Chapter 8. Sad

Gressil began, and the plaza fell into a strange rhythm.

“Aaren of House Corven.” The boy stepped forward, took his card, and Gressil read the score. “Seventeen.”

Damn, nice. Good for him. Aaren walked back to his place with quiet relief.

“Aerin of House Solenne.” A tall girl with the same crest as Rael on her collar. “Twenty-three.” Strong. As expected of a Solenne, I supposed. She returned without expression.

“Alba of House Venn.”

“Six.”

The silence afterward was different. Alba stood very still for a second, and then her Shadow stepped forward, took her gently by the elbow, and guided her toward the eastern gate. Alba didn’t say anything. Her boots made soft sounds on the stone as she walked, and I watched her go until I realized watching wasn’t something I should be doing, and I looked forward again.

The names kept coming. An uneven rhythm built itself up in the plaza, worse than the silence of the exam hall had been, because now there was nothing clever you could do. You either had the number or you didn’t.

A few more candidates were quietly guided toward the eastern gate, one after another, while others walked back to their places with scores that let them stay.

Then, “Beren of House Talse.”

“Thirty.”

Everyone had different variations of shock and surprise.

Thirty? Thirty was perfect! Somewhere behind me, I heard a soft gasp, and a murmur started to move through the crowd before Gressil raised his eyes from the paper and the murmur went away.

Beren himself just tilted his head, accepted his card, and walked back to his place. If he hadn’t expected it, he did a good job of hiding it.

The calling continued.

Another twenty. A twelve. A nineteen. A nine, gone. A twenty-five. A second perfect thirty, this one from a red haired girl whose name I didn’t catch, and the plaza rippled with a louder murmur this time, because two perfect scores in twenty names seemed to be an unusual thing, and everyone in the plaza seemed to understand that, including me, while my heart rate climbed with each new announcement.

I shifted my weight without meaning to. My hand found the strap of my bag and pressed into the leather as I forced it to let go, and it returned there a moment later without my permission.

“Tomas of House Draeven.”

My head snapped up.

Tomas stepped forward and took the card from Gressil’s hand, and Gressil read his score.

“Eight.”

Tomas didn’t react. He stood there for half a second longer than anyone else had, as though waiting for someone to correct the number, and then he turned without a word and walked toward the eastern gate. His Shadow fell in behind him, and they were gone before I could fully understand what I’d just seen.

I couldn’t move. I’d spoken to him and was genuinely looking forward to spending more time with him and the others, and now he was walking out of the gate and I would probably never see him again, and I had no framework for what to do with that feeling.

The names didn’t stop, though.

Another twenty-one. Another eighteen. An eleven, barely. A six, gone.

The rhythm was chewing through candidates at a pace that left no room between them to breathe, and my anxiety had become a physical thing, sitting in my throat and pressing against the back of my teeth.

I tried to run through my own answers in my head. I couldn’t remember them cleanly anymore. I tried to calculate how many people had been called and lost count twice. My palms were damp.

Then Gressil called two names at once.

“Erden of House Marren. Faelo of House Jarn.”

The two of them stepped forward together and stopped side by side in front of the balcony. Gressil lowered the paper and looked at them over his spectacles.

“Your fourth-section answers were identical. Word for word. Both of you have been scored at zero and are permanently disqualified from future examinations.”

Erden stared at the ground while Faelo turned to look at him with an expression somewhere between rage and terror, but Erden didn’t look up, and whatever Faelo wanted to say died in his throat.

Two Shadows stepped forward from the second line and guided them toward the eastern gate, and one of them was already starting to cry, though I couldn’t tell from where I stood which one it was.

A few names later, someone retched behind me.

I didn’t turn around, but I heard it clearly: a wet, involuntary sound, followed by a small gasp from the candidate next to him, and then silence.

Gressil didn’t pause. The calling continued. When the boy’s name was eventually read out, Hans of House Oll, he didn’t step forward at first, and then he did, slowly, his Shadow half-supporting him. His score came back at seven, and he walked toward the eastern gate with his head down and the front of his shirt stained.

I adjusted my stance and closed my eyes, the tension was becoming unbearable.

What if—

“Howl of House Aridis.”

Ah. That’s me, that’s my name. Oh no.

Murmurs started before I’d taken a step.

“Aridis?”

“Did he say Aridis?”

“That’s his name?”

The whispering rippled through the plaza in every direction, and I felt a hundred pairs of eyes pivot toward me at once. I straightened my back, let my face do nothing, and walked forward through a silence that had sharpened itself around me.

Gressil watched me come.

I stopped in front of him. He looked at me over the rims of his spectacles for a moment, and I could see him tracking my face, my posture, the set of my shoulders… then he handed me the card.

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I took it, but did not look at it.

“Thirty,” Gressil said.

YES! OH GOD, YES!

The plaza exhaled as one. All of them releasing a breath I hadn’t realized they’d been holding, and then a beat of silence, and then the whispering started again, faster and sharper, layered with fresh weight.

I bowed slightly, turned, and walked back to my place with the card in my hand and my face doing nothing as I did not let any part of me show what I was actually feeling.

The rest of my group passed.

Metys Ozen got a thirty, which she received with a small, stunned smile. Rael Solenne got a thirty as well, accepted it without surprise, and walked back to his place. Eydric Vael got a twenty-five, which was better than most. Cael got a seventeen. Dessa Vashren got a twenty-two.

None of them were sent to the eastern gate, and I was more relieved about that than I’d been about my own score, which was a feeling I had not expected to have this morning.

Gressil rolled the paper back into its scroll and looked out over what was left of us. “The practical examination will commence following a one-hour recess. Details will be provided at that time. You are dismissed until then.”

He turned and walked back into the building with Veyra and Bryce behind him, and the stone panels ground shut, and the second they sealed, the plaza erupted.

A boy two rows behind me actually shouted and someone else was laughing while Metys had both hands pressed over her face and was saying “oh my god oh my god oh my god” into her palms.

Rael was simply smiling and even Eydric exhaled loud enough for me to hear it from where I stood. Around the plaza there were hugs happening, and people clapping each other on the back, and candidates collapsing onto benches with their heads in their hands. I kept my face level, my posture correct, my breathing even, exactly as I’d been taught, and inside my chest there was a small, uncontrollable thing that kept trying to climb up into my throat and turn itself into a sound, but I was not going to let it, because I was House Aridis and we did not falter and we also did not, sadly, whoop.

I was still standing in my spot when a boy came up to me.

He was maybe a year older, with a narrow face and a house crest I didn’t recognize embroidered on his collar in green thread. He stopped about three feet away and looked at me.