Dalliance caught Sterling in the doorway.

  "Were you riding with Charity?"

  Sterling turned. The hooked nose that had looked severe on a younger boy had grown even starker, as the boy continued to gain height, and with his dark hair, and pale eyes, the boy reminded Dalliance of a hawk. He'd acquired a pocket-watch from somewhere, and he toyed with it restlessly. With his turn, the handle of his sword, ornamental with its braid in a way Dalliance's spatha simply wasn't, swung out inconveniently widely.

  Dalliance sensed the conflict in the other boy's face as he looked Dalliance over for a second, as if deciding something, but he'd engaged [Prediction] too late—whatever he was considering, he'd decided, and now every future had the same flavor of contempt about it.

  "That's hardly your concern, Rather."

  "How is she? I heard she was hurt—"

  "Class has begun," said Mrs. Tempest, loudly, from behind them both, and that was that.

  "I'm sure she'll recover," Sterling was already striding away, though he paused in his step as he nearly thought better of it.

  He nearly suggested that if she wanted him to know, she'd call for him herself.

  Dalliance's hands were shaking with temper when he reached his seat, but he'd mastered himself enough to push the thought away, for now.

  Twenty-nine students, he counted, watching the first names get called. Seven duelists, called first, each to hold the center in turn. Twenty-one challengers drawn from the rest—first a volunteer, then one unwilling, then Mrs. Tempest's idea of random, which was to say her whim. That left one student unaccounted for, the odd number out, not to duel that day. Lucky them.

  Mrs. Tempest had explained her reasoning once, in that way she had of explaining things as though the lesson were already obvious and she was merely being generous with her time. If all you knew was fog, putting three opponents against you would be rubbing it in. Whereas if you knew, say, ice prison, and sword work, and light, and you could push your speed with aeromancy—well, that was a student who needed to be tested from several angles to find the edges. The duelists were the broader-ranging students. The stars of her practicum, she'd called them, without apparent irony.

  He'd been proud of that once. Happy to take the center and wait, pleased that the format gave him time to think between bouts, to try things that hadn't worked yet and find out why.

  Today, vibrating in his seat, he just wanted to get it over with.

  He watched Ronan take the center, and Effluvia step up as challenger, passing up her own chance at facing three: Dalliance had raised his own hand to do likewise, but was ignored; he would be in the middle today, then.

  He'd rather have gotten the time to think.

  Maybe another point of Agility would help with the constant brain fog from all these emotions. Dalliance of a year ago wouldn't have been brain-blinded by anger. Right?

  Perhaps the points could go to Wit, to hit ten again.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  At the least, he could spend some time as the wind and see if thinking clearly brought some relief.

  Ronan lost, in the end, Effluvia helping him to his feet with her usual briskness, but Dalliance wasn't watching, instead having found himself glaring at Sterling.

  Even the way Sterling was sitting made Dalliance angry. Shoulders back, one hand resting on the ornamental hilt at his hip, other hand just fiddling with that stupid watch.

  That's hardly your concern, Rather.

  Sterling's pale eyes moved, found Dalliance's without apparent surprise, and narrowed slightly.

  What's it to you, Dalliance thought. That was what he'd meant. Whatever he'd actually said, that was what he'd meant.

  "Rather," said Mrs. Tempest.

  Every head in the room turned toward him. Dalliance stood, already moving toward the potion cabinet for his jar.

  Behind him, as predicted, Sterling raised his hand.

  Sterling was taller these days, Dalliance realized. He'd begun to put on weight, filling out the bones of an adolescent into the nascent form of a fairly imposing man.

  Same sword, though, even if he could walk through fire now.

  Same bluster and attitude in the mind behind them, too. For now.

  Missus Tempest could clearly see something was wrong, her face deeply concerned, but when the pair looked to her for the starting signal, she huffed in a deep breath and sighed, then gestured acceptance. "Begin."

  Sterling watched as Dalliance popped off the cap of his jar. "Are you ready?" he asked, irony in his voice.

  If he hadn't, Dalliance would have thrown the jar at him again.

  Dalliance nodded to him, though. Courtesy is its own reward, he thought unpleasantly.

  Sterling charged forward, feet pounding on the planks.

  Dalliance's chant was getting shorter and shorter with practice. Some syllables weren't even needed, just helped to space things out and stop tongues from twisting. Not everybody could say two 'a' sounds back to back, and so on.

  Dalliance's gesture to the ceiling came a half-second faster than it had last time.

  The armored boy, trailing silver flames, ascended, hitting the ceiling with a crash of metal on wood, then fell heavily to the floor. Artifact sword or no, he wasn't a mage.

  Dalliance strode forward easily, spine rigid from nerves at being watched, as much as from anything else. Sterling was different to the others. A noble, if only an esquire with no land or heritable title. Unlike Effluvia, he would bear a grudge. Unlike Effluvia, or Evercandle, or the other nobles in the group, he had dirt on his classmate. Old dirt, and probably impossible to prove at this point. But even the word of a noble might stick for a common man.

  And yet, the jar in his hand was heavy, and this was happening.

  Sterling was rolling to his feet, sword in hand. [Locomotion], again, and he was flying to the side, slamming up into the arena boundary, and then again, sending him arcing toward the ceiling, hand stubbornly stuck to his sword.

  When he landed, Dalliance was almost upon him, another spell on his lips.

  [Steel Wind Aegis]

  The larger boy had gifted Dalliance a coat of practice mail, a gift to keep him safe in the hunt to acknowledge the life debt.

  It no longer really fit, which irked, but while using it Dalliance had discovered one important detail about the armor, and how armor worked in general. It's stronger than the body inside it. Not just tougher -- to get out of the mail shirt, he had to dip forward and allow it to fall off him, since getting out of a fabric shirt relies upon buttons, which it hasn't got, ties, which it hasn't got, or give in the weave -- also not present.

  The immovable shield would only last for ten seconds, but when Dalliance laid the spell on the fallen boy's armor, it was absolute. He would not be moving.

  It's quite impossible to strike well with a sword from a starting position of impacting the floor, blade to the side, once stuck in it, as it turns out.

  Dalliance poured out the contents of the jar with as much relish as someone holding his breath can manage, then stepped smartly back as the spell failed.

  Sterling had more points in Grit than Dalliance did, but without forewarning to hold his breath, the difference seemed almost immaterial.

  As the pull-apart chunks of fetid rat fell from hair and shoulders, Vigilance Worth's son stumbled forward and emptied his stomach.

  "Dalliance."

  He looked to the side, to a prim-faced Effluvia, then to the speaker. Missus Tempest looked deeply disapproving.

  "You could have ended that at any point," she said bluntly. "This bout is over."