The week before term had a name — Settling Week — which sounded gentle and was not.
Five hundred fourteen-year-olds dropped into a county-sized academy with nothing to do but find their rooms, learn the layout, and establish the social architecture that would govern the next seven years of their lives. By day three most of the establishing had been done by collision. By day five it had mostly been done by consequence.
Dorm Five was on the third floor of the east residential wing. Five beds, five wardrobes, one common room with a fireplace that drew slightly left, a window overlooking the training grounds, and the particular smell of new stone and old wood that would, in time, become the smell of home.
Aren arrived first. He walked the room once, chose the bed furthest from the door and closest to the window, set his single bag on it, and sat down.
Roman arrived second, with three bags and a portable chessboard and an immediate opinion about the curtains.
Colis arrived fourth. He took the bed beside Aren's without discussion, sat down, looked out the window at the training grounds, and said nothing, which was entirely comfortable
Trnaz arrived the way someone arrives when they have been somewhere more interesting first and gotten here eventually.
He was fourteen like the rest of them and somehow gave the impression of being older without being larger — something in the eyes, an unhurried quality, a particular economy of movement. He had a narrow face, dark skin, close-cropped hair, and the kind of expression that was either deeply thoughtful or completely empty and gave no indication of which.
He looked at the four of them. Looked at the remaining bed.
"Trnaz ocas," he said.
house name offered. Ocas crest visible.
He put his bag down and went to sleep.
Roman opened his mouth. Looked at Aren. Closed it.
They let it go.
The last to arrive (to Aren's disgust)was Makhon rastin.
They both looked at each other for a full second then Makhon scrolled.
---
By day four the common room had become a real place.
Roman had produced a second chessboard from somewhere — the first had been challenged and beaten into submission, apparently — and had ongoing games with three different people in three different states of progress. Colis read in the evenings with the settled silence of someone who had always read in the evenings. Trnaz came and went at hours that suggested a schedule no one else was on.Makhon's case was most odd one out his large bags and chests had taken up the whole left corner of dorm and he was wearing a annoying smile that he knew what was going to be next .
Aren sat by the window most nights.
He watched the training grounds. Watched the academy. Watched the way students moved through the space and who deferred to whom and where the invisible lines were. Seven years was a long time. The shape of it was already forming.
---
Dorm Seven was across the courtyard and one floor down. He knew this because Roman had established it within approximately six hours of arrival — Roman established the location of everything relevant within six hours of arrival, it was simply how he operated.
Lura. Mizellia. Irisa. Two others whose names Aren learned on day two — Sela, a count's heir from the eastern reaches, quiet and precise; and Vorn, who was the loudest person in any room she entered and seemed to consider this an achievement.
The official rules of Selvinina covered many things. Length of blade permitted in residential wings. Curfew by year — first years by the ninth bell. Use of magic in non-designated areas. And in clear language in the second section, paragraph four:
*No romantic relationships between students for the duration of the seven-year term.*
Officially.
Roman had read the rulebook cover to cover on day one because Roman read everything. He had arrived at paragraph four, read it twice, looked up at the ceiling, and said, thoughtfully:
*"Seven years is a very long time."*Trnaz said: "It's a rule."
Roman said: "Yes."
Colis said Nothing and turned a page.
Trnaz was asleep.
Aren looked out the window.
The academy settled into its last quiet week before term. Five hundred fourteen-year-olds in their dorms, learning each other, learning the space, learning the rules.
Some of them were already deciding which rules were suggestions.
---
Mizellia could not sleep.
It was the last day of settling week by tommorw their term will start officially.
This was not unusual. Her mind ran late and she had learned to work with it rather than against it — reading, theory notes, the quiet productive hours between the last bell and dawn that she considered her best thinking time. She had been sitting at the small desk in Dorm Seven with her non-elemental theory notes for two hours when she became aware that Lura was also awake, sitting up in her bed in the dark, looking at nothing in particular.
"Fresh air," Lura said quietly, not really asking.
Mizellia put down her pencil.
They slipped out through the side door of the residential wing that someone had, at some historical point, failed to ensure locked properly. The courtyard at midnight was cold and empty and still, lit by iron lamps that burned low at this hour. Their breath came out white.
Mizellia saw it first.
A dark line on the stone path. Too dark. Too wet.
She stopped.
Lura stopped beside her. Looked down. Looked at Mizellia.
The line continued — irregular, intermittent, the pattern of something dripping at intervals. Moving away from them toward the south yard. Toward the section of the academy grounds that backed onto the supply buildings and the storage pens.
Mizellia was a practical person. She assessed situations without dramatic narration. She looked at the line on the stone, looked at where it led, and thought: *that is blood.*
Lura had gone very still beside her.
They looked at each other.
Then, because they were both the people they were, they followed it.
---
The blood trail led through a gate, across a yard, past two storage buildings, and ended at the large pen on the south side of the grounds that Mizellia had assumed held livestock for the academy kitchens.
It did hold livestock.
Currently the livestock was holding several boys.
There were perhaps eight of them in total — Aren and colis visible immediately, plus six others who had the look of second and third-years, all of them in varying states of dishevelment. Aren's shirt was torn at the shoulder. Colis had mud on his face and an expression of pure concentration. One of the third-years was sitting on the fence breathing heavily with the expression of a man who had made a choice and was still deciding whether he regretted it.
Roman was also present their in the corner with gold coins",now aren go on rip that bulls horns, go on here I won walot three golds".
In the centre of the pen, three bulls moved with the slow, weighty patience of animals that knew they were large and were comfortable with what that implied.
As Mizellia and Lura watched, Aren moved toward the nearest one.
What happened next was not graceful. It involved a great deal of mud and impact and at one point Aren was briefly and definitively on the wrong side of the weight distribution problem. But he got his arms around the bull's neck and his feet back under him and held on with the flat, patient determination of someone who had decided the outcome and was simply waiting for the bull to agree.
The bull disagreed for a while. Then it slowed. Then it stopped.
Roman cheered from the fence. The second and third-years made sounds of appreciation. The other two bulls observed this with profound indifference.
Mizellia stared.
Lura stared.
Aren let go of the bull, straightened up, looked down at his torn shirt, and then looked up and saw them.
A pause.
Roman turned. Saw them. His expression moved through several phases with considerable speed.
"We were," he began.
"Training," said one of the third-years helpfully.
"Grip strength," said colis.
Mizellia looked at the blood trail. Looked at Aren's shoulder — the shirt torn, a scrape beneath it, superficial, the source of the trail. Looked at the bulls. Looked at Aren.
"*Boys*," she said.
It was not a compliment. It was not an insult. It was a complete and total classification.
Lura pressed her lips together very firmly.
"Goodnight," Mizellia said.
She turned around and walked back toward the dormitory. After a moment Lura followed. They did not speak until they were back through the side door and halfway up the stairs.
Then Lura sat down on a step and covered her mouth with both hands.
Her shoulders were shaking.
Mizellia sat beside her. Looked at the wall.
"Bulls," Mizellia said.
Lura made a sound that was absolutely not a laugh because princesses did not laugh on stairwells at midnight about boys wrestling bulls in mud.
She laughed for quite a long time.
Mizellia waited it out with dignity. Then, quietly, she also smiled. Once. Briefly. She would not be confirming this later.
---
Dawn came grey and cold.
Irisa had a habit of early mornings. Makhon had a habit of early mornings because Irisa had challenged him to a sparring session before first bell and he was not going to be the one who arrived second.
They came through the south courtyard together at the fifth bell, still in the argument from last night which had merely paused for sleep.
"Adaptation under pressure," Irisa was saying. "A sword adapts. A spear commits."
"A spear controls the engagement before adaptation is necessary," Jordan said. "Prevention versus—"
He stopped.
Irisa stopped.
On the low bench beside the east fountain, Roman had a leather notebook open across his knee and was talking with the focused precision of someone delivering a lecture to an audience of one. The audience of one was Aren, sitting with his elbows on his knees, watching Roman's notebook, asking questions at intervals.
The notebook had numbers. Columns. What looked like flow diagrams with arrows.
"— the allowance moves predictably in the first month because everyone's establishing. The second month is where it gets interesting, because by then you can see who's spending defensively, who's spending for position, and who—" Roman tapped the page "—is spending to make friends. That last category tells you the most."
Aren said something. Roman nodded and turned the page.
Makhon and Irisa looked at each other.
Makhon said: "He was wrestling a bull four hours ago,right?."
"I know," Irisa said.
They watched Roman turn another page and Aren lean forward slightly to look at a diagram.
"Is he taking notes," Makhon said.
Aren had, at some point, produced a small piece of paper and was writing something on it.
"Yes," Irisa said.
Makhon processed this.
"Does he sleep?" he asked.
Irisa watched Aren ask another question and Roman answer it with the enthusiasm of someone who had found the ideal student.
"I don't think it's his priority," she said.
They stood in the early morning cold for another moment.
"The great sword thing," Makhon said eventually. "I can demonstrate the engagement control principle properly if you want to run it again before first bell."
"I have my longsword ," Irisa said.
"I know."
They left Roman and Aren to the finances and went to find a training circle before the academy woke up fully and took them all.
---
— End of Chapter 8 —
---