Chapter 323: The Trials Begin (4).

The announcement came on a Wednesday, in the middle of a footwork session, delivered by Commander Strut himself rather than through the usual channel of Vane simply telling them what was happening next.

Strut did not appear in the arena often. When he did, the room changed — not dramatically, not in any way that would have been obvious to someone who had never been in the room before, but the quality of attention shifted, the way the quality of attention shifted in any space when the person with the most authority in it entered. Vane registered this with a slight adjustment of his posture that was the closest thing to deference Nero had ever seen from him, and then folded his arms and stood to the side, which was all the instruction the candidates needed to stop what they were doing and stand at rest.

Strut surveyed the twelve of them without any particular expression. He was carrying a document, which he did not look at.

“The Trials begin in six weeks,” he said. “You received this information now because the Order representatives have confirmed their attendance schedules and the logistics of the Assessment stage have been finalised. Liedenstorm will receive candidates from three other garrisons in addition to those training here — you will not know the full size of the candidate pool until you are assembled on the first day.” He paused, and the pause was the kind that was not for effect but for accuracy, the pause of a man who says exactly what he intends to say and nothing adjacent to it. “Six weeks is not a long time. It is the time you have. I would suggest using it accordingly.”

He looked at them for another moment, and then he looked at Vane with the particular quality of a man transferring authority back to where it belongs, and left.

The door closed.

Vane looked at the candidates for a moment. Several of them were already doing the calculation visibly — six weeks, measured against what they currently were and what they needed to be — and the calculations were producing different results in different faces. Corvin’s expression had not changed, which Nero was beginning to understand meant either that nothing surprised Corvin or that Corvin had already known this and had been adjusting his approach to the sessions accordingly for longer than any of them realised. Garet’s face had the particular quality of someone who has received information that is simultaneously alarming and clarifying, the way a definite deadline clarifies things that ambiguity had kept soft.

Sable was looking at the floor. Not with distress, Nero thought — with the focused inward quality of someone running through a private accounting.

Edran’s jaw had tightened by a fraction.

“Footwork,” Vane said, with exactly the inflection he always used, and the session resumed.

—

Nero found Arthur that evening, which was not difficult — Arthur had been attending the Red House’s secondary training yard three evenings a week for the past fortnight, running his own drills with the particular discipline of someone who understood that cohort sessions were the floor and not the ceiling. He was working through a blade form when Nero arrived, and he completed it before acknowledging him, which was the kind of thing that could have been dismissive and wasn’t, because it was simply Arthur’s version of the same completeness he applied to everything.

“Six weeks,” Nero said.

Arthur sheathed the sword. “I know.” He picked up a cloth from the yard’s low wall and wiped his hands. “My father had word from the Order representatives two days ago. I’ve been waiting to see when they’d tell the cohorts.” He looked at Nero steadily. “How is your cohort responding?”

“Differently,” Nero said. “Corvin knew. Garet is recalibrating. Sable went quiet, which she mostly is anyway.”

“Corvin Vael,” Arthur said, and the name had in it the specific quality of information being retrieved and assessed simultaneously. “House Vael. His father was Crimson Crucible — retired now, injury. Third generation candidate.” He folded the cloth. “He’ll be the one to watch from your cohort in the Assessment. Possibly in the Gauntlet.”

“He’s the best fighter in the room by some distance,” Nero said.

“I know. I’ve seen him in the yard.” Arthur looked across the training ground with the even gaze of someone who catalogued things for reasons that were usually practical. “The question is whether being the best fighter in the room translates to being the best candidate in the field, and that question has a different answer for different people.” He looked back at Nero. “What about Jacob?”

“I haven’t spoken to him today.”

“I have. He’s been expecting this for longer than either of us.” Arthur set the cloth down. “He wants to meet. The three of us, before the week ends. He has things he wants to go over.”

“What kind of things?”

“The kind he’ll tell us when we’re all in the same room,” Arthur said, which was not evasion but simply accuracy — Arthur relaying Jacob’s preference, not exercising one of his own. He picked up the blade again, not to resume drilling but with the absent habit of someone who thought better with weight in their hand. “Six weeks is enough to mean something. It’s not enough to transform anything. Whatever you are walking into that Assessment as, that is what you’re going in as — the question is how well you know yourself before it starts.”

Nero thought about Vane’s voice saying *the habits are load-bearing*, and about the shoulder rotation he was still fighting, and about the quarter-second in Corvin’s shoulder that he had not yet found a use for.

“I know myself well enough,” he said.

Arthur looked at him for a moment with the expression he wore when he was deciding whether to push further on something and had decided against it. “Good,” he said.

He set the blade against the wall and looked out at the training yard, which was empty now except for the two of them and the torches burning in their sconces along the outer wall. Six weeks, in the abstract, sounded like a reasonable amount of time. Standing in a yard at the end of an evening, looking at the dark past the torchlight, it sounded like something else. Nero had lived long enough in conditions where time was the resource you had least of and controlled least to understand that six weeks was not the same thing to everyone counting it, and that the difference lay entirely in what you did with the counting.

He had been doing this long before he had a word for it. Planning. Running the accounting of what was needed against what was currently available and calculating the gap. It was the same instinct that had kept him alive in Gor after the city’s foundations cracked, and on the road south, and in the Thornwood, and in the dark underneath it. The scale here was different. The instinct was exactly the same.

“Thursday evening,” Arthur said. “Lyon’s old preparation room — Jacob has the key from somewhere, I didn’t ask how.” A pause. “Bring something to drink. Jacob has opinions about preparation that tend to be easier to hear with a glass in your hand.”

Nero almost smiled. “I’ll see what I can find.”

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