Blood and Mud

Chapter 65: Chapter 65

The Treaty of the Three Rivers was signed in the four-hundredth year of the Second Dynasty, and as far as I could tell, the only thing it actually accomplished was giving four different barons the legal right to tax the same barge load of salted herring.

I stared down at the parchment chart spread across the library table, rubbing my left temple where a dull ache had been sitting since dinner. My fingers were stained black at the tips from a leaky steel nib.

”All right, try it again without looking at the tree,” Nia said from across the table. She had a stack of thirty index cards held against her chest like a hand of playing cards. ”The Earl of Westmarch dies without a male heir during a winter siege. His eldest daughter is married to a second son of House Vance, and his younger brother is a sworn magistrate in the capital. Who gets the iron mines, and who gets the seat in the provincial assembly?”

I closed my eyes, trying to picture the branching lines in the textbook instead of the much simpler way the 7th Legion handled succession—which was that the highest-ranking surviving officer took the dead man’s tent and everyone got back to digging trenches.

”The daughter takes the land and the iron mines,” I said slowly, ”because Westmarch uses southern maternal law. Wait—no. Because iron is a strategic resource, the Crown leases the mines back to the younger brother until the daughter produces an heir of age. And the Vance husband gets nothing except the right to pay the estate’s back taxes.”

”Close,” Luckas said from the leather armchair by the radiator. He was slouched low on his spine, tossing a crumpled ball of scrap paper into the air and catching it one-handed. ”If the Vance husband is smart, he petitions the High Court to declare the mines an exhausted quarry, buys the lease from the brother for pennies, and keeps the iron for himself. My Uncle Galen did that in eighty-two. Still has the hunting lodge.”

”Professor Sterling isn’t going to accept ’tax fraud’ as an answer on Friday’s midterm, Luckas,” Nia said dryly, setting the card down on the ”missed” pile.

”She should,” Luckas replied, sitting up and stretching his long legs out across the rug. ”Half of Nobility and Etiquette is just knowing who is currently robbing whom so you don’t seat them at the same banquet table. Honestly, Elvit, you’re overthinking the dates. Nobody cares what year the Three Rivers treaty was signed. Just remember that the River Lords are cheap bastards who hate paying bridge tolls, and you’ll get half the multiple-choice questions right.”

”I don’t need half of them right,” I said, dipping my pen back into the inkwell to fix a smudge on my notes. ”I need eighty percent. If my written average drops below a B-grade at the midterm mark, the administration deducts forty rank points automatically.”

”You have a three-hundred-point lead on me,” Luckas pointed out. ”You could hand in a blank piece of parchment with a drawing of your horse on it and still keep Rank Three.”

”If I lose forty points to a piece of paper, it means I was lazy,” I said.

At the end of the table, Kaelen turned a page of his heavy leather ledger without looking up. ”Also, if she drops forty points, the fourth-years will smell blood in the water before the monthly purge. Let her study, Vance.”

Luckas sighed and tossed his paper ball at Kaelen’s head. Kaelen didn’t even blink; he just raised two fingers and caught the wad of parchment an inch from his ear, dropping it neatly into the wastebasket beside his boot.

”What are you even reading over there?” Nia asked, squinting at the spine of Kaelen’s book. ”That’s not the first-year history primer.”

”Toxicology and agricultural blights,” Kaelen said calmly. ”For Survival class.”

”Master Toris only assigned the Chapter on poisonous mushrooms,” Nia said.

”I like reading ahead,” Kaelen replied, his voice completely flat.

We worked for another hour until the library proctor—a sleepy third-year scholar with ink on his cuffs—walked down the aisle ringing a small brass handbell to announce the ten-o’clock curfew for the lower halls.

As we packed our satchels and walked out into the chilly night air of the quadrangle, my right eye gave a sharp, unpleasant throb. Spending four hours squinting at cramped historical script under flickering oil lamps was worse for my head than ten minutes of active combat.

”Are you coming back to the dorm?” Nia asked, pulling her grey wool cloak tightly around her shoulders as the wind came off the lake.

”In an hour,” I said, adjusting the strap of my leather bag. ”I’m going to stop by the Student Union first. Aurio said the top-floor library stays open until midnight for the top ten, and they have the original field reports from the First Coalition War. If I read an actual military log instead of Sterling’s textbook, maybe the geography dates will stick in my head.”

Luckas paused at the fork in the path leading toward the men’s wing. ”Want company? I have Rank Four privileges. I haven’t actually been up there yet.”

I looked at the dark circles under his eyes—he had been up late every night since the festival practicing his thermal shields in the courtyard—and shook my head. ”Go to bed, Luckas. We have two hours of heavy sword drills with Toris at six in the morning. If you’re slow, I’m hitting you in the ribs again.”

”You only hit me in the ribs because the ground was wet,” he protested, though he smothered a yawn behind his fist a second later. ”Fine. Don’t let Gentrimio talk you into joining any committees. Before you know it, he’ll have you organizing the winter dance.”

”I’d rather go back to the caves,” I said.

The Student Union occupied a three-story stone building near the center of the island, tucked between the faculty quarters and the main chapel. The lower two floors were dark and locked up for the night, smelling faintly of floor wax and the cabbage soup they served at lunch.

I climbed the wide spiral staircase at the back of the building until I reached a heavy door paneled in dark red mahogany. A small brass plate screwed into the wood read:

THE APEX HALL Entry Restricted to Ranks I – X

There was no guard posted outside, just a small runic plate set next to the brass handle. When I pressed my thumb against the cold silver inlay, the mechanism hummed softly, reading the small identification brand woven into the lining of my Academy rank clasp, and the heavy lock clicked open.

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.

If the first-year dormitories were luxurious, the Apex Hall looked like the private hunting club of an Imperial Duke. The room took up the entire top floor under the eaves of the roof. Heavy oak beams crossed the ceiling, and a wide fireplace made of river stone crackled at the far end, fed by dry birch logs that burned without smoke. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with glass-fronted bookcases, and instead of hard wooden benches, the floor was scattered with deep green leather armchairs, Persian rugs, and low walnut tables.

Along the left wall stood a long sideboard holding a brass samovar of hot water, three jars of loose tea leaves, a bowl of fresh lemons, and a covered silver dish containing warm lamb pasties left over from the faculty kitchens.

Only three people were in the room.

Sitting near the window at a drafting table was a tall, broad-shouldered third-year boy with his left arm in a clean linen sling—Julian Falk, Rank Seven. He was trying awkwardly to copy a rune diagram left-handed, muttering under his breath whenever his ruler slipped.

Near the fireplace, curled up in one of the green leather armchairs with a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose, sat a young woman in a fourth-year coat. She had long, straight black hair pinned up with a silver comb and sharp, pale features that looked like they had been carved out of marble.

Seraphina of House Vorne. Rank Two overall.

And across from her, sitting at a low chess table with a stack of correspondence beside his elbow, was Aurio Gentrimio. He had taken off his crimson representative coat, wearing just a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a dark waistcoat.

Aurio looked up as my boots hit the edge of the rug and offered a warm, easy smile. ”Look at that. I owed you five silver marks, Sera. I told you she’d come up before the end of the week.”

Seraphina didn’t look up from the thick medical folio resting on her knees. ”You said she would come up on Tuesday, Aurio. It’s Wednesday night. Keep your silver.”

She turned a page with two long, ink-free fingers, then finally raised her eyes to look at me over the rims of her spectacles. Her gaze wasn’t hostile like the third-years in the courtyard, nor was it friendly like Nia’s. She looked at me the way a veteran surgeon looks at an interesting fracture.

”So you’re Erula’s stray,” Seraphina said. Her voice was crisp and cool, carrying the clipped cadence of the capital’s inner ring. ”Sit down, Lieutenant. Or get yourself some tea first. Hovering by the door makes you look like an orderly waiting for a dispatch.”

”The lamb pies are still warm,” Julian Falk called over from his drafting table without looking up. ”Take two. The house stewards just throw them to the hounds in the morning anyway.”

I walked over to the sideboard. My stomach was never completely full these days, so I took two of the warm pasties on a small porcelain plate and poured myself a mug of dark tea from the brass urn, skipping the lemon and sugar.

I carried them over to the hearth and took the empty leather chair set at a right angle between Aurio and Seraphina. The leather was soft and smelled of old cedar oil.

”Midterm cramming?” Aurio asked, gesturing toward my ink-stained fingers.

”Succession laws,” I said, taking a bite of the pastry. The crust was flaky, filled with minced lamb, onions, and rosemary. ”And the Treaty of the Three Rivers.”

Aurio winced sympathetically. ”Sterling loves the Three Rivers. Her grandfather helped draft the tax addendum in the seventy-fourth year. Make sure you mention the salt tariff on page four; she gives three bonus points if you cite the exact weight in barrels.”

”I’ll write it down,” I said. ”You mentioned you had the unedited field logs from the First Coalition War up here.”

”Third bookcase from the window, bottom shelf,” Aurio pointed. ”Bound in pigskin. They’re the original dispatches sent back by the 4th and 7th Legions before the Ministry of Censors cleaned them up for the standard textbooks.”

Seraphina closed her medical folio with a soft thump, marking her page with a ribbon, and took off her spectacles. Up close, I could feel the steady, controlled pressure of her Ember. Unlike Luckas, who radiated heat like an open stove, or Aurio, whose presence felt like warm sunlight, Seraphina’s magic felt dense and heavy, like deep water under river ice.

”Why do you want the old dispatches, Lieutenant?” she asked, tilting her head slightly. ”They aren’t on the first-year curriculum. You won’t be tested on the southern campaigns until your third term.”

”Professor Sterling’s book says the 7th Legion held the Red Ford for nine days because of superior supply lines and imperial fortifications,” I said, setting my empty plate on the side table. ”I marched past the Red Ford two months ago. There’s no stone within twenty miles to build a fort, and the road is a swamp. I want to know how they actually held it.”

For the first time, the cool mask on Seraphina’s face cracked into a brief, genuine smirk.

”They held it by slaughtering their own baggage horses on the second day and stacking the carcasses four feet high to make a breastwork,” she said calmly. ”Then Commander Kaelus—who was a captain back then—had his sappers dig fire pits in the peat moss so the smoke would choke the Coalition archers. My uncle was the Surgeon-General attached to the relief column. The Ministry thought dead horses didn’t sound heroic enough for fourteen-year-old cadets.”

”That makes more sense,” I said, taking a sip of the hot tea. ”Peat burns for a week even if it rains.”

Seraphina studied me for a long moment, tapping her folded spectacles against her chin. ”You really aren’t playing a part, are you?”

”A part?”

”Half the Senate families think Erula fabricated your service record,” Seraphina said matter-of-factly. ”My father had dinner with the Minister of War on Sunday. The prevailing theory among the inner-ring lords is that Erula found an orphan with a lucky mutation in the border camps, stamped a Lieutenant’s commission on her file to embarrass the Academy admission board, and sent her here as a political stunt.”

”Sera,” Aurio chided gently, setting a black knight back on the chessboard. ”Don’t drag Senate gossip into the study hall.”

”It isn’t gossip if it affects the rankings, Aurio,” Seraphina replied without looking at him. She kept her dark eyes fixed on mine. ”The Monthly Purge is next Friday. Usually, the top ten don’t bother challenging each other during the first two months—everyone is too busy preparing for the winter practicals. Have you looked at who sits at Rank Eleven right now, Elvit?”

”No,” I admitted. After the inauguration day, I hadn’t paid much attention to the board outside the cafeteria.

”Titus Mercer,” Seraphina said. ”Fourth-year. His cousin sits on the Military Appropriations Committee, and his family lost out on the third-rank resource stipend when Corvus slotted you above him. Every cadet in the top ten gets three vials of refined mineral Ember a month from the crown vaults to speed up their progression toward the Bud Burst. Rank Eleven gets nothing but standard barracks rations.”

Over by the window, Julian Falk let out a dry snort, adjusting his sling. ”Mercer has been throwing a fit in the fourth-year commons for three weeks. He wanted to challenge you right after Gael lost, but his house tutor told him to wait until you had a month of classes under your belt so nobody could accuse him of bullying a fresh recruit before she learned the arena rules.”

”He uses a heavy halberd and earth-shaping Ember,” Aurio added, his tone turning serious as he leaned his elbows on his knees. ”And unlike Gael, Mercer has actually seen blood. He spent his third-year summer attachment hunting salt-pirates off the southern coast. He won’t leave his chest open for you to throw him onto the cobblestones.”

I listened to the three of them, turning the warm porcelain mug slowly between my palms.

In the 7th Legion, when an officer wanted your post, you found out because they either challenged you in the mud behind the command tent or sent you on a scouting patrol where the maps were wrong. Here, everything was wrapped in committees, stipends, and family dinners, yet it all boiled down to the exact same thing: a bigger guy with a sharp piece of metal wanted what was mine.

”If he challenges me on Friday, do I have to fight him with blunt weapons?” I asked.

Aurio blinked. ”In the Monthly Purge? No, Top Ten challenges use live steel. The arena wardens keep healers by the pit to stop anyone from bleeding out, and blows to the head or heart are supposed to be pulled if the opponent yields, but the blades are sharp.”

”Good,” I said, standing up from the armchair and walking over to the third bookcase by the window. ”Blunt wood bounces off armor too much. It ruins the timing.”

Julian paused with his charcoal pencil hovering over his paper, staring up at me as I crouched down to pull a thick, pigskin-bound ledger off the bottom shelf. ”That’s all you have to say? Mercer is six-foot-four and three months away from his Bud Burst.”

”I’ve fought tall people before,” I said, tucking the heavy ledger under my left arm. ”And if he needs three vials of crown minerals a month just to reach his threshold, he’s relying too much on his stomach and not enough on his lungs.”

By the fireplace, Seraphina let out a quiet, sharp laugh—a sound that clearly surprised Julian, who nearly dropped his ruler.

”All right, Aurio,” Seraphina said, flipping her medical folio open again and sliding her spectacles back onto the bridge of her nose. ”I take it back. Pay yourself five silver marks from the house kitty. I think I actually like her.”

”Keep the ledger as long as you need, Elvit,” Aurio smiled, picking up a white bishop from the board. ”Just bring it back before the end of the term so the archivists don’t come after me. And take another pasty for Vance on your way out—if he has to spar with you at six in the morning, he’s going to need the calories.”

I wrapped two more lamb pasties in a clean linen napkin from the sideboard, tucked them into my satchel alongside my ink-stained succession charts, and headed back down the spiral stairs into the cold night air.