The summons arrived the following morning via a single folded card slipped under Sieg's dormitory door sometime before dawn.
It was not an elaborate document. It contained one line, written in a hand that was precise and unhurried and left absolutely no ambiguity about whether attendance was optional:
Round Table Room, Central Tower, ninth hour. — N.K.
Sieg read it once, set it on his desk, and went back to sleep for another forty minutes because the ninth hour was the ninth hour and there was no virtue in arriving at anything with excess time to contemplate it.
He arrived at two minutes to nine.
The Round Table Room occupied the Central Tower's third floor — a space that announced its purpose immediately and without apology. The table at its center was exactly what its name promised: circular, large, and entirely without a head. Eight chairs arranged around it with equal spacing. Eight place settings. Eight small cards, each bearing a name in the same precise hand as the summons.
Seven of the chairs were already occupied.
Yumi Hasegawa sat with her arms crossed and her crimson-streaked hair in perfect order, which meant she had been awake since considerably before dawn and would not be admitting this. Beside her, Serena Whitaker sat with her hands folded and her green eyes already conducting the room's full inventory. Ayaka Daidoji occupied the next chair with the barely-contained energy of someone who had consumed too much coffee and had strong feelings about being here.
Victoria Whitaker sat across the table in the composed, iron-backed posture that was simply her default state of existence. The severe bun had been fully restored, the one displaced strand from the previous day's events having been dealt with at some point in the interim with what Sieg suspected was personal affront.
Wei Xiu occupied her chair with the settled composure of someone who had been thinking about this meeting since the warehouse, her jade pin perfectly in place, her dark eyes already moving across the table's other occupants with the systematic attention of someone taking positions. Vera Krauss sat in the precise center of her chair with her platinum hair impeccable and her steel grey eyes carrying their usual quality of assessment already half-complete. Nadia Burns was the picture of composed neutrality, long white hair catching the room's morning light, hands loose in her lap.
The eighth card read:
Sieg Brenner.
He pulled out the chair and sat down.
"Good morning," he said, to the room in general.
"You're late," Yumi said.
"I'm exactly on time."
"You should have been early."
"That's not what on time means."
Serena closed her eyes briefly. Ayaka watched this exchange with the expression of someone settling in for a performance they had already seen but enjoyed revisiting.
The door at the room's far end opened.
Natalya Kirinova entered.
She crossed to the table without hurry and took the one remaining chair — which was, Sieg noted, indistinguishable from every other chair, placed with the same equal spacing, bearing no mark of precedence. She sat in it exactly as she would have sat in any chair, which was to say with the kind of authority that rendered the chair's position irrelevant.
She looked around the table.
"Thank you for coming," she said. Her Eastern European accent carried its usual measured warmth, a quality that suggested she was genuinely pleased to see them all here and also that being genuinely pleased did not preclude having been entirely certain they would come. "I will not take more of your time than necessary. There are three items to address. The first: Specter Pain and his mercenaries are now in the custody of appropriate external authorities. The investigation into who hired them is ongoing. You will be informed of relevant developments."
A beat. Nobody spoke, because the tone she used left no gap for speaking.
"The second: the false intelligence used to lure the Crimson Daggers and Grey Scythes out of the academy has been traced to its source. The channel has been closed. The individuals responsible have been dealt with." Her dark eyes moved to Wei Xiu and Vera Krauss in turn, briefly and without drama. "This was not a faction matter. It was an external operation that used your rivalry as a mechanism. I would encourage you to remember that distinction."
Wei Xiu's composed smile did not change. Vera Krauss's expression did not change either, but something behind it did, fractionally, in the way of someone receiving information they had already suspected and finding the confirmation useful.
"The third item," Natalya said, "concerns the academy's structure going forward."
She placed both hands flat on the table.
"Nightblade Academy operates through its faction system. This has produced capable students and will continue to do so. It has also produced, on occasion, the kind of concentrated conflict that invites external exploitation." She did not elaborate on whether the previous day qualified as an example of this, because she did not need to. "I am therefore establishing a new position within the academy's structure. A position that sits outside the faction system, with authority to act in the academy's interests regardless of factional boundaries, and accountability directly to this office."
She looked at Sieg.
"The position is called Nightblade Academy's Prefect," she said. "And I am offering it to you."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Sieg looked at her.
"I don't want to join any faction," he said.
"This is not a faction," Natalya said. "It is a position. You would answer to me and to no one else. You would not take orders from faction leaders. You would not be bound by faction politics. You would, however, have the authority to intervene in any matter that constitutes a genuine threat to the academy and its students — with my full backing."
A pause.
"Think of it," she said, with what might have been the faintest trace of dry amusement at the edges of her composed expression, "as what you have already been doing. But with paperwork."
Sieg considered this for approximately three seconds.
"Is the paperwork significant?"
"Minimal."
"Does it change my daily routine?"
"Not meaningfully."
"Do I have to wear something different?"
"There is a pin," Natalya said.
Yumi's head turned toward Sieg with the precise, sudden attention of a person for whom the word
pin carried significant personal history.
Sieg looked at the table for a moment.
Then he looked at Natalya.
"Fine," he said.
Natalya reached into the inner pocket of her dark coat and produced a pin — small, understated, a simple silver design that suggested authority without announcing it — and set it on the table in front of him.
Sieg picked it up. Looked at it. Affixed it to his uniform jacket with the same energy he would have used to affix anything to anything.
"Congratulations," Natalya said. And meant it, in the quiet, settled way of someone for whom this moment had been a long time coming.
Across the table, the faction leaders absorbed the development in their respective registers. Wei Xiu's dark eyes moved from the pin to Sieg's face with a new and specific quality of assessment. Vera Krauss filed it in the important folder, which was getting quite full. Nadia Burns's composed neutrality shifted almost imperceptibly — the slight recalibration of someone who had been watching the board and had just seen a new piece placed on it that changed the configuration of everything adjacent to it.
Yumi Hasegawa stared at the pin on Sieg's chest.
Then she stared at Natalya.
Then she stared at the pin again.
"He gets a pin," she said.
"He does," Natalya confirmed.
Yumi opened her mouth.
"Yumi-sama," Serena said, in the quiet, preemptive tone of someone who had been monitoring the situation and had identified the precise moment at which intervention was required.
Yumi closed her mouth.
"The meeting is adjourned," Natalya said. "I would ask that you remain for a few minutes — there are refreshments, and I suspect there are things you wish to say to each other that are better said here than in the corridors." She stood, with the same unhurried ease she brought to everything, and crossed toward the room's side door. "I will be just through here, should anyone need me."
She went through the door.
It did not quite close behind her.
Nobody commented on this.
The silence lasted approximately four seconds.
Nadia Burns spoke first, because Nadia Burns had spent the previous day being captured in a warehouse and had opinions about the economy of time.
"Prefect," she said, looking at Sieg with the cool, appraising attention she had been directing at him with increasing frequency since the courtyard. "An interesting development. Unaffiliated, directly sanctioned, authority that crosses factional lines." A pause. "It suits you."
"Thank you," Sieg said.
"It creates certain opportunities," Nadia continued, in the same measured tone, "for collaboration. Between the Prefect's office and factions that have an interest in the academy's stability." She held his gaze with her pale eyes. "I would be open to discussing the parameters of such an arrangement. Informally, of course."
"Of course," Sieg said.
Wei Xiu's composed smile had returned in full.
"Crimson Dagger would welcome a similar conversation," she said, with the unhurried confidence of someone who had been thinking about this since approximately the moment the pin was placed on the table. "The Prefect's position as a neutral party could be extraordinarily useful to factions that value... precision in their operations."
"I'll keep that in mind," Sieg said.
Vera Krauss said nothing, because Vera Krauss rarely led with words when a look would accomplish the same thing. The look she directed at Sieg across the table was the look of someone who had filed everything in the important folder and was now opening the folder and reviewing its contents with the focused, deliberate attention of someone deciding what to do with them.
Sieg looked back at her.
"Grey Scythe as well, I assume," he said.
"When you're ready," Vera said.
This was, for Vera Krauss, approximately a speech.
Yumi Hasegawa had been watching this exchange with the expression of someone watching a weather system develop from a distance and calculating how long before it reached her location.
"He's busy," she said. To the table in general, in the tone she used when she was being territorial and was prepared to defend the position. "The Prefect has a great deal to do. Getting settled. Learning the responsibilities. He doesn't have time for informal arrangements."
"Yumi-sama," Serena said.
"I'm just noting the schedule constraints —"
"Yumi-sama."
"He's very busy —"
"Oh!" said Ayaka.
The table turned to look at her.
Ayaka had the expression of someone who had just remembered something important and was already in the process of sharing it before the part of her brain responsible for strategic filtering had been consulted.
"That reminds me!" she said, leaning forward with the unstoppable momentum of a person who had been waiting to tell this story and had finally found the opening. "Since we're all here — I was actually going to ask, because there's been this whole thing — so Yumi-sama said at the courtyard that Sieg is her lover, right? Which she's been saying for a while now. But the thing is —"
"Ayaka," Yumi said.
"— the thing is, Mio-sama actually taught her that word, and it turns out —"
"Ayaka."
"— it turns out Mio-sama's definition of lover is like, a battle equal, or a right hand, or someone you respect as a warrior, which is not —"
"AYAKA!" Yumi exclaimed.
"— which is not actually what lover means in the conventional social sense!" Ayaka finished, with the triumphant relief of someone who had successfully delivered important information despite significant interference. She looked around the table brightly. "So technically Sieg-kun isn't Yumi-sama's boyfriend! He's more like her —" she searched for the word "— her very impressive colleague."
The table absorbed this.
Serena pinched the bridge of her nose.
Yumi's face had completed a comprehensive journey through several colors and arrived at a deep, furious crimson that she was attempting to address by staring at a fixed point on the table with the focused intensity of someone performing emergency structural repairs on their dignity.
"So," Nadia said, after a moment, in a voice of precise and carefully neutral inquiry, "he is unattached."
"That is not —" Yumi started.
"Technically, yes," Serena said, because Serena was constitutionally incapable of allowing an inaccuracy to go uncorrected even when correcting it was going to cause significant collateral damage.
"Serena!"
"It is technically accurate, Yumi-sama."
"It is technically —" Yumi pressed her lips together. "It is not — the situation is more —"
"Sieg-kun," Wei Xiu said, turning to him with the composed smile at full power, the smile that she wore when she had identified an opportunity and had decided to pursue it. "Perhaps we should schedule that informal conversation sooner rather than later."
Sieg looked at Wei Xiu.
Then at Nadia.
Then at Vera, who had not changed expression but whose folder had, Sieg suspected, acquired a new and significant piece of documentation.
He exhaled.
It was a fairly long exhale.
"I would like to add something to the record," Victoria Whitaker said.
The table turned to look at her.
Victoria's expression was exactly what it always was — composed, precise, carrying the iron authority of someone who had managed Fallen Grace and its considerable personalities for long enough that nothing surprised her and very little inconvenienced her. She had, apparently, been listening to the preceding exchange with this same expression, which meant either that she was entirely unbothered by it or that she had decided to be unbothered as a tactical posture.
She turned to face Sieg directly.
"Fallen Grace," she said, "has worked alongside the Prefect in a professional capacity. His competence, his judgment under pressure, and his conduct during yesterday's events were — notable." She paused in the way that people pause when selecting a word that is doing more work than it appears to be doing. "I would consider it appropriate for the Prefect's office and Fallen Grace to explore a formal working relationship."
"That's what Nadia just said," Yumi said.
"I am aware of what Nadia said," Victoria replied, with the precise composure of someone acknowledging a point while making it clear the point did not affect their position. "I am expressing Fallen Grace's interest in its own terms."
She held Sieg's gaze with her icy blue eyes with the unhurried ease of someone who had made a decision and saw no reason to qualify it.
Sieg looked at Victoria.
He looked at the door through which Natalya had departed.
He looked at the ceiling for a moment, in the manner of a man conducting a brief, private consultation with whatever force governed the distribution of situations he had not asked for.
He looked back at the table.
He exhaled again.
Slightly longer this time.
"Mio-sama," Serena said carefully, to the woman sitting two seats down, who had been quiet since the meeting began with the concentrated quietness of a container under pressure, "has a prior claim, as I understand it."
"Fallen Grace's interest," Victoria said, without looking at Mio, "is a separate matter from Mio's personal position."
Mio Hasegawa turned to look at Victoria with the amber eyes and the sweetness fully deployed.
"Victoria-san," she said, in the voice she reserved for people she was fond of and was about to disagree with completely, "you are my dearest Head Maid and I respect you immensely."
"Thank you, Mio."
"However," Mio continued, with the same sweetness, "Yumi-chan has already laid claim."
"Yumi-sama's claim," Serena noted from across the table, in the tone of someone who had decided to be accurate even at personal cost, "has just been — contextually revised."
"The spirit of the claim remains intact," Mio said.
"That is not how claims work," Nadia said.
"It is how this one works," Mio said pleasantly.
Yumi, who had been in the process of recovering her dignity by increments, looked at Mio with an expression that contained a complicated mixture of gratitude and the particular exasperation of someone being defended by a force of nature that could not be redirected once it was in motion.
"Mio," she said.
"Yes, Yumi-chan?"
"I can handle this myself."
"Of course you can," Mio agreed warmly. "I'm just helping."
"I don't need —"
"I'm just helping, Yumi-chan."
The sweetness in Mio's voice had the quality of something that was not going to move regardless of what was said to it, which Yumi knew from twenty years of experience, and which produced in her the specific expression of someone deciding that some battles were better fought later and on different ground.
She crossed her arms.
"Fine," she said.
Nyx Harrow had not spoken.
This was not unusual. Nyx Harrow rarely spoke in any context, operating instead through the economy of a person who had concluded long ago that most words were optional and had arranged her life accordingly. She had sat through the meeting, through the Prefect announcement, through the revelation of Yumi's misunderstanding, through Nadia's inquiry and Wei Xiu's smile and Vera's folder and Victoria's composed, formal interest, with the same veiled violet eyes and the same patient, unhurried stillness.
Now she stood up.
She walked around the table.
She stopped beside Sieg's chair.
The chain whip was in her hands — not raised, not threatening, simply present in the way that Nyx's weapons were always simply present, extensions of her rather than instruments she carried. She moved with the same flowing, deliberate economy she brought to everything, and she reached out and wrapped one end of the chain around Sieg's wrist in a single, practiced loop. Not tight. Not uncomfortable. Simply — there.
She held the other end.
"Mine," she said.
The table stared at her.
Nyx looked at no one in particular, her veiled violet eyes directed at the middle distance with the expression of someone who had said what they had to say and considered the matter addressed.
Sieg looked at the chain around his wrist.
He looked at Nyx.
He looked at the chain again.
He exhaled.
It was the longest exhale yet.
"Nyx," Victoria said.
Nyx said nothing.
"Nyx, that is not —"
Nyx said nothing.
"Nyx. Remove the chain this instant."
Nyx considered this request for a moment with the patient, unhurried attention she brought to all input.
She did not remove the chain.
Victoria closed her eyes for exactly one second in the manner of someone accessing a reserve of composure that had been extensively tested over a long period of service.
"This," Mio said warmly, looking at Nyx with amber eyes full of something between recognition and professional solidarity, "is exactly the kind of decisive action I respect."
"Mio," Victoria said.
"I'm just observing, Victoria-san."
"You are not helping."
"I'm just —"
"Mio."
"My sister's claim," Mio said, returning to the topic with the graceful ease of someone sliding back onto home ground, "predates everyone at this table. Spiritually, strategically, and —" she paused "— in every other applicable dimension."
"She doesn't have a claim," Yumi said immediately. "I mean — I do — but it's not — we're not — the situation is —"
"Yumi-sama," Serena said gently.
"I know what I'm saying."
"With respect, Yumi-sama, you don't currently, no."
Ayaka had both hands pressed to her mouth and was producing a continuous, suppressed sound that was technically not laughter.
Wei Xiu, across the table, had her chin rested lightly on one hand and was watching the proceedings with the expression of someone who had come to this meeting expecting one kind of productivity and had found a different and arguably more informative kind.
Vera Krauss had not changed expression. But her eyes had moved to Sieg, and they held the particular quality of someone who was watching him very carefully and filing their observations in a folder that was now, without question, significant.
Nadia Burns was looking at the chain around Sieg's wrist with her pale eyes carrying the expression of someone who was revising their approach in real time.
"Perhaps," she said, with careful, precise calm, "we should all simply — state our positions clearly. To avoid further confusion."
"That seems reasonable," Wei Xiu agreed.
"It does not seem reasonable," Yumi said.
"Yumi-sama —"
"None of this is reasonable."
"The chain," Sieg said.
The table looked at him.
He had not spoken since Victoria's declaration. He had been sitting with the chain around his wrist and his hands folded on the table, watching the room's proceedings with the flat, assessing the attention of someone monitoring a situation they were technically at the center of but were approaching as an external observer.
"The chain," he said again, looking at Nyx, "is a no."
Nyx regarded him with her veiled violet eyes.
A pause that contained an entire conversation conducted entirely in silence, between two people who were both, in their different ways, economical about what they said aloud.
Nyx unwrapped the chain from his wrist.
She stepped back.
She sat back down in her chair.
"Thank you," Sieg said.
Nyx said nothing.
But she had sat back down in the chair directly beside him, and she did not move it further away, and the chain was coiled in her hands with the patient, unhurried readiness of something that had been declined once and had noted this as a provisional rather than a permanent outcome.
The side door opened.
Natalya Kirinova came back through it with a cup of tea and the expression of someone who had been in an adjacent room attending to administrative matters and had not heard anything through a door that had not been fully closed.
She settled into her chair.
She looked around the table — at Yumi's crossed arms and residual crimson, at Ayaka's heroically contained expression, at Serena's closed eyes, at Victoria's restored composure, at Mio's warm smile, at Nyx sitting directly beside Sieg with the chain in her hands, at Wei Xiu and Vera and Nadia each wearing the specific expression of people who had come for a political meeting and had stayed for something considerably more informative.
She looked at Sieg.
He looked back at her with the expression of a man who had survived an invasion, a Path clash, and the last twenty minutes, and who was communicating, with his eyes, a very specific message.
Natalya took a sip of her tea.
"Is there anything else to address?" she asked, in the pleasant, unhurried tone of someone who had just arrived and found everything in good order.
The table stared at her.
"No?" she said. "Excellent."
She set her cup down and opened the slim folder on the table in front of her with the same efficient composure she would have brought to any routine administrative task.
Yumi looked at Natalya.
She looked at the not-quite-closed door.
She looked at Natalya again.
"You heard everything," Yumi said. It was not a question.
"I heard nothing of consequence," Natalya said, turning a page. "The meeting produced its intended outcomes. The Prefect has been appointed. The factions are informed. I consider the morning productive."
"You heard —"
"Yumi-sama," Serena said.
Yumi pressed her lips together.
Natalya turned another page.
The expression on her face was the expression of someone attending entirely to their administrative folder and not to the room around them, a performance of inattention so complete and so precise that it communicated, to anyone with the wit to read it, that she had in fact heard everything, found it deeply satisfying, and had absolutely no intention of acknowledging any of it.
Ayaka leaned sideways toward Serena.
"She definitely heard everything," Ayaka whispered.
"Obviously," Serena whispered back.
"Is she going to say anything?"
"She is not."
"Is that better or worse?"
Serena considered the Headmaster, who was turning pages with the serene composure of someone in complete, uncontested command of a situation she was choosing not to exercise.
"Both," Serena said.
The meeting dispersed in the late morning.
The faction leaders filed out in their respective configurations — Wei Xiu and her lieutenants, Vera and Grey Scythe, Nadia with Kirika and Amy, each of them carrying something new in their posture that had not been there when they arrived, the specific quality of people who had recalibrated and were already thinking about the implications. The exchanges as they left were brief and professional, the kind that carried more in their undertones than their content — a look from Wei Xiu that landed with considerable weight, a nod from Vera that was not simply acknowledgment, a pause from Nadia that said three things she was not saying.
Fallen Grace departed in Victoria's wake, orderly and precise, with Mio at the rear, who paused at the door and looked back at Sieg with her amber eyes and her warm smile and said nothing at all, which was somehow more comprehensive than anything she could have said.
Nyx was the last of Fallen Grace to leave.
She passed Sieg without looking at him.
The end of the chain whip trailed across the back of his chair as she went, a contact so brief and so deliberate that it occupied the precise boundary between accidental and intentional, and she was through the door before he could decide which it had been.
Sieg looked at the back of his chair.
He looked at the door.
He exhaled, very quietly, in the manner of a man making a note of something for future reference.
Scarlet Bloom was the last to leave — Ayaka first, in a burst of energy, already talking at Serena about something with the unstoppable momentum of someone who had an enormous amount to process and was processing it audibly. Serena followed with the composed, resigned grace of someone who had accepted this as the permanent condition of her life and had made her peace with it.
Yumi was last.
She stopped beside Sieg's chair.
She did not sit down. She stood with her arms crossed and her crimson-streaked hair framing the expression she wore when she had things to say and was arranging them in the correct order before saying them, an expression Sieg was becoming familiar with.
"The pin suits you," she said.
"Thank you."
A pause.
"It doesn't mean anything," she said. "The other thing. The conversation. They were just — being opportunistic. Nadia and Wei and —"
"I know," Sieg said.
"And Nyx was just —"
"I know."
"And Victoria was being —"
"Yumi."
She stopped.
He looked up at her.
"I know," he said, for the third time, in the specific tone he used when he meant something that was slightly larger than the words he was using for it.
Yumi looked at him for a moment — amber eyes carrying the particular quality of someone who had received something unexpected and was deciding whether to acknowledge it or file it under things to be processed privately at a later date.
She filed it.
"Don't be late to anything again," she said and walked out.
Sieg watched her go.
From the head of the table — or rather, from a chair at the round table that was indistinguishable from all other chairs, which was somehow exactly the point — Natalya Kirinova closed her folder.
She looked at Sieg with her dark eyes carrying the settled, unhurried satisfaction of someone who had arranged a great many things over a long period of time and was watching them arrive, at last, at their intended positions.
"Welcome to Nightblade Academy, Prefect," she said.
Sieg looked at the silver pin on his chest.
"You planned all of this," he said. Not quite an accusation. Not quite a question.
Natalya smiled — small, precise, carrying within it the quality of something that had been patient for exactly the right amount of time.
"I planned the meeting," she said. "The rest was entirely the room's own contribution."
She stood, collected her folder and her tea, and walked toward the door.
"The paperwork," she added, without turning, "will be on your desk by tomorrow morning. It is, as I said, minimal."
The door closed behind her.
Sieg sat alone at the round table.
He looked at the pin.
He looked at the door.
He exhaled — the longest, most comprehensive exhale of the entire morning — and reached for the cup of tea that had been placed at his setting and that he had not touched until now, because the morning had not previously offered a suitable moment for tea.
It was, despite everything, still warm.
He drank it.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)