The Perfect Student

The Assembly opened with a hundred blades leaving their scabbards together.

Mali heard them from the service stair. The sound was beautiful. That was what she would remember later: how easily beauty could pass for evidence.

On the main platform, Deren welcomed the recovery houses. Behind him hung a translucent disc the height of a man, its branching mark shining through the cloth that covered it. Master Vale of Bell House stood beside the release cord.

Vale was young, scarcely older than Mali. His hands were steady. When Deren spoke of ending the age in which people needed heroes to save them, Vale's face filled with such open gratitude that Mali almost missed the needle between his fingers.

It struck the guard beside her in the cheek.

The man sagged without a cry. Mali caught him before he hit the steps. Vale was already coming down the narrow stair, a short blade in his other hand.

“You could have left the lesson,” he said.

Mali laid the guard down. “What did you give him?”

“Mercy. He'll wake.”

He moved like her first instructor at Bell House, but faster. Red Eave's rising cut became a closed-hand strike from another school. His short blade crossed beneath her guard. She jerked back and felt its edge open her sleeve.

The copper loop blackened against her hip.

She threw it at his face. He caught it. For half a breath she had an opening. Then his hand released the copper, his blade turned and he occupied the space she was moving toward.

It was learning her departures as readily as her forms.

Mali retreated down the stairs. Vale followed without hurry. Above them the audience applauded. Through the wall came Sori's voice announcing a change to the performance. Somewhere in the city, a door slammed.

Vale smiled. “They've started without you.”

She struck at his knee. He stepped over the blade and drove his palm into her injured ribs. Breath left her. She folded against the handrail. He placed the point beneath her chin.

“I used to shake so badly I couldn't hold a cup,” he said. “The first lesson gave me my hands back. Why should your fear be more important than mine?”

Mali could smell the oil on his blade.

“It isn't.”

For the first time, he paused.

“Then yield.”

“Let me.”

She opened her sword hand. The weapon fell between the steps. He looked down, instinctively, and she did not strike. She put both palms on the wall behind her and waited.

His point trembled beneath her chin.

“You want me to finish a movement,” she said. “I haven't agreed to one.”

“You agreed when you came.”

“Ask me now.”

Vale's jaw tightened. He could kill her. No principle made her safe. She could see the decision moving across his face, the old terror of a body that would not obey and the newer terror of finding whose will it obeyed instead.

From below came Pell's voice. “Mali. Step left.”

She did not know why. She chose to trust him.

A service shutter fell between them. Vale's blade scored the wall where her throat had been. Pell dragged her through a maintenance opening and caught the shutter's chain with his own arm. Metal crushed the sleeve against his wrist.

Mali took the chain. Together they secured it around a pipe. Vale struck the shutter once, hard enough to dent it, then ran upward.

Pell sat on the floor. “I can't feel my fingers.”

She tore the rest of her spare shirt into a sling. Above them, the applause stopped. The first bell sounded, though the city's bells had no clappers.

“He'll call the sequence early,” she said.

Pell nodded toward the maintenance shaft. “Then don't take the stairs.”

Mali looked up into the dark, narrow climb. Her sword lay beyond the shutter. She left it there.