Chapter 7: Frostfair

Frostfair came on the first night the river froze solid.

Grey Thorn hung lanterns of ice on every wall and set braziers in the courtyard.

Pedlars from the village sold hot cider and honey cakes, and two hundred students stamped their boots on the cobbles and shouted at one another.

I had been at the school six weeks, and for the first time I wasn't cold.

"You're entered," Hedda said, shoving a mug of cider into my hand.

"In what?"

"The rune duel. I put you down. Don't look at me like that, you need the practice, and I need to win a bet."

"Hedda."

"I bet a kitchen boy a week of his pudding that you'd go to the final."

"Which kitchen boy?"

"One I've invented to make you feel better. Drink."

The duel ring was a circle of chalk in the middle of the courtyard.

Two fighters stood inside it, each behind a ward-knot of four loops drawn on a slate.

Each tried to untie the other's before their own came apart.

It was a game for people who already knew how to cast.

I knew how to untie one loop of a chalk knot, in a quiet cellar, with a man breathing at my ear.

I stepped into the ring and the crowd roared.

My opponent was a third-year with a notch through one eyebrow and a lot of confidence.

He cracked his knuckles.

"Heard you took down a whole lecture hall," he said. "Try it on me."

"I'd rather not hurt your feelings."

The crowd laughed.

Two figures in white coats stood at the edge of the torchlight, notebooks in their hands.

Royal examiners.

The Crown sent two to Grey Thorn every spring to inspect its scholarship students.

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