Chapter 35. Revenge

The crowd had formed a circle around them by the time the second punch landed, and by the third, the younger boy had stopped trying to shield his face and started fighting back.

He was not good at it. His arms were too slow, his stance was wrong, and his mana flared in uneven bursts that told me he was channelling on panic rather than training.

But he was fighting, which meant Kyren was no longer beating a boy on the ground; he was in a fight with a mage who was getting desperate enough to use magic in the middle of a staging area full of two thousand students and their shadows.

Kyren seemed to welcome the escalation. A spell was already forming in his off hand, orange and bright, Vashren fire, and the younger boy’s hands were crackling with something unstable and blue that I did not recognise, and the thirty-pace radius around the two of them was about to become a very bad place to be standing.

Then a woman dropped out of the sky.

She landed between them with one foot forward, her dark robes barely moving from the impact, and her right hand caught Kyren’s wrist while her left caught the younger boy’s collar, and both of them stopped.

The spell in Kyren’s hand died immediately, and the blue crackling in the younger boy’s fingers went out as if someone had closed a valve on it.

That was impressive, you needed an exceptional control over mana as well as a much bigger pool to cancel another mage’s spell like this.

Which is why it did not surprise me when the crowd gasped. Several people said a name at the same time, hushed and sharp.

“Professor Ashara.“

“The Scarlet Steel.“

Oh, I knew that name. I studied its bearer. Ashara Vel, the woman who had held the Greymarch Pass alone against a barbarian incursion for eleven hours while the Crown’s forces regrouped behind her, and who had, six years later, dismantled a rogue Vashren war cell in the southern provinces with four students and no backup.

She had been offered a seat on the King’s Council twice and had turned it down both times because, as the story went, she found politics less interesting than teaching.

She was shorter than I had expected. The red hair was darker than the illustrations made it, closer to copper than scarlet, falling in heavy waves past her shoulders. Her face had the sort of stillness to it that reminded me of Bellos.

She released both of them at the same time, making Kyren stumble back a step and the younger boy collapse onto his knees.

“Explain.”

Four academy guards were already pushing through the crowd behind her, taking positions at the edges of the circle, their hands on their weapons.

Kyren straightened his robe and pointed at the younger boy without looking at him.

“This boy stole my pendant. A family heirloom, sealed to my bloodline. I cast a tracking glyph and found it in his trunk. Open it. You will find it inside.”

The younger boy looked up from his knees. His right eye was already swelling shut, his nose was bent at an angle it should not have been bent at, and blood was running freely from both nostrils down the front of his tunic.

He was crying.

“I didn’t— I didn’t take anything, Professor, I swear, I don’t even know who he is, I just got here, my trunk has been on the cart since—”

“Open the trunk,” Kyren said.

One of the guards crouched beside the trunk near the bollard and undid the clasp. He reached inside, moved a few items aside, and pulled out a silver medallion on a short chain. The metal pulsed faintly with a residual glow from Kyren’s tracking glyph.

“See?! That is mine,” Kyren said. “My grandmother’s seal! Vashren-marked, blood-bound. Ask any appraiser in this kingdom whose it is!”

The younger boy stared at the medallion with his one working eye.

“I don’t— that’s not— I have never seen that in my life, I swear, Professor, someone must have— I don’t know how it—”

“Enough.”

Professor Ashara took the medallion from the guard’s hand, turned it once, examined the seal, and handed it back to the guard without comment. Then she looked down at the boy on his knees.

“If you took this item, say so now. A confession at this stage will be treated as a disciplinary matter and handled within the academy. If you deny it and a formal investigation finds otherwise, you will lose your place at Sartheon. There will be no appeal. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

“I didn’t take it!” The words came out cracked and wet. “Professor, please, I swear on my family’s name, I have never seen that pendant before in my life, I don’t know how it got in my trunk, I don’t know, I—”

“He is lying,” Kyren said, flatly.

“I am not!“

Professor Ashara’s eyes remained on the boy for another long second, measuring him, before she finally turned.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Or perhaps not. At present, I know only that the pendant was found in his trunk. I do not yet know how it came to be there.”

Kyren’s jaw tightened. “It is blood-bound to my famil!. My tracking glyph led straight to him.”

“And that is evidence,” Ashara said. “Not a verdict.”

She turned to the guards.

“Take the pendant into academy custody. Record the names, Houses, and statements of both students. Open a formal inquiry immediately. I want the luggage handled, the route of arrival checked, and every witness in this circle identified before the hour is out.”

The younger boy looked up at her as if he was not sure he had heard correctly.

Ashara’s gaze shifted to him.

“You are now under investigation, you will continue your normal schedule and remain available to the academy at all times until this matter is resolved. You will not leave campus without permission, or interfere with witnesses. You will also not touch your belongings until they have been examined. Is that clear?”

“Y-yes, Professor.”

Her gaze shifted to Kyren.

“As for you: twenty points forfeited for public violence, and forty more for abusive conduct and the use of insulting language toward a fellow student and for bypassing established channels of grievance. You will also complete forty hours of disciplinary assignment before year’s end. Fail, and I will recommend your expulsion.”

“But professor he stole my p—”

Professor Ashara stared at him without further word, and he shut it.

“Now,” she said, turning back to the guards, “carry out my orders and fetch a healer immediately for the student.”

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“H-he didn’t take it!”

My voice came out louder than I meant it to. It came out loud enough that Ashara stopped mid-sentence, Kyren turned his head, the guards turned their heads, the younger boy turned his one working eye toward me, and every student in the circle who had been holding their breath released it in a single collective exhale.

Rael’s hand found my elbow.

“Hey,” he murmured, close enough that only I could hear. “What are you doing, Aridis?“

Professor Ashara turned to face me fully. Her eyes moved down from my face to my boots and back up again, unhurried.

“Aridis, is it?”

Murmurs started before the second syllable had left her mouth. I could feel them moving through the crowd behind me and around me. I did not need to hear the individual voices to know what they were saying, because it was always the same: Aridis this, Axiom that, gasps, stares, whispers aimed at the back of my head by people who thought I could not feel them.

I was starting to wonder whether I would ever walk into a room without it rearranging itself around me, and for someone so uncomfortable with this kind of attention, I seemed to have a genuine talent for ending up in the centre of it.

That thought did not make me feel better.

“I asked you a question, student.”

“Oh— yes. Yes, my lady. My name is Howl Aridis, I—”

“We are at school, student. You may address me by my title.”

My face went hot.

“Yes, Professor. Sorry, Professor.”

Rael stepped forward beside me, his voice louder.

“Professor Ashara, please forgive him, Howl was actually in conversation with us when the incident occurred, and I believe he simply spoke louder than he—”

“I think Aridis can speak for himself, don’t you think, Solenne?”

Rael’s mouth closed.

“…Right, Professor.”