“Then let’s go for a bit of tea. If he gets angry, just tell him you had to use the privy.”
Seeing the hopeful look in her eyes, he couldn’t find it in himself to turn her down. “I suppose I can. But just for a bit.”
The dining hall was its own edifice, located around the centre of the collegia’s grounds where it was most accessible to faculty and students. Whitewashed like all of the other buildings, the single-story construct consisted of a large hall that was filled with several dozen tables of considerable length, each sandwiched between a pair of long, wooden benches. The far end of the hall was sectioned off, designating a large area for the cooks to keep a constant supply of food idling atop the lengthy counter that barred the area.
“Let’s get some tea and then go over there,” said Lessa, pointing at an empty table in the far left corner. “It’ll be warmer if we sit closer to the kitchens.”
Alistar agreed with a smile, though he only managed a few steps before he instinctively reached for a little brown blur that had just flashed across the hall. He caught the small baked potato with a sinking feeling, or at least would have if it hadn’t been thrown with enough force to explode upon contact with his palm.
Why is he here?
He reluctantly walked over to a beckoning Tramon, who had been enjoying a large helping of stew in a bowl that was twice the size of the ones that the dining hall provided. Looking closely, he had brought it from home.
Tramon didn’t stop eating in light of their arrival. “Didn’t I tell you to keep clearing snow? I owe the headmaster a favour, so I told him you’d clear up most of the grounds. Yet here you are, taking a lass out to lunch while your master’s reputation dangles on the line.”
“What about you? Did you even have to talk with my uncle, or were you simply trying to waste time so that I would clear out more snow?” More to himself, he added, “And was it really necessary to hide your aura?”
Alistar recoiled as a piece of carrot struck his cheek with enough force to leave an instant bruise. This drew the attention of the few people in the dining hall, who had already raised their eyebrows at the potato from earlier.
“What a rude apprentice I have, talking back to his master without hesitation.”
Hells, thought Alistar, who instantly set about healing his face. Just a simple flick of a piece of carrot and he was left wondering whether or not his cheekbone had fractured.
“You could have just told me and I would have cleared the snow for you.”
“I was trying to teach you a lesson on patience.” Just then, an old woman in a white apron appeared at the table with a tray full of breads, cheeses and fruit along with another two bowls of stew.
When Lessa went to thank the woman for bringing them food, Tramon let out a shameless cough and then dragged the tray in front of him. “You two might as well eat since you’re here. Alistar, go and get some food for you and Miss Silvus.”
“Yes sir.”
“Bring me another ale while you’re at it.”
After asking Lessa what she wanted, he approached the kitchen area and retrieved two of the many trays of food that were sitting idly atop the counter where anybody could grab them, making sure to balance an ale on one of the trays. Hoping that his master wasn’t embarrassing him while he was away, he returned to the table and passed one of the meals to Lessa, taking a seat at her side as his master reached for the flagon that he’d brought along. Surprisingly, she didn’t seem uncomfortable in the least around the old swordsman.
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“We’re really in your debt,” Tramon was saying, pausing to enjoy a mouthful of stew as he nodded at the satisfying meal before him. “Me and the boy had no idea about these passes. You’d think someone would have told me after all these years, considering all I do for this place.”
“You’re not exactly easy to approach, Master.”
“It’s a matter of principle. You also have every right to be annoyed, you know. If we’d known about these passes earlier, you wouldn’t have had to make lunch all those times.”
“I suppose so.”
Lessa put on a light grin, undoing her white coat to reveal a thick winter dress of the same shade. “I’m glad I could be of some assistance. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, you can also get a pass card to access the library.”
“Thank you for the suggestion, but if I need a book then I’ll just send the boy to get it.”
“Master,” said Alistar, casting a sideways glance at Lessa. “If I clear away enough snow then is it possible that we can end early for the day?”
Tramon fixed him with a piercing stare before turning to Lessa with a low grunt. “I suppose you’re the reason why he’s been so absentminded lately. Distract him too much, and it could cost him his life in the future.”
“I…my apologies.”
Seeing Lessa’s sudden dejection, Alistar frowned at his mentor. Objectively speaking, Tramon wasn’t wrong. Still, it hadn’t been necessary to say such a thing directly to her.
“Just be sure not to forget it.” Turning his gaze, he added, “That being said, boy, as long as you clear away the remaining snow then I don’t care what you do afterwards.”
“Really? Then I won’t disappoint you, Master.”
The remainder of the meal passed without any complications, with the main topic of conversation being Alistar’s current attainments in the skillsets of the adept stratum. While a decent amount of time had passed since he had finally earned the four-stripe badge that denoted him as a swordsman of said stratum’s peak tier, his master had made it clear that he had no intentions of bestowing upon him a new badge any time soon.
In line with this thinking, Tramon hadn’t taught him any of the techniques from the warrior stratum’s first tier, focusing their lessons on the repetition and reiteration of what he already knew. While many of these moves made use of swordsman’s aura, the energy was limited in implementation so that it only ever covered parts of the body or different objects. It wouldn’t be until Alistar reached the warrior stratum that he would begin to learn the more dangerous skills that involved projecting his swordsman’s aura away from his body, such as the attacks that his would-be assassin had used to destroy small sections of the manor house’s southern wall face.
Lessa kept quiet throughout most of the meal, respectfully allowing Tramon to question and criticize Alistar without interruption. By the time the two of them finished eating and bade the sword master farewell, she seemed to have gained a considerable amount of sympathy for him.
“Your lessons seem like a lot of work.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. We usually just spar these days.”
“You’re always so busy,” she sighed, fixing him with a considerate stare. “If it’s not practicing with the sword master, it’s studying with Mr. Albeck or doing the readings and exercises that Mrs. Dawn assigns you. You’ve been going on like this for years. Doesn’t it get tiring?”
“Of course it does,” he admitted, pulling the hood of his cloak over his head to ward off the wind. “But those are all things that I like doing. Besides, as an illegitimate Silverkin I can’t afford to take things lightly.”
Branching off onto a partially-cleared path, he and Lessa began to clear snow as they continued to walk at an even pace. Wearing a mixed look of worry and discomfort, she hesitated for a moment before speaking up.
“Anne told me about what happened, what your cousin Edmun did. Do you think he’ll try something else?”
While his friends had heard about Janine’s death, he had kept the fact that his cousin had sent someone to kill him a secret. Even so, he’d figured that Anice had told the rest of the Dozen, as their outlooks on life had all seemed to harden around the time that the incident had occurred. Woods’s hard work as a cook at the Lawson’s tavern, Helen’s apprenticeship to Ms. Ersen, Corrie and the triplets’ newfound obsessions with studying magic, the increased amounts of training and frontiersmen excursions by Zech and the others—he had suspected that these things were all related to the fact that an arcanite from the County of Caerson had been dispatched to kill him under the orders of its new lord.