Chapter 16
Provisional
There were twelve of them.
He counted at the orientation -- twelve provisional students arranged in the eastern lecture hall at the sixth bell, most of them looking like they'd rather be somewhere else. The hall was designed to hold two hundred. The twelve of them rattled around in it like loose change.
Cyan took a seat near the back and assessed.
Three of them were clearly guild-sponsored -- he recognized the type, the same careful watchfulness he'd developed himself, the habit of sitting with your back toward a wall. Two of those three had Bronze-rank badges, which made them the most conventionally qualified people in the room. Four were noble-adjacent -- not from the great houses, those students went straight to General Cohort, but from minor houses or merchant families with enough political connection to get a provisional slot. Anxious in a specific way, the way people were anxious when they had something to lose.
Two were young. Fifteen at most, which was early for Academy admission and usually meant something unusual about their ability profile.
One was older -- mid-twenties, which was late, which also usually meant something.
One was a girl about his age sitting in the third row with her arms crossed and her eyes on the door, like she was calculating the distance to the exit.
And one was Cyan.
The orientation was run by a junior faculty member who delivered the information in the tone of someone reading from a document they'd memorized and found tedious. The rules were straightforward: provisional students attended all mandatory classes alongside general cohort, were evaluated at semester's end on a pass-fail basis, had no rank advancement privileges until passing evaluation, and ate after everyone else.
That last one wasn't in the official documentation. The junior faculty member mentioned it as an afterthought, the way you mentioned something that was technically policy but mostly just custom. Cyan noted it and moved on.
The practical information was more useful. Schedule, building locations, library access -- restricted for provisional students, full access after passing evaluation -- practice hall availability, and the process for filing grievances, which the faculty member described in a way that made it sound like nobody had ever successfully used it.
After the orientation, most of the provisionals clustered in small groups outside the hall. Cyan didn't cluster. He walked to the dormitory to check if his roommate had arrived.
He hadn't. The bag on the other bunk was still the only evidence of another person.
He sat at the desk and looked at his schedule. First classes started tomorrow. Mana Theory was mandatory for all students -- that would put him in a room with General Cohort. Combat Assessment was provisional-only for the first month. Dungeon Studies was general. History of the Saints was general.
History of the Saints. He'd see what they taught about that.
A knock at the door. He said come in.
The girl from the orientation -- arms-crossed, watching-the-exit -- leaned in the doorway. She had short dark hair and the particular expression of someone who had decided to do something practical and was executing on it.
'You're the null result,' she said.
It wasn't a question. His provisional badge had a small notation on it that indicated his Runestone result category. Apparently she'd looked.
'You're in this dormitory,' he said.
'Room four. Down the hall.' She studied him with the directness of someone who didn't have time for approaches. 'I'm Fen. I'm also a null result, officially, though mine is more complicated. I want to know about yours.'
Cyan looked at her.
'I'm not interested in being friends,' she said. 'I'm interested in surviving the semester. Two null results is unusual and unusual things at the Academy tend to either be very useful or very dangerous and I'd like to know which one this is before it becomes relevant.'
He thought about that for a moment.
'Sit down,' he said.
She came in and sat on the edge of the other bunk.
He didn't tell her about the Mark. Not yet. But he listened to what she said about herself, and he filed it, and he thought that whatever complicated meant in this context, it was probably worth knowing.