The honest shop was farther away. Kai admitted this after leading Jack through two covered arcades, down a stair cut through the old fortress wall, and past three separate places selling paper. The town had grown against Thornfield's lower defenses until shop roofs leaned beneath old arrow slits and merchants hung awnings from ironwork made for gates that no longer existed. Rainwater whispered along a channel beside the stair. Students crossed it without breaking conversation, each certain that paper bought ten doors sooner would fail them in some private and expensive fashion.
"The first one watered its ink," he said. "The second stores graphite beside lamp oil. The third is owned by a man who believes students cannot count."
"You said the dishonest one had sweets."
"Several dishonest people have sweets. It is how they remain in business."
Jack followed him into a narrow shop beneath a striped green awning. Shelves climbed from floor to rafters with bound notebooks, paper packets, rulers, inkstones, trimmed quills, chalk, sealing wax, and more kinds of sharpened implement than he had known writing required. A clerk on a rolling ladder fetched a blue ledger for an older student while the shopkeeper measured loose paper against brass marks worn into the counter. Everything smelled of paper dust, wood shavings, and the bitter iron scent of ink.
He chose a cheap stitched notebook, six graphite sticks, and a packet of paper coarse enough that he would not resent ruining it. The shopkeeper laid a ledger on the counter and asked for his account name.
"Jack Drake. Thornfield Academy."
The man found the entry without surprise. Eomer's funding reached even here. Jack signed beneath the purchase in the local script, slowly enough that two customers completed their business beside him before he finished.
The signature leaned downhill and trespassed into the next line, but it was still his name. He could read it.
Kai inspected the display of sugared citrus peels while Jack wrote and kept his opinion to himself. When they left, he had a paper twist in one hand.
"Those weren't on my account," Jack said.
"No. I maintain independent financial interests."
He held out the twist. Jack took one strip. The sugar cracked between his teeth before the peel filled his mouth with a bitterness strong enough to tighten his jaw.
Kai watched him swallow it. "The honest sweets are an acquired taste."
"You knew that."
"I know many things that become funnier when discovered by someone else."
By midday Jack could read enough of the serving signs to choose his food without following the person ahead of him. Heat from the kitchens lingered beneath the great hall's beams despite the air moving through the shutters. He returned to the quiet end with a meat pasty, sliced fruit, and something the sign promised was tea despite Finn's earlier objections.
Finn and Edric had already opened the table around their work. Finn's folded stems were gone; in their place sat a shallow wooden box divided into six soil-filled compartments. Edric had arranged his books beyond the place Jack had used at breakfast. Kai arrived behind him and occupied the remaining bench before anyone could decide whether it had been offered.
Edric's eyes found the notebook beneath Jack's tray. "You bought paper."
"I have an assignment now."
"Everyone in Voss has an assignment now," Kai said. "She believes shared suffering builds civic character."
Jack set the copied title where Edric could see it. "She told me to begin with the civil inventories in the east reading room."
Edric stopped with his cup halfway to his mouth. "Not the trial accounts?"
"She said trials are written to justify their outcomes."
The cup returned to the table without reaching him. Edric pulled his notebook closer and added a line beneath something he had already written. "The inventory catalog is older than the public index. I'll be there after evening meal."
Jack waited through the scratch of Edric's pen. "Can I meet you there?"
Edric looked at the spare place beside his books as though the answer might have been set there in advance. "Yes. Bring the assignment exactly as Voss wrote it. The catalog uses different subject headings."
Finn pressed one finger into the soil in the third compartment, checked what clung to his skin, and pushed Jack's cup an inch away from the box. "Don't drink that. It isn't tea."
Jack smelled it again. The steam carried mint and something smoky. "What is it?"
"A mistake with hot water."
Kai drank from Jack's cup, considered the result, and kept it. Finn replaced it with his own unopened water without interrupting his inspection of the soil.
The second warning bell found them finishing lunch. Edric left for the Athenaeum with three books and no visible food in his hands until Finn caught the back of his vest and put the remaining half of Edric's pasty into the top of his satchel. Edric checked that no grease touched the books, accepted the arrangement, and went. Finn closed the soil box, tied it with a cord, and carried it upstairs before joining Jack and Kai on the eastern walk.
War Arts occupied the East Yard below the oldest curtain wall. Sun lay white across the packed earth. Covered weapon racks ran along two sides, and a line of rain trees shaded a water trough at the far end. The fortress rose behind them in fitted blocks darkened by centuries of wet seasons. Iron rings remained set into the stone at shoulder height, relics of soldiers, horses, prisoners, or all three.
Students left bags beneath the awning and formed rows without being called twice. Jack put his new notebook beside Kai's fitted satchel and copied the spacing around him. Finn set his soil box beneath the bench, removed his uniform vest, and folded it over the lid. Two long knives hung in plain dark sheaths at his hips, their guards close to his scarred hands and their narrow sheaths reaching well down his thighs. On anyone larger they might have passed without notice. Against Finn's small, sharply muscled body, the matched pair announced themselves before he touched them.
A boy in the second row was staring at Jack. His hair was a dirty blond, cut long enough to fall across his forehead when he turned. An emerald chain joined the open sides of his training vest. It was the only other one in the yard, and unlike Jack's new gold it had been worn long enough to lose its shop polish where the links rubbed together. Akira stood beside him, as he had in every class Jack shared with them, their spacing closer than the line required. Jack knew Akira's name from the rolls but little else about him. The emerald-chain boy made no attempt to hide his attention. He looked at Jack with the fixed impatience of someone waiting to be acknowledged.
Jack had spent too much of the day guessing what strangers expected from him. He faced the front and let the boy wait.
Master Draek walked the line.
He wore no chain over his training clothes. A narrow baton rested beneath one arm while he checked wrists, footwear, old injuries, and the distance between bodies. He corrected a student's stance by striking the ground between his heels. The baton passed beneath another student's loose vest edge and lifted it clear of the practice belt without touching skin.
He stopped at Finn first. "Ashwell. Edges."
Finn drew both long knives and offered them flat across his palms. Blue light ran in narrow bands over the cutting edges and around the points, binding steel without disguising its weight. Draek pressed the end of his baton against each ward. Both flashed and held.
"Current," he said. "Nothing above the collar."
Finn returned the knives to their sheaths in the same motion. "Yes, Master."
When he reached Jack, his gaze settled first on the healing cut.
"Drake."
The surname sounded different from Voss's use of it. She had applied it like a label on an argument. Draek used it like a hand closing around the back of Jack's neck.
"Master."
The answer came with a posture Jack had not chosen. His shoulders settled. His chin lifted by a degree. His heels aligned as though the body had been waiting all morning for an authority it understood.
Draek saw the response and moved his attention down Jack's stance. "You were expected before term began."
"I was injured on the road."
"The road will not submit a correction to your training record. If the head turns your vision or drops your balance, you leave the line. If it merely hurts, you learn while it hurts."
"Yes, Master."
Draek continued. Jack's spine remained straight until the instructor had passed two more students. Only then did it feel available to him again.
Kai stood on his left, facing forward. Nothing in his posture acknowledged what had happened, but the joking looseness had gone out of him. His feet were placed exactly beneath his hips. His hands hung open and still.
Draek called the first sequence.
The class moved: guard, step, turn, recover. Jack followed the student ahead of him half a count late. His feet knew the places but not the reasons. On the second pass, he let the body's balance carry farther before interfering. The turn came cleanly. His longer leg put him beyond the mark, and he had to pull the recovery short to avoid striking Kai's heel. Finn moved two places to the right, lower than the rest of the line and precise enough that his short steps ended on the marks without adjustment.
They repeated until sweat ran beneath Jack's chain and gathered at the base of his back. Draek altered the count without warning. Students who relied on rhythm stumbled. Jack nearly did, but the body caught the change in the instructor's shoulders before the baton moved.
That knowledge frightened him more than missing the beat.
Most of the class went to the western rack for narrow practice swords, their wood darkened by oil and use, with rounded points and padded guards. Finn drew his bound long knives instead. The blue edges followed his legs as he walked to a lane opposite a student carrying a short spear. Jack took one of the wooden swords by the grip.
His hand closed correctly.
Not almost correctly. His thumb found the worn flat. Two fingers loosened to preserve movement. The point lowered to an angle no one had demonstrated, and his feet arranged themselves behind it.
A warm room surfaced behind his eyes. Lamplight lay across polished floorboards. Another blade rang against his own, followed by Jack's laughter while a boy held a reddening hand against his chest.
The memory carried pleasure without joy. Someone had been hurt, and the dead boy had enjoyed that the injury was embarrassing.
Jack opened his fingers before he dropped the practice sword.
"Pairs," Draek called.
Kai turned to him. He had selected a sword as well, though his attention went once toward the staff rack before returning.
They saluted.
Kai's motion was simple and perfectly proportioned. Jack's body answered with something more ornate: point raised, wrist turned, one foot drawing back through a courtly line that announced education before a blow had been exchanged. Jack felt the flourish complete and hated it.
"Outside parry," Draek said. "Bind. Step. Touch the shoulder. Nothing below the wrist. Nothing above the collar. Control is the lesson."
Kai attacked first. His blade came straight enough for Jack to see every part of the drill. Jack turned it, found the bind, stepped, and touched Kai's left shoulder.
The exchange was over.
His body continued.
The point dropped from Kai's shoulder toward the exposed fingers around his guard. Jack felt the next movement entire: a short snapping strike across the knuckles, hard enough with wood to split skin and loosen the grip. Not part of the drill. Not necessary. A punishment delivered after victory because pain would make the lesson memorable.
Jack tore his hand sideways.
His feet had already committed. The sword crossed empty air. His weight moved beyond his front knee, and Kai stepped inside before Jack could recover. One hand controlled Jack's wrist. A hip touched his thigh. The yard turned over.
Packed earth struck Jack's back and drove the air from him.
Kai released him at once. He remained over Jack for only the time required to see his eyes focus.
"Don't stop halfway," Draek said from three paces away. "A bad technique completed can be corrected. Half a technique gives your opponent the choice of correction. Again."
Jack rolled to one knee. Dust coated his bare back and had worked beneath the waistband of his trousers. The headache pulsed once with the impact, then settled without dizziness.
Kai offered no hand while Draek watched. His fingers opened and closed around the sword grip. They were unmarked.
Jack stood. "The movement went outside the drill."
Draek's eyes narrowed. "Then you control it before it begins, not after it owns your balance. Take the line again."
Jack saluted without the flourish. In the next lane, Finn caught the spear between his crossed knives, turned both wrists, and stepped inside before the other student recovered the point. One bound blade stopped against the ribs. The second rested across the forearm holding the spear. Finn released both contacts and returned to his mark without looking toward Jack.
The second exchange lasted longer because he no longer trusted the first answer his body supplied. Kai touched his shoulder twice. Jack caught one attack and lost the bind. When the ugly downward opening appeared again, he refused it before his foot moved. Kai's blade struck his ribs hard enough to leave a bruise.
He stayed upright.
On the fourth pass Jack reached Kai's shoulder cleanly and stopped. The point remained exactly where the drill required. Relief weakened his hand more than exertion had.
Draek struck the ground with his baton. "Change weapons. Declared pairs remain. If you have trained in only one arm, today is when that failure becomes public."
The class crossed between racks. Students chose axes with padded heads, short spears, bucklers, curved wooden blades, and staffs in three lengths. Finn stayed where he was and rolled his shoulders while the spear student exchanged his weapon for a longer shaft. Jack returned his sword carefully. The grip left warmth across his palm after it was gone.
Kai was already at the staff rack. He selected one reaching slightly above his head, rolled it once across his open palm to check the balance, and set the butt beside his foot. Nothing about the movement was beginner's luck.
Jack took the longest staff remaining. It stood a little above him. The ash was smooth where hands had polished it, rougher near both ends, and heavier than a broom handle without becoming unwieldy. He put one hand at its middle and felt the length answer on either side.
His right hand slid down the shaft. His left opened near the lower third, loose enough for the wood to turn and firm enough to arrest it. The butt passed behind his hip and stopped without touching cloth. His rear foot had already turned outward to make room for the return.
This knowledge was no shallower than the sword work. It simply arrived without a hurt boy behind it. A rain-dark yard flickered and vanished. A cane struck the earth beside one of his feet. Someone corrected the width of his grip, but no face remained and no remembered cruelty followed. The staff was still the dead boy's inheritance: years of guards, turns, recoveries, and measuring other bodies by reach. Jack could feel all of it waiting in his hands.
Draek demonstrated a forward guard and a descending strike. Jack followed the instructor's lead hand sliding, the rear hand driving, and the hips completing what the arms began. His first attempt cut down the marked line and stopped at the proper height. The return came around his shoulder in a swift, polished circle that turned several heads and accomplished nothing the shorter recovery would not have done.
Kai's eyebrows rose. "You've done this before."
Jack brought the staff level again. "My hands have."
Draek's baton struck the earth behind Jack's heel. "And somebody taught them to perform for balconies. Shorten the recovery, Drake. Again."
Jack repeated the strike. The old turn tried to open through his shoulder. He cut it in half, let the shaft travel through his rear palm, and brought the opposite end forward without tangling his elbows. His reach gave the weapon room to gather speed, but the useful part was not speed. He could feel both ends at once. The staff drew a line through space, and for the first time since waking in the ditch, the new body's length made the world easier to measure.
By the tenth repetition his shoulders burned. By the twentieth, the shortened return no longer required an argument. He was not learning where the staff belonged. He was learning which parts of an old education served him and which had been built to make an audience admire the boy holding it.
They paired once more. Finn faced the longer spear in the neighboring lane, both knives held close to his body rather than extended toward the point. The other student possessed nearly twice his reach. Finn watched the forward hand instead of the blade.
Kai took guard opposite him. The careless smile returned, but it sat on top of feet placed with exact attention. His brass chain remained straight despite the sweat darkening his vest.
"Touch only," Draek called. "Ribs or shoulder. Three exchanges. If you cannot stop the weapon, you do not deserve to start it."
Kai gave Jack the first opening. It was too broad, the forward shoulder abandoned and the ribs waiting behind an idle staff. The sword drill had taught Jack what happened when he obeyed the first answer placed before him. He turned the offered line aside instead, made Kai close it, and sent the lower end beneath the returning guard. Wood touched Kai's ribs.
For one breath, genuine surprise cleared Kai's face. Then his staff moved and the performance vanished.
Kai caught Jack's shaft near the upper third, rolled it under rather than striking it away, and stepped through the space Jack controlled. Jack let his forward hand release before the bind could become a lever against both wrists. The staff turned through his rear palm. He caught it again below Kai's grip, drove the butt between them, and forced enough distance to bring its full length back into play.
Kai was already turning with him. His upper end slipped over Jack's recovery and touched the point of his shoulder.
The third exchange began before the dust from their feet settled. Jack feinted high, shortened his hands when Kai refused the line, and thrust toward the ribs. Kai folded the strike across his body. Their staffs met once, twice, then separated into opposite turns. Jack's lower cap reached Kai's side at the same moment Kai's came to rest against Jack's shoulder.
Draek's baton struck the crossed space between them. "Double. Both dead if the other end carried steel." He pointed first at Jack. "Shorten the recovery. That flourish was old when your tutor learned it." The baton moved to Kai. "If you disguise another opening as incompetence, you will demonstrate the next sequence against me."
The yard became interested.
Kai bowed his head. "Yes, Master."
No embarrassment entered his voice. No one laughed. Jack saw several students look at Kai as though Draek had confirmed something they already suspected about the popular brass-chain boy. Then the next count began and attention returned to weapons.
They trained until the sun moved behind the curtain wall. Jack's palms reddened. A blister rose beneath his right forefinger and opened during the last set, leaving a bright smear on the staff. He adjusted his grip around it and finished. Finn spent the same final set being driven backward by the spear. Each retreat curved instead of running straight. When the spear committed too far, he crossed both knives over the shaft, carried it past his shoulder, and stepped inside before Draek's baton ended the exchange.
When Draek dismissed them, the rows dissolved toward shade and water. Practice weapons returned to their racks. Jack wiped the blood from his staff with the edge of his towel before setting it back. Finn sat beneath the awning with both knives across his bare thighs. He wiped dust from each blue-bound edge, checked the guards and points, then released the practice bindings under Draek's supervision. The light vanished from the steel. He sheathed both blades, put on his vest, and joined the first group heading toward the showers.
Kai stood at the trough with both forearms under the running spout. Water carried yard dust down his skin and darkened the waistband of his trousers. He had removed his vest to keep it dry and folded it over his bag with the brass chain laid straight across the cloth.
Jack rinsed his palm. The broken blister stung. His ribs hurt where Kai's sword had landed, and dirt remained trapped against his back despite several attempts to brush it away.
"How long have you used a staff?" he asked.
Kai turned one arm beneath the water. "Long enough that Draek has become personally wounded by my attempts at modesty."
That was not an answer, but Jack had spent the day giving people answers built the same way.
Students passed them toward the communal showers. Someone called Kai. He raised a wet hand, promised to catch up, and stayed beside the trough.
Jack watched the water pink briefly around his palm. "Why are you being nice to me?"
Kai reached for his towel. The question stopped him before he touched it.
"I told you why I crossed the room."
"You said I was pretty. That got you to the table. It doesn't explain the paper, the shop, bringing me here, or staying now."
The yard noise continued around them. Staffs knocked into racks. Water struck stone. Kai dried his arms slowly, buying time without pretending otherwise.
"You look at ordinary things before you use them," he said at last. "Doors. Food counters. Your schedule. You watch somebody else, then decide how much of what they did applies to you."
Jack's wet hand closed around the trough edge.
Kai folded the towel once. "You learned to read between breakfast and Voss. Your body knew a sword you didn't want. You wear those emeralds as if someone else chose them and forgot to explain why they matter."
Kai met his eyes. His own were steady now, without the grin that usually made attention easier to bear.
"I don't know what happened to you," he said. "I know you were hurt. I know you are missing pieces, and every time someone helps, you look as though you're waiting to learn the price."
Jack turned toward the water first. It ran over the trough lip and through a channel cut toward the rain trees.
"That still isn't why," Jack said.
"Because somebody should be nice to you." Kai picked up his vest but did not put it on. "Because I like you so far. Because you saw Finn and Edric making room and chose them while everyone else was waiting to be impressed. The fact that you're beautiful got me across the hall. It isn't why I'm still here."
"The attack damaged my memory," Jack said. The admission came quietly, but the yard was emptying and no one stood close enough to hear. "Some things are coming back. Some aren't. I don't remember what people think I should."
Kai lowered his eyes to the folded vest in his hands, giving Jack somewhere else to place his own. "That explains enough for today."
"You're not going to ask what happened?"
"Not while you're standing there like the answer might make me leave."
Kai put on his vest. The fitted cloth settled into place, and he fastened the brass chain without looking down. Then he picked up both bags and held Jack's out by its strap.
The last of the class was disappearing into the communal showers beneath the eastern gallery. Steam drifted through the open upper vents. Jack could already hear too many voices striking tile, water running, bodies crowding a room whose rules everyone else understood.
He had intended to wait until they were gone.
Jack took his bag. "Stay near me in there."
Kai's expression warmed without becoming a joke. "I can do that."
They crossed the yard together. Jack entered the crowded doorway before the fear could choose his room for him.