~Chapter Twenty-Eight: Roth Gerr~

“Today, apprentices, we are going to do something different,” Instructor Tarik said as Eola and the others filed into the classroom across the hall from their professor’s office. Patrice, as usual, yawned and put her head down on her desk. Roth glared daggers at the professor—but Eola was used to it. In the last four days, he’d glared daggers at everyone, including her when they practiced dueling in the hedge maze.

“It has come to my attention—thanks to a colleague of mine—that you, Miss Lemiene, have decided to take part in a noble’s duel of honor.”

Eola flushed, and her fist balled under her desk. They’d had two days of calm—two days without classes. Then, yesterday, she’d caught Catrine whispering with Madame Reyanna before Mana Studies, and, somehow, she’d ended up without a partner for the day’s exercise. She was pretty sure she knew exactly why. What she couldn’t understand was what advantage Catrine hoped to gain from it.

“So, instead of spending this afternoon and evening allowing the four of you to continue with your mostly independent studies, the five of us will be visiting the library. Row Eighteen, Shelf Eight. You will each pick a book from that section, and from that book, you will each find a noble’s duel of honor that went wrong for one or both parties. Tomorrow, you’ll report back on what you learned from your respective duels.”

Patrice whispered something into her arms, and Eola pressed her lips together as she stared at their professor. What was his game? What was he trying to do—intimidate her into surrendering? That wouldn’t work; she’d already committed, and while Eola wasn’t very good at magic, she was very good at following up on her promises. That was the whole reason she was here, at Varin’s Academy, after all. She’d promised her mother—

“I see what you’re doing,” Colin said. “You’re searching for—“

“Shhhh. Let the others figure out the assignment for themselves, Mr. Tremory. Now, off to the library we go. Don’t bother with your gear. It’s a short trip to the second floor, and you’ll be quite safe with me.” Instructor Tarik strode to the door, and Eola followed, shooting Colin a look.

To her annoyance, he didn’t say anything. All he did was mime locking his lips and throwing away the key. Then, of all things, he winked at her.

She rolled her eyes and focused on the library.

Stepping into the library without her gear left Eola feeling…naked. Vulnerable. Exposed and uncomfortable. Her mother’s sword had always been her companion on her trips there, and leaving it and her armor behind left a bad taste in her mouth and a feeling between her shoulders, like a dagger was inches from being jammed into her spine.

She didn’t like it one bit.

But she had to admit that Instructor Tarik’s magic put hers to shame, and this close to the entrance, there wasn’t anything too threatening. She’d be okay. Intellectually, she knew she’d be okay. That didn’t stop her from casting Chromite Cloth on herself, though—or from holding her modified Lighting Wing. Both spells together took almost all of her Mana, but the fact that she could cast them both and still have anything left was a small victory.

The first yellow-scaled trog died to a carelessly-sketched rune as Instructor Tarik turned, glanced at it, and kept walking. Eola blinked once and missed over half of the spell; one second, it was half-sketched, and a moment later, it was filling with Mana. As it fired, she blinked a second time—this time, intentionally.

She’d seen something, and she wanted the afterimage burned into her vision.

But even that didn’t help. Whatever it was she’d seen, it faded from her mind as quickly as it did from her vision, and then it was gone.

Instructor Tarik killed three more trogs on their way to Row Eighteen, Shelf Eight. One of them almost made it within ten feet of the students, and Eola almost used Lighting Wing. Then the professor’s spell fired, the trog flew the other direction, and just like that, it was over.

“Not to worry, Miss Lemiene. I know for a fact that you’re capable of keeping yourself alive on the second floor, but for today, I’d prefer that the four of you focus on the books you’re after, rather than the monsters after you. I’ll keep watch over you as you work. Good luck!”

Eola sighed and winced, then turned down Row Eighteen and followed the others to Shelf Eight. Halfway down, she touched Colin’s shoulder. He jumped. “Y’aer curse you, Eola!”

“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t pull her hand back.

“What do you want?”

“I want to know what you think Instructor Tarik is up to,” Eola said.

Colin glanced over his other shoulder at the professor, whose hands were both in his robes’ pockets as he whistled and looked at the low ceiling. Then he shook his head. “I’ll explain later. Just…make good choices about the books you grab. This isn’t a casual research trip, and it’s not him trying to persuade you to back down, either. It’s something else.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yes, it’s fine. Everything’s just fine.”

“Good,” Colin said.

Eola narrowed her eyes. “It is good.”

It didn’t feel good, though. Eola didn’t much enjoy being left on the outside, looking in.

Shelf Eight was packed with books. The Dozen Duels of Lady d’Mauf was a thin red book with a hand-written title across its leather. Dueling Records of Cape Fortune was thicker—in fact, it was one of the thickest books Eola had ever seen. She pulled it off the shelf and cracked its pages. “There’ve got to be a dozen duels on each page. Are these all noble duels?”

Patrice glanced at it, then shook her head. “Cape Fortune, so…no. It’s on the continent’s southern tip. Lots of sea traffic, lots of money, but not many nobles. Keep looking.”

Roth kept walking all the way to Shelf Ten, then pushed a rolling ladder over to the edge of Shelf Eight and started climbing. Eola ignored him and focused on the books at eye height. There were plenty.

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The Dishonored Period: Dueling and Nobility in Eastgate, a black book with dozens of dog-eared pages, looked solid, but after a quick look-through, Eola handed it off to Patrice.

Conversations with the Archmage was less about dueling and more about a series of interviews with an aged man who claimed to have won several hundred honor duels in his life. Eola skimmed the first one, then re-shelved the book. “Not believable.”

Palladium Blade, by Erren Foles, looked more promising than either of the others. It was a hand-sized pocket guide to common dueling techniques, supposedly from the fifty-eighth century post-Y’aer. Of course, even that age was suspect, but the techniques inside were—

“That one, Miss Lemiene?” Instructor Tarik asked from the main aisle. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with actual duels.”

“All the same, sir, I’m going to check it out.” Eola pocketed the small book and kept searching.

It took almost half an hour of digging before the four apprentices found books they each thought would work. Patrice had stuck with The Dishonored Period, sitting against Shelf One and closing her eyes moments after she got it. Eola was mostly sure the noble girl wasn’t actually asleep, but she couldn’t prove it. Colin cradled a massive tome, Craghold Honor Wars, Sixty-Fourth Century Post-Y’aer, in his hands. Roth had pocketed his book the moment he pulled it off the top shelf. He hadn’t said anything to anyone about what he had, and Eola hadn’t bothered asking.

And as for Eola herself? She’d thought long and hard about the task ahead of her, and she’d picked Highstone Duels.