At four o'clock on Monday morning, a bugle sounded inside Alan Frost's skull.

It was not a real bugle. It was a voice doing an impression of one, a crisp, merciless, carrying voice that had clearly commanded armies across frozen fields and saw no reason to soften its volume for a dormitory bed.

-- RISE, -- said Valeria. -- The sun is not up. Neither should you be sleeping. Rise.

Alan sat bolt upright in the dark with his heart hammering and his blanket tangled around one leg. Across the room, Tobias muttered something about pastries and rolled over. The window was a black rectangle with a single cold star in the corner of it.

-- It is four, Senior Valeria, -- he whispered.

-- Four is late. Dawn Legion mornings began at three. I am being generous because you are a civilian and you are small.

-- I am average height.

-- You are average everything, which is why you need work. Boots. Now.

He found his boots. It took a very long time. The leak in the pit of his stomach was ticking in the dark, a small cold beat that told him he had slept only four hours and that his reserve had refilled only partway, to something like ninety-five. He pulled on his training clothes, a grey tunic and loose trousers, and crept out of the dormitory in his socks, boots in hand, like a thief escaping from his own bedroom.

-- Where is the training ground? -- he whispered, once he was outside.

-- Behind the old orchard, -- said Nyx, with a yawn, from somewhere deeper in his head. -- I scouted it through your eyes yesterday. It is empty at this hour, and no windows overlook it. You will not be seen. You are welcome, by the way. Let me sleep.

-- Thank you, Senior Nyx.

-- That is a very polite way to ask for a medal. Go.

The academy grounds in the dark were a different place. The lamps along the paths burned low and amber. Dew soaked the grass. The towers of Lumina rose against a sky just beginning to turn from black to indigo, and the whole place looked as though it were holding its breath. Alan walked quickly past the chapel and the sleeping greenhouses and the long dark shapes of the old apple trees, until the orchard opened out into a flat clearing of packed earth and trampled grass, ringed by tall hedges.

A rack of wooden practice swords leaned against a fence at the far end, weathered silver by years of rain. Alan stopped in the middle of the clearing, laid his palm against the cold ground, and felt for the hollow in his chest.

-- Valeria, -- he said. -- Please come out.

The light was white-gold and very clean, like sunrise through ice. The air bent. The tall woman who stepped out of it was already in motion, rolling her shoulders, her silver ponytail swinging behind her, her pale armor catching the first faint light. She looked around the clearing with the narrow satisfaction of an officer reviewing a parade ground.

-- Adequate, -- she said. -- Flat. Open. No obstacles. -- She turned her blue gaze on him. It was a very direct gaze. It felt like being measured for a coffin. -- You have forty-five minutes of my time. At two mana per minute that is ninety points. You will be left with five.

-- I will be left with five, -- said Alan, who had already done the arithmetic. -- And the leak will take another one or two before sunrise. Technically I will be at three or four.

-- Then we will not waste any of it. -- She raised one gloved finger. -- First, rules. I will say them once. If you hear nothing else this morning, hear this. I will train you hard. I will not train you past what you can bear. If you wish to stop, you will say the word halt. When you say it, I stop, immediately, without argument. It is not a sign of weakness. A soldier who cannot call a halt is a soldier who will die stupidly. Do you understand?

-- Yes, Senior.

-- Say the word.

-- Halt.

-- Good. Do not forget it. Do not be too proud to use it. -- A faint hardness crossed her face. -- I have buried people who were. Run.

-- ... Run where?

-- Around the field. Until I say stop.

Alan ran.

It was a very large field. It had been, he suspected, designed by a sadist. The packed earth slapped under his boots. The hedges blurred. Cold air burned in his lungs. He ran one lap, then two, then lost count, while Valeria jogged beside him without a drop of sweat on her face, calling corrections in a flat, even voice.

-- Your shoulders are tight. Drop them. Your stride is uneven. You are favoring your left leg. Breathe through your nose, not your mouth. Your posture is a disgrace. Your arms are flailing like a drowning scholar. Hands loose. Loose. LOOSE.

-- I am trying, -- said Alan, between gasps.

-- Try harder, or try differently. Either is acceptable. Standing still is not.

By the eighth lap, the world had gone narrow and bright. By the twelfth, his thighs were burning and his vision had acquired a faint red edge. Valeria never raised her voice. She only said his name sometimes, with a precise little snap, and each time he found, somewhere, a little more.

At last she said, -- Stop. -- And he stopped so abruptly that he nearly fell over. He bent forward with his hands on his knees and dragged air into his chest. His whole body shook.

-- Not bad, -- said Valeria, which was clearly the highest praise she had ever bestowed on a human being. -- For a civilian. Now the sword.

The practice sword was a plain length of oak, heavier than it looked. She put it in his hands and stood back, arms folded.

-- One thousand cuts, -- she said. -- Vertical. Same line. Same weight. Same breath. I will count.

He began. He swung, and the sword whistled, and Valeria said, -- One, -- in the same flat voice. He swung again. -- Two. -- Again. -- Three.

By thirty, his arms burned. By one hundred, they were numb. By two hundred, he had stopped feeling the sword as a separate thing, and it was only a long wooden extension of the pain in his shoulders. Valeria walked in a slow circle around him, studying him the way a master studies a student's brushwork, and whenever his form drifted she called it out in the same crisp voice.

-- Elbow too wide. -- Swing. -- Wrist cocked. Straighten. -- Swing. -- You are dropping the point at the end of the stroke. Why?

-- I am tired, Senior.

-- Everyone is tired. Why are you dropping the point?

He did not answer. At three hundred and ten, she stepped in front of him and said, -- Stop.

He stopped, swaying. She stood very close. She was a head taller than he was, and the clean cold smell of her armor was like frost on iron. She took the practice sword out of his hands, set it on the ground, and said:

-- Hands.

He held them out. Her gloves were smooth and strong. She took his right hand in hers and turned it over, and for a moment simply held it, inspecting his palm, where the blisters were already forming. The inspection lasted a moment longer than it needed to. Her thumb brushed across the red heel of his hand, almost absently.

-- The grip is wrong, -- she said. -- You are choking the handle. The sword should rest in the fingers, not the palm. Like this.

She put the sword back in his hand, closed both of her hands over his, and moved his fingers with small precise pressures. Her hands were warm through the leather, steady as stone. She guided his wrist and his elbow into the line. She stood so close that he could feel the heat radiating from her armor. He realized, with a belated and horrifying clarity, that the back of his neck was burning, and that the heat was climbing toward his ears.

-- Your face is flushed, -- said Valeria. She frowned, and took her hand away, and placed it flat against his forehead, a quick brusque gesture, like a mother checking a child. -- You have a fever. Is it fever? Is it exhaustion? Are you ill?

-- No, Senior, -- said Alan, hoarsely. -- I am fine. It is only the running.

-- You are red from the neck up.

-- It is the cold. The air. The exercise. It is a normal physiological response.

-- To what?

-- To... the sword. And the early hour. And the running. -- He looked firmly at the ground. -- I think it would be best if we returned to the sword.

There was a short, odd silence. Inside his head, a lazy voice drawled, -- Oh, how interesting, -- and another voice, throaty and gleeful, said, -- Oh, I knew it, I knew it, he is going to be adorable. -- Valeria's gaze moved from his face to his ears. She considered this for a long moment, with a frown of serious concentration.

-- Is it a fever or not? -- she said at last.

-- It is not a fever, -- said Priscilla, helpfully, from the back. -- It is another response entirely. I could explain...

-- Do not explain, -- said Valeria and Alan simultaneously.

-- Very well. I will take notes.

Valeria cleared her throat. She stepped back sharply, with a strange stiffness in her shoulders, and said, in her normal brisk voice, -- The grip is acceptable. Resume. Three hundred and eleven.

-- ... Yes, Senior.

They resumed. The sky lightened by degrees, from indigo to grey to a thin wash of yellow. The sword swung. The numbers climbed. Alan fell into the strange trance of exhaustion, in which the body keeps moving and the mind drifts, and somewhere around the five-hundredth stroke, he made a choice he did not know he was making.

He let his swing slow.

It was a very small thing. A little less force on the downstroke. A fraction of a second's hesitation at the top. Enough to look tired, not enough to look lazy. Enough to blend into the broad forgettable middle of the class, where he intended to live for the next four years. It was an old reflex, older than the Rite, older than the academy. Do not shine. Do not stand out. A blade held too high gets noticed.

-- Seven hundred and forty, -- said Valeria. Her voice had gone very quiet.

He swung.

-- Seven hundred and forty-one.

He swung.

-- Stop.

Alan stopped. The sword hung from his hand. Valeria stood in front of him with her arms at her sides, and her face had changed, from the brisk stern mask of a drill sergeant into something harder, flatter, and much colder.

-- You are holding back, -- she said.

-- I am tired, Senior.

-- You are not tired. You are exhausted. There is a difference. I know the difference. I have watched men fall asleep on their feet. -- She stepped closer. Her eyes were very blue. -- You were swinging cleanly at two hundred. You were swinging cleanly at five hundred. For the last two hundred strokes, you have been deliberately sandbagging. You have been matching your pace to some imaginary ranking in your head. I can see it. I have seen it on the faces of a hundred recruits who wished to be neither the best nor the worst.

His grip tightened on the sword. His mouth was dry.

-- Why? -- said Valeria.

It was a plain question. It was not hostile. It was almost worse than hostility, because it was genuine. And Alan, who had been asked that question in a hundred forms by a hundred people and answered it every time with the same smooth mask, felt his old reflex rise like a reflex of the throat.

He lowered his head. He bowed from the waist, a smooth practiced motion.

-- I am sorry, Senior Valeria, -- he said. -- I was wrong. I will pay closer attention next time.

The silence that followed was very long.

-- ... I am sorry, -- Valeria repeated slowly. -- You are sorry.

-- Yes, Senior. It will not happen again.

-- You do not know what you did wrong. -- Her voice had gone tight. -- You did not even attempt to understand it. You said the words because you wished the conversation to end. I do not want your apology. -- She took a short hard breath. -- I do not want a servant who bows. I do not want a boy who says what the person in front of him wants to hear. I have buried enough people who said yes to me and died saying it. I want to know why you would rather hide than be strong.

Alan stared at his feet. The words sat on his tongue like stones. He could say nothing. He could say a hundred things, and every one of them was wrong. His hand pressed, without conscious direction, against his chest.

-- Senior, -- he said finally, very quietly. -- I would like to continue. If that is acceptable.

Valeria looked at him for a very long time. Something moved behind her face, a flicker of grief, of anger, of something he did not understand. Then it was gone, shuttered, folded into the iron discipline of her face.

-- From seven hundred and forty, -- she said coldly. -- Properly.

-- Yes, Senior.

He swung the sword. He swung it properly, with his whole shoulder behind it, and she counted without a word. Alan felt something prickle behind his eyes that he refused to acknowledge. He did not understand what he had said wrong. He only knew that he had said it, and that it had cost something.

Somewhere past the eight-hundredth stroke, Valeria began to speak again, though not to him. It was the voice she used for thinking aloud, low and level, the voice of a woman reciting a lesson she had once been given herself.

-- Dawn Legion mornings began at three, -- she said. -- We ran until the sun came up. Then we swung the blade until it did not matter whether we were tired. A thousand cuts was the first lesson of every recruit. Do you know why?

-- No, Senior, -- said Alan, between strokes.

-- Because around the eight-hundredth cut the mind gives up arguing. You stop wondering whether you can. You stop wondering who is watching. The body simply does the thing, and the thing it does is the truth about you. -- She paused. The count went on. -- I watched a boy once who was the finest swordsman in his company. He hid it, for months. He thought it safer. Then one day the line broke, and there was no more hiding. I have not forgotten what that looked like.

She did not say what had happened to the boy. Alan did not ask. He was learning that Valeria's silences were a kind of language, and that some of the sentences in it were very long.

-- Is she telling the story about the pass again? -- murmured Nyx, from the back of his skull, in a voice so quiet it was hardly a voice at all.

-- Hush, -- said Seraphina.

-- I am only asking.

-- Do not ask. Watch the boy. He is doing very well.

It was said so gently that Alan nearly lost his stroke. He kept swinging. The count crept past eight hundred, then nine, and as it did he noticed, with a dim and distant astonishment, that Valeria had been right. Somewhere in the eight-hundreds the arguing in his head went quiet. The ache turned into a plain fact, like weather. There was only the sword, and the swing, and the flat steady voice saying his numbers, and the strange sense that someone was walking beside him in the cold.

He did not feel sorry for himself. He did not feel afraid. For the length of about fifty strokes, he did not feel anything at all except the plain clean effort of the thing, and it was, he thought later, the nearest he had come to peace in eight years.

-- Nine hundred and ninety-nine, -- said Valeria quietly.

He swung.

-- One thousand.

The sword came down and stopped, and the clearing was very still. Dew shone on the grass. A bird began to sing somewhere in the old orchard. Alan stood with the practice blade trembling in his hands and his whole body singing with exhaustion, and he heard Valeria let out a very small, very controlled breath, the kind a person lets out when they are trying not to look pleased.

-- That, -- she said, -- was a thousand cuts.

-- Yes, Senior.

-- It was not entirely terrible.

It was the first thing she had said to him that morning that was not an order or a correction, and Alan, who was too tired to arrange his face, felt the corner of his mouth tug upward before he could stop it.

The last few minutes of the session slid by in a blur. By the time Valeria called the clock, the sun was a thin gold line on the horizon. Alan's arms were trembling. His breath came in ragged gasps. The leak in his stomach had sped up, and he could feel his reserve draining in slow cold pulses. Four. Three. Two.

-- Time, -- said Valeria. -- Forty-five minutes.

She looked at him then, and saw, and her face changed again.

-- Your hands are shaking, -- she said. -- Your lips are pale. Your pupils are unfocused.

-- I am fine, -- said Alan, and smiled the pleasant, polite smile he had perfected over the years.

-- You are not.

-- Truly, Senior. It is nothing. Just a little tired.

-- It is more than that. -- She stepped toward him, and her hand lifted, as if to take his arm, and stopped halfway. -- Frost. Halt. Do you wish to halt?

-- No, thank you, Senior.

-- You are bleeding mana like a cut vein.

-- It is within tolerance, -- said Alan. -- It is only the end of the session. I will recover. I always do.

It was a lie, though a small one. She stared at him with her blue eyes narrowed, and he could feel her weighing it. Inside his head, a throaty voice said very softly, -- Watch his answers. Short ones. He is down to one word. -- And another voice, a lazy voice, said, -- I am noting that. -- And a warm voice, soft as wool, said, -- Oh, my poor dear.

Valeria lowered her hand.

-- Very well, -- she said. -- I will release now. But hear me, Frost. If you collapse on my watch, I will not forgive it. Not you, and not myself.

-- I understand, Senior.

-- You do not. -- She was already fading, her armor glowing white-gold at the edges. -- But you will.

The light folded away into his chest. The clearing was empty. Alan stood alone in the pale dawn with the wooden sword in his hand, and slowly, very slowly, he sat down on the packed earth, because his legs had stopped working.

It was a long time before he realized that Valeria was still there, in the Lobby, silent, watching through his eyes. He could feel her attention like a hand resting on his shoulder. She did not say anything. She only watched him, steadily, as he sat there with his head between his knees and counted his own breath.

And in the long silence, Alan found that he had never in his life been looked at quite like that, with so much severity and so little contempt.

-- Tomorrow, -- said a lazy voice at last, cheerfully breaking the quiet, -- is Tuesday. You belong to me.

-- Senior Priscilla, please, -- Alan groaned.

-- I have prepared a potion. It is purple. It is very promising.

-- ... You are trembling, -- said Seraphina softly, from the front of his mind, and her voice was thick with worry. -- Alan. Dear. You are trembling.

-- It is just the cold, Senior.

-- I do not think it is, -- said Seraphina. -- I do not think it is at all.