Chương 39: The King In The Room

"I asked a question." Professor Ashara had not moved from the doorway. Her eyes were traveling across the room in a slow sweep that missed nothing. She took it all in without her expression changing, which was somehow worse than if she had shouted. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. This was yet another situation I had never been in before. It happened that I broke some rules from time to time, even at the estate, in small ways that nobody had ever caught.

But I had never stood in front of an authority figure with blood on my clothes and a room full of evidence behind me and been asked to explain myself. My mind went blank, overwhelmed by the choices in front of me. Should I lie? Say I fell, a spell misfired? No… no, she wasn't someone who'd buy a lie that obvious. Plus it'd probably land us in even more trouble than we were already in. Should I tell the truth, then, and try to save what little was left of her sympathy—"We fell, Professor."

I turned so fast I nearly gasped. The Rothvar said it from across the room. He'd righted his bed at some point — I hadn't seen when — and was leaning against it now, arms folded, split lip still bleeding. Ashara's eyes moved to him.

"You fell?"

"Yes, Professor. The floor is uneven. I tripped coming out of bed and hit my face on the trunk."

"And the scorch marks?"

"Unrelated." The sword boy spoke next, his tone flat and bored.

"I was carrying my blade to the rack and lost my grip. It fell. I reached for it, stumbled, and struck my ribs against the bedframe. Clumsy of me." The bald one was holding a strip of fabric to his nose, which was still bleeding freely, and his smile had not wavered.

"I saw my brother stumble and went to help him up, but I lost my footing as well. The floor is quite slippery, Professor. I believe someone may have spilled water earlier. I will pray for better balance going forward." The shadow boy was sitting at his desk, his hands folded in front of him as if nothing had happened.

"I slipped and landed on my face. An embarrassment, really." Ashara slowly looked at each of them in turn, and then her eyes came to me.

"Aridis." I looked at her. She was not angry, exactly. Anger would have been simpler. What was on her face was closer to a very controlled expectation, directed at me specifically, as if the next words out of my mouth were being weighed before I had spoken them. I swallowed.

"... We fell, Professor." It was stupid. It was so, so stupid and obvious she was not buying it, but the narrative had now gone out of my hands. She held my gaze for what felt like a very long time without blinking, then...

"Stark." No response.

"Stark, get out from under the bed." Then there was a shuffling sound, followed by the scrape of a trunk being pushed aside, and Tomás emerged from beneath his bedframe on his hands and knees, his hair full of dust, his face the colour of milk.

"I'm sorry, Professor, I didn't— I was just— I apologise…"

"Stand up." He stood up, legs shaking.

"Tell me what happened in this room." Tomás threw a glance at me, and all the others one by one with his hands trembling at his sides. That told me quite enough about what was about to happen, so I closed my eyes, and exhaled, accepting my fate. My heart was hammering as my father's voice echoed in my head, clear as it had been that day by the carriage: keep the house in your head, son, always, do not dishonor us. I had owned my uniform for four hours and had been in this room for fifteen minutes.

The gryphon on my collar was soaked in someone else's blood and probably some of my own. … This was going to reach the council, my grandfather would know, and so would my father. I might be expelled, sent home, shut back inside my chambers with my meals weighed out and my hours counted. But I couldn't do that anymore. A week ago I might have, but now… now I couldn't even imagine it. What have I done?

"T-they fell, Professor." Huh? My eyes snapped open as I turned to look at Tomás so fast my neck hurt. He was staring straight ahead at Ashara, his jaw clenched so hard I could see the muscle jumping under the skin. I was not the only one looking at him. Everyone else seemed to be surprised. But Ashara still simply stood in the doorway and said nothing. The silence stretched for five seconds, then ten going to twenty as the excuse started to sound even more stupid in my head. We fell.

With all the damage in the room, the best we had managed was we fell … If I were in her place I would have been insulted by the sheer laziness of the lie. I was starting to open my mouth to try something better when she finally spoke…

"Choose your captain." I looked at her, confused.

"Right now, in front of me. You have five minutes." A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. She was... letting it go?

"Aridis." The Rothvar said first without hesitation, still leaning against his bed with his arms folded. The sword boy jerked his chin toward me.

"Aridis." The bald one inclined his shaved head.

"The heavens teach us that when four wolves cannot agree, the lamb should lead, for the lamb alone has made no enemies among—""Aaaah, just say the name," the Rothvar said.

"... Aridis." The shadow boy was examining his slightly burned fingernails at his desk.

"Aridis, I suppose." I stood there with my one working eye going from face to face, very confused.

"Aridis," Tomás said quietly from where he stood, still pale and rigid. Ashara then looked at me.

"Do you accept, Aridis?" I was about to ask them if they were sure when I remembered the quest. The gold text was still there at the edge of my vision and this was not how I had thought this would end. I had expected to fight until one side stopped moving but I supposed this was not so bad, after all.

"Yes. I accept." Ding! [Quest Complete: Become King of the Room] [Reward Granted: Captaincy of Group 7. New Path acquired.]"Good." Ashara's voice interrupted my emerging excitment.

"A healer will be sent to your room shortly. Get healed, then get some sleep." She looked across the six of us once more.

"I am the professor assigned to Group 7 this year. I expect to see all of you tomorrow at dawn, in the eastern courtyard, standing and conscious. Failure to appear will cost each of you one hundred points." The room went cold, could she do that?

"P-Professor?" Tomás raised his hand halfway.

"The academy schedule has activities beginning at the fourth bell. That is not until mid-morning, so—""I am aware of the schedule, Stark. This is not an activity, but a corrective exercise." She looked at the bald one.

"Oss, you prayed for better balance earlier, did you not?" The bald one blinked.

"I... yes, Professor, I did."

"Then your prayers have been answered. Tomorrow morning, all six of you will carry a full water basin above your heads and walk the eastern courtyard wall from end to end without spilling a drop. You will do this every morning at dawn, for one month." She then looked at the Rothvar.

"Since balance seems to be such a persistent problem for this group." Oh. Oh, that was… okay, well done.

"Are there any objections?"

"No, Professor," the Rothvar said.

"No, Professor," said the sword boy.

"No objections at all," said the bald one, whose smile had finally, for the first time all evening, disappeared.

"No, Professor," said the shadow boy.

"No, Professor," I said. Tomás shook his head vigorously.

"Good. Wait for the healer, then sleep." She turned, stepped through the doorway, and pulled the round door shut behind her. Her footsteps faded down the corridor, and when they were gone the room was very quiet for a long time.

"Fuuuuuuck." The Rothvar finally slid down the side of his bed until he was sitting on the floor.

"She fucked us. She actually fucked us. A month?" The sword boy crossed the room and cuffed him across the back of the head.

"Ow!"

"That's for the excuse. We fell." He said with contempt.

"Why is it always the dumbest one in the room who's most eager to open his mouth?"

"You had a better idea? I didn't hear a better one." The Rothvar was already up. He hit the sword boy in the shoulder, the latter shoved him back, and within about two seconds they had each other by the collar and were staggering into an overturned trunk, snarling, the fight starting up again as if it had never stopped. The shadow boy watched them from his desk, pushed the broken remains of his glasses up his nose, and let out a long, weary sigh.

"What," he said to no one, "did I do to deserve this company."

"You must have done a great deal," the bald one said serenely, dabbing at his nose.

"The heavens do not gather sinners in one room by accident, brother. Each of you has earned his place here through some private wickedness. Yours, I could not say. But it was surely severe." The shadow boy turned to look at him.

"And you? By that logic, what did you do to end up in this room, if only the deserving are here?" The bald one smiled, entirely untroubled.

"God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers."

"Hahaha!" I laughed loud enough that the four of them stared at me.

"Sorry." I waved a hand.

"You guys are funny. Odd, but funny." Tomás went very still beside me. « Howl, please don't anger them," he murmured." Please. No more fighting. I am begging you, on the first day—""You're odd too, you know," the Rothvar said mid fight, his grin creeping back.

"Very odd. You liked that fight, didn't you? Don't lie. I saw your face."

"Well." I thought about it.

"Not all of it. Getting hit in the head four ways at once was not my favourite part." I shrugged.

"But I do always look forward to a bit of sparring, yes."

"HAH!" The Rothvar shoved the sword boy off him mid-scuffle, ignored the punch that clipped his ear on the way, and crossed the room to me with his hand out like the other three didn't exist. The sword boy stood there a moment, fist still half-raised, then lowered it, perhaps deciding the fight wasn't worth finishing without a partner.

"Varen. Son of Ghol. Clan Vharsk of the free steppes." He grinned.

"Say the first name." I took his hand.

"Howl. Howl Aridis." He nodded, and clapped my shoulder hard enough to rattle my sore arm.

"Good! I like a captain who likes a fight!"

"I would like it noted," the shadow boy said from behind his book, "that I sincerely hope our new captain is not a battle-hungry, empty-headed musclebrain like the idiot currently crushing his hand." Varen rounded on him.

"Who the fuck are you calling an idiot, you tight-assed fallen noble?" The rat boy ignored him entirely. He turned a page, then finally lifted his eyes to me.

"Dren Malkai." He gave me a dry nod.

"For however long this arrangement lasts." Malkai. I knew that name from Instructor Varren's histories, the campaign records I'd copied out by the hour. House Malkai had been one of the old border families, minor but ancient, and they had been all but wiped out during the long wars with the neighbouring kingdoms, a stretch of years when the eastern marches had changed hands so many times that whole bloodlines had simply stopped appearing in the records. A few names survived a war like that.

I looked at Dren and felt a lot of sympathy for him.

"And I," said the bald one, "would counsel our new captain, in the spirit of brotherly love, to run." I turned my attention to him.

"Jaerik Oss. Of the Hollow Light." He pressed his palms together and inclined his head.

"Hear me captain, while there is still time. You seem a decent soul, and the small one beside you—" a nod at Tomás "—decent also, if easily frightened. Which is why it grieves me to tell you that you have been placed among demons."

"…Demons?"

"Yes," Jaerik confirmed. « Varen is a beast who has never met a wall he did not wish to put a man through. Suth is a weapon that thinks. And Malkai—" he lowered his voice, though not nearly enough "—Malkai keeps a rat under his bed and speaks to it more kindly than he has ever spoken to any of us. Flee, captain. Take the boy. Petition the rector tonight, while your souls are still your own, and let them rot together as the heavens surely intend."

"But, aren't you one of the four?" I said. Jaerik smiled beatifically.

"I never claimed to be saved, captain. Only honest." The sword boy stared at me for a moment, and I got the sense he'd been waiting for the others to run out of noise before bothering to speak.

"Oss already said my name, so." He got up, crossed to his bed, and started dragging it back into its place against the wall.

"Kael Suth. Nice to meet you, I suppose. Try not to be a pain in the ass."

"... Alright," I said.

"And don't get the wrong idea about the vote." He set the frame straight, then crouched to right the trunk that had gone over during the fight.

"We didn't pick you because we think highly of you or something like that. We did you because none of us wanted any of the other three giving orders." He shoved the trunk flush against the bed.

"You were the option nobody hated. That's all it was."

"I mean… thanks?" Kael just nodded, as if that had been a perfectly adequate exchange and required nothing further, and went on straightening his corner of the room. That was, I was beginning to understand, simply how he was. A few moments later, the healers came in our room. Healing worked by accelerating what the body already did on its own, which meant it drew from your reserves.

The healers who came to our room that night were two older men from the medical wing who moved from bed to bed, mending the worst of the damage in minutes. But the mending cost energy, and the more there was to do, the more it took out of you. You needed to have eaten well beforehand, which, apparently, none of us had, so the healing left the others drained to the bone. But that was the others. The healer working on me sat back on his heels after a moment and frowned at my ribs.

"You're knitting faster than the potion accounts for," he said.

"A good deal faster. Do you have a healing constitution? A bloodline trait?"

"Oh, I drank troll blood."

"Troll blood?" the first healer repeated.

"Those things still exist?" Varen said.

"I thought they were all hunted out ages ago."

"They are nearly gone," the healer said.

"I have practised medicine for forty years and treated exactly one patient who carried the blood. A general at the capital. He was a hundred and thirty when I met him and looked sixty." He pressed two fingers to my ribs, testing.

"Hm. Then you'll cost this wing far less than your roommates over the next four years. Eat well tonight regardless. Even a troll's gift runs on fuel." Ding! [Healing Factor: Level 1 (24%)] The percentage had climbed a good deal; the body learned healing by healing, the System had told me, and I supposed four upperclassmen taking turns on my face ribs counted as a thorough lesson. Most of my injuries were dealt with, though my left eye was still bruised a deep purple and tender to the touch.

Whatever the blood was doing, it was not doing it instantly. Not yet. Suffice to say, we slept where we fell, and dawn arrived faster than I had hoped.