7th of Darkfall, 412 AH
Aldric had the collar buttoned before I was fully awake. I undid it while he moved to my cuffs, and left it that way.
"Tutor Pemberton arrives within the hour, young master." He set out a gray jacket with stitching on the cuffs that distinguished it from the other gray jacket. "The formal gray."
"Is there a difference?"
"The collar sits higher." He didn't smile.
"Right..." I looked at the offending collar.
Two days had passed since the library. I'd gone back once, spent three hours in the geography chapters I'd only skimmed, and borrowed a handful of books that referenced magic. Ren waited outside without comment, and Aldric brought food I didn't eat until it was cold.
The dangerous notes were folded inside a thick, boring bestiary I'd borrowed with no intention of returning. It stayed in the drawer in my room, where Aldric's tidying rarely went. His hands were on the desk every morning, but he never opened a the drawer, let alone a thick bestiary.
Getting the pages through dinner had been the hard part. Folded paper stays silent until the worst possible second, then crackles. I ate only what was close, sat like my spine had a point to prove, and somehow reached my room without having to confess anything. The pages and I had survived...barely.
The magic was still there underneath everything. The sensing had come, at least. I could find the mana in my own hand easily when I tried. Moving it was the next challenge. Whenever I tried to point it somewhere, the mana was moving like honey.
I needed a teacher who'd spent years doing what I couldn't. But first I needed enough of this world to ask the right questions.
Two knocks on the door.
Aldric opened it. "Tutor Pemberton, young master."
The man who walked in was tall and thin. He carried himself like someone who'd once been told to take up less space and had spent the next thirty years refusing. Late-forties. Gray at the temples, dark elsewhere, swept back from a high forehead that he led with.
He stopped three steps into the room and looked at me.
I was sitting at the desk, looking back at him.
His eyebrows rose slightly.
"Good morning, young master." A tenor voice, pitched for lecture halls. "I trust the recovery continues." A man built for a bigger room than this one, and dressed like he hadn't conceded the point.
"Good morning. Yes."
He set a leather case on the side table. His dark blue coat was pressed, his vest buttoned to the throat. He withdrew papers, a text, and a writing board. "I had prepared a reduced curriculum, given the healer's guidance. We'll begin gently."
He pulled a chair to face the desk and sat straight-backed, knees together, hands folded.
"Letters first. I'll dictate, you'll transcribe."
He dictated something about the founding charter of the duchy. Formal language, noble lineage declarations. The sentences were longer than the exercise required.
I wrote with rough, oversized letters and uneven spacing.
The body's unfamiliarity helped a little, but I had to consciously loosen my writing that would normally be controlled. A ten-year-old recovering from a head injury wouldn't write in clean adult cursive.
I misspelled "sovereignty."
He collected the page and studied it at arm's length, tilted slightly, eyes tracking left to right with the focus of someone grading an examination. This man took penmanship personally.
"Legible," he said. "Which represents an improvement I will accept without comment." He set the board down. "Arithmetic."
He slid a sheet across the desk. Addition, subtraction, multiplication. My hand worked through problems that would have bored me at eight. I showed my results, and Pemberton's hand had closed over the sheet before I realized I'd forgotten to add mistakes.
His eyebrow lifted a fraction. "All correct." His pen made a note I couldn't read. "Shall we advance to history, or would you prefer to demonstrate that head injuries resolve all academic deficiencies at once?"
I'd rather not crack my skull again to prove it.
"History," I said instead.
He pushed a text across the desk. Chronicle of the Northern Duchies. "Page fourteen. The founding of the duchy. Read it aloud, and I will endeavor to remain conscious."
I read. The passage described a woman named Astrid Silver, who two hundred years ago had taken on a permanent border garrison in exchange for mining rights to the Maw. Later she became founder of House Silver.
The library survey had given me the minerals, the symptoms, and the rotation schedules. This was the political framework underneath: who held the burden, who collected the value, and why my family sat on both.
"Now," he said, when I'd finished. "What do you make of it?"
It was obvious to me. She'd traded a military burden for control of the resource every ward and light-stone depended on. If the grant gave her house the leverage it appeared to, everyone needed what House Silver supplied, including the crown.
I obviously couldn't say that. A boy who'd spent two years teaching Pemberton to expect nothing did not open with founding-era resource politics.
"She got the mining rights," I said. "And the other houses got someone to guard the border."
Pemberton waited for more.
I gave him the silence back.
"Adequate," he said. "Though I suspect there was more behind that than you chose to share." He turned several pages. "Consider why nobody else wanted the bargain, and what Astrid saw that they didn't. We'll discuss it next session."
Geography came next. Pemberton tested borders and trade routes I already knew from the survey, so I asked different questions on what it hadn't explained. How the border duchies answered to the interior, where the crown sat, and what the armistice with Drakenveld actually required.
Short questions, things a curious child could ask after reading a few books. I had more analysis than I had cover to spend, so I let him explain and kept my mouth shut.
His sentences grew longer and more layered. The teaching slouch from arithmetic disappeared; he sat taller, his voice quickening when a question gave him something worth answering.
"Fairhaven." He tapped the southern point of the map. "The academy. Four years of instruction, beginning the autumn after your fourteenth birthday. Seasonal breaks in between."
Four years left until the academy. I could get a lot done in four years.
"The entrance examination covers five areas: letters, mathematics, history, etiquette, and basic formula theory." He looked at me over the map. "Your admission is assured by your house, but there is a difference between attending Fairhaven and arriving as someone worth the name you carry."
I nodded.
Pemberton's pen was still resting against the note he'd made after arithmetic. His eyes stayed on me over the map.
"Etiquette." He closed the geography text and straightened. "The polite name for the art of existing inside a political system that measures every word, glance, and silence you produce. In two years we've covered formal address, dining protocol, and presentation, and from what I hear you have retained approximately none of it."
"I've been injured."
"Which may work in our favor, since we can begin without the accumulated bad habits." He squared the papers against the desk. "At Fairhaven, you will attend formal gatherings. You attend on behalf of House Silver, and every house with an unwed daughter will note where you stand, who you speak with, and for how long."
I thought about that. "Because of the succession."
"Because of everything. Women outnumber men four to one. Matrilineal succession means the daughter inherits the house. A daughter needs a husband, and a husband from a great house brings alliance, resources, and bloodline." He adjusted his cuffs. "You are, to be direct, one of the most valuable marriage prospects in the northern duchies."
My hand had stopped against the pen on the desk.
Four to one should have given men leverage. But Pemberton kept speaking about houses: what they gained, what they watched, what my name brought them.
"My mother will negotiate the marriage?"
"Your mother will negotiate everything. You will have input, considered alongside the house's strategic position, the political landscape, and whatever Her Grace determines serves the house's interests." He paused, eyes on me. "Your preferences are a factor, just not the primary one."
I kept the frown off my face, this was going to be an issue. Thankfully marriage was years away, I had plenty of time to progress my research and build leverage. If the worst case happened, I'd figure out a way to make money and leave.
"At formal gatherings," Pemberton continued, "a young master carries himself with restraint. You wait to be approached. When a woman asks you to dance, you accept with a nod and allow her to lead."
"Women lead?" I raised an eyebrow at him.
"Women lead." Flat and self-evident. "You do not initiate contact unless you wish to signal particular interest, in which case you had better be certain your mother approves."
"And how I dress," I said, tugging the collar I'd unbuttoned that morning. "The collar... that's part of this too?"
He glanced at my throat.
"Male presentation follows specific standards. Neckline, cuffs. A young master covers himself to the station of his house." He paused. "What you choose to show says something. Whether you meant it to or not."
Pemberton gathered his materials. The light through the window had moved while we talked.
"I shall adjust the curriculum," he said, placing papers in his case. "Your arithmetic was correct, your letters were legible, and your history showed independent reading that contradicts every habit you've displayed in two years. Well done."
He latched the case, stood, and tucked it under his arm.
"I'll see you day after tomorrow, young master. Read the geography chapters." He reached the door, glanced at my throat, and paused. "And do consider buttoning that before formal company. Whatever you think you're saying with it, people are listening."
He left.
Aldric appeared from wherever he'd been. His eyes went to my collar.
"Shall I bring tea, young master?" he said.
"Please."
My fingers found the collar.
Pemberton had said formal company. He was gone.
I left it open.