The next months passed surprisingly quickly.

  Between swordplay at lunch and raising provisions while on duty, Dalliance was perpetually on the verge of sleep. If he'd grown slimmer, or more toned, or his abs more prominent, certainly his muscles hadn't gained any size—though unbeknownst to Dalliance, he had gained a modicum of height.

  Whimsy came around eventually, whether from true acceptance that Dalliance hadn't meant her any harm, or from loneliness, he wasn't sure. Meanwhile, Earnest's already poor relationship with his mentor, Father Lupine, steadily degraded to the point that Earnest rarely even saw the man, by reason of being posted on street corners to solicit alms for the poor.

  Dalliance's secret jar with its bubbling brown contents sat unmolested and wax-sealed in front of the likewise untouched brown paper bags in Missus Tempest's Practicals locker. He had decided to try pulling back a bit, following Effluvia's example of not letting his entire arsenal be visible at once.

  Not everyone in class had understood the class theme, though. As it turned out, Flounce was an extremely dangerous one-trick pony—but the trick was so good that neither Dalliance, nor Effluvia, nor even Ronan held the class record for most knockouts or yields. Not that anybody had gotten the chance to yield.

  On duty days, with the completion of the potatoes project came the traditional reward for work well done: more work, in the form of other bulk goods transport for the tower. Dalliance was not sent back to shelf and sort jars: Instead, his next shipment, this one worked over the course of weeks, was chalk of various grades and colors, by the ton. Another fall split the wagon bed, which was replaced, after some research and a discussion with the head of the imperial scouts' logistics branch, with three-ply tarpaulin within a rope net bag. This, loaded, hung like a teardrop-shaped pendulum below the mage's kite as it lofted higher and higher, the reasoning being that even if dropped, chalk could be reused in all but the most catastrophic of circumstances, but this way they wouldn't waste another cart bed.

  In fact, Dalliance did not drop it, and after chalk moved on to shipping replacement slate tiles for the tower top in small batches in case he dropped them, and then as the quarterly resupply of provisions came and his burdens changed back into potatoes, Dalliance found himself on the cusp of midterms, wondering at how quickly the time had gone by.

  "It stands to reason," said Earnest, sipping his hot cocoa with the easy familiarity of someone for whom the capital's manners had, by dint of exposure, become second nature.

  Dalliance still found the small tea cups less satisfying than the carved wooden vessels his mother had used as he grew up, or even a nice mason jar. Dalliance's tea, an adventurous blend he would not be trying again, sat nearly untouched, piss-yellow in its own fragile tea cup, one of the array scattered across the table as the group convened.

  Effluvia drank her blue coffee with pomegranate syrup this time, making it a shade of purple to put him in mind of blueberry jam, while Whimsy had yet to make her appearance, which was for the best, as Morality had spent the first quarter-hour regaling the group with the gory aftermath of no less than four hunts which she had completed in the first half of her year, against everything from myconids to an honest-to-goodness hill giant.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "What?" asked Dalliance, distracted.

  "Why it feels like it's been no time at all? Your life isn't your own these days. Effluvia is a slave driver—" the girl gave a mock curtsy from her seat. "Charity is lost in her own little world—"

  The girl in question, lost in the pages of a book she had brought in complete contravention of the group's usual tradition, and retained despite it being mildly rude to Morality and her tale of gore, looked up with a faint line between her eyebrows, but then returned her eyes to the book. It was, after all, nearly midterms, and their meeting was between classes besides. She had a test upcoming. Dalliance couldn't hold it against her.

  Circe let out a languid yawn. "Hey," she said, "in case anyone was wondering, I am staying up very late to give you the pleasure of my company."

  Dalliance recalled that she was nocturnal, some quirk of her class.

  "And because I have an announcement," she declared. "I have achieved D tier," she proclaimed.

  Dalliance blinked. He had not in his wildest imaginings thought Circe would beat them all to the punch.

  "What are you?" Effluvia asked, just as Earnest asked "but you can still heal," focusing on what mattered in a clash of voices.

  "Yes, of course. I'm a [Wood Witch]." From her tone of voice that had never been in question, and Dalliance couldn't imagine her selecting a class which couldn't heal, considering her parents.

  "Where did you get the experience for it?" Earnest continued, clearly entirely enthralled by her revelation.

  "Everyone she heals on the wall goes back in, fights, and kills things," Dalliance said. It was half speculation, but Circe nodded.

  "I haven't even had to touch a blade," she said. "Except this one time, when I had to pull a spearhead out of a captain's pancreas."

  Dalliance shuddered at the image, but she showed no revulsion at the task. Better her than me, he concluded.

  "Well," Effluvia said, after another silence had come across the table, waiting until a scone had come and vanished, dabbing her lips with a napkin, "as a coven, our primary advantage is knowing what's out there. Did you look at the class list for long, Circe?"

  Her face remained serene, but there was an audible punch in her voice. "No, of course not. I'm just a hanger-on planning to let you all down. Of course I checked—but I can't write any of this down, so I had to get it to you fresh from memory."

  Dalliance imagined the penalty for letting slip noble secrets. Probably death.

  "So here we go." Even Charity closed her book and leaned in as Circe's voice fell to a near whisper. "It's not just stat levels it looks for," she said, sibilants loud against the murmur of her voice, "but also what skills and spells you have perfected. You need six ranks of Agility to multicast, and you need multicast for all the nicer classes. Plus, you know, Wit and Spirit, and… honestly, I can't see how someone would have the time to have more than one perfected skill, normally. But if you can get two or three of them, it also opens some things I would love to tell you about, but I don't understand them well enough. Like: [Wood Witch] lets my overflow go to Spirit first. I don't know what to call that, but you really need to perfect your skills for D tier."

  "How did you know?" asked Morality. Her voice was speculative, and colored with envy. "How many of yours did you perfect?"

  Circe had the grace to duck her head in feigned embarrassment. "Healing is all I did on the wall," she said. "[Diagnosis] and [Woodsie Healing] were both perfected already. [Healer's Intuition] and [Rude Health] now. Just the one trick, but people liked it . . . but I have two, now. I'm hoping that with [Woodshape], I can finally contribute."