On good mornings, the Emberward stank of oil, ash, and promise. Most days it managed only two of the three.
Soren lay on a cot so clean he'd spent the night counting its stitches, checking for traps. No one had tried to garrote him, not even the pillow.
Sunrise filtered through a grid of glass blocks inset above the door, dotting the floor and wall with identical squares of watery gold.
He rolled onto his back, waited for the familiar pressure of a dorm-mate's elbow in the ribs or the stinking foot dangling over his throat. Nothing.
Only the weight of a blanket that could have fetched half a week's pay on the old block.
Soren stretched, toes brushing the footboard, and debated: steal the impossible-riches bedding for later, or admit he'd grown soft and keep it.
In the end he settled for folding the blanket at the foot, which seemed polite and also just enough like theft to amuse him.
Outside, the Emberward yawned to life.
He laced boots, shrugged the new tunic over yesterday's shirt, scarlet at the cuffs, Velrane's new color, already stained by the damp ink of its own insignia.
The badge at the breast was a sunburst, cheaper than gold but laquered so hard it reflected his own face: narrow, brow furrowed, mouth tensed between grin and scold.
He followed the noise to the mess, a hall that had been chiseled straight from the cliff's edge.
Spread across the central table, a mix of faces he'd only half-memorized: some from drills, others from the yard, all of them likely to outlive him.
The morning's porridge steamed in a vat at the center, beside bricks of cheese and torn bread still warm at the core.
He recognized Lyrik on sight, the only recruit motivated enough to have combed his hair, but too slouched in his seat to keep it from falling over one eye.
Lyrik caught Soren watching and raised a spoon, lazy salute.
"Gutterboy arrives," he announced, perfectly audible to the table.
Soren ignored it, ladled porridge into a bowl, then wedged himself between two strangers at the bench nearest the fire.
A girl two seats down glanced over, quick, then resumed eating with her head lowered.
Soren saw the set of her jaw: determined, maybe angry, maybe just used to holding on through the first bite so no one could steal from her bowl.
Opposite, a tank-shaped recruit methodically sawed slices from the cheese, stacking them onto bread until gravity staged a rebellion. He looked at Soren with something between challenge and invitation.
"You're with Velrane now," the tank said. "Dane."
"Soren." He tore a bit of bread, focused on the chew: salty, dense, exactly the kind he'd miss if he ever left.
Lyrik rapped the table with his knuckles, striving for attention. "You hear the new rumor?" he said, not needing an answer.
"They're bringing in a master from Blackridge for next week's duel. Means the Houses are watching, means somebody's getting promoted whether they want it or not."
"Or demoted," added Dane, picking cheese from his teeth. "Depends if you're lucky. Or slow."
Soren let the words roll past, watching the others. The girl with the held-tight mouth caught him at it.
"Mira," she said. Her voice barely crested above the din, but her eyes were clear: blue-tinged, the color of snow just before it kills you.
He nodded, then, after an awkward span, "First day?"
She snorted, actually snorted, like it offended her to be asked. "I was here before you. Doesn't mean I have to like it."
Soren smiled at the bowl, which didn't require conversation back.
The table's mood ticked upward as porridge gave way to bread-fights and chore lists. Lyrik collected gossip from each end, annotating every rivalry with a stage-whispered aside.
Mira ate with one hand under the table, like she expected someone to break the other. Dane's appetite outlasted the first round of bread, and required a second.
Soren only spoke when forced, and then only in answers short enough to be mistaken for mistakes. Even that earned a laugh out of Lyrik, who repeated Soren's rejoinders as if they were puns.
By the end, Soren caught himself relaxing. The strangeness of noble-born camaraderie, how it tilted between derision and invitation, made him uneasy, but at least no one here expected him to kneel.
–
They assembled outside, boots crunching the court's rim of black ice. The wind sheared off the cliff and flung itself through the archways, chilling every joint to the marrow.
Soren scanned the yard's geometry: the wide open, ringed by three stories of glass and stone, shadowed in the crook of the main tower.
From above, Veyr Velrane leaned across a balcony, flanked by two men with the posture and hair of genuine tutors. Soren didn't look up more than once; he knew better than to meet a noble's eye before being invited.
They started, as always, with footwork. The master in charge, a stiff-backed ex-knight with the beard trimmed to a fatal angle, whistled them into lines, then into pairs. "Rhythm, not speed. If I see even one of you skipping a beat, you'll spend the afternoon sanding the floor with your face."
Partners cycled. Soren drew Mira first. She moved like the last day of winter: tight, full of pent-up violence, but with a precision that impressed him.
Her boots found the marks with microsecond accuracy. "You're making me look bad," she muttered, only half annoyed.
"They'll kill you if you make them look worse," he replied, barely moving his lips.
She smirked. "Don't worry. You can take the blame next time."
They switched off. Lyrik, next; he fought every instruction, improvising so often Soren wondered how he was still alive.
"Too slow," said Lyrik, then, "No, too fast!" as Soren switched tempo mid-step, forcing him to backpedal and catch himself. By the third round, Lyrik was winded and Soren unmarked, and the instructors took note.
The next drill was more showy: staves, point-control, make the opponent miss, then punish the miss. Soren liked this one. The memory overlay, the one he'd trained with since the yard in Ashgard, took over, mapping every flaw in his partner's form before it could be corrected.
Each time a staff swept at his neck or knee, Soren slipped or redirected, sometimes not even looking at the attack.
Valenna's lessons ran under his skin like an old, secret pulse. He wondered, idly, if any of the others felt the world slow down when the violence started.
Most of them just looked confused.
By noon, they'd moved on to sparring. Short rounds, scored not by touches but by how well you could keep your blade and fingers intact.
Soren won the first, lost the second, drew the third. "Lucky," muttered his opponent, Dane, this time, whose swings were clumsy but almost terminally surefooted.
In the background, he heard Lyrik whispering to Mira: "He never sweats. Even when he loses."
"Maybe he's already dead," Mira replied, quiet.
It didn't bother Soren, but he played up the joke for their sake, rolling his eyes at every win and feigning fatigue when the swordmaster drifted nearby.
He knew better than to show his best work unless someone paid for it in advance.
Two hours later, they ended with a formation drill, group against group. The best teams, Soren saw, were ones that ignored the hierarchy and just tried not to trip themselves.
He let Mira and Lyrik run it, following their lead, positioning himself in the slot most likely to be ignored by the instructor.
Even so, the swordmaster clocked him twice, the second time with a hail-mary punch to the ribs that Soren recognized as an old city trick.
When the horn sounded for dismissal, he kept to the back of the cluster. The air in his lungs felt more his than it had in days.
–
The yard didn't clear so much as disperse, the recruits peeling off for chores or food or the luxury of being away from authority.
Soren picked at his sleeve, working the dampness out, then noticed a page, barely past childhood, face too round for the livery, waiting by the door. The boy, when he realized Soren had noticed, scurried up the rest of the way.
"You're Soren Thorne?" the page asked.
"Depending on who's asking."
The kid went red, stammered, produced a folded slip sealed with the house sunburst. Soren broke it without thinking. Two lines, inked in the same hand as the previous night's map:
Report to the Solar at evening bell.
—Veyr
He pocketed the note.
From the other side of the yard, Lyrik shouted, "Uh-oh! Summoned already, are we?"
Mira said, "Tell the Young Master we want better bread."
Dane just shrugged, more interested in the cheese ration he'd scored.
Soren didn't react, but tucked the note deeper anyway.
"Interest usually means extra work," he said, not to anyone in particular.
The page seemed pleased that his task was complete, and jogged off to the kitchens, voice trailing with the hope of hot food, or maybe just a moment of not being noticed.
Soren hung back, arms loose at his sides, then drifted to the edge of the yard. The last light of afternoon burned off the cliff and caught the glass in the tower, reflecting a perfect, razor line across the old practice posts.
He watched it for a time, saw the way the sun picked out every chip and scar left by those before him. He let the memory run.
"Practice," Valenna had always told him. But today, the practice felt less like a sentence, and more like a start.
He drew the line in the air, once, then again. The line felt real.
But Soren stood for a while longer, just in case it needed to be.
–
On the upper balcony, Veyr leaned forward, watching Soren's outline form and reform against the yard's clutter.
His mouth quirked, not quite a smile. Then, hands behind his back, he waited for the evening bell to see what would walk through the Solar's door.