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“I am not getting in a ring.” It came out defensive, and I hated that I’d let him hear it.

“Nobody said you were. You sit on the rail and make notes about how impressive I am.” He uncrossed his arms and flexed his muscles. He was showing off and, dammit, it was working.

“I don’t need more notes on that. You’ve given me plenty of chances already, and I have to say I remain unconvinced.” It wasn’t quite a lie, but it was close. I found all of them somewhat impressive simply due to the fact that they could wield their powers.

“Then come correct the record.”

Pippa, passing with an armful of books balanced against her chest, paused long enough to be unhelpful. “Actually, watching would help. If they still haven’t classified you, practical exposure might⁠—”

“Et tu?” I said.

She blinked, mouthed something, thought better of it.

Linden closed the book he’d apparently been carrying beside me the whole time without my noticing, which was its own small offense. “The yards are useful.”

I turned on him. “Really? You too?”

He gave the smallest shrug a body could give and still call it a shrug. “You want to know how things work.”

That was unfair, because it was true. I had asked. I had a whole notebook of questions.

Kit saw the opening and went for the throat. “One hour. If you hate it, you can call me an idiot in front of witnesses.”

“I already do that. For free.”

“Imagine the value with more witnesses.”

So I went, which told me something unflattering about myself I chose not to examine.

The training yards sat beyond an arch on the side of the main building. The yards were really just a row of packed-dirt rings cut into the grass like healed-over wounds.

The air changed before I reached them. It was almost like my ears popped, or like I walked into an area that had a different pressure from the rest of the world. Another step and a variety of scents filled my nose. Sweat and mud met me first, followed by singed wool, cold iron, and that sharp electric smell that came after lightning struck nearby but not near enough to kill.

I counted the rings without deciding to. Four. Two gaps in the low fence wide enough to leave through in a hurry. One set of bleachers for professors and students to sit on if they weren’t currently able to practice.

A broad gray-haired woman ran the whole thing with a voice that could probably redirect the weather. The practice was not pretty, which surprised me.

The lecture demonstrations had been polished little miracles, water beads and panes of glass handed round like calling cards. Out here power had weight. It missed. It overreached. It slammed bodies into the dirt and left students winded, furious, laughing, or bleeding from the nose, sometimes all four inside a minute, all of which happened in the first stretch of packed earth I looked at.

Force students shoved and caught and redirected. Ward students took hits that made my own body ache to watch, whole shoulders absorbing a blow and holding. Element students worked fire and water and wind and stone, some of them clumsy, some frighteningly not. Craft students built weapons out of nothing and broke them down again so fast that it blurred in my vision. One student closed a cut on his own forearm with two fingers and looked embarrassed when he caught me watching, as if I’d walked in on him praying.

Useful, I wrote, before I remembered I hadn’t meant to take notes.

Kit leaned over my shoulder. “Did you just write ‘useful’?”

“No.”

“You did. I watched you do it.”

“I was referring to the dirt.”

“Famously practical substance, dirt.”

The gray-haired instructor saw me standing against the fence the way instructors always found the one person hoping not to be found.

“You. Lane.”

Every student inside thirty feet turned. I considered pushing Kit into the nearest ring and leaving during the confusion.