2

The two of them registered at the Solmaere desk and then set off in search of an inn for a breakfast. The inn stood two streets down from the university gate and was called Tev’s.

Teram, a broad-shouldered human of fifty, brought them stew and bread without being asked. He had been serving examination candidates for forty years and knew what they needed before they had sense enough to ask for it. His forefather, Tev, had founded the inn and for generations the family had fed travelers; the art of reading faces had descended to him with the rest.

“Your first time,” he leaned slightly upon the table.

Rhovyn gave him a look which plainly conveyed that everyone knew the examination did not allow a second attempt and that therefore all of them were there for the first time. He found it faintly amusing that a man of Teram’s years, living so near the academy, should ask so foolish a question.

“Eat and do not think. The ones who spend the hour running the examination through their heads are always the ones who walk in already weary.” Teram went back to serve other students.

Erynae glanced at Rhovyn. He was already doing the very thing Teram had warned against. She could see it in the set of his jaw; she had known that jaw since she was eight years old, yet she said nothing and ate her stew. She had made an art of not saying what she thought where Rhovyn was concerned.

The city was full of unfamiliar faces. Bram Laebaedore, Human man, seventeen of age had never before been to Aldaene, and he was failing miserably to conceal it. The city was enormous, loud, and smelt of seven different things at once. He had been walking for twenty minutes in search of the university gate, which the letter had assured him was visible from anywhere in the lower city. He questioned the definition of visibility of people who had written it and walked straight into someone while turning left at a crossing.

“Watch...”

A halfling woman stood outside a bakery with a basket over one arm. She frowned at him, but his face gave him away and her expression softened.

“Lost?” she asked.

“The university gate, which way?” Bram asked.

“Follow the white coats. Senior students running errands; they will all be heading back soon.” She gave him another look. “Infantry.”

“Aye. How did you...”

“Good shoulders, boots that have earned their living.” She pressed a warm bread roll into his hand. “Eat. You have not broken your fast this morning.”

He had not, he had been too anxious to eat anything at all.

“Thank you,” he said and meant it with his whole heart.

“Pass the examination,” she turned back to her shopping.

He ate the roll, followed the white coats up the hill and thought of his mother's question when he informed her of his decision, she had loved him too much to speak truth, so she had instead asked whether he was certain. He had told her no, but that he meant to try all the same. He still meant it, more now than when he had first said it.

Bram Laebaedore.
Infantry Candidate 312, Balyti, Miranda.

He read the card given to him by the registration desk after signing in, noted the grey trim and took his place in line. He looked at the twelve hundred people about him, all of whom seemed far more confident than he felt. He decided they are all pretending and that thought improved his spirits considerably.

The Grand Courtyard was the oldest place in the university. The stone there was darker than anywhere else in Aethoria, four hundred years of weather and footsteps worn into the paving in a patina no scrubbing could ever lift. On three sides, the walls were the original cliff-face; on the fourth, the court opened towards the city below and Aldaene stretched beyond the low wall in the pale light of morning.

“This is a strange feeling,” Rhovyn stood amongst the blue group and looked out over the court.

“It is meant to be,” Erynae replied beside him.

He let the answer sit and turned his attention to the divisions of each stream. Grey was for infantry, green for medicine, blue for cavalry, and gold for archers and it was upon the gold that his gaze halted. She stood at the very edge of it with her back turned to him, the amber scales upon her neck and forearms were catching the morning light in fragments.

“The Draconian girl,” Erynae followed his gaze.

“She is brave, or else a fool for it," he shrugged.

“She did not come lightly to that gate," Erynae looked at Ryska once more. "Whatever brought her here, it cost her dearly, you can see it in the way she stands.”

“And how does she stand?”

Erynae opened her mouth to answer, but the sudden hush that passed over the court stilled her.

Vidhya Cordaelae the Ashgrave had appeared upon the platform at the northern end of the court. He was a human man of sixty, young yet, by the reckoning of a world where centuries made a life, but there was nothing young about the way he carried himself.

Broad through the shoulders, built like a soldier because he had never wholly ceased to be one. His face was rough-hewn in a way sixty years shouldn't have earned him, weathered more by campaign than by time, a thin white scar cut along the left side of his jaw that he'd never bothered to hide and never explained.

Handsome still, in that severe, unyielding way certain soldiers become handsome, silence settled around him the way it does around authority of a man who had won four wars and lost only one, who had done in six decades what most did not manage in six centuries, and who was still, all these years later, spoken of in hushed voices whenever someone said the word.

Navale Bay.

“Four hundred and twelve years ago, the first class of Aethoria stood in this court. Forty-three students, most of them human, for the Charter was new and the world had not yet seen fit to trust it," he let his gaze pass over the court, over twelve hundred faces from six continents and eight races. "The second class brought seventy students of eight species and that number has not fallen since."

“The Charter is simple and it is absolute," said he. "Within these walls, you are not soldiers, not subjects, not the face of your race, your continent, nor of whatever troubles lie beyond these gates. You are students, shielded by a Charter older than this principality, older than every name and banner that shall one day attempt to tell you that the Charter bends," he clasped his hands behind his back. “It does not. Should any man tell you otherwise, my door stands open in the north wing.”