The world started to tunnel, and the memory, Valenna's own, the first time she'd sworn a life-oath, crashed in on him like a fever: the crowd, the applause, the moment she realized she'd never be on the ground again.
The instructor stepped between them, muttered, "Enough." He caught Soren's gaze, the look long and unsparing, then turned to Tavren and offered a hand.
Tavren ignored it, wiped the snot from his nose, and stood on his own. They both limped out of the pit.
From the benches, Rhain sat watching, his own bandage vivid against the pallor of his skin. He gave Soren a nod, solemn as a burial.
Soren made it almost to the barracks before the embarrassment turned corrosive. He pushed past the other boys, through the resin stink of the corridor, didn't stop until the stink of it faded.
Ducking behind the shed, he pressed his face to the rough stone, letting the chill gnaw at the flush in his skin. Seen.
Not just for what he was, a gutter rat lucky enough to swing a stick, but for the exact manner in which he didn't belong.
It wasn't even the instructor's stare that stung the worst, or the knowledge that Rhain might carry the scar for weeks; it was Tavren, lurking by the end of the yard with that same clever look, as if he already knew exactly what Soren had done.
He pressed his thumb into the palm, hard enough that the edge of the hidden shard bit through callus and into quick.
For a second, Soren imagined driving it deeper, splitting skin, letting the blood smear out and dissolve the memory. Instead, he wiped his hand on the black of his coat and tried to breathe.
"Where'd you learn it?"
The instructor's voice, again, puncturing the skull like a steel spike. Not a question meant for answering, not when the answer wouldn't fit the world.
He had no script; the lie came out thin as gruel. "I just moved."
That night, every muscle twitched with the urge to wriggle out of his own body.
He ate only enough to kill the taste of old bread, ignored the background thrum of Glen's curses, and lay on the cot with arms folded tight, waiting for sleep. It hid from him.
All he got was the odd half-dream: a flicker of blue-white banners, the pressure of ceremonial cloth around the neck, and the memory of that sword's, no, her, presence steering his limbs with the certainty of a wolf among sheep.
Hours passed. He lurched up, sat on the edge of the cot, and fished the rag-wrapped shard out. The ghost waited, silent and patient as rot.
"You nearly broke his neck," Soren muttered, keeping the words behind his teeth in case anyone listened.
The reply was not a word but a sensation, the tightness at the back of his jaw, the ache under the shoulder blade where the memory had planted itself too deep to dislodge.
"You asked," Valenna pulsed through him. "You asked to learn. I warned you what the edge would feel like on your skin."
He gripped the fragment tighter. "Can you turn it off?"
A long silence. "No," the voice said, at last almost gentle. "But I can show you how to choose when to cut."
He snorted, one dry, involuntary laugh. "That's nothing like a power," he said. "That's just madness, wrapped up fancy."
"Most power is," Valenna said, and the truth of it settled like a stone in his chest.
Next morning, the yard was bitter with a slick layer of black ice. The instructor met them early, cane in one hand, a length of real steel in the other. He pointed at Soren, then at Rhain, and barked: "You're first."
Soren did as told. The two drifted to the center. Rhain's face was icy-pale but composure locked it in place; he nodded at Soren, then set his weight, low and careful.
Soren's own sword felt heavier than before, as if the thing resented being used for violence done without purpose. He waited for the instructor to call the round, but Rhain didn't wait; he stepped forward, blade angled toward Soren's heart, and hissed, "Don't fake it this time."
Soren obliged. The memory overlay was there, crisp as yesterday, Valenna's technique, but his own panic underneath. The first two exchanges were nothing: a test, the voices of the other boys fading as the world narrowed to the ring, the cold, and the possibility of failure.
The third time, Soren parried, then shifted the blade in a motion so fast he barely recognized it.
The sword popped free of his hand, landing in the snow, but the move had done what it needed, Rhain's guard lowered, his balance ruined.
Soren stopped seeing the yard. He saw, instead, the memory of a dozen duels that weren't his. The Doctrine of Angles. The way a true swordsman read not the arm, but the line from the ankle to the tip of the nose.
"Let him win," Valenna whispered. "Not the match. The lesson."
He let Rhain close. The noble boy hesitated, unsure if it was a trick. Soren used the pause, closed distance, and in a single motion, used the old street trick: left arm up, then a twist of the hip, and a leverage against Rhain's wrist that sent both blades tumbling.
They hit the ground together. Not romantic, not even fair, but enough for the instructor to sneer and mark the round as a tie.
After, Rhain glared. "You could have dropped me flat. Why didn't you?"
Soren shrugged. "Better to bleed a little now."
Rhain wiped the snot and smiled, a bare suggestion of gratitude in the upward twitch of his mouth.
The day passed in a blur of drills and bruises. Soren tried to use less and less of the memory, more of himself.
But it was hard work, always knowing that a better, crueller move lay waiting one layer down. By the third set, his muscles had gone soupy, and he limped back to the barracks, where Tavren waited, grinning as always.
"You're getting good, Soren," Tavren said, knowing it would bother him. "You'll be the first gutterboy to make House without bribing a judge."
Soren wanted to hate him, but only managed a laugh. "And you'll be the first to get thrown out for biting."
"Not a crime if you don't get caught," Tavren replied, then handed him a heel of bread ripped from the middle of the communal loaf.
Soren took it. Chewed. The world didn't taste like victory, but it didn't taste like losing, either.
He went to bed early. Dreamed, again, of the sword and its memory.
This time, though, he dreamed of standing in a corridor lined with banners, and as he walked, each flag changed: blue, to a colorless white, then to a shade he couldn't name at all.
At the end of the corridor waited a door, but he woke before he could reach it.
—
Weeks blizzarded by, every day a layer on the heap of bruises and half-mended skin. Soren was moved from drills to choresc hauling water, splitting kindling, ferrying buckets of ash from the smithy to the waste pit.
Through all of it, the memory ticked away, less intrusive now, a background hum he could almost ignore when the physical work got hard enough.
He liked those hours best: shoveling, sweating, the numbness in his hands erasing everything the city or Valenna tried to write onto him.
Some days, Kaelrin appeared at the edge of the commons, waving or, more often, watching from the shadow of the wall, face unreadable.
Soren ignored him, but always felt the prickle of being observed.
By the time the final Choosing was announced, only fourteen boys remained.
They were weighed, measured, and made to stand in the blue-lit corridor while the judges circled, picking favorites by the shape of a jaw or the width of a wrist.
Soren stood as instructed, shoulders back, face blank, and tried not to think about the fact that Valenna's memory had gone quiet for two whole days. Not a word, not a chiding, not even the suggestion of a sneer.
He wondered if she'd left, or if something worse was waiting.
His turn came. They called his name, "Soren, gutter side, bring your blade", and he followed, out into a courtyard lined with spidery white trees.
A man in priest's dress waited there, but the face was a surprise: the same judge from months before, the one with river-glass eyes and the broken nose.
The man nodded. "You advanced," he said. "I'd say you surprised me, but to be honest, I bet the pool on you."
Soren looked at him, unsure if it was a joke.
The judge smiled, or something like it. "This is the end of the choosing. You did well. Now you get to see what it was for."
He handed Soren a slip of parchment, sealed not with wax, but with a strip of blue linen sewn through the fibers.
The sign of House Ashgard, full member, not just conscript.
Soren waited for the other shoe, but the judge only shook his head. "It'll get harder. But you're used to that."
A nod sent him back to the barracks.
Inside, Tavren was already mid-celebration, packing his bag with anything not nailed down. "We're real now," he said, voice barely softened by the cut on his lip.
"We get coats, real ones, and pay, and maybe even wine if we don't screw it."
Soren let him talk, then rolled the parchment in his hands, feeling the slit of blue fabric between his fingers.
He sat on the edge of the cot, looked out the window at the night's colorless sky, and whispered, "You there?"
No answer. Only the echo of his own voice in the stillness.
He tucked the slip into his shirt, then lay down, hands folded. Maybe she was gone, or maybe the next time she spoke, it would mean something awful.
He almost hoped for it.
The city never let you keep anything you didn't need, and Soren had stopped needing the voice. He'd learned to make do with just the memory.
But as he drifted off, he felt, faint and easy, the pulse of the shard through the bones of his wrist, colder and more constant than ever before.