The opponent in my plan was being very considerate.
He attacked where I expected, kept moving after I broke the first spell, and left me time to reach the edge of the court. If I turned the page, he let me surrender before anything else hit me.
I had drawn his path so neatly that it took a while to notice.
The sheet lay beside the account of the trainer. One brief interruption, a hand that shook afterward, most of an afternoon lost. Three days later the finger still hurt if I forgot where to put it around the pen. None of that appeared in the tidy line carrying me across the court.
I put another sheet beside it and began with the things I could expect of myself.
A short contact. Perhaps. If I reached the current, if it was weak enough, if circulation steadied while someone approached me with an attack instead of leaving it politely between two brass studs.
I stopped writing. There was very little room left for the rest of the fight.
In the game, Cedric's losing exchanges had looked recoverable until he insisted on continuing them. I remembered the turning point: a brief opening after the opponent committed. The animation gave him enough room to break the edge of the incoming attack and step inside it. He could have disengaged there. Usually he tried to make the other boy regret putting him in that position.
I had wanted the opening without the rest of Cedric's decision. On paper that seemed easy.
I stood beside the desk and set one foot back. No sword, no circulation. Just the turn I remembered, kept small enough to fit between the chair and the rug's edge.
My right heel caught the rug.
I reset it and tried more slowly. That worked, until I looked over my shoulder to find where I would be going. The movement pulled beneath my ribs. I stood still with my left hand on the desk, waiting for it to pass.
I had put the retreat after the impressive part, as if the retreat required whatever I had left over.
When I sat again, I crossed out the whole sequence. It involved interrupting the first strike, stepping inside, presenting a threat and disengaging. The little drawn blade had made it look like one action. I did not own a blade, did not know what the examination would issue, and could not afford to discover the weight of it halfway through that turn.
I tore off that part of the page. I kept the rest, because the opening still mattered. It might give me time to move away instead of time to do something worth watching.
The problem was what happened when the opponent declined to supply it.
I sketched the court I remembered, then drew a broken line around its boundary. I couldn't remember whether stepping across counted as surrender, a penalty or nothing at all. There had been announcements before the fights. I had skipped some of them.
No amount of sitting here would make the words come back accurately.
I left a question beside the line. What counted as yielding? Who had to acknowledge it? Could the examiner halt a fight before someone fell? I would ask before entering, in front of whoever was expected to stop us. The thought of asking was unpleasant. It was also much less unpleasant than discovering that a raised hand meant nothing.
For the examiner I made a mark outside the court, then moved it. I didn't know where that person would stand either.
If I could see them, I could call to them. If I couldn't, I needed space to turn without putting my back to an attack. If the opponent followed me, the retreat had to leave room for another step. If they stayed where they were, I didn't have to go back and make them fight me.
That last possibility was so unlike Cedric that I nearly dismissed it. I put it on the page anyway.
A knock interrupted me while I was trying to decide what losing would cost after the fight. I covered the court sketch with the supply receipt I had retrieved yesterday.
The older attendant entered alone.
"His Grace will see you in the practice gallery tomorrow at nine, my lord. For the demonstration."
I looked at the edge of the sheet beneath the receipt.
Tomorrow made the academy seem indecently far away.
"Nine in the morning?"
"Yes, my lord."
"The upper gallery?"
"It will be prepared there." He remained beside the door. "Is there a message you wish returned?"
I had spent the afternoon arranging a fight I could lose. The Duke wasn't going to give me a referee I could appeal to, or a painted line I could step across and declare the matter finished.
In one of the routes I remembered, an unsatisfactory assessment had led to what the house called a bloodline correction. The Ledger had attached a fatality slot to that assessment. I couldn't remember an account of Cedric coming back afterward.
"The small current trainer," I said. "The brass one in the covered court. Ask whether it can be brought up."
The attendant waited while I considered asking for a chair.
"That is the one I've been using."
"I'll send the request to the household office."
"Will there be anything else?"
"For the demonstration, my lord? I haven't been told."
I could hear another question coming. What exactly would the Duke expect? How long would he watch? Would saying that I had finished end anything? The attendant didn't have those answers merely because I wanted somebody to have them.
"Tell me when they've answered about the trainer."
"Of course."
He went out. I uncovered the sketch and looked at the space outside the court, where I'd kept moving the examiner.
I hadn't solved the examination. I had found several places where I would need another person's answer. That could wait until I reached the academy. Tomorrow's room was upstairs.
I put the two preparations on opposite sides of the desk. The examination sheet kept its questions. For the gallery I had one result worth attempting again, and one thing I must not do: hold on because someone was watching.
There was no point exhausting the hand to reassure myself tonight. The last successful contact was still the last one. I left it that way.
I went to the wardrobe and took out a clean coat. The lining caught on the raised finger through the glove; I changed hands before drawing it from the hanger. On the chair I laid the formal pair, then the strip of linen I had been wearing beneath the softer leather.
Together they made a thickness that would be obvious when I moved. Apart, the formal glove would rub. I tried it once, stopped before forcing the cuff down and laid the linen beside it.
When the attendant returned to ask about supper, there was still no answer about the apparatus.
"Breakfast at seven tomorrow," I told him. "And come for me at a quarter to nine."
He repeated the times. I asked him to bring supper to the study, moved the examination pages out of the place where the tray would go, and sat down before he came back.