Frost made lace of the lawn; the sun unpicked it thread by thread. Bells tolled one, then two; the third hung in the air like a coin thrown and caught. Ernest tied the last button at his cuff and slipped the Aldery schedule into his breast pocket. The day already had a seam—he could feel where it would split.
The corridor's talk had a worked-on brightness, like smiles reheated. Names hopped, landed, pretended not to limp.
"Rowan says yesterday was a trick."
"He says he wasn't ready."
"He says a lot."
Ernest stepped into the flow. Students parted without deciding to. At the bend by the west stair, a notice board had grown a new sheet of cream parchment—a neat, official hand.
Field Assessment: Class C, Controlled Grounds—Three Days Hence. Teams to be assigned by faculty. Objective: locate, identify, subdue or avoid. Discipline graded. Injuries docked. Priests observing.
Someone had underlined priests in pencil and pressed hard enough to tear the page.
Good, Ernest thought. Noise prefers crowds. A test will collect them for me.
Lecture hall three carried the cold of stone that hadn't yet agreed to be day. Magister Halvern stood with a long pouch of glass rods, each as thin as a reed, each sealed with a bead of wax the size of a teardrop.
"Stability," he announced, as though declaring weather. "You will maintain resonance in the rod for one hundred heartbeats. If the rod sings, you are pressing. If it cracks, you are foolish. If it stays silent, you are dead. Begin."
The rods were treacherous—too responsive, hungry to echo any pulse, eager to magnify it into song. Ernest held his between forefinger and thumb. He drew a thread—no thicker than a breath's edge—and laid it along the rod's spine the way a fisherman lays a line along water. It quivered, wanted to sing; he let it not.
Across, Rowan's rod thrummed in the first ten heartbeats; he grimaced, overcorrected; it chimed once like a struck nail and fell silent with the sulk of a child disciplined in public. On the thirty-second, his grip tightened; the glass gave a hairline sound that made half the class flinch. He snatched breath through his teeth, loosened, saved it. Barely.
Celina's held. Twice the curse bit and her knuckles paled; twice she did not let the rod tell on her. When Halvern passed her row, his spectacles caught the rod's clear body and cut it into shards of light across her desk. He did not stop. Approval from him was the certainty he would choose you for the harder work later.
At ninety-nine, Ernest's thread tapered until it was a rumor; at one hundred, he let it go as you might let a bird go—no flourish, no sound, no need to prove it had been in his hands to begin with.
Halvern placed a rod on Rowan's desk. "Again," he said, mild as sky.
Rowan glanced up, cheeks hot; his eyes slid to Ernest and skittered away. He drew and held. This time he made it to eighty before the rod sang loud enough to earn a soft "tsk."
By bell, the room buzzed. Not laughter—the pre-storm sizzle between clouds. The notice on the board had given everyone the same thought at different volumes: Three days. Teams. Priests. Marks that will follow us into dinner talk and beyond.
The yard had the smell of old chalk and young breath. Serren walked them through cuts, calling numbers instead of names. "Two. Five. Four. Three-three. Stop grinning, your elbow wanders." He did not look at Ernest for long; he didn't need to. Watching a boy who obeys is how you forget to catch a boy who won't.
Rowan kept pace grimly. The wildness of yesterday had burned off; what remained was effort. It threw sparks, some of which landed in the right place. Ernest noted it because ignoring facts was a hobby for men who died early. Mikel moved like a man listening to the ground he walked on; he would not be the fastest in a sprint, but he would also not be first to fall in a hole.
After drill, in the shade of the west arch, Rowan waited with two boys from his wing and a third Ernest recognized as the sort who lent their face to any cause that promised applause. They didn't block the path. They arranged themselves near it like a net hung loose.
"Aldery," Rowan said, measured. His pride had found a new expression; it wore less powder. "Three days. Field assessment. Teams will be assigned. I propose we speak before they speak for us."
Ernest halted. The arch's stones held yesterday's cold. "Speak," he said.
Rowan glanced at his companions, then back. "I wasted the circle with noise. You made certain of that. I won't waste the grounds. Stags hunt in bands." He almost smiled, then chose honesty instead. "Or so my tutors say."
"What do you want, Rowan?" Ernest asked. He used the name to see what it did. It made the boy stand a touch straighter. Names are leashes if you tighten them.
"If we end in the same team," Rowan said, "I won't sabotage you." He flushed, as if saying it hurt worse than yesterday's yield. "If we don't, I won't sabotage you anyway. I will win or I will lose on my own blade."
The boys behind him shifted, surprised; one began to protest; Rowan cut him a look that tried to be Serren's staff and landed close enough to hush him.
Ernest studied him. The boy was still noise. But noise can learn songs.
"Good," Ernest said. "If you keep your word, I will keep mine."
"And your word is—?"
"I will not let you die."
Rowan blinked like a man who had expected scorn and received a contract instead. "Very… well," he said, and discovered the taste of very well wasn't as sour as he'd thought.
They parted without ceremony. Mikel slid into Ernest's shadow the way honest men do when they trust without needing to be told it's safe.
"You told him you wouldn't let him die," Mikel said, half-awe, half-worry.
"I will not," Ernest said. He did not add if his death does not serve me, because that was noise best kept silent.
The noon assembly swallowed the yard. The Headmaster stood between two priests; the older one with the pale lashes lifted his chin as if scenting weather.
"Three days," the Headmaster said. "Controlled Grounds. Your goal is not glory. It is not kills. It is orderly return with objective met." He let his gaze touch a few chins too high, a few shoulders too loose. "Your marks will be permanent."
Whispers bloomed; died under a lifted hand.
"The Grounds will include wolves, goblins, and low-tier aberrants," he continued. "There may be a wisp-rot pocket—avoid. There may be priest totems—do not touch. There will be marks deducted for spilled blood that need not have been spilled."
The old priest smiled without showing teeth. "The gods favor discipline," he said, the words soft enough to feel slippery. "We will watch."
Ernest felt the Veil hum like a plucked string and settle deeper. Watch, then. Learn nothing you can use.
Afternoon was theory—routes, signals, the dull necessities that keep groups from eating their own feet. A map hung at the front. Paths inked in red; shaded patches warning of thickets too dense for order. Ernest studied the bottlenecks and wrote a small list in the margin of his copy:
Choke points = voices carry. Avoid or control.
Wind direction—noise hides better downwind. Choose angles.
Clearings are altars. Refuse worship.
When the bell released the hall, the board at the west stair had grown another parchment.
Provisional Teams (Subject to Final Review): Team Two—Ernest Aldery, Celina Gold, Rowan Stag, Mikel Rane. Overseer: Magister Halvern.
The ink might as well have been blood for how quickly mouths found it.
"They put Aldery with the cursed girl."
"And Stag. Gods help him."
"Priests will hover like bees."
"Magister Halvern? Precision team. Dear heavens."
Ernest traced the four names with his eyes and felt the board click into a shape it had wanted. He did not smile. He did not need to. Mikel made the sound honest men make when given weight—the soft grunt that means I will carry this and not let it break me. Rowan stood off to the side reading his own name as if it had been written on him. He touched the crest at his throat and did not puff it.
Celina approached without being summoned. Students made space without seeing they were doing it.
"Aldery," she said.
"Gold."
"Three days."
"Three days," he echoed.
Rowan cleared his throat. "We should—we should plan. Meet. Before drills end today."
"After drills," Ernest agreed. "Lecture room five. No followers."
Rowan nodded as if it had been his idea. Mikel nodded because it had been someone's and he trusted the right one had owned it.
Sword forms made dust from the yard's corners. Serren drove them until their shoulders burned clean. When he dismissed them, he did it with a flick that meant, If you die for preventable stupidity, I will be offended personally.
Lecture room five was small and square; its windows looked west into a stand of dark trees that never quite lost shade even at noon. A chalk board waited with its back to them. One oil lamp limped at the edge of brightness.
Ernest closed the door. Silence assembled.
"Roles," he said. "Mikel on rear watch—your eyes are patient. Rowan on flank—noise attracts threats; make yours attract only what you can survive. I will call marks. Celina will make fire when needed and not otherwise."
Rowan bristled, then breathed, then let the bristle go. "Understood."
Mikel tapped the map Halvern had left under the slate. "The north run has a choke. If we hit it with something behind us—"
"We won't," Ernest said. "We will take the west line to the low ridge, cross above the choke, and drop in behind our objective. Priests like to watch men get trapped. We won't feed them."
Celina's gaze slid to him. "Objective?"
"Standard Grounds set," Ernest said. "Goblin outpost with a crude banner and a whistle horn. We will break the horn first. If there's a wisp pocket, we skirt. If there's a totem, you do not touch it." He let his eyes hold Rowan's a heartbeat longer. "You do not touch it."
Rowan looked offended, then almost grateful. "I won't."
"If we must bleed," Ernest said, "we do it inward, not outward. Bandage behind a tree. No cries. No cheers."
"Noise is small," Celina said, voice almost amused. "Yes."
Mikel's mouth twitched. "My father would say, 'If you boast at supper, you weren't there for the work.'"
"Your father is useful," Ernest said.
They broke with an economy that made the little room seem larger when they left it. In the hall, a pair of priests trailed in the opposite direction like a small weather system. The older one's lashes made a pale fringe on his gaze; it touched Ernest and slid, found Celina and held a fraction too long. Her shoulders did not change. The Veil sank deeper; the curse coiled closer.
Evening spread thin blue over stone. The dining hall smelled of broth and bread. Rowan ate with his jaw unclenched for the first time since the circle; Mikel counted spoons at the sideboard and chose the plainest. Celina sat at the end of a long table and did not notice the empty chairs around her; their emptiness did not ask to be filled.
Across the hall, whispers ran their old track with new words.
"Team two—those four? Together?"
"Halvern overseeing. He'll skin them for a misstep."
"Or polish them into knives."
Ernest finished his plate and left without leaving a ripple. His room was cool; the window held a square of sky. He took out his notebook.
Teams set. Useful shape. Rowan's spine beginning. Keep it braced—Mikel will help.
Celina—language shared again. Precision will be our knife. Curse bites at half-draw. Build plans with that threshold's teeth in mind.
Priests watching. Old one's gaze seeks the seam. Veil holds.
He wrote the route with a child's crooked lines and an adult's intent. He marked where to slow, where to speed, where to stop and let breath make friends with silence again.
He paused, quill lifting. Then he added one more line.
Optional objective: capture goblin whistle horn intact. Voice may teach it a new song.
He closed the book. Outside, the chalk circle lay blank as a page between stories. Three days is a long time to boys who think in meals; it is no time at all to men who think in vows.
Ernest stood at the window until the yard lamps came on in a row, obedient as soldiers. Across the green, a single candle rose in Celina's room, burned high, dipped, steadied. He learned its rhythm without trying.
"The forest bent," he said to the glass. "Nobles bowed behind masks. The class begins to sing in tune."
His reflection's mouth curved a fraction.
"In three days," he whispered, "the Grounds will learn the same lesson."
He turned down the lamp. The room grew gentle with dark.
"I am the Voice that commands," Ernest told the quiet, "even in silence."