorrow, I promise. Just humour me this evening." He gripped her wrist and pulled her up, though her legs wobbled beneath her as she tried to stand. "One more time, okay?"

  "Okay, just once."

  He helped her onto the first beam again, and again he left her balancing uncertainly while he retreated into further and higher places, although he was kind enough to avoid the rotating beams.

  After she fell into the sand again he tried to persuade her to have a third attempt, but she was determined she'd had enough.

  "I've fallen over twice now, isn't that enough for you?"

  He offered his hand to help her up, but she pulled him down onto the sand beside her.

  "Don't you want to go in?" he asked.

  "It's a nice evening." She lay back, and shuffled her body until the sand was supporting her comfortably. "Look, there's almost no clouds. Look at all the stars."

  He rested next to her, but she was conscious he was watching her rather than the sky.

  "What do you think about harping knife and palm-blade?" she asked. "For the contest, I mean."

  "It's not about what I think, Ellie, it's what you're happy with."

  "I know that. But you're stronger on hand-to-hand than I am." She picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers, scattering grains across her stomach. "You know I'd never get within ten yards of a fight in the real world, if I could just end it from a distance, but of course they won't let me fight my way. So I'd like to hear your thoughts."

  "Well, it's a strong combination if you're confident with it. And like anything interesting, if you're not confident, it could go horribly wrong – so again it comes back to what you're happy with."

  "Can we practise tomorrow? I want to know what you'd do against it, because Ivan can still get past me, but so far as I can tell he was born with a harping knife in his hand."

  "And a pipe between his teeth. Yep, that sounds like Ivan." He tilted her face so she was looking straight into his eyes. "You shouldn't assume you're not good at something just because you're not quite at his standard, you know."

  "That sounds like the voice of experience. Something you learnt at school?"

  "Something like that." He took a deep, slow breath. "Look, I can't really explain what it was like, growing up with Ivan always a few steps ahead of me. I don't even understand it myself. But mostly, it felt like looking into a mirror and seeing a slightly better version of myself. A reflection I could never quite live up to. I can only imagine what he must've thought about me."

  "Do you think that's what it was like in the old days? Before the Empire, I mean – before children went to school."

  "It must've been very strange. Can you imagine knowing your parents, and maybe even their parents, and having who-knows-how-many brothers or sisters? How would you know who you were supposed to be, with all those people expecting you to be like them? It was hard enough with one!"

  "I always thought it sounded quite nice. But then, I never knew who I wanted to be anyway."

  "It's better to have a choice. Even if you end up choosing the same thing... because I don't think I could've been happy anywhere but here, but at least I knew there were other possibilities, however remote."

  "Really? I wanted to be a dancer, when I was much younger, and then I had my heart set on the Specials."

  "I've always wanted this."

  "But you were lucky. In most of the Empire, this place is just a legend. A fairytale – like Hess, we didn't believe in them either. It was only when I saw my assignment that I started to wonder."

  "Ah, of course – the Association has never worried about what the girls' schools might think. If we're not expecting you, it doesn't matter if you think it's real or not."

  "It might be time to put that right, once I get my council seat." She sat up and brushed the sand from her hair. "So can we do some proper training tomorrow?"

  "You don't think this was proper? It'll serve you well."

  "It wasn't what I was expecting to practise. Anyway, I want to try out the harping knife with you – I don't want to give up the element of surprise by using it too much against the others. No-one's going to expect me to pick that combination for the contest, they'll expect me to be using something a bit more... well... normal. So if I go for it, I want it to be a surprise."

  The days leading up to the first contest p
assed in a haze of training and nerves, and Eleanor found the days were generally vanishing much more quickly now she was spending so much time with Raf and his friends. Whether they were studiously training or relaxing with a few drinks, it was certainly more fun than sitting alone in her room.

  On the morning of the winter solstice they assembled after breakfast in the practice hall, which had been transformed into a compact arena for the contest. A thick rope was strung out to mark the limits of the fighting area, and benches had been arranged around the outside for everyone who wanted to watch: an assortment of first years, academy instructors, and other, unfamiliar faces had come along for the spectacle. The most notable absence was Bill; the rumour was that their hand-to-hand instructor objected to the rules under which the contest fights were held, but this was how it had always been done, and he stood no chance of getting it changed to disallow the swords, axes, and cudgels which he considered "far too military" for the Association's needs.

  Ragal was officiating, with a shrill whistle between his teeth for whenever he needed to draw their attention, and a blackboard propped on a large A-frame laid out the running order, with space for the finalists' deciding bouts to be chalked in underneath.

  The first fight saw Mack pitted against Fred. As they warmed up, Eleanor recalled Fred's confident words in the tavern, just after they'd found out who they were each facing in the first round. He certainly didn't look ruffled by being up first, whereas Mack looked a little nervous; once the fight started, it became clear that his nerves were getting the better of him, and he made a string of silly mistakes which allowed Fred to get a dagger under his chin.

  Charles and Jorge were next, and after the amount they'd been practising together they each knew the other's style intimately. The familiarity showed in every block and counter. Charles was hardly bothering to follow through on thrusts he knew would be parried. It was starting to look like it could be a very long fight until Jorge, with characteristic bluntness, forced his way forwards and knocked Charles to the ground where he could pin his opponent down for a convincing, if sudden, victory.

  Eleanor's first fight of the morning was against Sebastien. As she adjusted the straps of her leathers and followed him into the ring, she thought about the hundred times they'd practised together. With everyone watching, and something real to play for, this was going to be very different to casual sparring.

  She held the harping knife diagonally in front of her chest, guarding her body, with her palm-blade ready to protect her left hand. Sebastien was fighting with a curved sword and a short dagger, a combination he'd become very comfortable with over the previous year, though Eleanor could usually slip her stiletto past his guard. In a fleeting moment of panic she wondered if she'd made a mistake going for a more unusual combination, but she loved the defensive wall that the harping knife gave her. And Sebastien certainly looked surprised when he first saw what she'd chosen, which could only work in her favour.

  She flicked away his first few strikes without effort, but though it seemed easy, something was missing. She thought back to every time she'd fought for something that mattered – it all felt so different when winning meant survival, and the alternative was death. She needed to recapture that sense of urgency if she was to stand any chance at all of putting meaning into her movements.

  After her next parry she stepped back, giving herself a moment to breathe and think before she launched herself back into the fight. Sebastien always opted for a sword, liking to put some distance between himself and his opponent, and she realised she had to get his blade out of the way if she was going to get close enough to make a winning strike. Otherwise they'd spend all day exchanging casual fencing which would only, eventually, tire them both.

  With this in mind, when Sebastien next thrust his sword towards her she caught the hilt with the long blade of her harping knife, and instead of just blocking his attack she forced his arm down towards the floor and held it, using her palm-blade to block the secondary attack of his dagger, then darted forwards and brought the harping knife up against his chest. Ragal blew his whistle and Eleanor stepped back, then offered her hand for him to shake.

  After the second round of fights, in which Daniel beat Mack, Jorge flattened Mikhail, and Sebastien narrowly defeated Paul, they broke off for lunch.

  "Enjoying yourself?" Raf asked Eleanor as they walked across to the dining hall. "You had a good first fight."

  "I was thinking of all the times we fought to survive," she said. "But it's much harder to really mean it in such a fake environment."

  "This is a kind of survival, though."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're fighting to stay in the set of people who can win. It might not be life or death, but it is important, Ellie. You mustn't forget that."

  "I suppose so."

  "Looking forward to this afternoon?" Jorge asked, as he and Fred caught them up. "You going to be joining me in the finals, El?"

  "I'll do my best," she said. "You're lucky to have got yours out of the way."

  "It was easy," Jorge said. "Only got you standing between me and the top slot this afternoon, eh Fred?"

  "You haven't seen Eleanor at her best yet," Raf said, squeezing her shoulder. "Don't rule her out."

  "If you say so." Jorge shrugged, but he didn't look convinced.

  Eleanor was secretly pleased he was being so dismissive: if he didn't class her as a threat, he wouldn't be paying much attention to her style. That could only help her if she did end up facing him in the finals.

  Fred excused himself from the table after only a couple of mouthfuls to go and warm up for his next fight.

  "Thought you weren't worried about Daniel," Nate said.

  "Didn't say I was worried," Fred replied. "But I don't want to be fighting on a full stomach, so I might as well keep my muscles warm."

  As it happened, Daniel and Fred were both doing stretches in the ring when the others returned from lunch. They cast occasional glances at one another but each was maintaining a determined pretence of being more interested in his personal exercises than in the imminent competition.

  When Ragal blew his whistle and instructed them to arm themselves, however, a predatory look came over Daniel's features. Eleanor was taken aback by the transformation; she'd never before seen Daniel look anything but bored with a fight, but this time he looked positively restless, itching to get started. As usual, he was fighting with one long and one short dagger, which he held tip-to-tip in front of his body until Ragal's next whistle blast signalled the beginning of the fight.

  Daniel's style was always a cautious one, and despite the change that had come over him he still kept his daggers in a close guard and his weight well over his back foot.

  Fred made a couple of over-confident attacks in the first few moments, which were easily knocked back, and then he too realised that Daniel was fighting in a fundamentally different mode today. After his next, more considered approaches were parried with equally effortless movements, he was starting to look slightly disconcerted.

  Daniel, on the other hand, was evidently enjoying himself. He made several quick strikes, fell back for a moment, then launched himself back into the fight. Precisely what happened next was unclear even to those involved, but it ended with Fred's knives flying across the room – Greg had to move his feet quickly out of the way as one of the blades spun towards him – and Daniel flat out on his stomach on the floor. He pushed himself into a kneeling position and twisted up, thrusting his dagger against Fred's stomach, and Ragal blew his whistle to stop the fight. Fred went to collect his knives with a sour look on his face.

  Since neither of them could win after Jorge's earlier victories, Mikhail and Charles agreed to skip their fight, meaning the next – and last – of the qualifying fights saw Eleanor come up against Paul.

  As she adjusted the straps of her palm-blade, in the back of her mind she wondered what the tie-breaker would be if she lost, leaving them on one victory each. But she couldn't af
ford to waste energy on that kind of thought. Far better to focus on winning now and make sure the question didn't arise.

  She swung the harping knife as she waited for Ragal's signal to begin, getting into a comfortable rhythm. After the whistle, though she edged forwards, she continued to wait for Paul to attack. She'd been watching him in their hand-to-hand classes ever since they'd been drawn against one another, but they'd seldom been paired together, and she was unfamiliar with his style. Given the defensive strength of the harping knife, she had time to wait and see what he brought against her.

  What he presented was a series of short, jabbing thrusts with his left arm, while he kept his right blade in a defensive position. They were attacks she could parry without difficulty, though he kept them coming with a speed that kept her on her toes, and with an unusually high proportion of feints. Indeed, she soon realised that every third attack he made involved a similar misdirection, though she tried not to give any clues that she'd spotted a pattern and continued to follow his feints before switching back to block his secondary attacks. While he thought he was surprising her, he had no reason to change his tactics. Eventually the moment she'd been waiting for presented itself and she blocked his feint with a strong sideways blow, spun the harping knife to deflect his right arm, and ducked around to bring her palm-blade up behind his ear for a winning attack.

  They moved straight into the finals, and Ragal decreed that Daniel and Jorge should be the first pair to contest their places, since Eleanor had just fought. They readied themselves as Eleanor sat on the sidelines and sipped from her flask.

  Again, Daniel was eager to get started, and Jorge eyed him suspiciously. He'd been so sure that Fred would be his first opponent in the finals, and Daniel was an unknown quantity. He'd never bothered to pay much attention to the quiet theorist – but the quiet theorist had just disarmed Fred with apparent ease, and that was worrisome.

  Jorge was fighting with two long daggers, one straight-edged and one serrated, which he held in an inverted V in front of his chest while he waited. At the sound of the whistle, before Ragal had even taken a breath, he charged forwards with both blades swinging.

  Daniel stood perfectly still, daggers held in the textbook position which he always adopted, and waited for the storm to reach him. He moved only when he had to, deflecting Jorge's blows with the minimum of effort, and making no attempt to counter until, after a dozen quick parries, he saw his chance to strike. Taken by surprise, Jorge tried to block but opened his right side in the process, and Daniel's second attack sealed his victory.

  Daniel stayed in the ring for the next fight, and Eleanor wondered whether she'd see the same predatory look in his eyes as when he'd faced Fred and Jorge, but apparently that look was reserved only for Venncastle opponents.

  He was breathing heavily from his previous exertions, but shook his head impatiently when Ragal suggested taking a short break.

  "I see you have gone for the 'exciting' option again," he said to Eleanor as they faced each other, waiting for the whistle.

  "I'd prefer to say interesting," she said, giving the harping knife a quick twirl. "We don't want too much excitement, do we?"

  "Are you confident you have now learnt how to wield it?"

  Ragal blew his whistle.

  "I'm in the final, aren't I?" she said. "I'd say I've probably got the hang of it by now."

  "We shall see."

  They circled one other with a few feet between them, both reluctant to make the first attack, both having got this far with a mostly defensive strategy.

  "It seems we could be here for a very long time," Daniel said.

  Eleanor wondered why he was talking so much. He was hardly the Empire's most talkative person, generally, and he hadn't been like this in his earlier fights. Maybe he just knew how much it would irritate her.

  She resolved to ignore him completely, but it was harder than she anticipated.

  "Do you not wish to show me what you can do?" he asked, beckoning her forwards.

  "You go ahead," she said, spreading her arms wide to give him an easy line. He didn't take the bait. "Come on, I'm giving you an open target, what more do you need?"

  "I am waiting for the same as you."

  "Really? Well, if you drop your guard I'll have a go, how's that sound?"

  He took two steps backwards and lowered his arms, pointing both daggers towards the floor. "Done."

  Eleanor wished she was allowed to use her best skills; if she threw the harping knife there was no way he could move in time to block it. But that wasn't an option, and she'd promised to make some attack, so she skipped forwards and thrust the harping knife towards his chest.

  She was expecting the parry from his long blade, and he brought his second dagger round in a predictable counter which she blocked with her palm-blade. What she failed to anticipate was that he would drop his short dagger to catch hold of her wrist, move too close for her harping knife to be effective, and flick his remaining dagger under her arm to press against her throat. No, that wasn't like Daniel at all.

  She felt a little bit cheated. Facing someone like Ivan or Raf, she would have expected the unexpected, and she might have had chance to react. Against Daniel, the surprise caught her, and she only realised exactly what had happened when she heard the whistle.

  Jorge came into the ring before Daniel had even left, but Eleanor ignored him and ducked under the rope to get a drink of water from her flask, determined to have at least a short rest before the next round.

  She was about to go back into the ring when it hit her.

  "Wait... I want to change my blades."

  "Are you crazy?" Mikhail asked as she thrust the flask back into his hands. "How can you change at such a late stage?"

  "Different opponent, different style," she said, trying to sound mysterious. She winked at him, then turned and jogged across to where the first-years were watching the spectacle, leaving her harping knife on the floor by her seat. "Raf, can I borrow your stiletto?"

  "What? What's happened to yours?"

  "Nothing – I just want to borrow yours." She unfastened her palm-blade and offered it to him. "I want to swap."

  "Ellie, that's crazy. You've been practising with those for ages."

  "I know," she said, leaning across to take the stiletto from the sheath at his waist. She held it up alongside her own. "These make a good pair, don't they? I thought they'd be well matched."

  "What are you doing?" Raf dropped his voice to a troubled whisper. "You can't take two stilettos into a knife-fight."

  She grinned. "You've got Bill for hand-to-hand, haven't you?"

  "Yes – why?"

  "Did he give you that silly speech about how, if you end up using what he's teaching, you've already made a mistake?"

  Raf nodded, still looking puzzled.

  "Think about it, and if it doesn't make sense I'll explain later," she said. "Just lend me your knife. And look after this for me." She pressed the palm-blade into his hand, then turned back to where Jorge was waiting.

  "Ready now?" he asked, a faint note of amusement in his voice, as she returned to the middle of the arena.

  She nodded.

  Ragal gave a sharp blast of his whistle to signal the fight to begin, and Jorge lunged immediately as she'd guessed he would; by the time he'd followed through to where she'd been she was out of the way, over to his left. Another lunge, and this time she rolled and came up behind him, slightly too slow to make a clear strike of her own before he turned.

  She ducked easily away from his next few attempts, watching his frustration mount. It was going precisely as she'd hoped; now she simply had to wait for the inevitable mistake.

  Every time he aimed a strike at where she had been, half a moment later she'd moved to somewhere else, leaving him to stab at empty air. For all his growls of frustration, he couldn't get close.

  And then, suddenly, the moment came.

  She ducked, he turned, and he got it wrong – leaving her with a clea
r line to his back. She wasted no time in darting towards him, sandwiching his neck between her twin blades for an undeniable victory. And just like that, without a single blow exchanged, the fight was over.

  "Well, whatever that was about, it seemed to work – but what in all the Empire were you thinking?" Mikhail asked when she went back to pick up her flask.

  "I was going to lose." She took a long mouthful of water, aware that everyone was suddenly listening to her, and she hadn't given nearly enough of an answer. "I know how Jorge fights, and he's twice my size – if I'd tried to tackle him the way I fought the others, I wouldn't have stood a chance. He would've just crushed me."

  "But – two stilettos?" Sebastien asked.

  "It felt all wrong with two different knives. I know all the theories, I've practised for months, but it just felt... unbalanced. I know how strange it sounds, but for what I had to do, I needed symmetry."

  She glanced across the faces of the other students. Jorge had stormed off after the whistle, and was nowhere to be seen, but everyone else was still watching her. With the exception of Raf, who caught her eye and smiled, they all looked thoroughly bemused. She smiled to herself. For all that she'd worried about not fitting in, maybe being the wildcard could work to her advantage – and no-one was going to tell her she didn't belong here now she'd scored second place.

  After everyone dispersed, she went up to Raf's room to give his knife back.

  "Thanks for the loan," she said, taking a seat at the end of his bed. "I hope you didn't mind – I knew yours was about the same size and weight as mine."

  "Of course I don't mind. Jorge, on the other hand, is going to be hopping mad," he said, laughing. "You should've seen the look on his face when you kept dodging him."

  "I can imagine."

  "But it really worked for you. I'll admit I was confused at the beginning, but once I saw what you were doing... wow."

  "You're the only person who didn't look confused afterwards. I think most of them are still trying to work out what I actually did."

  "Ah, they're all kids. Anyway, do you want a drink before dinner? You look like you could use it."

  "Thanks."

  He poured two tall glasses of spring nectar, apparently the only drink he kept in his room. "Cheers."

  "Cheers." She took a large mouthful. "So, what did you make of today's sport? I'm sure you were paying more attention than I was."

  "I doubt it – if I know you at all, you were constantly watching for mistakes and angles."

  "That's different to just watching. I could only see it through my fighting eyes. What did it look like from the outside?"

  "Well, you did brilliantly, of course. But you've got the points to prove that, you don't need me to tell you about it. Other than that, a few good fights, bit of a disappointing show from Venncastle, but it was a fun day. Can't wait for next year."

  "You'll have to watch out for that Venncastle trap, though."

  He looked puzzled. "What trap?"

  "The overconfidence, I mean. It got Fred and Jorge today – I wouldn't want to see that happen to you."

  "And you said I was paying more attention!" He laughed and took a gulp of his drink. "You'll tell me if I start to get lazy, though, won't you?"

  "Definitely. And I'll come down to watch you compete, of course – it must be a fun day off."

  "Oh, it was entertaining. But I can understand why Bill boycotts it – it's not the most realistic test."

  "No. I did get there, though, with the urgency. By the end it almost felt real."