The clinic woke soft. Light pooled on the plank floor, the kettle breathed, and the river's slow noise threaded through the shutters. Rem lay still until his heartbeat stopped trying to sprint out of his chest. The fatigue was honest. The ache along his knuckles and shoulders told him yesterday had happened and he had survived it. The heat in his chest was back too, dimmer than the arena, an ember that did not know if it wanted to warm or burn.
He rolled to sitting and reached behind him for the dagger as a test. The blade came up a handspan before gravity reminded him who was in charge. He grunted, set both feet, and lifted the rest of the way. Not graceful. Acceptable. He slid it into the sheath at his lower back and felt his stance settle around the weight like a truth that refused to move.
Downstairs, Livesey had already arranged the morning into obedience. Two bowls. One pot. Steam. The doctor looked like a storm that had learned manners.
"You look less like a ghost," Livesey said, ladling stew.
"Ghosts don't creak this much," Rem said. He sat and began the slow business of convincing food to become strength.
They ate without hurry. The clinic's shelves watched. The old clock clicked to itself. Rem's mind kept circling the same quiet thought and finding no new angle. He put the spoon down.
"You went out yesterday," he said. "You did not tell me where."
"Old patients," Livesey said. The words were casual. His eyes were not. "Boring people. Nothing you would like."
"Mm."
"Before you interrogate me," Livesey added mildly, "I have a request. Run the counter this morning. I need to be out again. I will not be long."
"I can," Rem said. "I wasn't planning to start a war before lunch."
"Good. Save it for an afternoon," Livesey said, almost smiling.
A knock came. Not the apologetic tap of a patient. A firm, professional rap that had practice behind it.
Livesey set the ladle down. "Open," he called.
The door swung inward to admit Cecil in a dark coat, polished boots, and the uncomplicated presence of someone who never had to wonder if he was allowed where he was. He closed the door behind him, set his hand briefly to his chest in greeting, and took in the room, the shelves, the boy with the blade.
"Hunter Avern," he said, and let the title live for a second. "Doctor."
"Cecil," Livesey said. "You remember how chairs work, I trust."
Cecil's mouth twitched. He stayed standing. "I will not take much of your morning." His attention returned to Rem, then settled evenly between them. "First, formalities. The Association has completed registration. Your trial badge becomes a legal license at the desk when you sign. You are now in the books of the capital as a D-rank hunter. Congratulations."
Rem nodded. The word hunter still fit strangely in his ear. He did not hate how it felt.
"Second," Cecil said, and the room adjusted to the way he said it. "There is a sponsorship. The Royal Academy has agreed to admit you into the final-year combat track, effective at the start of the next block, under the patronage of House Verran."
Rem blinked once. "The Academy."
"Yes."
"I do not belong there."
"You did not belong in the Coliseum either," Cecil said, pleasantly. "And yet the floor remembers you."
Livesey poured another spoon of stew as if the conversation were about weather. Rem watched his face and found nothing he could use.
"Why," Rem asked.
"Several reasons," Cecil said. "Some of them I will say, others you can guess. The Academy's final year is where licensed candidates refine what keeps them alive. You lack instruction in aura. You will receive it. You will be evaluated in team dynamics so you stop trying to solve problems by headbutting the horizon. Your… anomaly will be supervised. People who are paid to worry about such things will do so. Also, the Duke thinks the city is safer if you are sharpened properly."
Rem folded his arms. "And if I refuse."
"Then you refuse," Cecil said. "You are a hunter, not conscript. But your life will not be easier for the refusal. There will be eyes, with or without the Academy's walls to concentrate them. I prefer the eyes I know."
Livesey broke the quiet with a soft clink of spoon on bowl. "You said you wanted to be strong," he told Rem, not looking up. "Strong does not happen only by punching stone in my yard. Go learn their rules before their rules decide what to do with you."
Rem stared at the tabletop. He was already good at not flinching when a weapon came for his face. This felt like a different kind of impact. The words the guard had thrown at him outside the Association circled back, stubborn as a fly.
Your blade is heavy. Your reason is not.
"What do they want from me," Rem asked.
"Survival," Cecil said. "Competence. A lack of scandal. You are not compelled to bow. You will be expected to show up on time with your shirt on and your blade sheathed, learn without breaking your instructors, and not put anyone through a wall unless you truly mean it."
Rem snorted despite himself.
Cecil allowed the smile its full shape. "Sign at the Association. There will be a packet at the desk. You will receive a schedule, a uniform you are not required to wear outside campus, and a list of prohibited behaviors. Consider all the interesting ones on the list. Avoid them. Classes begin in three days."
"Three days," Rem said.
"You will want to finish whatever things you pretend you have to finish," Cecil said. He inclined his head to Livesey. "Doctor."
"Try not to teach him your worst habits," Livesey said.
"I would not dare," Cecil said. He turned back to Rem and lifted his hand, palm open. "You do not belong there. Good. Belonging is overrated."
Rem didn't take the hand, but he did nod. Cecil left it at that, stepped to the door, and let himself out into the city as if it had been waiting for him.
The room breathed. Rem looked down at his fingers and found them curled tight. He opened them.
"You arranged this," he said.
Livesey took a thoughtful sip of tea. "I arranged that your name would be considered by people who do not usually consider names like yours."
"So yes."
"So yes."
Rem waited for anger and found annoyance instead, and under that something embarrassingly close to relief.
"I am not a showpiece," he said.
"Then do not act like one," Livesey said. "Go in to learn. Come out standing. If someone tries to pin you to a board with long needles, I will introduce him to malpractice."
Rem huffed laughter. "It will be crowded."
"Yes," Livesey said. "That is what halls are for."
Rem pushed back his chair. "Fine. I will sign. I want a condition."
"State it."
"If I go, I train. I hunt. I graduate. No parades. No speeches. I am not there to bow."
Livesey finally looked at him properly, the exact kind of pride Rem had noticed earlier sitting in the doctor's eyes like a light behind glass. "Then do that."
The clinic found its normal again. Rem washed bowls. Livesey wrote a note in his tight script. A woman came for tincture. Rem measured and wrapped and discovered his hands had learned steadiness even when his head did not have steady thoughts to offer.
When the traffic thinned, Livesey closed the ledger and checked the clock. "I will be out," he said. "Try not to sell the furniture."
"I will keep all the chairs," Rem said.
"Generous," Livesey said, and left.
Rem stayed at the counter, the badge heavy in one pocket, the letter of yesterday that he had not been allowed to read heavy in his imagination. He took the dagger off his belt and set it on the counter. The wood creaked under it. He put his palm on the hilt and then took it away. He did not trust what his hand wanted.
He needed air.
He hung the sign, locked the door, and walked. The city did what cities do in late morning, hustling without hurrying. He crossed the market where vendors pretended not to recognize him and then did, smiled like they were proud of something they had no part in, and gave him a bruised apple anyway. He ate it to be polite.
At the Association, the clerk behind the counter looked up, saw his face, and reached without asking to the shelf where thick packets sit for people whose lives have changed. She set his down, stamped the license in the neat way of people born to stamp, and pushed a quill.
"Sign there," she said. "And there. Congratulations, Hunter Avern. Try not to die."
He signed. He took the packet. On the way out he looked at the notice board and saw nothing that wanted him today. He climbed the broad steps and sat on the top one and opened the packet.
Schedule. Map. Rules that sounded like they had been written by someone who didn't like surprises. Uniform request form with a blank for height and weight that made him want to put "heavy." He did not.
He folded the papers back into their envelope and watched the street while thinking about nothing. It lasted half a minute.
If I go, I will not bow.
Fine. But he would have to learn when to lower his head enough to avoid losing it. He would have to learn how to carry the blade through rooms where blades were social, not steel. He would have to meet instructors who had not spent their lives forgiving him, and students who would despise him for how he was made and how he was not.
He felt the ember in his chest wake and press the ribs from within, not rage this time, not hunger. Direction.
He walked home slow. He read the rules twice and then handed the packet to Livesey without comment. The doctor flipped through, nodded at a line, and made a sound Rem could not catalog.
"What," Rem said.
"Nothing," Livesey said. "Only the note that says you are to report to the Yard early for a private assessment. Interesting."
"How early."
"Earlier than you prefer."
Rem grunted. "Of course."
Late afternoon found him behind the clinic again in the narrow yard where Livesey had chalked rectangles onto packed dirt and called them wisdom. He set the dagger on his back until the strap bit and then moved. Slow, careful. The blade argued with him at each pivot. He learned to answer with hips instead of back. He learned to let the weight finish speaking before he spoke again. Sweat found his eyes. He blinked it away and did not stop.
He was on his third set when footsteps paused at the far end of the alley. He did not turn. The shoes belonged to someone who had been taught to walk on stone without telling it. He finished the set, rested the blade on the ground, and looked.
Cecil leaned in the mouth of the alley as if it were a doorway he was thinking about buying. "Good," he said, as if Rem had gotten an answer right. "I came to deliver a message before you hear it from a messenger who likes the sound of his own voice."
"That would be a crime," Rem said.
"The Duke's sponsorship has cleared with the Board," Cecil said. "There was grumbling. There is always grumbling. It is done. One more thing. You will be assigned a liaison in the final-year cohort. Someone who knows the place and will not let you break the wrong stair with that blade. Try to behave."
"Who."
"Miss Evelyn Verran," Cecil said.
Rem kept his face still until he remembered he did not owe it to Cecil. Then he let his mouth twitch. "That seems unwise."
"For whom," Cecil asked.
"Yes," Rem said.
"Think of it as mutual insurance," Cecil said. He nodded toward the blade. "Train. Do not cut the city in half. I will see you at intake."
He left Rem with the evening and the chalk and a blade that felt slightly less like a stranger.
Somewhere across the city, in a garden walled with quiet, Evelyn dropped both staves when Cecil said the same name. They bounced once on the stone and lay still. She did not. She looked at the horizon as if it had been rude to come that close.
"He is really coming," she said. The words carried no tone. The fingers she flexed did.
Night came in on little feet. Rem washed, ate, and tried to sleep. It did not arrive when he called it. He lay on his back and watched the ceiling refine itself out of darkness. He held the badge in his palm until the metal warmed and then set it on the table. He thought of a clerk saying try not to die. He thought of Cecil saying survive. He thought of Livesey saying find your reason.
He lifted his hand and set it lightly over the ember behind his ribs as if it were a candle he could cup with his palm.
"If you are coming," he told it, "come properly. We have work."
Morning would bring a uniform he would not wear outside, a map he would pretend not to need, and doors people would expect him to be grateful for. He did not intend to be grateful.
He intended to make them all look up.