The evening before everything else on the Martial Arts Practical Session began, Kaleran was still signing for the cohort.
Five folders sat stacked at his elbow, each with its schedules, its evaluator rosters, and an extract waiting on a signature nobody else in the Academy was allowed to give. His tea gone cold two documents ago, he drank it anyway, out of respect for the cup.
The lamps had burned down to the dull gold they reached around the sixth bell, and the parchment looked warmer than it had any right to. That morning he had promised himself forty minutes.
'Five commoners. Every problem lands on me twice.'
He set the quill down to flex his hand, and someone knocked.
A single knock, from someone whose habits Kaleran knew.
"Come in."
Elias Selcourt came in alone.
There was no clerk behind him now. And Sera apparently did not follow him either, which she would have done most of the time Elias visited Kaleran.
