It was the last day of the second week, the deadline for our second assignments, and Adrian still hadn’t even collected his scroll. He was going to fail, and he was going find out what it meant to fail here.

I’d been busy all week. I’d finished my own assignment at Fort Msiesetr within three days. Master Antonyx hadn’t wanted my report on the red stars, but he’d signed off on my official task, the geneology. He’d even given me an aspect manual as my reward.

In my personal time I’d been practicing my own magical path. I now had a Winter Hearth canto active in my cell wall at all times. The heat was a comfort in the night, even if the dimming effect made it harder to read during the day. A single cantogram drawn in Wild Century’s ink would last over a day before the maja was spent, and it only took a small amount of ink to draw.

So far none of the other students in the barracks had noticed it. I was sure that as soon as someone found it, they’d try to get me to apply it to their cell as well.

I’d studied the design of the Heart’s Memory cantogram I’d all but stolen from Antonyx’s office. It was a rare cantogram according to him, but without knowing what it did I didn’t want to experiment with it.

With my new sword I’d been able to make halting studies of The Opening Arts of Arrenshu, practicing the strange stances and movements it recommended for fighting other sorerous sword wielders.

Yesterday I’d even learned the Wheel aspect, and I’d been one of only a few to manage it, though I didn’t know what it was good for.

None of it had left much time for worrying about other people.

Now I was worried.

It was still morning, and Adrian might have enough time to complete his assignment if he got his scroll soon.

He’d asked me not to bring him it. He’d given up on surviving here. But if he’d already consoled himself to death then I didn’t think I could do much damage by ignoring his wishes.

I picked up the scroll and dropped it into my pack. I shoved my sword after it, wrapped in its birch bark sheath. The fact that I barely knew how to use the sword meant there was no point being able to get to it easily, but I didn’t want to leave it where someone might steal it.

With all my worldly possessions in my bag, I left for the barracks and headed for his camp on the upper terrace.

I was forced to slow as I crossed the infirmary terrace.

Count Serrato was there with Master Cordaze. Serrato was inspecting a pair of Antorxian warbeasts, magical monsters that the Antorxian army used to terrorize their enemies.

Both beasts had bald gray skin, but otherwise looked completely different to each other. One had a long snakelike body, four weak vestigial-looking limbs, and an elongated wolf-like head. The other was swollen bipedal creature with disproportionately long arms, each ending in vicious claws.

Both of them were magical creatures. I could feel their maja presences as sharply as I’d felt any Reeve. One was heavy and dull, like a boulder rising out of a grassy plain, the other gave off the feeling of shivering needles, anxious and awkward.

The only other things they had in common was their eyes, and their scars. Both had round, soulful eyes. The wolf-snake’s eyes were green, the giant’s brown. Both also had the same scar; a vertical line surrounded by a pair of tiny dimples in the center of their forehead, as if they’d been sliced and then pricked by a fork. I’d seen the scar before. Ba had had it, the near-mindless girl I’d run into the library.

The giant biped’s eyes followed me as I passed. I couldn’t help but read a deep, dull pain in them.

I found Adrian’s camp back in the woods on the upper terrace, but Adrian himself wasn’t there. I wandered in, trying to suppress the feeling that I was intruding in someone’s home.

His small camp fire was still smouldering. I added some of the dry sticks he kept nearby to keep it alive. I pulled another few fern branches onto the bed under the lean-to. I pulled the cords holding the sagging blanket above his shelter tight.

He’d added a couple of things to camp since I’d last been here. A skinned rabbit hung from a branch by its feet, smoking over the embers, and there was a small bucket sitting by the lean-to, filled to the brim with fresh water.

I was still tightening the strings on his tarp when I heard footsteps behind me.

“You’re a bit of a busybody, aren’t you,” Adrian said, stepping into the camp.

Instead of answering I unslung my pack and pulled out his assignment scroll.

“You never came for this.”

“Don’t want it,” he said, moving past me to finish tying up the cords.

“You should at least look at it. What if it’s something you don’t mind doing? You could be failing for nothing.”

“I really don’t expect you to understand. I’m not playing their game. I’m Losirisian. I was raised in the Abbey. I’m here as a prisoner.”

“We all are,” I said. Adrian snorted, but I went on. “How will failing on purpose help? What if they kill you? Wouldn’t it be better to survive, no matter what?”

“Like I said, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to play their game for now and fight against them later?” I tried. “You could do more damage to them from the inside than sitting here in the woods.”

“Compromising with them would do more harm to me than I could ever do to them, like that.”

I stood there as he went about doing chores in his camp. My hand hurt with the pressure I was putting on his scroll.

“Well if you don’t want it, I’m going to open it.”

“I was sure you would.”

I watched him for a few seconds, then turned and mached off into the woods.

I unrolled the scroll as I went. I was wondering if it was something I could just do it for him, or whether he’d need to hand it in himself to get credit.

I rolled the paper back, revealing a single clear line on the page.

Fight a duel with another student.

I came to a stop.

It wasn’t something I could do for him, but it was something I could force him into.

I turned around and headed back to the camp site. I pulled my pack down off my shoulder and drew my sword as I walked.

Adrian looked surprised to see me when I broke back into the clearing around his camp. His eyes went to the sword in my hand, and back to my face. He looked amused more than worried.

“Get your quarterstaff,” I said.

“Why?”

“We’re going to fight a duel,” I said.

He thought for a second, then the tension went out of his muscles.

“Is that what they want me to do? Fight you?”

“It’s what I want,” I said.

I looked around then grabbed his staff from where it leaned against a tree. I tossed it to him. He let it hit his hip and fall to the ground.

“Pick it up,” I said.

Adrian shook his head slowly.

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“Look, all you have to do is fight. You don’t even have to win. Just fight me. Knock the sword out of my hands. I won’t use any magic.”

“I won’t,” he said.

He let his gaze fall down to where the camp fire was starting to consume the fresh twigs I’d fed it, but otherwise didn’t move.

I stared at him, exasperated.

“What if they kill you?” I said.

“I don’t really know why you care.”

I let out a frustrated breath.

“I care because I’m the reason you’re out here,” I said. “If I hadn’t accidentally thrown you, you might not be refusing to do this one simple thing.”

Adrian frowned, still not looking at me.

“I don’t think that’s really it,” he said.

“Oh? Then why do I care?” I asked.

“Because you’re afraid I’m right,” he said.

My heart was beating in my ears, and I wasn’t sure it was because of the prospect of getting into a fight.

“You’re afraid if I stay true to myself, then I’ll have proved it was possible to all along,” he said. “That would make you the traitor. To yourself, if nobody else.”

I thought about his words. I really considered them.

I remembered my fears from the time I left the academy on my first assignment. That I was a collaborator. That by not running when I had the chance, I was complict in my imprisonment. But I’d rejected those arguments. I’d known then it was a choice between death and survival, and I’d chosen survival. The fact that I was learning magic, reading ancient texts, discovering secrets, all clouded the issue for me, because they were things that rewarded my decision to stay. But I hadn’t lost sight of the threat that hung over my head every day, and the pressure it exerted on my decisions.

“You’re wrong, actually,” I said finally. “I care because I can do something about this, and if I don’t it’s going to haunt me forever, whatever the punishment is.”

“I’ve made my decision. You can’t do anything about that,” Adrian said.

In reply I stepped forward and slapped him with the flat of my sword.

He grabbed his arm. “Hey, that hurt.”

I did it again.

After looking like he was about to respond, he forced himself to stillness. He bowed his head, apparently ready to take whatever I would do to him.

I swung the sword at the branch holding the rabbit, cutting the cord holding it there. The carcass fell into the fire.

“Hey!” Adrian snapped. His serentiy of a moment before was obviously taking him effort to maintain. He was completely unused to backing down.

“What does it matter?” I asked. “You might be dead tomorrow.”

He forced his gazed down.

I slapped his other arm with the flat of the sword. He winced, but didn’t respond.

I thought furiously to try and come up with whatever I could that’d annoy him. He liked limericks, didn’t he? Where had he come from? His last name was Wheatfield. He was probably from one of the small farming towns.

“There was a young farmer from West Lance,” I started, “who went to the harvest night square dance…”

Adrian’s eyes rose to meet mine.

“He had lots of courters, among farmer’s daughters, but found that a sheep was his preference.”

“Is this supposed to make me angry?” he asked, exasperated. “You know I’m not a farmer? I was an orphan. I was raised in the Abbey.”

Orphan… I tried to remember the lists of Losirisian villages from Bevin’s study.

“There was an old Abbot from Torfan,” I started, instead. “Who found his bed empty too often-”

Something dark passed over Adrian’s face. I felt like I’d hit a nerve.

Without any more warning he threw himself at me. He didn’t even bother with his staff, just coming at me with his hands out, like he was going to wring my neck.

He hit me like a bag of sand and knocked me backwards onto the ground. He straddled me, with one hand knotted at the neck of my robe. I barely had chance to see his fist raised in the air before my face exploded in pain. My head banged against the ground and points of light burst against my closed eyelids.

I tried pushing him off. He held on. He punched me again. I pushed maja from my core into my hands and colored it with Force aspect. I pushed it out, hoping to throw Adrian back, but it didn’t hit him. The branches above us cracked and thrashed, but Adrian held on. He hit me again and I heard something crack.

I tried to remember this was technically what I wanted.

Adrian paused, his fist held up above my face. He seemed to realize what he was doing and let his arm drop. He got up, shifting over awkwardly to sit by my side.

“Well, you got me,” he said. “I hope you’re happy.”

“Delighted,” I said. It came out more like ‘Bewited’ thanks to the throbbing pain in my nose and lip.

I got onto my hands and knees and crawled to his water bucket. I hung my head over it, looking at my reflection in the water.

It was the first time I’d seen myself since I arrived. It was a shock that took my mind off Adrian. Thin wispy hair covered my cheeks. I hadn’t shaved in weeks. My eyes were sunken with dark rings under them. I hadn’t been sleeping well. My hair was wild, the short sides slick with grease, the long top sticking up in every direction, and all of it dusted with dry mud and unidentifiable debris.

I thought I’d been getting clean in the wash house, but I hadn’t quite managed it. My nose was sitting at an angle, broken in the fight.

The face in the water looked exactly like the visage of a mad sorcerer. It was like looking at a stranger, right down to the wild glint in his eyes.

I cupped my hands and lifted some water from the barrel, hissing at the sting as I washed my face.

“Did the scroll say I had to hurt someone?” Adrian asked while I was getting cleaned up.

“You had to fight a duel with another student,” I said.

Adrian nodded and sighed. He seemed to think of something and looked at me.

“For the sake of our friendship, what were you going to end that rhyme with?”

I thought for a few seconds, and continued the rhyme from before. “He attracted a lady, who longed for a baby, on account that he’d adopted an oprhan.”

Adrian hummed. “You’re bad at these.”

“I just started,” I protested.

When I was finished cleaning the blood from my face I put my sword back in its sheath and packed it away. Adrian picked his skinned rabbit from the fire and hung it back up, only a little dirtier than before.

“I think you should come back to the barracks,” I said.

“I don’t think I can face it.”

I waved at his lean-to shelter. “You’re not winning anything by staying out here. You’re not keeping yourself pure, or whatever you think the point is. That’s just another delusion. Refusing to try to survive is just another way of giving up in the face of a situation you don’t like.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Also I’m magically keeping our cell warm,” I added.

He shook his head.

I touched my nose again, flinching at the spike of pain that shot through my head. I needed to get it set.

“I’m going to try the infirmary,” I said.

Adrian didn’t reply. He wasn’t apologetic. He barely seemed to hear me.

“Come back to the barracks if you feel like it,” I said, getting up.

I left Adrian and his camp behind.

I hadn’t been to the academy infirmary yet, and I sincerely hoped they had treatments that didn’t involve giving me unfamiliar gray flesh.