Morning found Dalliance Rather still too weak to walk. His father had roughly unloaded him into his shack, placed his belongings into his hands, and stumped off to the house. Dalliance hadn't dared darken the door at dinner ti, either. When morning ca, his legs were weak. He tried to stand, but a wave of agony and dizziness sent him collapsing back onto his cot. He wasn't going to be able to walk to school. He wondered if he could even walk as far as the wagon.
The realization was a cold dread. If he couldn't get to the school wagon, he couldn't get to class. If he couldn't get to class, he'd fall behind. Forget rigging the final exam results; he'd be disqualified from his own inability to take the test. All of the sacrifices and pain and ticulous planning were about to be undone. He was going to be defeated by a few hundred yards of dirt between his room and the road.
He watched dawn break through his small window, listened for his brothers' footsteps, hoping they would think to help him. But as the light grew, he saw them heading out to the fields with his father. No help there, then. He prayed but received no comfort. As the day began, he imagined he could see the dust from Miss Wimple's cart rolling along behind the treeline, his body vibrating with stress and tension. He'd lost everything. Having co so far, for it to co to this. He looked at his collection of chapbooks idly, but had no interest.
He was trimming his fingernails with the knife his uncle had given him when there ca a sharp rap of knuckles on his shack door. He'd been wondering what Da was building up to—would he be beaten for his defiance? But when the door opened, it was Servility Immaculate's neat boots that stepped through the portal. The boy's eyebrows were near his hairline as he looked around Dalliance's shack. "That's a lot of books," he said.
Dalliance . . . this hadn't been anywhere within the possibility space that he had imagined. "What are you doing here?"
"Get your things," said Sterling from the door. "You'll be late."
Dalliance offered Servility a chapbook. He took it happily; it seed only polite. The boys got their shoulders under his arms, Sterling taking his books and Servility taking his pack. They were halfway to the road when Cadence's horse pulled up next to them in a cloud of dust.
"What do you think you're doing on my land?" Cadence said harshly.
"We're taking this in shifts," Servility said. "For your son."
"My father was extrely clear," said Sterling. "Dalliance saved my life. There's an honor debt between House Worth and your son. So we'll be getting him to school every day, sir."
Cadence's mouth thinned into an irritated line, but he made no move to stop the boys as they hauled Dalliance the rest of the way. The wagon wasn't there yet.
"I couldn't quite put my finger on it," Sterling said suddenly. "My father's retainers, so of them . . . so of them do possess such skills themselves. I should have put two and two together. You’re not a [Pupil] at all."
Dalliance didn't comnt.
"And so I thought, 'No, that can't be true. He's in the top five, but . . . '" Sterling looked at Dalliance with a new and unwelco expression. The faint contempt he always had in his eyes was still there, mixed with a sliver of grudging respect. "You're whip-smart, aren't you?" the knight's son said, his voice laced with suspicion. "But you need this," and he shook the textbook for emphasis, "just like Servility here. You need the notes. You need the reference."
Dalliance's mouth felt dry.
"So," Sterling continued, holding out his hand for and receiving Dalliance's pack from Servility, who looked like he wished he could be anywhere but here. "I think, by weight of the evidence . . . " He pulled out a sheaf of graded tests from the pack. Each was covered in Mister Best's precise, neat markings. At the top of each page, in undeniable red ink, was the letter 'A'.
"It's , you, Charity, and Effluvia," Sterling said, his voice flat. Not an accusation, just a statent of fact. "I dared to dream there were only two serious rivals for the three slots."
"The debt is for the hunt," Sterling told him, his voice level. "It doesn't cover the scholarship." The board, he trailed off, gesturing, "is set differently now."
"You saved my life. You'll get to school. But you kicked . Humiliated . And I had to say thank you for it. So, this is for that," he said, throwing the books and notes into the stream. "Today, I shall see that both debts are seen to."
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Dalliance watched his notes float off down the stream, waterlog and sink, dissolving into pulpy bits of paper. He tried not to cry. Missing class would have been better.
When Miss Wimple's cart caught up, Sterling and Immaculate placed him in the back and walked a little distance away from the rest of the group, which, for its part, stared at them sidelong and murmured about what their purpose might be. Miss Wimple, though clearly aware of Dalliance's mood, allowed him to make the ride in silence.
Upon their arrival at school, Sterling wasted no ti putting word into deed. The last students were still settling into their desks, and Mister Best was writing on the chalkboard, when Sterling stood up.
The boy's voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the quiet murmur of the classroom like a blade. "Just so you all know," he said, his gaze sweeping over the other competitors before landing on Dalliance. "Our rival here isn’t a pupil."
The classroom went quiet. All eyes turned to Dalliance.
"Perfect grades," Sterling pointed out. "Social skills." He turned his gaze to the rest of the class, his voice taking on a tone of mocking self-deprecation. "Imagine my embarrassnt," he said, the words dripping with bitterness. "Talking down to my intellectual better all this ti. I can morize. He can't, and has stayed up with us anyway."
He looked to Charity, who was watching the scene with an alert but unsurprised mien. "Charity, of course, is unsurprised," he said. "It seems so of us were already aware of the ga being played."
He glanced to Effluvia, his social equal. She smirked. Dalliance thought she looked almost predatory, but Sterling misread it. "Effluvia looks shocked," he said, almost conversationally. "And intrigued . . . "
" . . . you know how it is," she interrupted him, her voice a contented drawl, looking at Dalliance with amusent. "He's not just a poor, struggling student. He's a scheming poor, struggling student with a secret. And secrets . . . well, a girl has to have a hobby."
Sterling frowned, his confidence pricked. "I just thought everyone should know."
Morality smiled smugly from her desk. "So of us already did," she said loftily.
Dalliance's face was burning. Sterling looked frustrated, his gaze flicking from Charity to Effluvia, to Morality, then to Earnest, who was smirking openly. "Of course, you knew," Sterling comnted. "The smartest man in the room, tutoring you. That's why you're keeping up." He shook his head. The show was over. "Thank you for indulging , Mister Best," he said.
"I had been growing tired," said Mister Best, his tone dry as dust, "of watching a perfectly good student pretend he couldn't talk circles around the rest of you."
Sterling shot a final, ugly, thoughtful expression toward Dalliance. The ga had changed.
The walk ho felt like a long and drawn-out humiliation. Sterling's every action highlighted Dalliance's weakness. His books were gone. His secrets were exposed.
Cadence t them at the edge of the property, his face a thundercloud as he took in the sight of his maid son being carried ho like a sack of al by the children of his betters.
"Get off my land," Cadence snarled at Sterling.
Sterling didn't move. "A word, Goodman Rather," he said. "About your son."
Cadence shoved Dalliance onward. As he stumbled away, Dalliance saw Sterling speaking, low and intensely, to Cadence for a long, tense minute. Dalliance couldn't hear the words, but he saw the effect they had on his father's stiffening back.
Dalliance slumped toward his shack, a knot of ice forming in his stomach. This wasn't going anywhere good.
When his father ca to get him for dinner, they didn't go to the house, but to the barn.
"There’s sothing not everyone knows about wizards," Cadence said. "A wizard is only as good as his spellcraft. In fact, without spells, most wizards are nothing. And you cannot cast more than the simplest of spells by rote chanting; you must also shape the waves of the magic with gestures." He gestured, vaguely magical-looking signs.
"I see," Dalliance nodded, unsure where this was going.
"So," said Cadence, picking up an axe, "I don’t need your sister to force these [Wizard] dreams to bed."
Dalliance scread, but there was nothing he could do. His father took him by the wrist, dragged him to the block.
It was sharp, and sudden, and the pain was as startling as the action was barbaric.
"This gives plenty of opportunity," Cadence said, "for further punishnt, while still leaving you capable of swinging an axe and carrying on the Rather na."
Dalliance was able to process what had happened as he watched his father pick up the resultant pieces: the pinky and ring fingers from his left hand.
Cadence pocketed them, then shook his head sadly, as though he was the one being wronged. "I had hoped I wouldn’t have to resort to this," he said, ignoring his son screaming and writhing on the floor.
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