For a long time, none of them moved.
Owen stood over the body with the rifle hanging from his good hand. Elias stood beside him. Marianne was a few steps back, her spear still raised, as though she hadn’t yet decided whether to lower it.
The creature’s eyes were still open. The tears hadn’t dried on its face.
Owen found he couldn’t look away from them.
"Owen." Elias’s voice was quieter than Owen had ever heard it. "What happened? You went completely still."
Owen didn’t answer straight away. He didn’t know how to say it so that it would sound real.
"It said something," he said at last. "Just before it died."
Elias stared at him. "It said something? Like... words?"
"It said thank you."
Nobody spoke.
Marianne lowered her spear, slowly. She looked down at the creature, at the blood on its jaw and the long, twisted fingers curled into the dirt, and she wrapped both arms around the shaft of her spear and held it against herself.
"No," she said quietly. "No. I don’t like that."
Elias opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He didn’t seem to know what to say either.
The wind moved across the slope. Down in the trees below, a bird called once and went quiet.
Owen thought about the boy back at the clearing, with his shoulder smashed. About the girl, crying for someone called Tobin. About the claws going through his arm.
And then those two words, in that voice.
None of it fit together. He didn’t know how to make it fit.
After a while, Elias let out a long, unsteady breath. He looked away from the body, as though he had decided he had looked at it enough, and his eyes went to the rifle in Owen’s hand.
He was quiet for a moment longer. Then, carefully, he said, "That thing in your hand. What is it?"
Owen looked down at it.
He had been waiting all day for the chance to look at a new weapon class. He had finally got it. He had summoned a weapon that was nothing like his sword, and integrated a core into it, and used it, and the shot had gone exactly where he had meant it to. On Earth, he had thought guns were the most exciting thing in the world. After eighteen years in Asteria, he had never expected to hold one again.
It had worked. All of it.
He waited to feel pleased about it.
He did, a little. But it was tangled up with something else. The first thing he had ever killed with it was lying at his feet with tears on its face.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
Elias had come closer while he was thinking. He bent over the rifle, studying it from every side, the long barrel and the strange grip and the scope mounted on top. Some of the colour was coming back into his face.
"I’ve never seen anything like it," he said. "How does it even—"
He reached out to touch it.
Owen dismissed it.
The rifle vanished. Elias froze with his hand still out, his fingers an inch from empty air.
He looked at the empty space. Then at Owen.
"Really?" he said.
It came out so offended that Marianne laughed. It was a shaky laugh, and a short one, but it was a laugh, and Owen felt something in his chest loosen slightly when he heard it.
"Bring it back," she said. "I want to see it too."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I can barely stand," Owen said, "and I’m not summoning anything so the two of you can poke at it."
"You can’t show someone something like that and then just take it away," Elias said. "That’s cruel."
"It is cruel," Marianne agreed.
Owen turned and started back down the slope. Behind him, the two of them followed, still complaining. It was better than the silence.
* * *
Eveline was waiting at the edge of the clearing. Her eyes went to Owen’s empty hands, and then, almost at once, to his arm.
The whole sleeve was soaked through. Blood had run down over his hand and dried between his fingers.
"You need that seen to," she said. "The moment this is over."
"I know."
"He made it disappear," Elias told her. "Right when I was about to touch it."
Eveline didn’t look nearly as upset about that as he did.
"So what is it?" Elias said, turning back to Owen. "You can at least tell us that."
Owen sighed.
"It’s called a firearm."
They looked at him blankly.
"It’s a ranged weapon," he said. "Like a bow. But it doesn’t shoot arrows. It shoots small pieces of metal. Bullets. They come out through the barrel, the long part at the front."
"But there’s no string," Elias said. "How does it throw anything that fast?"
"And the noise," Marianne said. "I thought the sky had cracked."
Eveline didn’t ask anything. She was listening.
Owen gave them as much as he could without giving them too much. That it threw a bullet much faster than any bow could loose an arrow. That it could reach a long way. That the noise came with it.
Elias nodded slowly. Then he frowned.
"But you’ve had a sword all day," he said. "The whole examination. So where did that come from?"
Owen had known that question was coming.
Elias wasn’t suspicious. He was just curious. But whatever Owen said now, Elias would remember it. And so would the girls.
He couldn’t tell them the truth. He didn’t want to lie to them, either. They had just bled beside him.
"My armament isn’t like other people’s," he said. "It doesn’t only take one form."
Elias stared at him.
"It doesn’t only take one form," he repeated.
"No."
"Since when?"
"Since always." Owen thought about the sword, and the Steel, and the Vapor. "You’ve seen some of it."
"Some of it," Elias said. "Some of it, he says."
Marianne was looking at Owen as though she were seeing him properly for the first time. Eveline’s expression didn’t change, but she was very quiet.
Elias opened his mouth again.
Above the forest, the great projection flared bright.
"The entrance examination of the Imperial Military Academy has ended."
The voice came from everywhere at once, carrying over the trees and the rocks and the open ground.
"All candidates will stop hunting immediately and wait for further instructions."
The rankings began to fill the sky.
First: Lucien de Clare, 214 points.
Second: Mira Calder, 207 points.
Third: Adrian Holt, 198 points.
Owen read the top line, and then he read it again.
Lucien.
He had known it was likely. He had seen the name at the top of the board for hours now. But seeing it there at the end was different. The last time Owen had seen Lucien de Clare, he had been on his knees on the stone of the East Martial Court, begging. Now his name hung above all of them.
It stung. Only a little. But it did.
Then Owen let it go. Lucien had fought for every one of those points, on a replacement arm, only weeks after losing his own. Whatever else he was, he hadn’t come here to give up. And Owen had never believed that the duel had ended anything between them.
He looked down at his own bracelet.
Fifth. One hundred and seventy-six points.
It hadn’t moved since the Goblins in the clearing. The creature had never been one of the Academy’s monsters. Killing it hadn’t earned him a single point.
He found that he didn’t care.
Beside him, Elias had lifted his wrist and was staring at his bracelet with an expression Owen had never seen on him before. He didn’t say anything. He just stared.
Owen looked up at the board. Down near the line, among the names he didn’t know, was one he did.
Forty-sixth: Elias Ward, 91 points.
Four places below him, the last name inside the fifty had eighty-eight.
"I’m in," Elias said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "I’m in. I’m actually—"
He didn’t finish. He just kept looking at his wrist.
Marianne had checked hers. She let out a long breath and sat down heavily on a rock. "It’s over," she said. "It’s actually over."
Eveline had glanced at hers too, but only for a moment. Then she was looking past all of them, toward the edge of the trees, where the girl was still kneeling beside the injured boy.
Owen followed her gaze.
The examination was over. The boy’s shoulder was still smashed. And somewhere back in the forest, their friend was still lying where that thing had left him.
* * *
It wasn’t long before Owen heard footsteps.
They weren’t candidates. There were a lot of people, moving together, boots striking the rock in a steady rhythm, and beneath it, the faint clink of metal.
Soldiers came out of the trees. Academy uniforms, made for the field, with the sword and laurel on the breast. They wore protective gear and carried weapons, and they moved like people who had come expecting a fight.
Some of them spread out around the clearing without being told, watching the forest. Others went straight past Owen and up the slope.
The man leading them went with them.
He was broad-shouldered, with a weathered face and dark hair cropped close, going grey at the temples. His uniform was neat despite the hurry he must have been in, and the insignia of his rank stood out on his coat. He didn’t waste a single movement.
He crouched beside the creature and looked at it for a long time. At the limbs, and the burns, and the broken bone. At the hole the bullet had left in its chest. He pressed two fingers to its neck and waited.
Then he stood.
"It’s dead."
His face had gone very grave. Whatever he knew about creatures like this one, he clearly understood how bad this could have been.
He turned to his soldiers. "Secure the remains. Nobody touches it without my say. Get this area under control, and get that body recovered intact. The Academy will want to examine it." He turned to another soldier. "And the team for Marr?"
"On their way to his last recorded position, sir."
"Good."
Only then did he come down the slope toward Owen.
"Owen Ferrers."
"Yes."
"Captain Alden Pike. I’m an instructor here, and an officer of the Academy." He looked Owen in the eye. "That was well done. Not many people your age would have walked away from that."
"Thank you, Captain."
Pike’s eyes went to the ruined sleeve, the blood, the careful way Owen was holding himself to keep the weight off his side.
"The Academy’s senior officers will want to speak with you," he said. "After you’ve been treated. Not before."
"I understand."
Owen had a fair idea what they would want to talk about. But Pike clearly had his hands full, and the soldiers were still moving all around them. He didn’t ask.
"Get yourself seen to," Pike said. "Now."
He went back up the slope.
* * *
The healers came soon after, with more soldiers escorting them. They wore looser clothes than the soldiers did, made for kneeling and moving quickly, and each of them carried a satchel full of supplies.
One went straight to the injured boy.
"Jonas Reed?"
The boy nodded. He was grey with pain, and the girl hadn’t moved from his side.
The healer knelt and began asking him short questions. The girl didn’t want to give up her place.
"Celia," Eveline said gently, touching her arm. "Come and sit with me. You can still see him from here."
After a long moment, Celia let herself be led a few steps away. She sat down beside Eveline, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and didn’t take her eyes off Jonas.
Another healer went to Elias.
"I’m fine," Elias said, before the healer could speak. "Mostly."
"You’re limping."
"I got thrown across a clearing."
"Weren’t you saying earlier," Marianne said, "that you could keep going all night?"
"I was wrong." Elias winced as the healer pressed at his hip. "Very wrong."
A third healer came to Owen.
She was a woman in her middle years, her dark hair tied back tightly, her sleeves rolled to the elbow. She peeled the torn sleeve back from his arm, and he hissed through his teeth as it came away from the drying blood.
"Claws?" she asked.
"Yes."
She pressed gently at his side, and he nearly bit his tongue.
"And it threw me into a tree," he added.
"I can see that." She pointed to a rock. "Sit. Stay still."
Owen sat. For the first time since the girl had come bursting out of the trees, he let his shoulders drop.
The healer laid her palm just above the wound.
Warmth spread out from it, slow and soft, sinking down into the torn flesh. The sharp, burning edge of the pain began, very slightly, to dull.
Owen closed his eyes.
And in the quiet, with the warmth sinking into his arm, he heard it again. Two words, cracked and faint, in a voice that had sounded far too human.
Thank you.