Page 51 of Legacy Ascended

Jessica

I find him outside the languages building with three books tucked under one arm and his coat draped over the other. I've thought about this all afternoon, and I still just say it.

"Walk with me after class?"

Ander stops. "Now?"

"Now's after my class. I'm not responsible for your timetable."

"I have a reading group at four."

"Do you want to go to it?"

He considers it. "No."

"Then walk with me."

I've got Governance at nine tomorrow and a form due for it that I haven't looked at, and for the next hour I would just like to go for a walk.

We go down the steps and he falls in on my right, which he does without making a thing of it. Partway down the path, he says, "Where are we going?"

"Nowhere."

"Which direction is nowhere?"

"That's the whole point of nowhere, Ander. It doesn't have one."

He walks a little farther in silence.

"I would like it on record," he says, "that I'm perfectly capable of doing this. I'm simply unpracticed."

"Nobody's marking you."

"Everybody is always marking me," Ander says. "That's how I was raised."

We end up at the low wall above the north lawn, which is where everybody ends up when they haven't got anywhere to be. The sun is doing something half-hearted through the clouds. A group of second-years is running the perimeter, and we sit on the wall and watch them suffer without any guilt whatsoever.

"Faris changed the reading list," I say. "Half of this wasn't there in September."

"Two of the additions aren't even published in English, and I want to know where she got them."

"You're following her course?"

"I've been sitting in when I can." He pushes his sleeves up, and I look at his forearms, and then at the runners, with what I hope is enormous subtlety. "She's better than people say. They call her a fanatic because she makes them prove things they'd rather believe without evidence."

"She's still frightening."

"Deeply."

"Real question," I say. "Roast potatoes or fried."

"That's not a real question."

"It's the realest question available."

"Roast," he says, "obviously — but only if they've been turned at least once, which this kitchen does not do, so in practice the answer here is fried, and it's a disgrace."

"You've thought about this."