Chapter 13 — Room Fourteen
Room fourteen was a decent size for a shared space.
Two beds, two desks, two wardrobes, one window facing the academy's eastern courtyard. Stone walls, wooden floor, ceiling high enough that someone Rael's size could have stood comfortably, which was a measurement Raj used automatically and then felt briefly strange about. A small fireplace that had clearly seen significant use based on the scorch marks around the mantle that someone had attempted to clean and only partially succeeded.
Raj stood in the doorway with his academy-issued supply pack and took all of this in.
Then he took in the roommate situation.
Kael was exactly as advertised — large, broad, currently standing in the center of the room with his arms crossed and his fire attribute doing the passive leak thing it had been doing all morning, which had raised the ambient temperature of room fourteen by approximately three degrees. He had clearly already claimed the left bed based on the fact that his belongings were on it and the belongings included a sword that was not standard academy issue and a training manual so worn it was basically a historical document.
He looked at Raj.
Raj looked at him.
"You're the all-type," Kael said.
"You're fast," Raj said.
"Word travels." Kael unfolded his arms and extended one hand with the directness of someone who had decided to skip the evaluation phase and go straight to conclusion. "Kael. Fire. Advanced class apparently."
"Raj." He shook the hand. It was like shaking hands with a furnace that had learned social skills. "Same."
"Good." Kael dropped onto his bed with the complete physical confidence of someone who had never once questioned whether furniture could support him. "I saw your crystal test. Six attributes clean simultaneous. No bleeding between channels." He said it the way someone said a fact they found interesting rather than a thing to be impressed by. "How long have you been training?"
"A while," Raj said, setting his pack on the right bed.
"Longer than a while based on that control," Kael said. He was looking at the ceiling now with his hands behind his head. "I've been training since I was six. My output is high but my fine control is garbage. Professor Maren told me that today specifically and in those words."
"She seems direct."
"She told Tomis his lightning output looked like a sneeze," Kael said. "So yes."
Raj almost smiled. He opened his pack and began sorting its contents with the organized efficiency of someone who had lived out of a pack for a year and had systems. Basic uniform, two sets. Textbooks, which the academy provided and which he had not yet looked at. A small notebook — blank, standard issue — that he intended to use for something other than class notes.
"The sword," he said, nodding at Kael's blade. "That's not academy standard."
"Personal weapon. They allow it if you have a combat arts registration." Kael glanced at him. "You have anything?"
Raj thought about the scout blade he had carried through the forest belt and the Demon King's castle and which was presumably still on the floor of a throne room in a world that no longer had a Demon King in it. "Not currently," he said.
"Academy armory has loaners," Kael said. "They're terrible but they're functional." A pause. "You fight?"
"Some," Raj said.
Kael looked at the ceiling. Looked at Raj. Back to the ceiling. "You know what I think," he said, with the energy of someone who was going to tell you regardless, "is that you are doing the thing where you describe yourself with the smallest possible words to avoid follow-up questions."
Raj considered this. "Possibly," he said.
"Right." Kael seemed satisfied by this honesty in a way he had not been by the deflection. "I can work with possibly." He sat up. "There's a mess hall on the ground floor. Dinner is in forty minutes. The second years told me the fish on Tuesdays is a war crime but everything else is fine."
"It's not Tuesday," Raj said.
"It's not," Kael agreed. "But now you know."
The mess hall was large, loud, and smelled aggressively of bread and something with herbs that Raj's stomach responded to with immediate enthusiasm after a day that had included being born, landing in a bush, and navigating two separate conversations about his magical abilities.
He collected a tray and followed Kael to a table with the passive acceptance of someone who had learned that Kael moved through spaces like a current and it was easier to go with it than perpendicular to it.
Sana was already at the table.
She looked up when they sat down. Looked at Raj with the expression she had been wearing since the courtyard — that specific sharpened interest that had not diminished at all since the placement test and in fact appeared to have grown more organized, like she had been taking notes on it internally and was now working from an outline.
"All-type," she said, by way of greeting.
"Fire," Raj said.
"You said wind and earth in the courtyard," she said.
"I have a broad—"
"Application, yes, we have covered that." She picked up her fork. "Six attributes simultaneously on the placement crystal. Clean separation, no channel bleed, post-graduate level suppression. I looked up the historical records this afternoon." She said this like looking up historical records in an afternoon was a normal thing to do on your first day. "Four confirmed all-type cases in the academy's history. The last one was sixty years ago." A pause. "His name was Aldric. He became the academy's headmaster and then a national hero and then a statue in the front courtyard."
"There's a statue in the front courtyard?" Raj said.
"You walked past it coming in," she said.
He had walked past it. He had not looked at it because he had been thinking about other things. He made a note to look at it later and feel whatever complicated feeling that was going to produce.
Tomis appeared at the table carrying a tray and looking pleased to have found a group to sit with, which he expressed by sitting down and immediately apologizing for taking up chair space.
"You don't need to apologize for sitting," Kael told him.
"I know," Tomis said. "Sorry."
Kael looked at Raj with the expression of someone sharing a private understanding. Raj looked at his food and thought about how many times Lily had told him the same thing about apologizing for existing in rooms.
Sera arrived last, tray in one hand, book in the other, and sat down without fully looking away from the page. "The advanced class practical schedule starts tomorrow morning," she said, to the table generally. "Five AM."
Kael stopped mid-bite. "Five."
"AM," Sera confirmed.
"That's—" Kael did some calculations. "That's four hours from now."
"Less actually," Sera said, turning a page.
Kael looked at Raj with the expression of a man reassessing his entire morning. Raj looked back with the expression of someone who had been doing five AM training for a year and for whom this was not new information.
"You're not bothered," Kael said.
"I'm used to early starts," Raj said.
"From your self-study," Kael said, with the specific emphasis of someone using someone else's words back at them.
"From my self-study," Raj confirmed.
Kael pointed at him with his fork. "You are going to explain yourself eventually."
"Probably not," Raj said pleasantly.
"I respect that," Kael said, and went back to eating.
The east wing had thin walls.
Raj discovered this at approximately eleven PM when the room two doors down from fourteen began a heated argument about elemental theory that was clearly not the first round of this particular argument and showed no signs of being the last. Specific phrases penetrated the wall with impressive clarity. Compression ratios.You always say that.The crystal doesn't lie, Venn. A long pause. The crystal absolutely lies, ask anyone.
Raj lay on his back staring at the ceiling.
Kael was apparently asleep already, breathing with the deep regularity of someone whose conscience was clear and whose fire attribute had finally dialed back to a temperature that did not constitute a heating system. The ambient three degrees it had added to the room all evening had actually been pleasant once Raj adjusted to it.
He looked at the ceiling and thought about the day.
Bush landing. Registration. Sana and the notes. The placement test. Professor Maren. Kael. Dinner with people who asked questions and then accepted non-answers and kept talking anyway, which was — nice. Uncomplicated. The kind of social interaction he had spent most of his old life avoiding because he hadn't known how to be inside it without feeling like he was taking up space he hadn't been assigned.
He was still figuring out how to be inside it. That had not changed. But the wanting to be inside it was different now — cleaner, less complicated by the fear that had always sat underneath wanting things.
He thought about Lily telling him he was not a resource she was managing.
He thought about Michal's hand on his shoulder one beat longer than necessary.
He thought about Rael handing him half a sandwich in a training forest three hours into accidentally tracking him.
He thought about Christine's handwriting sharp and precise in the margins of his spell notes.
He held those thoughts for a moment with the careful attention of someone handling something they did not want to put down and then, gently, let them settle somewhere they could stay without hurting.
They were fine. He had made sure of it. That was enough.
He closed his eyes.
Through the wall — the compression ratio is a theoretical construct, Venn, you cannot compress lightning with earth base, I don't care what the second year textbook says—
Raj smiled at the ceiling.
This, he thought, is exactly what I asked for.
He was asleep in six minutes. Third best sleep of his life, after the night Lily had taken his watch on the road and the last night in the Demon King's castle when the future had still been a question.
Tomorrow was five AM and an advanced practical class and Kael's fire attribute at breakfast range and whatever Sana's organized internal notes had concluded overnight.
He was, he decided, looking forward to it.
End of Chapter 13