The infirmary had never held this many people at once, and Julian had said so twice, and had then apparently decided the argument was not worth continuing.
JUL: Left leg. Try to relax it.
ART: It is relaxed.
JUL: It is not relaxed. It is the least relaxed leg I have handled this year, and I have handled a considerable number of legs today.
He worked the muscle above Arthur's knee with both thumbs, methodical and entirely without sympathy, and Arthur made a sound he was not proud of.
JUL: That's the problem. That right there.
ART: That HURTS.
JUL: Yes. It will keep hurting, and it will hurt considerably more tomorrow, and if I leave it alone it will still be hurting in three weeks. Lie still.
Arthur lay still. Yseult sat on the edge of the bed by his shoulder with one hand moving slowly through his hair, and had been doing it for some time, and did not appear to consider it worth commenting on. Nobody else commented on it either, which Arthur noticed.
Elsie was leaning against the wall a few feet away with her bandaged arm folded across her chest and her legs, by her own report, still not entirely convinced by the concept of standing.
ELS: Twenty-four minutes.
ART: I've heard.
ELS: Against the defending champion.
ART: I've heard that too.
ELS: You know you don't have to keep trying this hard to impress me. We've been friends ten years. The bar is genuinely very low at this point.
BRR: That's the funniest thing you've ever said.
ELS: I know. I've been saving it since the doorway.
Finn was sitting on the floor with his back against the far cabinet, still visibly delighted with his own existence three hours after being pushed out of the tournament. Briar had taken the only other chair. Mira stood near the window, and Talon near the door, and the whole room had the particular quality of people who had gravitated somewhere without discussing why.
YSE: You missed our match.
ART: Yours and Corin's?
YSE: Mine and Corin's.
ART: How was it?
YSE: Short.
She said it flatly, her hand not stopping.
YSE: Three minutes. I opened well. I had him giving ground for most of the first two, and I'd started layering properly, and I'd used my soul ability twice and was about to do it a third time.
ART: And?
YSE: And then I couldn't.
Her hand paused for a moment, then resumed.
YSE: I reached for it and it wasn't there. Not depleted. Not blocked. I want to be precise about the difference, because I've been trying to be precise about it for an hour. It was not that I had nothing left. It was that the place I reach into was no longer connected to me.
The room had gone quiet.
YSE: I stood in the middle of the marked ground and reached for my own essence and found that I could not find myself.
ART: Yseult-
YSE: It lasted perhaps four seconds. It was the worst four seconds I have ever experienced, and I have had a genuinely varied life.
She smiled, which did not entirely work.
YSE: When it came back, his blade was at my throat. He'd walked the whole distance while I was busy panicking. So I yielded.
BRR: Nobody knew what happened. The whole arena thought you'd simply stopped.
YSE: I had simply stopped. That's precisely what it looked like, because that's precisely what it was.
COR: ...How's the leg?
He was standing in the doorway, and nobody had heard him arrive. He had not changed out of his gear. There was dust on his cape and a scrape along his jaw that somebody should have looked at, and he stood with the particular stillness of a person who had come to say something and had not yet decided how.
ART: It's attached.
COR: That's a lower standard than I'd have expected from you.
ART: It's been a long day.
COR: It has.
He came in a few steps, which Arthur registered as significant, because Corin Ashby did not enter rooms he had not been invited into.
COR: Twenty-four minutes.
ART: Everyone keeps saying that.
COR: Everyone is going to keep saying it. I watched the last nine. I want you to understand that I have never in my life seen anything like it and I do not expect to again.
ART: I lost.
COR: You did.
He said it without softening it, which Arthur appreciated more than reassurance.
COR: You lost, comprehensively, and it does not matter at all. I have spent an hour listening to fourth-years attempt to explain what they watched and not one of them has managed it. That is not what losing sounds like.
He glanced at Yseult, briefly, and something passed across his face.
COR: I'm sorry about the match.
YSE: Don't be. I asked for a fight against someone genuinely trying to stop me. I received one.
COR: It wasn't a fight. It was four seconds of theft and a walk.
YSE: I'm aware of what it was. I'm also aware that you could have done it in the first ten seconds and chose not to, and I've decided not to examine why too closely, because I suspect the answer is embarrassing for both of us.
Corin did not respond to that. He turned to go, and stopped in the doorway with his back to the room.
COR: The final is at the sixth bell.
BRR: We know.
COR: I'd like all of you there.
ELS: We were going to be there anyway, Corin.
COR: I know. I'm asking anyway.
He was quiet for a moment.
COR: I want to be clear about something, because I don't intend to say it twice and I don't intend to say it where anyone else can hear it.
His hand had found the grip of his blade. Arthur watched the knuckles go pale.
COR: I am not going out there to win.
Nobody said anything.
COR: He stood over a boy who could not move and threw a punch at his face. In front of the entire academy. Because he was frightened, and because he has spent four years being told he is the strongest thing in this building, and because nobody has ever once made him feel small.
His grip tightened further.
COR: I am going to make him feel small.
He walked out without waiting for a response. The infirmary held its silence for several seconds afterward.
FNN: So that's terrifying.
BRR: Deeply.
FNN: I've never wanted to watch anything more in my entire life.