Eveline looked properly at his face for the first time, under all the dirt. "It is you."
He had only seen them in ballgowns before. Eveline’s fair hair had been pinned up that night. Now it was coming loose from its braid, full of bits of web, and her grey hunting jacket was torn at the elbow. Marianne’s dark hair was a mess, and her brown riding clothes were coated in silk and mud up to the knee. But her eyes were as bright as he remembered.
"Lady Eveline," he said. "Lady Marianne."
"Oh, don’t," Marianne said. "Not after you’ve seen me stuck in a spider’s web."
Elias had come back over and was looking from Owen to the girls. "You know each other?"
"We met at the Princess’s ball," Eveline said. "Briefly. He came in with Clara and Elise Ashcombe." She smiled at Elias. "And you are?"
"Elias Ward."
"Then thank you as well, Elias. You were wonderful."
"That spear was a lot of help," Elias said, looking pleased.
But Marianne had already turned back to Owen.
"You took both of the big ones," she said. "On your own. In about three moves." She stepped closer. "Everyone’s still talking about you and de Clare, you know. I thought half of it had to be exaggerated. Where did you learn to fight like that?"
"At home," Owen said.
"That’s not an answer."
"The way you handled the fire," Eveline said. She had stepped closer too. "I thought it was going to catch all that web, and it didn’t. It was very controlled."
"Thank you."
"Did you always use fire?" Marianne asked. "Or is that new?"
"Marianne," Eveline said. "We haven’t even thanked Elias properly."
"I thanked him. Elias, thank you." Marianne didn’t look away from Owen. "So, the fire?"
Owen found himself very slightly backed up against a boulder.
He had barely finished fighting. At the ball, they had talked to him for a few minutes about cakes and music, and then gone off to see other people. Now they were both standing in front of him firing questions at him, as though he had known them for years.
He wasn’t sure how it had happened so quickly.
Mostly, he wanted to get out of this ravine before something else came out of the rocks.
Behind the girls, Elias had folded his arms. He was grinning so widely that it looked painful.
"I’ve been following you around for hours," he said, "and you’ve told me about four things. They’ve known you two minutes."
"They’ve known me since the ball."
"That’s even worse."
"We should travel together," Marianne said. "For the rest of the examination."
Eveline nodded. "We came in here looking for something worth more points," she said. "We saw the webs. We just didn’t realise how far back it went, or how many of them there were. By the time we did, we couldn’t get out." She glanced back at the dark openings in the rock. "I’d rather not do that again. We’d stand a much better chance with people who know what they’re doing."
"No," Owen said.
He didn’t need a team. That hadn’t changed because he had pulled two people out of a web.
"Of course they can come," Elias said.
Owen turned and looked at him.
"You were never invited in the first place," he said. "Why are you still following me?"
"I’m not following you," Elias said. "We just happen to be going the same way. Remember?" He turned to the girls with a little bow. "And since I happen to be going wherever Owen’s going, you’re very welcome to come along with me."
Marianne burst out laughing.
Eveline looked at Elias for a moment, and Owen saw her understand exactly what he had done. She didn’t object. She just smiled politely and said, "Thank you, Elias. That’s very kind."
Owen looked at the three of them.
There didn’t seem to be any point arguing.
He checked his bracelet instead.
Ninety points.
Beside him, Elias was checking his. Fifty-six.
Through a gap in the webbing overhead, Owen could see a corner of the projection. The rankings had changed again.
First: Lucien de Clare, 121 points.
Second: Mira Calder, 116 points.
Third: Adrian Holt, 111 points.
His own bracelet said seventh. And Elias’s—
"Forty-eighth!" Elias stared at his wrist. "Forty-eighth. I’m in. Owen, I’m in the top fifty!"
He looked as though he wanted to shout it at the whole forest.
Owen looked at him. Elias had walked into this examination admitting he had barely hunted anything. Every one of those fifty-six points was his own.
"You’ve improved a lot," he said.
Elias beamed. "You’re lucky I decided to follow you, you know."
Owen didn’t answer that.
Forty-eighth wasn’t safe, though. It was barely inside the line. With hours still to go, anyone below him could pass him.
"Congratulations," Eveline said warmly.
"Look at him," Marianne said. "He’s glowing."
Owen looked back up at the board.
Lucien was first.
He thought of the East Martial Court. Of Lucien on his knees, his axe on the stone. Of the empty sleeve. He had wondered, seeing Lucien’s name earlier, whether the duel had taken anything out of him besides his arm. Apparently, it hadn’t. Whatever his replacement arm could or couldn’t do, it hadn’t stopped him. He was out there somewhere, killing faster than anyone else.
Owen wasn’t surprised. Lucien had never been the kind to stop.
Ninety points put Owen comfortably inside the top fifty. But it was a long way short of a hundred and twenty-one.
He wasn’t done yet.
* * *
While the others talked, Owen turned his attention to the notification still waiting at the edge of his vision.
He focused on it, and the translucent window opened in front of him, visible to no one but himself.
Congratulations!
[BLADES CLASS MASTERY: 100%]
[Master Class mastery requirement completed.]
[Reward: One additional Master Weapon Class selection unlocked.]
[You may now select your next Master Weapon Class.]
Owen read the last line again.
And then again.
He remembered the first time he had looked at the Infinite Arsenal. The rows of weapon classes, nearly all of them locked. Knowing how much was there, and that he couldn’t touch any of it.
All those years of sword training as a child had given him a foundation most people would never have. But even with all of that, it hadn’t been enough on its own. It had taken the training, the hunts, real fights where a mistake could have killed him. It had taken that last cut through the spider, with the fire held exactly where he wanted it.
And now it was done.
He felt something rise in his chest, and it took him a moment to recognise it as excitement. Real, uncomplicated excitement, the kind he couldn’t remember feeling in a long time.
He wasn’t limited to Blades anymore.
He wanted to look at everything. Every class that had just opened up to him. What each of them could do, and what they might do alongside what he already had. What would fit with Fire, with Steel, with Vapor—
"Owen."
He barely heard it.
"Owen. Hello?"
Elias had been talking. He kept talking for a little while, apparently assuming Owen was ignoring him on purpose. Then he stopped.
"Owen."
Marianne looked from Elias to Owen with an amused expression. Eveline’s smile faded a little.
"Is he all right?" she asked quietly. "He did fight both of those big ones."
Elias came right up to him. "Owen. Owen. Owen Ferrers."
Owen blinked.
The ravine came back to him. The webs, the dead spiders, the three of them standing in front of him.
"What?" he said. "Why do you keep bothering me?"
"Because I’ve been calling you for ages," Elias said. "I wanted to know if we’re actually leaving or if you’re planning to stand there staring at a rock for the rest of the examination."
Owen glanced at the girls. They were both watching him, waiting.
He realised he had been standing there in silence for a good deal longer than he had meant to.
He looked at the window one last time. He wanted very much to start going through the classes right now. But not here, with three curious people standing a few feet away, watching his face.
It could wait.
He closed the interface without choosing anything.
"We’re leaving," he said. "We’ve wasted enough time."
He turned and started walking back toward the mouth of the ravine.
Elias was after him at once. Eveline and Marianne glanced at each other, then followed Elias.
"Is he always this hard to talk to?" Owen heard Marianne ask behind him.
"Oh, this is nothing," Elias said happily. "You should have seen him earlier. I asked him about the subjugation, and all he said was ’busy.’ One word."
"That doesn’t seem fair," Eveline said. "He did just save our lives."
"He saved mine too, a bit. He’s still terrible at conversation."
"I’m sure he isn’t terrible."
"Wait until you try asking him a question."
Owen listened to them going on behind him as they climbed out of the spiders’ ravine.
He thought about turning round and telling them, again, that he had never agreed to travel with anyone.
Then he thought about Elias stepping around that spider without even needing his shield’s power. About Marianne’s spear darting in to cover him. About the relief on both girls’ faces when they realised the spiders were dead.
They really weren’t as much trouble as he had expected.
He kept walking, and he didn’t tell them to go.
A small smile crept onto his face.
* * *
Jonas Reed didn’t like this part of the forest.
He, Celia and Tobin had come a long way in. Much farther than most people had bothered to go, as far as he could tell. They hadn’t seen another candidate for a long time.
The trees grew thick and close together here, and the undergrowth between them was dense enough that he had to shove his way through it. The ground kept dipping and rising under his feet. Very little light made it down through the branches. It was still day, he knew. But down here, it felt like the evening had already come.
He checked his bracelet again.
One hundred and eleventh.
He let out a breath. The last time they had passed under a break in the canopy, he had seen the board. De Clare had taken first, with a hundred and twenty-one. Calder and Holt were right behind him. Even Owen Ferrers was up to ninety.
"At this rate," Jonas said, "we might as well start packing to go home."
"Complaining won’t get us any points," Tobin said. He didn’t look at him. He was looking ahead, through the trees.
"I’m not complaining. I’m just saying."
"That’s what complaining is."
"We’ve come a lot farther than we said we would," Celia said. She had stopped walking. "We said we’d turn back an hour ago. Shouldn’t we at least think about whether this is worth it?"
"We’re a hundred and eleventh," Tobin said. "All three of us, near enough. Nothing back there is worth anything anymore. Everyone’s already picked it clean." He pointed into the trees. "If there’s anything good left, it’s farther in."
"Or there’s nothing farther in, and we’re just getting lost," Jonas said.
"Then what do you want to do? Go back and kill rats for one point each until the time runs out?"
Jonas didn’t have an answer for that.
Celia looked from one of them to the other. She rubbed her arms, though it wasn’t cold.
"A little farther," she said finally. "Just a little. And then we turn back. Whatever we find."
Tobin nodded. After a moment, so did Jonas.
They went on.
It was Jonas who noticed the smell first.
It was faint at first. Sour and heavy, catching at the back of his throat. Something dead, he thought. A monster someone else had killed and left to rot.
But the farther they went, the stronger it got.
"Jonas," Celia said quietly.
She had stopped beside a bush. The leaves on it were spattered with dark stains. She crouched down and touched one of them, and her fingers came away red.
"That’s blood," she said.
"Over here," Tobin said.
Something was lying under a bush a few steps off the path. A Goblin. Or what was left of one. It was lying on its side, and whole pieces of it were missing. Not cut off. Torn away.
Jonas looked farther ahead.
There was another one, lying among the roots of a big tree.
And another, past that.
There were dead monsters all over the ground. The earth under them was dark and soaked, and the undergrowth around them had been crushed and torn up, as though they had fought something before they died.
None of them said anything.
Jonas had seen plenty of dead monsters today. He had killed some himself. But none of them had looked like this. Nobody with a sword or an axe had done this.
Something had been eating them.
"We should go," Celia whispered. "Right now."
Jonas opened his mouth to agree.
From beyond a fallen tree a few paces ahead came a wet, tearing sound.
Then a crunch.
Then another long, wet tear.
Jonas turned his head, very slowly, toward the sound.
There was something on the other side of the fallen trunk, half hidden by low branches. It was crouched over a dead monster, its back to them.
At first, he couldn’t make out what it was. He saw a hunched back. Long arms. A head bent low over the body, moving.
For a moment, he thought it might be another candidate.
Then he saw the arms properly.
They were much too long. Far too long for a person. And the shoulders were wrong, set too high and too wide, and the way it was crouching didn’t look like any way a human body should bend.
It lifted something from the corpse and brought it up to its mouth.
It was eating.
Blood dripped from its chin and spattered onto the leaves.
Tobin had moved up right beside Jonas. All the impatience was gone from his face. Celia’s hand closed on Jonas’s sleeve and tugged, very gently. Back. Go back.
They began to edge away.
Jonas took one step back, and then another, and on the third, his boot came down on a dry branch.
Crack.
The thing stopped eating.
For a moment, its head stayed bowed over the body.
Then, slowly, it turned toward them.
Jonas saw its face.
It was almost human. That was the worst part. There was enough of a face there that he could see what it had been meant to look like. But it was all wrong. The jaw was huge and twisted out of shape, hanging open, and fresh blood covered its mouth and ran down its chin in thick streams.
It stared at them.
Nobody moved.
Jonas’s hand had tightened around his weapon. He couldn’t make himself take a single step toward it.
"Go," Celia breathed. "Go, go—"
The thing began to stand up.
It unfolded. Its long limbs straightened one after another as it rose up off the corpse, and it kept rising, taller than any man Jonas had ever seen, its body all the wrong shape. One of its hands trailed across the blood-soaked ground as it straightened, the fingers dragging through the dirt.
Tobin stumbled back.
The thing’s head snapped toward him.
Then it lunged.
Jonas turned and ran.
Celia and Tobin were running beside him, all three of them crashing through the undergrowth, branches whipping at their faces, roots catching at their feet.
Behind them, something heavy was coming through the trees. Its footsteps were uneven, a dragging, thudding rhythm.
And it was getting closer.