Chương 41: Dining Hall

"Ashara! There you are." Ashara had made it barely twenty paces down the eastern corridor when a voice called her name. Cerise was coming toward her with a cluster of students trailing in her wake, five of them, first-years by the look of it. She stopped a few feet away and waved a hand at the group without looking at them.

"Go on ahead, children. Eat something before you fall over. I'll catch up." The students dispersed, and Ashara watched them go. She recognized three of them. The Solenne boy — Rael — walking with his hands in his pockets and an easy expression. The Marrow girl, Circe, red hair pulled back, a fresh scab along her jaw that had not been there at the entrance trials. And the Ozen girl, Metys, a notebook tucked under one arm even now, saying something to Circe that made the taller girl almost smile.

All three had scored above ninety and earned the spirit contract, and it did not surprise Ashara in the least that Cerise had ended up with them. Cerise was, if Ashara was honest with herself, the closest thing she had to a friend in this place. They could not have run their rooms more differently — Cerise was loose where Ashara was rigid, quick to laugh where Ashara was quick to correct, and she let her students get away with things that would have earned a month of buckets under Ashara's hand.

And yet Ashara had never once been able to call the woman's results inferior to her own. Her groups came out of their years just as sharp, capable and ready. However she did it, it worked. So, Ashara had stopped trying to understand it and settled for respecting it.

"Your group?" she asked.

"My group." Cerise fell into step beside her — or rather stopped where Ashara had stopped, since neither of them seemed inclined to keep walking.

"Strong cohort this year. Strongest I've seen. Yours?" Ashara chuckled.

"Stop playing coy. Every professor in this academy is talking about mine, and you know it." Cerise tapped the side of her own head and stuck out her tongue, sheepish.

"I nearly forgot."

"Is that so?"

"I was trying to be polite about it." She dropped the act.

"But since you insist. Yes, I saw what you had them doing this morning. Half the academy did. So? What happened?" Ashara was quiet a moment, deciding how much to say.

"They fought," she said finally.

"All except the Stark boy fought over who'd be captain and I walked in on the aftermath, finding the room was destroyed."

"Oh my." Cerise put a hand to her chest.

"How very naughty of them." Ashara gave her a flat look, and Cerise laughed.

"No, no, I mean it. But if I didn't know better, I'd say you weren't the least bit bothered by it. In fact." Her eyes narrowed, delighted.

"I'd say you were rather pleased."

"Stop reading people's thoughts with that Authority of yours." Cerise gasped, pressing both hands to her chest now, wounded to the core.

"How dare you. First —" she held up a finger "—I would never use it on a soul without their leave, and you know that better than anyone. And second —" a second finger joined it "—I did not need to. Ashara. Darling. Your face." She reached up and tapped her own cheek.

"You spend so much of your day trying to frown that the moment something actually pleases you, the whole thing gives out at once. You are the most expressive woman I have ever met." Ashara said nothing.

"See," Cerise said, satisfied.

"You're doing it now." Ashara let out a breath.

"I suppose I am." Cerise waited, which was its own kind of talent.

"That team was the one I dreaded, to be honest. Four of the worst students in the academy, and a captaincy that's broken everyone it's touched. I expected a year of pulling them off each other." She glanced toward the eastern gate.

"Instead they closed ranks on the first night. Before I'd done a thing."

"Hm, interesting, and that pleases you?"

"Of course. Cohesion is the one thing I can't drill into anyone. It keeps them alive in the field, and it either grows on its own or it never comes." She had a pause.

"Theirs is already growing. So yes. It pleases me." Cerise's smile had gone soft, the teasing set aside. She fell into step as a fresh wave of students came up, the two of them drifting toward the far wall to let them pass.

"The Arbiter's work, all of this," Cerise said, watching them go.

"I'll admit I doubted it this time. Putting those five together looked like an oversight." She had a small smile.

"And here it is, already coming good."

"It usually does," Ashara said.

"I do hope the others don't rub off on him too badly. Rael's taken with him already; says he's sweet. Naive, even. It'd be a shame to watch that room sand it out of him." Ashara laughed. Cerise turned to her.

"What? What's funny?"

"Nothing." Ashara shook her head, still smiling.

"Only, I would not worry about the Aridis boy going the way of the others, Cerise."

"No?"

"No." She watched the last of the students file past.

"If anything, I think it's the other way around. I think he's the one rubbing off on them."

At the same moment…

"Whoa…" I marveled at the dining hall the moment we stepped through the doors. It took up the whole third level of the central tower, and it was enormous. A long vaulted room that ran the whole western face of the level, tall windows down one side letting in the valley light, a sheer drop down the other. The room was ringed with dozens of standing tables, each one holding a single kind of dish under a warming glyph, and above each hung a small panel of pale light naming what sat beneath it. RED MEAT. POULTRY.

RIVER FISH. ROOTS & TUBERS. GREENS. GRAINS. BROTHS. And more, curving away around the room farther than I could read from the door. To see all of it you'd have had to walk the entire perimeter, which a number of students were doing, drifting from table to table with trays balanced on their forearms. There was a man sitting at a stand just inside the entrance with a shallow box of iron discs in front of him. He held a hand out to Tomás without looking up. This story originates from a different website.

Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Name?"

"Tomás. Tomás Stark." The man took a disc, pressed his thumb to the center of it, and I felt the small pulse of mana leave his hand and settle into the metal. He held it out.

"Don't lose it. No badge, no tray, no food. Next." Tomás took it, and the man's hand was already out toward me.

"Name."

"Howl Aridis." If the name meant anything to him, his face did not show it. He charged a disc, handed it over, said "don't lose it, next" in exactly the same tone, and looked past me to the students behind. I turned the badge over in my hand. It was warm, and there was a faint line of glyphwork running around the rim. Tomás was already at the nearest tray-rack, a metal frame near the entrance stacked with empty trays, each slot fitted with a small iron socket. He pressed his badge into one.

There was a soft click, a green flicker, and the tray came free in his hands.

"Oh," he said, brightening for the first time all morning.

"Oh, that's clever." I fit mine into the next socket. Click, flicker, and the tray released into my grip. I was excited to taste something new — I'd been excited about it since the letter, honestly, the whole list of foods I'd built in my head over years — and now here it all was at once, more of it than I could take in, so much that the sheer number of options left me a little dazed at the door. Tomás had already wandered off toward the poultry.

I drifted the other way, toward a table near the windows where something dark and glistening sat under a warming glyph, and leaned in to read the panel above it.

"Skjørründ­lax," I read carefully.

"Skjor... rund..."" Skjørrundlax."

"Aaargh!" I flinched hard enough to nearly drop my tray. A mouth had formed in the side of the container itself; the metal simply parting into lips, opening, and speaking, as though it had been there the whole time waiting for me to mangle the word. Beside me, Tomás had jumped a full step back with a small yelp, and somewhere behind us a few students laughed.

"Skjørrundlax," the container said again, more patiently.

"Cured river salmon, northern method. You put the stress on the first part and swallow the middle. You were close." I stared at it.

"... Are you a spirit?"

"I am." The lips moved without any face around them, which I decided not to think about too hard.

"Assigned to this hall. I tell the students what they are about to eat, since half of you come from places that have never seen the other half's cooking, and I keep track of what you take."

"Keep track?"

"This is a military academy, young man. Every one of you has a recorded metabolism, and every tray is measured against it. I make certain nobody leaves this hall carrying weight they will have to run off later. You would be amazed how many first-years believe a warm room and free food is a gift. It is a ledger. Everything here is a ledger."

"Oh," I said.

"Name's Chef." The mouth closed most of the way, then added, almost as an afterthought: "Take the skjørrundlax. It's good for you, and you clearly need feeding. Next." I took the sk…skjørrunl.. aah, I took the thing. The tray had a shallow well in it that hadn't been there a moment ago, and the cured salmon slid into it with a faint chill coming off the surface.

"Thank you," I said. The mouth curved into a smile.

"Go on, then. Walk the room. See what you need." The lips settled back toward the metal.

"Anything you don't recognize, ask. I'm in all of it." All of it. I glanced down the long curve of tables and decided, again, not to think about that too hard. I nodded and moved on. The next table held a mound of something pale gold and steaming, cut into neat wedges. I leaned in.

"Rösten mash," Chef said before I could embarrass myself.

"Tubers, roasted, then whipped with bone butter. Southern staple. It sticks to your ribs, which is the point." I took a wedge. Three tables down, small dark parcels wrapped in a glossy leaf.

"Vine-folds. Spiced grain and river shrimp, steamed in silverleaf; you eat the leaf, it's good for the blood. The eastern colonies live on them." Into the tray. Then a wide dish of something deep red and slow-bubbling, and I didn't even have to lean in before the mouth found me.

"Braise of ridgeboar in blackberry and iron-wine. Heavy. You did buckets this morning, so you've earned it." I had no idea how it knew about the buckets. I took some anyway. By the time I reached the far end of the hall, my tray was full — fuller than I'd meant it to be — and I still hadn't seen the thing that stopped me. Then I saw a low table in the dessert section, colder than the others, frost climbing the legs of it.

There were rows of small pale spheres sat in neat lines under a glyph that shimmered with cold, each one dusted faintly white, soft-looking, giving slightly where a serving spoon had pressed one.

"What are these?"

"Treyan delights." Chef's voice had gone almost fond.

"Frozen and sweet, milk at the center; churned near solid. The shell is pounded rice, worked soft, so it gives before the cold does. Treya's finest export, and the one thing every student in this academy agrees on. You are allowed three." I'd noticed the students ahead of me taking two, and one older boy reached for a third, but the container simply closed over the rows before his hand got there. He sighed and moved on.

"... Three?" I asked, unsure.

"Yes." Chef replied. So I put three on my tray, grateful for the favor, if this was one.

"That," Chef said, "is you done. Your badge says so. You've hit the day's measure and then some — off you go, sit, eat before the warming glyphs give out on the mash." I looked back down the enormous length of the hall, at all the tables I hadn't reached, the panels I hadn't read, the dozens of dishes I would now have to wait a whole day to even ask about.

"I'm going to come back," I said.

"And I'm going to try every single thing in here. All of it, eventually." Chef laughed.

"Sure you are," it said.

"Off you go." Tray in hand, I turned to find somewhere to sit. The hall had filled while I'd been wandering, and I stood at the edge of it for a moment scanning the long tables, not sure where I was meant to go or who would want me next to them. Then I saw Tomás, halfway down the room, sitting across from someone, and the someone was Rael. I couldn't help the smile. I crossed to them, and Rael looked up and grinned before I'd even set my tray down.

"There he is."

"Rael!" I sat.

"I've been looking for you all morning, I didn't see you in the courtyard."

"I heard about the courtyard. I heard about a great deal, actually." He tipped his head at Tomás.

"Your man here has been filling me in." His eyes went to the side of my face, and his brows lifted.

"That is a mean bruise, Howl. That is a work of art. Who gave you that?"

"Oh," I touched my eye, which was still tender.

"One of my roommates. Or all of them, really. It got a bit confusing near the end."" Confusing, eh?"

"But it was fun!" Rael laughed, loud enough to turn a few heads at the next table. Across from him, Tomás put his face in his hands.

"You see," Tomás said, muffled.

"You see what I've been living with? They're all like this. All of them. And I thought — I genuinely thought — that Howl would be the normal one, but he is not! He is one of them!" I remembered myself then, and glanced up. Gowyn was standing a pace behind my shoulder, hands folded, exactly where he had been the whole time and whom I had somehow completely forgotten about during the food.

"Sorry, Gowyn." I felt my ears go warm.

"I got a little… there was a lot of food."

"There was, Young Lord." Rael's Shadow sat just behind him — the young man in the long coat, whose name I still didn't know — and he caught my eye and gave me a short nod.

"Young Lord."

"Hello. Good to see you." He nodded at me once more.

"Where's Eydric?" I asked, looking around.

"I haven't seen him either."

"He'll turn up," Rael said, waving a hand.

"His group had something run long. He said to save him a seat." He nudged my tray.

"Speaking of which, we should actually claim some seats before the good end of the table fills. Sit and eat."

"Actually…" I set my tray down properly.

"Why don't you come meet my team? They should be somewhere in here. I think you might like them. They're a bit… teasing, I suppose, but not in a mean way. Nothing cruel in it. You'd get along, I think." Rael studied me for a second, amusement evident in his eyes, then shrugged.

"Sure. I'll come. Lead on."

"I just have to find them first." I stood and looked out over the hall, at the sea of grey uniforms and moving trays, and my heart sank a little.

"Somewhere in all this. It might take a—""I think they won't be hard to find," Rael said. I looked at him.

"Why not?" Then, from somewhere across the hall, a scream resonated. I followed it and found that far down the room, near the meat tables, Varen had an older student bent backward over a bench and was cheerfully forcing what looked like an entire braised something into the boy's mouth while the victim's teammates pulled at his arms and accomplished nothing. I sighed.