Professor Ardent Hale announced the Survival Trial at the end of Wednesday morning's lecture, in the tone of a man reading a weather report to people who would soon be rained on.

-- The Freshman Survival Trial will be held in fourteen days, -- he said, and set down his chalk. -- It will last three days and two nights in the Greywood. Each student will carry a pack, a water skin, and one blanket. Spirit beasts are permitted and monitored. The assessment criteria are resource management, field craft, and covenant coordination. Failure to complete the course is not penalized by expulsion. It is penalized by being laughed at for the remainder of one's academic career.

A wave of anxious murmurs rolled through the lecture hall. Someone in the third row dropped a pencil. Tobias, beside Alan, made a thin, high, strangled noise and clutched his breast pocket as though his ember mouse might evaporate.

-- Three days, -- Tobias whispered. -- In a forest. With no pastries.

-- I believe there are berries, -- said Alan.

-- Berries are not pastries!

-- Mr. Alcott, -- said Hale mildly, without turning around, -- if you wish to share your concerns with the class, you may do so at the end of the hour. Preferably in writing.

Tobias subsided, quivering. Across the aisle, Cassian sat with his hands folded and his chin up, a model of untroubled confidence. The silverfang cub lay across his boots and yawned. Alan had a distinct, unwelcome vision of his classmate winning the trial by a wide margin, and of himself placing sixteenth out of thirty-one, which was precisely the rank he wanted, and which would take, he calculated, approximately a month of careful and exhausting subtraction.

-- Fourteen days, -- said a clipped voice in his head.

It was Valeria.

She had been silent for two days. She had not spoken since the Hall of Demonstration, and the sound of her, crisp and level and perfectly controlled, startled him so badly that he knocked over his inkwell. A black pool spread slowly across his notes. Tobias gasped and began mopping with his sleeve.

-- Valeria, -- said Alan, very quietly, under the noise.

-- I have drafted a plan, -- said Valeria. -- It is fourteen pages. It begins at four o'clock tomorrow. I would like you to read it at lunch.

-- Senior, I, ah. I wanted to say.

-- It is not necessary.

-- I was going to say I was wrong.

-- I did not ask you to. -- A pause, a very short one. -- I have been thinking. It is possible that I was, that I was disproportionate. On Monday. In the Hall. It is not that I wish to withdraw what I said. It is that I should have said it more briefly. -- Another pause, shorter still. -- The plan is a great deal better than an apology. I find it is more reliable.

It was, he understood, the closest thing to a white flag that she knew how to raise. Her voice was stiff, and clipped, and absolutely sincere.

-- I will read it at lunch, -- said Alan.

-- You will also eat lunch.

-- Yes, Senior.

-- Good.

The door between them did not exactly open. But he felt it move on its hinges, a very small inch, and the cold draft that had been blowing through his skull for two days eased by half a degree.

At lunch he read Valeria's plan, as promised, over a bowl of lentil soup, with Tobias hovering at his elbow like a worried hen.

It was fourteen pages long. It was written in a bold, upright, military hand, with numbered headings and underlined deadlines. It contained a drill for every morning, a rest rule for every evening, and, on page eleven, a short and startling paragraph that began, in letters slightly larger than the rest: THE TRAINEE SHALL NOT BE PUNISHED FOR CALLING HALT. At the bottom of that page, in a smaller and much less steady hand, someone had added a line that had clearly been written and rubbed out and written again: If he does not call it, I will.

Alan read the line three times. He put the page face down on the table and looked, for a while, at the soup.

-- Is that a battle plan? -- whispered Tobias.

-- It is a training schedule.

-- It looks like a battle plan. It has arrows.

-- It has a great many arrows, -- Alan admitted.

-- Does it say anything about snacks?

-- It says, -- said Alan, turning the page back over, -- that rations in the field are a matter of discipline.

Tobias let out a long, tragic breath. He had been preparing for the trial, in his own fashion, ever since the announcement. He had bought a very large map of the Greywood, which he had pinned above his bed, and a very small compass, which he had immediately lost. He had made a list of survival essentials, on which the first seven items were different kinds of bread. He had asked three separate instructors what to do if one encountered a bear, and received three separate answers, one of which was run, one of which was do not run, and one of which was a long silence followed by the words, I would not.

-- I am going to die, -- said Tobias, with great calm.

-- You are going to be fine.

-- I am going to be eaten by a bear, and my ember mouse is going to be left alone in a cold forest, and nobody will ever know what happened to my last honey cake.

-- Tobias.

-- I have not even named it yet.

-- The honey cake?

-- The mouse. -- Tobias looked at him with huge, miserable eyes. -- I have been waiting for the right name. It has to mean something. It has to be a name for a hero. And now I will die, and it will go to its grave a nameless mouse.

Alan looked at the small sleeping creature in the breast pocket, and the large worried boy above it, and something that had been tight in his chest for a week loosened by a very small notch.

-- Call it Crumb, -- he said.

-- Crumb?

-- It is a small thing that survives on very little and is usually under the table when something good happens. It seems a heroic sort of name.

Tobias stared at him. Then, slowly, his whole round face lit up. He pulled the mouse out of his pocket and held it up in both hands, and said in a tone of wonder, -- Crumb! -- and the mouse opened one bleary eye and sneezed.

It was an ember sneeze. A single spark flew out and landed in Alan's soup. It hissed, and was gone.

-- It likes it, -- breathed Tobias.

-- It has set my lunch on fire.

-- That is how you know.

By midafternoon, there were three plans.

He spread them across a corner table in the dining hall, between a plate of cold toast and a pot of tea, with a fourth sheet of paper left blank in the center. He had bought a pencil with his own money, and a ruler, and a bottle of ink. He had decided, with the grim determination of a man preparing for a siege, that the only way to survive was to put the problem on paper.

-- Valeria's plan, -- he said under his breath, tapping the first sheet, -- is physical conditioning. Fourteen days. Daily runs, weighted pack, forced march on the ninth day, the navigation drill, and a fasting exercise on day twelve.

-- It is a standard preparatory regime, -- said Valeria.

-- It is eleven hours a week. I do not have eleven hours a week of mana.

-- Then we will reduce the intensity.

-- You have never reduced the intensity of anything.

-- It is a recognized military principle. -- A faint sniff. -- Mostly.

-- Priscilla's plan, -- he continued, tapping the second sheet, -- is terrain analysis, ley-line mapping, and a, ah, a set of experiments on the interaction between wilderness mana and the Void Resonator.

-- It is eminently practical, -- said Priscilla, brightly. -- It will give you a decisive edge. I have already begun a topographic model of the Greywood from the academy's survey archive. It requires approximately two full days of your reserve, for the live field measurements.

-- Two days.

-- Consecutive. It would be inefficient to divide them.

-- And Helga's, -- said Alan wearily, tapping the third sheet, -- is an equipment manifest.

-- I need a full day, -- said Helga, immediately, from the depths of the Lobby. -- One day. All of it. Dawn to dusk. You cannot make a field kit in an afternoon.

-- That is six days of mana in total, -- said Alan, tallying on a corner of the blank sheet. -- Eleven hours is Valeria. Two full days is Priscilla. One full day is Helga. That is already four days. I have not left a single hour for Senior Nyx, or Senior Seraphina, and there are only fourteen days to work with, and I cannot summon more than fifty minutes in any one of them.

There was a short, thoughtful pause.

-- We could prioritize, -- said Valeria.

-- I am the priority, -- said Priscilla.

-- It is a question of survival, -- said Helga.

-- It is a question of what he can bear, -- said Nyx, lazily, in the background. -- You are all very sure of yourselves for people who have never once had to do arithmetic.

-- I do arithmetic constantly! -- said Priscilla, offended.

-- You do mathematics. It is different. Arithmetic involves a budget.

-- Enough, -- said Alan.

He did not raise his voice. He had learned, in eight years of other people's houses, that a quiet voice, held steady, was more effective than any shout. The Lobby fell silent. He took the pencil and drew a long, neat grid across the blank sheet.

-- Fourteen days, -- he said. -- Fifty minutes a day. Seven hundred minutes in total, and I will keep a daily margin of ten points for emergencies, which leaves six hundred and thirty. I propose the following allocation. Valeria, two hundred and ten. Priscilla, one hundred and eighty. Helga, one hundred and eighty. Nyx, sixty. And the remainder is held in reserve.

-- That is not equal, -- said Valeria.

-- It is not meant to be equal. It is meant to match what each of you can actually do for the trial. Valeria, you train the body. That is the largest need. Priscilla, you teach me to read the ground. Helga, you equip me. Nyx, you teach me to be unseen. -- He paused. -- It is a budget, not a ranking. I would like it understood that nobody is being demoted.

-- Hm, -- said Valeria. -- Acceptable.

-- Priscilla?

-- I could do the mapping in a hundred and fifty, -- said Priscilla, thoughtfully, -- if you let me use the live sensor from the ring.

-- The ring is not for... -- He stopped. -- Fine. One hundred and fifty. With Helga's permission.

-- Take it, -- said Helga gruffly. -- It is nothing. Scrap.

Alan wrote the numbers down. He felt, for a moment, a small clean satisfaction, the satisfaction of a man seeing a messy equation resolve into rows. And that was why it took him a moment to notice that there was one person who had not spoken.

-- Senior Seraphina, -- he said.

-- Yes, dear?

Her voice was perfectly pleasant. It was warm, and unhurried, and very slightly too bright.

-- You have not said anything about your allocation.

-- I did not like to interrupt, -- said Seraphina. -- I am sure whatever you decide will be quite sufficient. I only need whatever time is left over. It is of no consequence. -- A very small pause. -- I am the healer. The healer is always the last thing on the list. One hopes only to be useful at the end.

It was exactly the voice she used when she poured a cup of tea so full that it trembled on the lip. Alan knew it now. He looked at his grid. He looked at the blank space at the bottom, where he had intended to write her name, and had not, because he had run out of minutes before he reached it.

He had done it without noticing. He had not forgotten her. He had simply allocated, one by one, the things he could easily see, a sword, a map, a hammer, a shadow, and left the one he could not measure for last.

-- I am sorry, -- he said.

-- There is nothing to apologize for.

-- There is. I left you off.

-- You did not, dear, -- said Seraphina gently. -- You simply have not reached me yet.

It was the kindest possible way to say something terrible.

That evening, in the Chapel of the Quiet Hour, it was Wednesday, and the tea was ready before he arrived.

She poured it with exquisite precision, and set it on the altar, and folded her hands in front of her and smiled the round, even, motionless smile. The little spirit lamp hissed. The window of colored glass had gone from gold to violet. The cup, he noted, was filled very slightly above the brim.

-- Your knee, -- said Seraphina.

-- I beg your pardon?

-- You are favoring the left one. You have been since you came through the door. -- Her golden eyes rested on him steadily. -- Show me.

-- It is only a scrape, Senior. From the roof on Tuesday. I fell against the parapet.

-- Show me, dear.

It was phrased as a request. There was no question in it at all. But he rolled up his trouser leg, and she knelt on the cold flagstones in front of him, and for a moment simply looked at it.

It was a small, shallow, pink scrape, perhaps an inch across, already beginning to close. She laid two fingers lightly beside it, and a pale gold glow gathered beneath her hand, soft and warm and sweet as candlelight on honey. The sting faded. The skin knit. The scrape was gone in under a minute.

She did not lift her hand.

-- There, -- she said. -- There. But we must be careful. A scrape on the knee can be a very serious thing, Alan. It is a joint. It is full of fluid. If a shallow wound there should become inflamed, it can spread inward. It can stiffen the whole limb. I have seen men lose a leg to less. -- The gold glow brightened. -- It is best to be thorough. I will need a few minutes more.

-- It is already healed, Senior.

-- On the surface.

-- It is perfectly smooth.

-- Smooth skin can hide a great deal.

-- Second pass, -- said Nyx, very quietly, in the back of the Lobby. -- Same patch. I am counting.

-- Observe more softly, -- said Seraphina, without turning her head.

-- I am extremely soft. I am a whisper.

-- You are a very loud whisper.

Alan looked down at the top of her golden head. She was kneeling very straight, her hand still resting on his knee, and under the serene pleasantness of her face he could see something else, a faint tight line at the corner of her mouth, the pulse beating in her throat. She was not watching his leg. She was watching the light.

He thought of the grid. He thought of the blank space at the bottom of the page.

-- Senior Seraphina, -- he said gently. -- I believe it has been three minutes.

-- A little longer, I think.

-- Seraphina.

It was the first time he had dropped the honorific. It was a slip, brief, accidental, and he saw her hand tighten against his knee, just slightly, as though he had touched a sore spot.

-- Yes, dear?

-- It is healed, -- said Alan. -- It is entirely healed. There is nothing more to do. I would like to, ah, to tell you something. If you will allow me.

-- Of course.

-- I made a schedule today, and I left you off.

-- I know.

-- It was not an oversight. It was a flaw in the method. I allocated time by task, by what I could see, and I did not allocate for what holds the whole thing together. -- He took a breath. -- The schedule does not work without you. Valeria will break my body, and Priscilla will strain my mana, and Helga will make me carry things, and Nyx will teach me to fall, and every one of them will leave me worse than before. I will not survive the fourteen days if nobody is there to put me back together afterward. -- A pause. -- I would like to propose a recovery slot. After each training session, five minutes. Yours. You would heal what the others break. It is not a courtesy. It is a requirement of the plan.

She had gone quite still.

-- Five minutes, -- she said, in a very small, very careful voice. -- After every session.

-- Yes.

-- That is, ah. Almost an hour a week. Of your reserve.

-- It is sixty points a week, -- said Alan. -- I have already worked it out. I will take it from my own margin. I will reduce the daily buffer from ten points to five. It is not a large sacrifice. It is an acceptable risk.

-- Dear, that is. -- Her voice faltered. -- You would give up your own safety, for the healer.

-- I would give up a very small portion of a very large margin, for a necessary component of the system, -- said Alan. -- I do not see it as a gift.

It was perfectly true. It was also, he knew perfectly well, the sort of statement a man made when he was lying to himself and doing it well. Behind his eyes, a small cold chime sounded, and he looked up and saw Seraphina's eyes fill with something that was almost, not quite, a tear.

-- Thank you, -- she said.

It was one syllable and a half. It was said in a voice with no softening on it at all, bare and low and abrupt, and she took her hand from his knee and folded it very tightly against her robe.

-- It is a business arrangement, -- said Alan quickly.

-- Of course. -- She smiled, and the smile was slightly crooked, and very real. -- Of course. I understand. -- She looked at her folded hands. -- It is only that, in four hundred years, nobody has ever put me on a schedule because they needed me.

-- That seems like an oversight.

-- Yes, -- said Seraphina, very quietly. -- It does.

The lamp hissed. The light in the window turned from violet to dark blue. Somewhere in the Lobby, Nyx coughed, a little too loudly, and said nothing.

He did not see Valeria at the edge of his awareness. She had not spoken. But from the half-open door at the back of his mind, he felt something move, a faint cool attention, drawn to a point on the page where a ten had been crossed out and a five written beneath it in his small cramped hand. It rested there for a moment. It did not say anything. But she was watching, and he knew it, and he was not sure whether he wanted her to say what she was thinking.

The session ended in comfortable quiet. She gave him a cup of tea, filled to the proper level, and he drank it. It was sweeter than the herbs. He had decided, a week ago, not to wonder why.

When she faded, she did it slowly, with her hands loosened, and the smile she wore was very small and, for once, entirely unarranged.

He went back through the dark gardens with his hands in his pockets and the day's bargaining ticking in his skull. The stars were out. The leak in his stomach had slowed. On the third step of the dormitory stair, a gruff voice said, abruptly, out of nowhere:

-- Boy.

-- Senior Helga?

-- That ring. -- There was a short rough silence. -- Does it fit well?

He looked down at his left hand. The band of dull grey metal sat warm on his third finger, humming very faintly against his ribs.

-- It fits perfectly, -- he said. -- It has not moved since the day you gave it to me.

-- Hm. -- Another silence. -- Does it, ah. Does it ever feel... too tight?

-- Never.

-- Too loose?

-- No.

-- Good, -- said Helga. -- That is good. That is only, I only wondered. -- A cough. -- It is scrap. I do not care. Good night.

-- Good night, Senior.

-- And boy.

-- Yes?

-- Take it off when you wash your hands. Or the soap will pit it.

-- I will.

-- And do not wear it when you work with acid.

-- I will remember.

-- I do not care what you do with it, -- said Helga, very fast. -- Go to sleep.

She was gone. He stood alone on the stair with the faint ghost of her gruffness in his ear, and a smile he could not quite suppress.

It was, he thought, getting a little crowded in there. And he was beginning, to his considerable alarm, to like it.