Da was out front when Dalliance came home, his hat twisted into a shapeless mass by his fidgeting, as his great hands turned what had been a flat brim this way and that.

  The [Patriarch] looked every day of fifty, with his silver muttonchops and craggy face, though Dalliance knew he'd fought on the Wall for longer than that. Upper tiers lived longer. For an instant, the man's eyes looked it, too. Old.

  "This one," he said without any lead-up, "claims the most lives."

  Dalliance didn't pretend to be surprised, and his Da didn't pretend to expect him to be. Having to arm yourself was a stupid test.

  "Congratulations," Cadence Rather said at length. "You lived. My expectations haven't changed, and going forward, having proven your mettle, I may have to be stricter. But today was an important watershed."

  "More than you know," Dalliance told his Da, not expecting to. The honesty just kind of happened. "The System told me I've been blessed by the gods," he said.

  Cadence looked up sharply at that, his face gone grave. "A blessing," he said, "is never a minor thing. Tell me, son."

  "It's called," said Dalliance, "'Call Me Cassandra'."

  "A woman's name," commented Cadence. "And what is the text of this blessing?"

  He was honest.

  "Interesting," said Cadence, once he had finished. "I appreciate your honesty."

  It was quiet for a moment. The wind moved through the trees, a sound to complement the hammering of Dalliance’s heart.

  "You move easier, now. You've invested in Might, as you ought to have."

  Dalliance nodded, eyes tracking downward without his conscious direction.

  Cadence gave him a direct look. "And if I asked you how you’d spent the rest of your points?"

  Wit, of course. He'd advanced one level. In light of the circumstances, it hadn't felt much like cause for celebration.

  Dalliance was exhausted and sighed audibly. "I'd lie to your face," he said.

  His father gave him a sorrowful look and backhanded him across the face. Something broke there. A hot rush. "Not just a 'no'," his father said. "You’ve got spunk. But I told you, boy, I'd beat you as if you'd allocated your points properly." His father's tall frame rose to its full height, terrible against the sun. "I am," he said, emphasizing the word, "glad you've come home safe to us, my son. I will make inquiries as to your blessing. For the meantime, practice your [Introspection]. It's the only skill not bound to your class. You'll never lose it. If you turn that skill upon your blessing, most likely you'll learn something."

  He stumped away and settled in on the porch, rocking chair groaning under each stroke. Several minutes went by before Dalliance felt a pair of calloused hands gently help him to his feet.

  "You look terrible," Whimsy said. "We have to get you to a doctor."

  "No," he said.

  "How about Circe?"

  He nodded reluctantly, and they began the slow progress toward the road under the watchful eye of the patriarch.

  [Introspection] 23%

  [Trait: Call Me Cassandra]

  [Prediction] is made clearer! You are nō lengra lost in a gewind, ac can fylgan any one tr?d through to the end!

  And nān mann will ever gel?fan you about anything they could not ?r cnāwan.

  Circe was home with her mother when Dalliance and Whimsy came onto the scene. The girl had been crying.

  "May I touch you?" said the older woman, even as Circe's fingers grazed Dalliance's cheek and her face went blank.

  "His cheekbone is broken. But he was fine when we left the forest!"

  "What have I told you?" her mother said, ignoring her commentary and asking first. "I don't mind," Dalliance spoke up quickly.

  For some reason, the healer gave him a very unimpressed look. "I'm sure," she said. "Nonetheless, we will be adhering to basic standards of propriety in this household."

  Circe scrubbed at her cheeks and turned away, washing her hands in a basin.

  "It was Father," said Whimsy.

  Dalliance feigned surprise. It was the first time he'd seen any sort of break in her fanatic loyalty to the man.

  "He's a bear," she added. "Perhaps he doesn't know his own strength," said the older woman.

  And her tone told Dalliance nothing as to what she was feeling. "Now then, if you would do the honors," she gestured to her daughter, whose hands lit up as if glowing from the inside. Not like looking at someone's hand in a sunbeam, but more like someone's hand had been heated in a blacksmith's forge. A clean, soothing radiance bathed Dalliance's face.

  The warmth faded. "Work your jaw," Mistress Mallow instructed, her voice clinical. "Move it around. Any clicking?"

  Dalliance did as he was told, the movement smooth and painless. There was no clicking.

  "Very well. Run along now, Rathers," she told them. "Tell your Da there will be time for an accounting ancillary to the next town hall."

  Their Da was, whether by reason of popular request or natural temperament, deeply involved in town council business. Nevertheless, this didn't feel like the sort of message Dalliance wanted to carry to his father.

  "We'll tell him," promised Whimsy.

  "You've got me all wrong," said Whimsy, no longer helping Dalliance upright. The girl was walking by the edge of the path, kicking rocks and leaves off it idly—a small act of neatness in a world left overgrown. "I never said that just because he's our Da, that everything he wants is always okay."

  "You didn't?" asked Dalliance.

  "No," Whimsy sounded frustrated. "He's supposed to be protecting us."

  "From wolves and such," Dalliance said dryly. "He does a great job."

  "That's not what I mean," she said sharply, "and you know it."

  He rolled his eyes. "You saw Mistress Mallow back there. This is not unexpected. People know what he's doing."

  "Just like," said his sister, "his Da did to him. Or are you forgetting, in all your self-righteous victimhood, that you're not the only one?"

  "What, like Probity before me?"

  "No, he had an easier time."

  Dalliance scoffed. "Nobody cares."

  "What are they going to do, lynch him? With whose army?"

  Dalliance didn't think it would take an army. But he didn't gainsay her.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  They walked for a little while.

  "I want to ask Mom who he was," she said.

  "No," said Dalliance. "We're not going to do that."

  "I do what I want," she said. "And I want to know who Mom was kissing."

  "It's not going to help."

  "But she has to stop."

  Dalliance whirled on his honest little sister. "Does she, really? Are you sure? Because all we know is that she's not happy, and that someone is trying to make her happy, and then you're going to take it away?"

  "But it's Mom," she complained.

  "'A woman's business is none of mine,' isn't that what she always told me?" said Dalliance. "But even so, have you seen Mom smile at Da at all recently?"

  "Well . . . no."

  "Earnest told me that's what his sister was like when she was running around with those two boys."

  "Together?!" asked his little sister, scandalized.

  "No, sorry. Pledged to one and apparently spending quality time with the other. Earnest told me that she stopped smiling at the one she no longer wanted because she didn't want him anymore. And that's what Mom is doing with Da. And if she doesn't want him anymore . . . ."

  "No," she said petulantly. "That's not okay."

  "It's not my fault," complained Dalliance.

  Mister Best was grave and solemn. He wore a tightly fitted black waistcoat with a black vest and a black shirt beneath it, shiny black shoes, and a red neckerchief. It was the most somber Dalliance had ever seen his teacher.

  "The Empire doesn't do this as a blood sport," he began, "nor are we intentionally wasting young lives. It is simply that the will of the gods makes the System accessible at twelve, and without guidance, most students have completely ruined their future prospects in all ways that matter before they would come of an age that would be appropriate for this grim business. The Chancellor, and the council of Magisters, chose a course of action that appeared efficient, and which has been proven effective at fostering the elites we need for the Walltop."

  He did not look at the two empty desks.

  "It is unfortunate that the only way to advance is through peril. Real danger. We are assured that everything else has been tried, and, that it has come to this . . . . Well. Heroes rise through adversity. Scant comfort, though that be, for the families of the departed and their friends." He cleared his throat. "We are obliged to rely upon the prescriptions of our betters. This is no less true elsewhere in your lives, so I shan't say any more about that. Today, as after-actions go, I will be brief, for there is much to do, and I have the families of our former classmates to speak to.

  "However, as is customary, we shall be putting up today's stat adjustments on the board. This is discretionary, etc., etc. Hands up for Grit?" He scribbled. "Might?" Dalliance raised a hand and his teacher scribbled without a comment. "Agility? No one. Wit? Of course, Dalliance. Charm? Earnest? Spirit? Fine. With that bookkeeping out of the way, who would like to begin the analysis of what went wrong?"

  The room was silent for a moment, and then Dalliance, to his horror, noticed that his own hand was raised. When had he decided that? Earnest smirked at him. He used a skill on me.

  But it was too late. "Yes, Dalliance," said Mister Best.

  Morality turned and gave Dalliance her full, undivided attention, dark eyes rimmed with dark lashes, unblinking, quill poised over a fresh sheet of paper.

  "Once again," Dalliance said, "we went in without any idea of what we were going to meet, or even that these things were possible. Once again, we had no idea what was going . . . we . . . " An idea struck him. "Are we supposed to scout for ourselves?"

  "Give the man a cookie," said Mister Best. His face was icy and analytical now. "Yes. Although I had thought my student who has formally studied tactics would have been the one to come to this realization. But yes, this is among your many options. You run forward and attack, as you did, to the best of your twelve-year-old last time. Ideally, a leader would have emerged and guided you on some alternate action." He looked at Sterling. "That you and Dalliance prevented this from being an utter disaster does not excuse you, who should have known better."

  Dalliance, still standing, met Mister Best's gaze, but the man just shook his head. "You are a farmer's boy," he said, "and I know what your father considers essential information. You have not been prepared in a similar way. Or am I wrong?"

  Dalliance shook his head, although he wondered if perhaps Topaz might have said something at some point that he could have . . . but no.

  "Going forward," said Mister Best, "I expect you to make use of all of your options. Scouting is essential. Planning is indispensable. And no, I was not allowed to suggest that option, and I am not allowed to suggest the other options you have available to you. But I encourage you to consider what they may be. We need not repeat this failure."

  He gestured to Prudence's empty desk.

  "Class is dismissed, unless someone has something pressing."

  "I got a blessing," blurted out Dalliance.

  The class went silent. "Well, don't leave us in suspense," Mister Best sounded a little bit friendlier now.

  Dalliance read it to him. "And there's more. Da said to use my [Introspection], but I don't understand it at all. It says the name of my skill."

  "I suppose you still aren't interested in sharing that with the class?" asked Mister Best.

  "No, thank you."

  "Fine. Tell me what [Introspection] said."

  It says that my skill 'is made clearer! You are nō lengra lost in a gewind, ac can fylgan any one tr?d through to the end! And nān mann will ever gel?fan you about anything they could not ?r cnāwan.'

  "I do not believe that is quite the correct pronunciation," said Mister Best, "but this is as good a time as any to explain, in brief, [Introspection]. To wit: the better your [Introspection] skill, the clearer the will of the gods, as brought to us by the System, shall be. One of the first great teachings is 'know thyself.' In this case, the gods have left us little option. Has anyone else received anything?"

  The class was silent again.

  "Class dismissed, in that case," said Mister Best.

  "How am I supposed to make this work?" Dalliance asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the clean-swept floor of his shack. He had made doubly sure that it was clean, because he knew what would happen if he was caught sitting idly while it was not.

  "[Introspection], that is right," said Topaz. "It is the study of the self by the self. You sit, and you think about who you are, who you want to be. Ask yourself the questions about yourself you need answers to. When you find the correct question, you will learn more."

  "When I was younger," he said, "it felt like you were less vague about things."

  "Well, perhaps," she shot back, "it's simply that I trust you to be capable of picking up subtext."

  "People need to trust me less," he groaned. "Are you sure there's nothing else you can tell me?"

  "I probably wouldn't waste time on [Introspection] right now," she admitted. "Does that count?"

  "I don't understand. Part of my System is in another language, and you want me to just leave it be?"

  "You must," she told him, "learn to prioritize what is important over what is interesting. Listen.

  “I’ve been trying to prepare you for the real world, and that means real consequences for your choices. So, I’ve tried to prepare you for the easiest choices to quantify and answer your questions about the harder ones as you grow older. But I can see I erred . . . listen.

  “The points you spend on your attributes are real. But that allocation is the least important one you will make. Let me talk to you about your real, most precious resource—time.

  “You wake up every morning with a double handful of hours, and that’s all. Where you spend those may not determine your capacity, but it will determine your destiny. Do you see? No?

  “You dream of being a wizard. We share that dream, and it is a worthy ambition. But you cannot spend your whole day in dreams of being a wizard, nor invest all you have toward it—you will starve and die.

  “You live in a world of danger—but cannot spend all your attentions there, or you will not plan for the future.

  “You have friends who care about you, and a body that needs care from you. Left untended, you . . . ”

  “ . . . will die, yes,” he said.

  “So each day you have spent your double handful of hours. Each day you will, until the last hour is gone. And THAT is your life.”

  "You must," she insisted, "approach this mindfully. My gift to you has been peeling back some small portion of the fog surrounding mortals in their earliest years. But surely you can see I wouldn't be doing you a kindness to lead you by the nose to where I want you to go, Dalliance. Faeries live forever, but these fleeting moments are all you have.

  "It is not my nature to shepherd the unwilling, just as it is not yours to follow blindly. That is what I've seen in you. I have nurtured that within you, and I am content."

  She kissed his nose, an action so tiny he couldn't feel it at all, and was gone.

  Grumbling, he settled into the lotus stance she had taught him painstakingly, closed his eyes, and tried to still his whirling thoughts. It would be a long time before he made any progress.

  Dinner was a solemn affair, with Uncle nursing what he assured Dalliance was known as a "migraine," and Da looming from the head of the table, clearly deep in thought but saying little. As was her custom, Chastity interpreted this as an invitation for everyone else at the table to be completely silent. The distant chirping of a squirrel in the attic was the only sound throughout dinner.

  And as they got up to leave, Cadence said two words, a hand on Dalliance's shoulder.

  "Kill it."

  "Quietly," added Chastity.

  They went into the master bedroom, closed the door, and locked it.

  "Uh . . . going to be a fun night for you," said Whimsy brightly, and swept off outside to her own shack.

  "Piss."

  Some, however, are true.

  In case I'm too light-hearted for you: