Two days later.
Nobody stood at the gate anymore except an instructor, hands behind his back, watching the path, ready to swing the gate shut on whoever came late.
The tournament had ended, and the term was winding down behind it.
"There's still nobody standing in for our class," Tomas said, catching up to Vel from behind.
"I don't think anyone can. Not on this notice."
A few steps went by.
"Good thing they waived the Final Paper Test."
For some it was a gift. For others it was a sentence. Whatever they had made of the term, there was nothing left to change it now.
There was one caveat. Show up for attendance, and the rest of the term was free time.
Tomas walked with that a while before he found something else.
"You know what's weirder? Nobody's said a word to me since the accounting." He glanced back the way they had come. "They don't usually stop there."
"Congratulations." Vel turned to him with a smile. "Either they see you as a normal student now, or they're too afraid of you to say anything."
"I doubt the latter." Tomas's voice climbed on the next part. "That doesn't bother you?"
Then it dropped away in a long exhale.
Vel shrugged.
They went through the administration section to reach it. Clerks behind the counters, instructors moving between the record rooms with ledgers under their arms, more of them in the corridor than students. When a face turned their way it held a second or two, then went back to whatever it had been doing.
"You know..." Tomas started, then trailed off.
Vel turned to look at him.
"I used to think if they ever called me here..."
"Was to tell me 'Don't come back next year'."
Tomas turned back with a grin, and Vel watched it sit there for a breath.
"They can still do that," he answered, flat as anything.
The grin faded from Tomas.
Vel took a second to catch up to it.
Half a laugh got out of him, and an instructor down the corridor half turned.
"Come on." He nudged him along. "Maybe she just wants a few things before the term ends."
Then he kept walking.
The room they had been given was not the Archmagister's office. It was one of the hosting lounges, cushioned benches set around a low table, vases and portraits along the wall, the kind of room kept for talking things through in comfort.
Vel had worked out why before he was fully through the door.
Team Atherwind was already seated.
Prince Eldrin gave him the same smile as ever. The harp against his shoulder played two notes, close enough to a welcome that it might have been meant as one.
Lysithea's eyes came off him and found Tomas, then went past both of them to the door, the way anyone looks at a door when someone is still due to come through it.
Kein turned his head and watched them come the rest of the way in. Nothing in his face said he was surprised.
The benches left no question about where Vel and Tomas were meant to sit. Across the low table, facing the other three.
The last time both teams had stood together like this, they had been fighting.
Vel took the seat and found he had nothing.
It was the strangest silence he had ever sat in. They were not enemies, but not close enough to call friends. A casual greeting was out of the question. He could have managed the formal one instead, the address a noble would have reached for without thinking, but he had never been one and saw no reason to start now.
Before the quiet could set into something worse, the door opened behind them.
Archmagister Elyssia came through it without slowing, robes gathering at the turn.
"Good, everyone's here."
She settled into the armchair at the head of the low table, between the two of them and the three across.
Her eyes went once from one side to the other, and the light smile she came in with stayed where it was even as her brow drew in.
"What's with the silence?"
The five of them looked around at one another.
"After everything this room has been through." Her eyes went around the low table and stopped on the empty stretch of bench. "Including the one who isn't."
Nobody moved.
"You will be sitting across from one another a great deal from here on. I suggest you make a start on it."
The prince nodded twice.
"Archmagister." Lysithea straightened where she sat. "Would you be so good as to explain what you mean by that?"
"I will." Elyssia settled back into the armchair. "Though before we come to it, let us speak of the behemoth in the room."
"The Ternion Tournament."
They waited for the rest of it.
"The board and I have discussed alternatives," she went on. "None of them satisfactory."
She leaned forward slightly.
"So I propose we let the five of you decide."
"A rematch?" Fairwind had it out before anyone else could speak.
"Would it suffice?" Elyssia went on as though she had expected the word. "Every strategy you held back for the final is known now. Are you confident you could win a match where both hands are already open?"
"Not to mention Velarian's team is down a member. For a reason everyone in this room already knows."
Vel's hand curled into a fist on his lap.
Across the table, Kein drew a breath that ran a little too long.
The question was aimed at Fairwind alone.
"Before any of you decide, let me ask you something first."
"What do you think the purpose of the tournament is?"
She wasn't waiting for an answer.
"A bragging right? Privilege enough to make the rest of your years here an easy one?"
"What are you proposing, Archmagister?"
Kein's tone was level, carrying only the certainty that none of hers had been an answer.
The harp gave a low note behind him, asking the same thing.
"Would defeating your peers, in a place made safe for you, weigh heavier than..." Elyssia paused there. "...say, escaping two highly skilled assassins? Or holding your ground against a force from beyond this realm?"
"What you need is not to defeat one another. It is to grow past what you are now."
Lysithea drew a breath and leaned back deeper into the bench.
Kein sat with it. His hand moved to his chin and rested there.
Tomas showed no change at all. Maybe he had worked out what Elyssia was saying back on the arena floor, and had been carrying it since.
The tournament was the practice.
"Now, to answer Miss Fairwind's question."
"What I am about to tell you, no other student knows yet."
She waited until every one of them was looking at her.
"After this term, we are reforming the class structure. There will be no more standard, no more elite, and no more Clouded."
"What?"
Lysithea was halfway off the bench before she caught herself.
"This year has proven the structure obsolete. Being elite does not make a student better than a standard one." Elyssia's eyes went across the table. "Miss Celia proved that. So did you, Miss Fairwind. Both of you did."
"And with what we now know about unstable attunement, it is best we rebuild how students are measured altogether."
"That will upset a number of the board." She continued. "Unless..."
"Unless we, the students, agree to it."
Kein had finished it for her without moving.
"Specifically the five of you, who happened to be the finalists. Whatever you decide, the rest of the students will not question."
They looked to their own first, then across the table.
"Miss Fairwind. If you are still disappointed." Elyssia let the corner of her mouth go. "I have another piece of news for you."
"After the term break, all of you will be joining a special class."
"Which is what the tournament was really for."
"I will be teaching it myself. So will masters from beyond this kingdom."
Vel spoke for the first time since he had sat down.
"A special class? Why would another kingdom want anything to do with our schooling?"
The answer came to him while the question was still in the air.
"Could it be they also..."
Elyssia inclined her head.
"As sharp as ever. Yes. The class will not be for this Academy alone. It will be held jointly, with the others."
Tomas worked through it aloud.
"So that would include the Elven from the Therian Empire. And the Beastkin from Zunese."
"And the scalefolk along the Veneran coast," Elyssia added, "though I have had no final word from them yet. They appear to be occupied with the flooding."
Kein waited until she had finished.
"Archmagister. May I ask why one and all have come to this resolution?"
Elyssia did not answer at once. Whatever light had been in her face went out of it.
"Something is stirring in the dark, past the reach of our understanding. And I do not mean the cult alone."
"When the like of that arena comes again, someone needs to be ready."
"The Church will say a portal is the Guild's business. The Crown will say a cult is the Church's. And by the time any of them arrive, it is already too late."
"What we lack are people who move first."
"A force that stands for the people, and the people alone."
She looked at Eldrin before she said the rest.
"Even if..." She let it come. "...it might upset the institutions."
She's building her own force.
Something outside the factions entirely.
She let it hang a moment longer. Then she clapped her hands once and lifted her voice.
"So. How about we call it a draw and announce both teams the winners?"
Nobody took it up straight away. Vel let the question sit until he was sure of his own answer.
"No objection from me."
"Same here."
Kein had it out almost on top of him.
Maybe that's the first time we've agreed on anything this fast.
The harp strings vibrated, and the resonance shaped itself into a single word.
"Agree."
Tomas gave his nod after them.
Fairwind swiped the closed fan across her palm before she spoke.
"This decision won't please everyone."
Elyssia held her gaze on Fairwind, the smile already returned to her face, and she knew what was coming.
"Their unpleasantness is far less dangerous than what is coming."
More students meant more variables, more potential allies and rivals.
But she's right.
If the factions put their own interests first...
They'd be too blind to see who the real enemies are.
"Well then. It's decided."
Elyssia's eyes sparkled with amusement.
"I will announce it on the day of the ceremony. Until then, the lot of you can get back to whatever you were doing."
Vel looked across at Kein's bench, then to Tomas.
Tomas gave him a shrug. It was the kind that left the next move to him.
He got up first. A nod for the Archmagister, then a smaller one toward the bench across from him. His gaze did not stay long enough to see how they took it.
Then he left.
Outside, the corridor was as it had been.
In the same class as the people I spent the whole year fighting.
Where does anyone start with that.
Talking already seems hard enough.
"—that's a problem."
"What?"
Tomas had said something and Vel had caught none of it.
"I said, how are we supposed to work together when we're not even in the same class." Tomas caught himself. "Not class-class. I mean... all of them outrank me on any scale you could name."
"And the history between you and Atherwind..."
Vel did not look over.
"Let's just say we see things on two different spectrums."
Except the two keep landing in the same place lately.
And neither of us is ready to admit it.
The class, the joint training, whatever came after the break. All of it pointed forward, and moving with it felt wrong.
Not while Celia's still in that ice.
I need to start working on it. And the only way to understand what I did is to go back to what helped me do it.
Zephyr.
The arena.