Chapter Text
Correction is given in inches. Obedience is measured in breath.
Officer’s Manual, Training Notes
Morning came meaner. The yard wore a film of pewter light that made every scuff in the flagstones look like a fault line waiting to widen. Frost clung to the cracks that dragon talons had worried thin. Sweat from yesterday had dried into a salt ghost that rose again the moment boots began to move.
They were already moving. Not instruction— attrition. Lines that broke the lungs into obedient pieces, footwork that asked ankles to choose between grace and honesty and then punished them for choosing wrong. River kept to the numbers the way she always had: breath counted and stacked, four down, four up, never gifted to panic, never wasted on performance. The braid along her spine lay strict as a rule.
Junia slid beside her in a running pass, neat even in exertion. “You run too hot,” she said, not a rebuke, an equation presented.
River didn’t turn her head. Heat is a kind of noise. “Heat burns pace,” she answered, voice low enough to conserve. “I keep the pace.”
Junia’s mouth acknowledged the logic by refusing to smile. She fell a half step forward again, the kind of companion who corrects by existing in a better line.
They pivoted into ladders chalked on the stone. The chalk rose as dust and found teeth. Fynn clipped a rung with his heel, recovered quick, muttered something to himself that sounded like a promise he planned to keep. Lucan followed with the lazy grace of a man who pretends not to care because caring would confirm how much he’s enjoying himself. He caught the ladder clean, looked insufferably pleased, then immediately stumbled on nothing at all and laughed as if he’d meant to. The bench of instructors to the right hated him exactly as much as he wanted.
“Clause Eight, Section Two,” Lucan gasped as they turned, words running out of him as easily as air. “When exhausted, fall with dignity so others may admire your choreography.”
“Incorrect,” Fynn said, too earnest, too bright. “Section Three: Always die facing your most flattering side.”
River threaded between them, deadpan dropped like a coin. “Clause Nine. And you’ve misquoted both.”
Lucan nearly tripped on delight. “Statue corrects the Codex,” he announced to the sky. “A new sect is born.”
Fynn was already laughing, hoarse and honest, the sound skipping off stone and loosening a few shoulders in passing. Even Junia’s breath made a quieter sound, which was her version of amusement. Theron, behind them, didn’t laugh; his exhale arrived like the word steady spoken once and kept.
They were sent down the rope weave; low, mean, and hung just enough to skin a back if someone started believing in glory. River flattened, hips a measured inch above scrape, breath held at the precise moments the ribs wanted to flare. A cadet from another squad tried to be fast and turned clumsy; his ankle caught hemp and he swore in a voice that would have been a joke if it hadn’t already decided to be a bruise. Lucan murmured something wicked under his breath and still offered a hand to free the ankle on the way by. Junia didn’t dignify any of it, she simply didn’t bleed.
On the turn to the next station, a shoulder jutted deliberate from a passing rank—testing or bored cruelty, it didn’t matter. It cut across River’s path hard enough to steal a breath.
Theron appeared the way a wall appears when someone tries to go through it. His mass absorbed the blow and redistributed it into the floor; the offending shoulder discovered friction and a new respect for geometry. He did not look at River. He didn’t need to. He adjusted the line and kept moving, the act so unremarkable it couldn’t be argued with.
Valenor moved like weather, present without permission, course-correcting without spectacle. He stepped through their wake and set a hand at River’s outer elbow mid-drill, a wordless pressure that asked her to shift her stance a finger’s width. She had already felt the flaw; resentment flashed and was filed, then her body accepted the correction as if it had been the plan all along. The adaptation was too quick. His attention sharpened by a degree. He said nothing and moved on. The ledger in his eyes kept writing.
They were onto strikes. Blunted edges, padded joints painted bright so no one could pretend they hadn’t aimed wrong. Fynn’s first pass went too high; River tapped the heel of his hand with the barest reprimand.
“Lower,” she said, the syllable the size of a breath.
“Lower,” he repeated, like he could nail the word to his own bones, and the second pass landed true enough to pull a grin he quickly swallowed.
Lucan took the station beside them and tried to sign a flourish into a simple elbow pop. The target swayed unimpressed. Junia’s glance scissored the flourish off at the wrist. Lucan obeyed the next attempt with almost obscene efficiency out of sheer contrariness, then waggled his eyebrows at no one as if to apologize for being competent.
“Again,” an instructor said, voice sandpaper.
They obliged. The morning rose hotter; the work stayed colorless. Fynn found her cadence on the tether drill without yanking her off it, the rope a small honesty between them. Junia’s edges stayed neat even when breath wanted to fray them. Lucan’s noise turned out to be an engine the row pretended to hate and unconsciously used. Theron gave one of the poles a look so patient it stopped wobbling.
They hit the sanded lane last; footwork on a surface that wanted you to confess imbalance. Fynn slipped, corrected without pride, bit back a curse and replaced it with breath. Lucan narrated the sand’s treachery long enough to entertain three squads, then shut up mid-sentence and ran with a seriousness that surprised even him. Junia’s steps wrote tidy cursive; Theron’s prints looked like punctuation: period, period, period.
“Codex, Section Ten,” Lucan panted as they came off the lane, because he had found wind for words no matter what physics said. “When the ground betrays you, accuse it loudly.”
Fynn, crimson, wheezing, still managed, “Section Eleven: Apologize to the ground later.”
River swallowed a mouthful of copper air. “Section Twelve,” she said without looking at them. “Stop speaking to the ground.”
They howled, the sound breaking hoarse and joyous and indecently alive. Even the instructors’ mouths pressed flatter as if refusing to enjoy it took effort.
Water, finally. Tin cups stung split lips and taught new languages to raw knuckles. Lucan dumped his over his hair and declared his rebirth to a scandalized bystander; Fynn almost drowned laughing. Junia wiped a blackening bruise across her thumb with the corner of her sleeve like she was erasing a smudge she’d made in a ledger. Theron stood where the wind hit first and let it, as if that had always been his job.
Valenor came close enough for the signet’s gravity to change the air. He didn’t speak. The not-speaking said what it always did: I measured; I will measure again. River refused to tilt toward the attention. Her breath held its numbers. Her bones behaved.
“Form,” he said at last, and the yard’s noise found its spine.
They moved as if someone had drawn a line and they had decided not to embarrass it. The drills would keep cutting until the day admitted defeat or they did. River set her feet where the ground demanded, matched the count, and let the laughter of a minute ago settle warm under the armor where no one else would see it. As they turned into the next run, Fynn fell into step just behind her shoulder; he didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His cadence matched. That was enough.
The corridor bled the yard’s heat into stone and returned chalk for breath. Benches waited in the doctrine room like pews that had forgotten comfort. The board wore lines of law that never washed out: sections, subclauses, the old spine of obedience.
They filed in with the drag of fatigue disguised as discipline. Junia’s neatness straightened the row without speaking. Theron took the aisle end and made the space hold. Fynn leaned forward as if a quill might keep pace with a pulse. Lucan slouched into irreverence like armor he refused to buckle. River chose a seat where door and window shared her eye; control often begins with angles.
The instructor, a narrow man with a voice like scraped tin, tapped the Codex pinned to a wooden frame. “Conduct under pressure,” he said. “Chain of command. Hand signals when sound fails. If you do not know the words, your body will speak for you and likely say the wrong thing.”
He pointed at the chart of signals: palm flat—hold; two fingers—split; fist—compress; wrist—cut. He made them echo the shapes in the air until the room learned a second alphabet.
Behind River, Lucan murmured at the ceiling, “Clause Twelve: When rebuked, die beautifully.”
Fynn, breathless but grinning: “Subclause A: With audience.”
River didn’t turn. Her voice cut flat as steel. “Subclause B: Pay attention. Or die loud and useless.”
The laughter that broke out was hoarse, startled, indecently alive. Even Lucan tipped his head back with a grin like he’d just been handed his favorite kind of wound. The instructor lifted his chalk like a weapon and aimed it at the back rows. “If you’ve the energy to jest, you’ve the energy to demonstrate. You-” the chalk ticked toward Lucan “and you” it snapped to Fynn “signals, now.”
They went down gratefully, grins mostly swallowed. Lucan’s hands made a flourish of hold that would have gotten a wing killed; Fynn mirrored it too large. The room’s patience creaked. River’s eyes gave them the correction without mercy. Smaller. Lower. Honest.
They reset, and this time the shapes told the truth.
“Again,” the instructor said, tin scraping.
Pairs rotated. Junia’s signals looked like ink dried clean: no wasted curve, no vanity. Theron’s were rocks given grammar. When the rotation reached River, the instructor watched a beat longer than fairness and only said, “Good,” which in a room like this meant: acceptable, don’t get proud.
The temperature changed. A silence with its own gravity entered at the doorway. Valenor leaned against the jamb without claiming it. His presence made the air organize. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. The relic under his shirt did the work of turning quiet into structure.
River refused to notice him with anything but discipline. The sand table took their attention—thread for routes, slate chips for wings. “Lead is down,” the instructor said, tapping a cipher. “Right wing spooked. Left waiting to be told they are brave. Who speaks next.”
Hands rose. Words jostled. River held still, counting breath until the noise thinned to something instructive.
Junia answered without vanity. “Second in command if present. If not, the nearest mind that can be obeyed without debate.”
Lucan breathed it out like a revelation, grinning. “Nearest mind. Cruel measure.”
River didn’t glance up. “Unfortunate.”
Laughter cracked through the row, quick and hoarse. Even Fynn barked once before smothering it in his sleeve. Lucan clutched his chest as if mortally wounded, delight sparking in his eyes.
“Again,” tin-voice ordered. “Louder signals. Smaller hands.”
They obeyed until muscle started remembering without mind. Chalk turned the air grainy. Fynn’s writing limped but persisted. Lucan wore the virtue of tiny like a borrowed shirt; skeptical, then settled. Junia’s precision refused to degrade. River kept the floor of her breath; she let the work burn but not brag.
The bell found them bent over the slate. They did not leave until dismissed. “Bring your bodies back to this shape tomorrow,” the instructor said, capping the chalk. “Leave the flourish where it belongs.”
On the way out, Valenor’s shadow crossed her just long enough to teach the hallway what gravity was. He didn’t look at her. He had already taken his measure. It didn’t matter. Her bones felt numbered.
They spilled into the corridor’s cooler air. Lucan, unable to keep triumph from his voice, murmured, “Witness me: I signaled without seducing the wind.”
Junia didn’t even slow her stride. “All I witnessed was you seducing a whole wing into their graves.”
The laugh that broke through the squad was ragged, too loud in the narrow hall. Theron’s mouth tugged, the barest curve, as if he’d been waiting for someone to finally say it aloud.
Lucan only brightened, eyes glittering. “Ah, but don’t worry, my Serrin darling; you were on the right wing. Your survival was assured by my genius.”
Junia’s sigh carried enough force to silence saints, her pace sharpening by a fraction as her eyes flicked to River for a heartbeat; flat, knowing, before she faced forward again.
Fynn fell into step a breath later, elbow not quite brushing hers. “Your cut,” he said, pitched low, careful. “Clean.”
She caught his forearm, drew his hand closer to his center, narrowing the gesture until it lived inside his frame. “Yours, smaller,” she returned, the words exact but not unkind.
His mouth twitched into a smaller smile, a quick nod sealing it before he tried again.
Ahead, the next room waited, the one where practice would stop pretending to be polite. The day sharpened. She let it.