Gareth held his wooden sword lightly.
It was the same stance he'd taken against Viktor. No openings. Wherever Luca struck, he had a feeling it would just be turned aside.
Luca stepped in with his right foot, half a step, deep.
[Lunge].
His wooden sword shot straight at Gareth's chest. Gareth turned it aside with the smallest possible movement.
"An orthodox lunge. Clean footwork. No bad habits."
Gareth's sword came back at him. From above.
Luca angled the shield on his left arm. [Shield Block]. The wooden blade slid smoothly down the slope of the shield and off to the side.
"...Hm?"
One of Gareth's eyebrows twitched.
"That block belongs to a heavy fighter. Not a swordsman."
Gareth swung a sideways sweep. Luca met it with the back of his blade and knocked it away, and with the momentum of the parry, he spun the hilt in his fingers. Forward grip to reverse. [Reverse Grip].
"A thief's sleight of hand...?"
There was open confusion in Gareth's voice now. The Rank Tens watching began to murmur.
"What was that?"
"Is he a swordsman, or what?"
* * *
Gareth closed in a step. He was faster than before. Maybe thirty percent of his real strength now.
A thrust came.
Luca didn't move.
Not yet. Not yet—
The tip of the wooden sword was a breath from his chest when he shifted half a step to the side.
[Hairbreadth].
The thrust slid past under his arm. The wind of it stirred the hem of his training clothes.
"—!"
Gareth turned his wrist at once and came at him from the side. Fast. Too fast to dodge completely.
Luca turned his own wrist.
The way you run a ladle along the bottom of a pot to lift off whatever's starting to stick.
[Ladle Work].
The back of his blade slipped in under the base of Gareth's and smoothly bent its path. Gareth's strike swept through empty air above Luca's head and went on past.
"...What was that?"
Gareth had stopped in his tracks without meaning to.
"That's from no school I know. It isn't a sword parry, and it isn't a shield block. Turning the line with nothing but the wrist... What technique was that?"
"A ladle."
Gareth just looked at him.
"It's how you keep stew from burning."
The training grounds went dead quiet. Then, somewhere, someone snorted. Laughter spread out like ripples on water.
Gareth didn't laugh. He only looked at Luca, steadily. There was something different in his eyes now.
"...Again. This time I'm coming at you for real."
* * *
Gareth's sword changed.
Fast. Heavy. This was a knight's sword. Not a single wasted motion, and every strike set up the next.
Luca took blows on his shield, turned them aside with his wrist, slipped them by the width of a sheet of paper. Even so, little by little, he was being driven back. He could feel the edge of the sand creeping up behind him.
At this rate, he's going to push me right out.
Luca breathed in. Inside himself, he built the shape of the flame. Gather it. Heat it. Sharpen it.
"Pierce."
Fizz.
A spark of fire the size of his thumb burst right in front of Gareth's eyes.
Only for a moment. Less than the space of a blink. But Gareth's sword slowed, very slightly.
That moment was enough.
Right foot, half a step, deep. Drop the hips. And at the very last instant, kick off as if to crack the ground underfoot.
[Lunge] and [Iron Legs].
Luca's body flew forward like an arrow. The tip of his wooden sword stopped dead, just short of Gareth's side.
Every sound in the training grounds vanished.
* * *
"...That's enough."
Gareth slowly lowered his sword.
For a while he didn't say anything. He looked down at the tip of Luca's wooden sword, then up at Luca's face.
"Not a single form," he said quietly.
"...No. That's not right. It's nothing but forms. An orthodox swordsman's lunge. A heavy fighter's block. A thief's sleight of hand. A duelist's evasion. A mage's shortened chant. And a ladle."
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The watching Rank Tens laughed a little again. Gareth shook his head.
"Forms from who knows how many people, lined up side by side in one body without fighting each other. I've been an instructor for twenty years, and I've never seen anything like it. ...To be honest, I don't know how to grade it."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize."
Gareth wrote something in his notebook. Then, just barely, the corner of his mouth lifted.
"You pass. I said I'd find out whether you had what it takes not to die on the ninth floor. You, at least, didn't die to my sword."
"Thank you very much!"
The instant Luca bowed, his stomach growled.
This time, everyone on the training grounds burst out laughing.
"...It's been growling since the middle of the bout. I could hardly concentrate."
"I'm sorry."
* * *
When Luca came back from the sand, Celes was standing with her chest puffed out, as if she were the one who'd just passed.
"Naturally."
"Congratulations on passing too, Celes."
"Naturally."
Viktor came by. He stopped and looked at Luca, his face as cold as before.
"...A ladle."
"Yes."
"Is this a joke to you?"
"It's not a joke."
Luca thought for a moment, then went on.
"I think I understand about half of what you said, Viktor. That the forms are what the people before us left behind in exchange for their lives."
Viktor said nothing.
"Mine are the same. Every skill I have came from the last time someone used something. Theo's lunge. Boss's legs. The shield of a rookie named Pete. All of them had their lives on the line."
Luca looked down at his palm.
"That's why I don't want to throw a single one of them away. The ladle included."
Viktor was silent for a while. He started to say something, then closed his mouth. Then he opened it again.
"...I refuse to accept it."
That was all he said before he turned his back. But his back looked, just a little, less certain than it had before.
* * *
"Here are your Rank Nine tags. Congratulations, both of you."
That evening, Nora held out their new tags at the front desk. A nine had been carved into the iron.
"...So. About Gareth's evaluation."
Nora opened the exam record and pressed her fingers to her temples.
"'Forms: numerous. Classification: impossible. Ladle: yes.' ...What does 'Ladle: yes' even mean? What am I supposed to put in the ledger...?"
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to apologize, but honestly!"
Next to him, Celes was giggling. Then her face went serious all at once, and she closed her hand tight around the tag with the nine on it.
"Rank Nine. Now we can go as deep as the ninth floor. ...And we can challenge the Gatekeeper on the tenth."
"Yes."
"Let's go, Luca. Six months. All the way up."
Luca nodded.
His stomach growled again. This time, nobody laughed. Celes just held out a piece of shortbread without a word.
* * *
The eighth floor was a floor of wind.
When they came out of the seventh floor's mine tunnels and went down the stairs, the wind roared in their ears. All across the rock floor, shafts gaped open, so deep that no one could see the bottom. Cold air blew up out of them without letting up.
"The Guild map calls this floor the Wind Pits. It says if you fall down one of the shafts, you're as good as dead."
"I'll be careful."
"Really be careful. Whenever you spot something someone dropped, you stop seeing anything else."
"...I'll be careful."
Using [Mapmaking], Luca counted his paces and marked down each shaft in his notebook, one by one. It was their second day as Rank Nines.
* * *
A little before noon, in a hollow sheltered by the rocks, they found an old campsite.
The remains of a fire. A collapsed stone hearth. Scraps of a rotted blanket. And in the ash of the hearth, half-buried, something small and silver.
"A spoon. A silver one."
Celes picked it up and brushed off the ash. A tiny flower was carved at the end of the handle.
"Delvers don't carry silver spoons around. This is the kind a noble house's food taster uses."
"Food taster?"
"Someone who eats the food first to make sure it hasn't been poisoned. Silver turns dark when it touches certain kinds of poison."
Luca took the spoon from her.
◆ ◆ ◆
The big camp pot. Tonight, it's mushroom stew.
One spoonful. Roll it over the tongue.
Salt. Milk. Forest mushrooms. And—
The back of the tongue goes faintly numb.
"Wait. Nobody eat."
Every hand around the fire stops.
"There's a numbcap in here. They look a lot like forest mushrooms, but the stem is a little red at the base."
"You're kidding. Did I pick that one...?"
Search the pot. There. One mushroom, red at the base.
Five years since leaving the food taster's post to cook for delvers. This tongue, at least, hasn't gone dull yet.
While the stew is being made over, the spoon gets set down on the rim of the hearth. And there it stays, until the ash buries it.
◆ ◆ ◆
Echo inherited: [Poison Tasting].
"...It was a cook. They could pick out a poison mushroom in a single mouthful."
"A food taster's skill. ...Not much use in a fight, though—"
Celes stopped there, maybe remembering [Mapmaking] on the sixth floor, and shut her mouth.
Then, a little hesitantly, she rummaged in her pack and took out a cloth bundle.
"Good timing. Let's have this for lunch."
"Shortbread?"
"The shortbread ran out yesterday. Because you ate it all."
"I'm sorry."
"So today... I made something myself."
Inside the bundle was a round pie. It was a little lopsided, and the edges were burnt. But it smelled sweet.
"After our family's cook left, I taught myself. ...I'm not very confident about it, though."
"Then I'll dig in."
Luca bit into a slice.
It was salty.
Very, very salty.
His [Poison Tasting] tongue sorted out what was in it all on its own. Flour. Butter. Apple. Egg. And a huge amount of salt. Only the smallest pinch of sugar.
"...Celes. You swapped the salt and the sugar."
"What?"
"There's salt where the sugar should be, and sugar where the salt should be. Also, there's no poison in it."
"Of course there's no poison in it!"
Celes bit into a slice herself. Her whole face scrunched up.
"So salty...!"
"But the apples are cut nicely. And it's baked just right, except for the edges."
"You don't have to cheer me up..."
Luca reached for a second slice.
"You're eating more?!"
"I'm hungry. And it isn't poison."
"There's something wrong with your standards, you know that...?"
In the end, Luca ate the whole pie. Celes kept her face turned away, red to the tips of her ears.
* * *
That afternoon, the two of them stood at the edge of an especially big shaft.
It was wide enough to swallow a house. The bottom was pitch black, impossible to see. But on a ledge a little way down from the rim, something glinted.
"...What is that? It looks like a metal fitting."
"I'd like to go down and see."
"Don't be ridiculous. There's nowhere to tie a rope."
Luca looked around the rim of the shaft. In a crack in the rock, an iron hook had been driven in deep. A rope was tied to it, but it had snapped partway down and was swaying in the wind.
Luca touched the hook.
◆ ◆ ◆
He drives the hook into the crack in the rock.
Loops the rope around his waist and ties it off. Double, so it can't come loose.
Feet against the wall. Lean back. Give the rope his weight. No fear. He's come down cliffs this way hundreds of times.
Push off the wall with his feet and feed out the rope, a little at a time.
He drops onto the ledge and picks up the pack a comrade dropped.
"Got it! Pull me up!"
Just as he finishes climbing back up, the rope scrapes over a corner of rock and snaps.
...This rope's had its day, then.
He'll leave the hook where it is. Somebody else might need it.
◆ ◆ ◆
Echo inherited: [Grappling Hook].
"It's a way of tying on a rope and climbing down a wall."
"...You could have led with that."
Exasperated as she was, Celes took a new rope out of her pack. She'd bought it on Nora's advice, to be ready for the ninth floor.
Luca untied the old, snapped rope and knotted the new one to the hook. Around his waist, double. So it couldn't come loose.
"You're really going down there?"
"I'll be right back."
Feet against the wall. Lean back. Give the rope his weight.
Oddly enough, he wasn't scared. His feet found the bumps in the wall on their own. Push off, feed the rope. Push off again, feed it again.
"...You're good at that."
Celes's impressed voice drifted down from above. Before long, Luca touched down on the ledge.
The glint had been the clasp of a leather purse. When he picked it up, silver coins clinked inside. A name was embroidered along the seam, so he could probably get it back to its owner. Luca tucked the purse into the pouch at his hip.
"Got it! Coming up now!"
He took a fresh grip on the rope and set his feet against the wall. He gave the rope his weight.
That was when it happened.
With a deep roar, an especially strong gust came howling up from the bottom of the shaft.
The rope swung wildly. Looking up, he could see the crack in the rock where the hook was driven in.
And now he could tell. [Stone Reading] told him.
Thin lines ran all through the rock around the crack. Lots of them. And they all came together at a single point—exactly where the hook had been driven in.
Oh—
That rock had been battered by the wind for years.
There was a sharp crack.
"Luca!"
Celes's scream was pulling away from him. A chunk of rock broke loose, hook and all, and the rope suddenly went slack.
Luca plunged headfirst toward the pitch-black bottom of the shaft.