I gasped as the point punctured me and flung me down. I could hear high-pitched horrified screaming coming from nearby- the girl who heard the whistling. She was staring at me with wide horrified eyes, her fists clasped together in front of her mouth, which did nothing to muffle the tea-kettle shriek she was emitting.

  "The fuck are you screaming about?" I rasped. "You got something stabbing you too?"

  I don't take javelins with good grace. God, I've been sprinting my ass off, and the one minute that I decide to rest, I get this crap.

  The coach's voice was roaring. "EVERYONE OFF THE PITCH! LOCKER ROOMS, GET TO COVER!" and she was sprinting straight at me, her clipboard - her precious clipboard! - tumbling through the air behind her, neglected. She had tossed it over her shoulder and ran right for me without a second thought. I rolled to my side and hardened air above us in case there was another one. Right, that's why she had everyone run from here, in case there's more.

  I pulled myself to my feet, and glanced over my shoulder. A few feet of jagged rock were projecting out of my upper back, but it didn't feel like I had a punctured lung. I could barely move that arm though, something was definitely jammed up. I gestured to curve stone, and most of the projectile dropped away, leaving just enough to plug the hole.

  "COME ON," the coach bellowed, and grabbed me up like a delicate little waif and then she bridal-carried me at a full sprint back to the locker rooms. Even carrying me, she was catching up on the girls that were running ahead of us, closing the head start they'd gotten. I bounced in her arms, and my dazed pain-addled brain thought about Thumper. I blushed hard.

  "Sorry, hey, you don't need to carry me," I said, shaking my thoughts together. I flew out of the coach's arms, and floated along ahead of her as she sprinted. "Um, actually, should I carry you? My flight is faster-"

  "GET THERE!" she thundered, jabbing a finger, and I took off at full speed without hanging around to offer help. I overtook most of the running players, and used hardened wind to open the locker-room door and hold it for the other runners. Wind compressed into a solid object lifted the latch and pushed the door until it swung for us. I set down in the doorway, and held the door with my hand. I started waving them in, and watching the sky for more meteoric spears.

  The perpetual night-time lighting of Skyside Hearstcliff could hide many sins and sinners; there was no sign at all of any attacker. The hazy and indistinct light that pervaded the city was not sharp enough to make out details at range. And yet..

  Huh. Holding still again..

  I twitched the wrong way, and my arm protested. A flick of magic snatched a towel off of a bench and wrapped it around my bad arm, and then bound it close to my torso and tied itself in place there, splinting the injury. I stepped out of the way of the coach who was moving like a train, and then when the last couple students were inside I slammed the door shut.

  Someone in here was crying and whimpering. The smell of fear joined socks and perfume.

  "What happened?" asked someone with enough wind to speak. "I didn't see anything, just yelling."

  "Someone threw a javelin at us!"

  "It was a stalactite breaking off the ceiling!"

  "No way, it came in sideways at high speed!"

  "We're under attack!"

  "The princess is under attack, more like."

  "Someone tried to kill the princess?!?!"

  "No, not that princess, just Harigold."

  "Someone's trying to kill us!"

  "It was just one stalactite, maybe it was an accident?"

  "We should get help!"

  "Is it safe outside?!"

  "Hey coach," I said, sidling up to her.

  "You should be sitting down," she said automatically.

  "Nah, I'm good. I realized that this thing hit me the only time I slowed down all day. I've been running and dodging the whole class, and then when we stopped and I stood still, then I got hit."

  Do I sound way too collected? Compared to them, yeah. But I'm the only one who realizes that I'm only down by a couple hit points. Everyone else is fixated on the very dramatic attack, and not on the fact that it's more of an annoyance than an injury.

  "So?"

  "So I don't think that whatever got me has good enough aim to hit a moving target," I said. "Or they're far enough away that they had to wait for me to hold still to even have a chance. It's awfully dark out there."

  I could see her running that math in her head. Someone scoping us out, watching for an opportunity. Waiting for me to hold still enough to take the shot. "Do you know who?" she asked.

  "I don't," I admitted. "But it's probably a sorcerer. By tradition, the best way to take out a sorcerer is with another sorcerer."

  She glared at me. "Another thing. You're a sorcerer too?"

  "Yes?"

  She swung a fist in the air, waving it in frustration. "A murderer and a mage! Nobody tells me anything anymore!"

  "This is a matter of public record," I protested weakly.

  She paused, and looked over at me. "This is why you're not dead right now, isn't it?"

  "Hmm? Oh, yeah, probably," I said. "I had infused myself with steel today, so my flesh is very sturdy right now."

  The coach planted her palm on the wall, locked her elbow and leaned in, crossing one ankle over the other. "Right. So, even if you're a little scrawny, you're as strong as steel?"

  "Not as, but stronger," I said carefully. Also, I'm not scrawny. I'm decently muscled, I'm just not burly like some of these girls.

  She reached for her whistle, and ran her thumb over it. I was pretty sure she was missing her clipboard, it's her best friend in the world after all. "I'll come back to all this," she said. "Meantime, let's figure out how to let someone at the main campus know that we've been attacked. I need to get a message out without risking anyone else."

  "Oh, yeah, all right," I said, and dropped into a blaze of white light.

  "Godsdammit! Nobody tells me-!" The portal closed and cut off her rant.

  The school's security staff flooded the field and checked everything. Forensic magic is a lot cooler than forensic science. One of the magisters took a psychic reading off of the stone javelin, and determined that it had come from the wall of the cavern nearly a mile away, well outside the campus's fence line and wards. The attack itself had not been magic, just a hurled stone, so the magic shields ignored it. It had been flung very hard, but lost most of its force in the intervening distance, hitting me hard enough to kill most low-level adventurers outright but I had been prepared to tank an attack because of the status menu's warning.

  So I got issued a new jersey, the rest of practice was canceled, we changed into our own clothes, and the security team started working on new defenses for the perimeter while I got sent off to the healers.

  I knocked on Licard's door, and waited. The massively musclebound medic opened the door and started to snap at me, but I interrupted. "Not my fault this time!" I insisted. Which felt a little bit like a lie. I had seen the warning that this was a Strength-based challenge and I stepped onto the pitch anyway.

  He waved me up onto the bench and started doing his diagnostic magics, but paused. "There's a stone button on your back," he said.

  "Oh, yeah, it's to stop me bleeding," I said. "It's the weapon that stabbed me, I broke off the rest and used this part to seal up so I wouldn't lose blood."

  He gave me a disbelieving look, and a few seconds of silence.

  "What?!" I demanded.

  "Nothing. You're very weird, you know that?"

  "I had a lot of channeled steel in my soul at the time. Steel is very pragmatic and direct," I said in my own defense. "Do you need me to remove the stone so you can heal me?"

  "I have a hard time overstating how much easier that will make things. You don't want that to be a permanent part of you, right?"

  "Shut up."

  "You should probably also release that steel essence, it makes your flesh less responsive to my powers. You feel less like living tissue and I can't do much for you in that state."

  I turned my back and tugged my chemise down off my shoulder to expose the wound, and then I molded the stone point thinner and longer so it would not tear my flesh, and then lifted it out and cast it to the side. I started releasing the channeled steel essence, and my hands started trembling. I stared at them in confusion, and then my whole body started trembling. And then my breath started coming in short painful pants that beat against my chest.

  Well that's not good.

  I eased the steel essence back into my thoughts, bolstering me with steady strength and unflinching pragmatism. The panic reactions died away. Now that my flesh was malleable again, Licard started mending my flesh, and that left me time to think.

  All the other love interests have something to contribute specifically. Money, connections, knowledge, skills, weapons. But Licard would be the school's healer no matter what. He does not seem to actually be interested in me at this time, so why is he listed? What is his connection? We seem to get along okay, in that somewhat-morbid-but-affable way. He seems to not want me to die, which is a start, and I can follow most of his banter.

  But, (a) he's a ton older than me because healers are always older than they look , (b) there's definitely a conflict of interest if the school's healer was in a relationship with a student, and (c) he almost could not be any less of my type.

  "Hard to believe you got your leg wrecked by a teenager with a wooden paddle last week," he butted into my thoughts.

  "I was powered down at the time," I said. "I think from now on, I'm gonna be channeling steel if there's not a good reason not to."

  "Well, someone threw a needle-pointed stone spear to stab you in the back and you walked it off, so I'd say that's a good idea," he said. "Try not to get beaten up, okay? Today was a good day."

  "It's not a good day until I figure out who did this, and why, and figure out how to stop them."

  "Well, I'm sure the forensic mages will-"

  "The sorcerer never touched the stone directly," I interrupted.

  "Oh. Shit."

  "Also, I've got like a million enemies and sorcerers are easy to hire," I said. "We don't even have a guild. If this had been scrivening, I'd start asking around who takes this kind of work."

  "Very well, but how many of those enemies would hire a magical assassin to kill you with witnesses?"

  "About a million. I had already narrowed the catalog to account for that question."

  He chuckled under his breath. "Alright. Get your sleeve back up, you're good as new now. And that assassin is definitely long gone by now."

  The next time I saw Quarl Billiams I was going to have a lot of much more specific questions to ask him.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The dinner offering was garlic-seasoned roast with buttered potatoes. There had been other options, but they were all grabbed up by the time I got there because even with the speeds I travel at, having a crisis will eat up your time. I sat down with Elica, Yheta, Vancy and Larianne, and to make up for the lack of variety I had grabbed a double-portion.

  "So it's true you did get hurt today," Elica said, nodding. "You always seem to get hungry when you've been through the healer."

  "Isn't that normal? Doesn't everyone get like that?" I asked, cutting into the potatoes.

  "Nobody seemed to know what happened," Yheta said. "Just that you got stabbed in camogie?"

  "Broadly true," I said. "Someone hired a sorcerer to assassinate me, and they did it by hurling a stone spear at me from outside the school's protective barriers. Someone from security is already rewriting the wards to stop that happening again."

  "Good then," Yheta said. "Eventually we'll figure out who did it and why, and we'll stop that from happening again."

  Vancy looked horrified. "Someday? Eventually?! What about right now! She's in danger!"

  Yheta counted off on his fingers as he considered the points. "First, whoever did this has no access to the school. Second, whoever did this has no access to our social circles. Third, whoever did this only had enough money for one assassin. Four-"

  "I understand believing that they can't get to the school," I cut in. "But why don't they have access to 'our social circles'?"

  "If they could get into the sort of parties that you attend, that's where they would try to kill you," he pointed out. "Your attendance is known for weeks in advance, easy to plan. And you're extraordinarily easy to poison, you regularly just take food and glasses from people that offer them without checking to see if they're really with the catering staff."

  I held his eyes, and leaned in close, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Yheta. For the sake of all gods. Listen to me. Do not ever, ever, tell a girl that you have made a study of how much or how little she guards her food and drinks, all right?"

  He shrugged uncomfortably. "It's not just you. Hardly anyone does. I only notice because Uncle Lewot made me start practicing it myself, just in case."

  Oh, so the only reason that Yheta knew how easy I'd be to assassinate is because his underworld uncle has been teaching him to be harder to assassinate. That's not just horrifying for me, this is now horrifying for everyone.

  I opened my skill menu and allocated my free skill points all into Alertness. "I think from now on I'm going to be paying a lot more attention to that," I said. "That, and everything else. I don't want to be caught off-guard."

  God dammit. Maybe Yheta's not a scumbag. But it's still very socially oblivious to mention to someone that you've calculated how hard they are to roofie. I shivered again. This was not the day to make me wonder about who I can trust! I don't need anything else to be freaked out about!

  "Why stone?" Larianne asked.

  I paused, and then leaned forward, hunching over my plate as I stirred my fork through. "Huh. I mean, obviously it's because this was a sorcerer and sorcerers are limited by their elemental essence. But this sorcerer did not use conjured stone, they used repurposed stone from the cavern walls, molded into a weapon and then hurled. If it had been me, I probably would have used two spells for this and not even really paid attention. For one thing, because vanishing a weapon once it's done is good..." I paused, trying to find the right term.

  "Tradecraft," Yheta said. "The term is 'good tradecraft'. And yes, disposing of murder weapons is very sensible and cautious."

  "Huh," I remarked, surprised. "I was going to say exsanguination. If they had vanished that stone away I'd have bled a lot. As it is I used their weapon to patch my own wounds. Tradecraft?"

  "Ahem. Anyway, with conjured weapons you'd have gotten no clues at all," Yheta pointed out.

  I groaned and put my head down. "Shit. Is this a misdirect? Did they use this kind of attack so I'd assume it came from off-campus? Did they use stone from the cavern walls just so we'd think the attack was launched from a great distance? Or was it actually done that way, by someone who is just trying to conserve mana and does not observe good tradeskill."

  "Craft."

  "Whatever," I retorted. "Great, now I need to be paranoid about assassins."

  "Well, one less at least," Quarl said. Evening study hall, same people as morning homeroom.

  "How so?" I asked.

  He frowned. "All right. Off the record. I'm going to be ... uncharacteristically candid, all right?"

  "Oh thank gods."

  "Right. Anyway, Lady Harigold, normally an assassin does not get a chance to fail, especially not an independent one. Organized assassins have a union that will back them up if things go bad, but normally targeted killing is a very dangerous and short-lived profession. Every assassin is, always, a witness to someone hiring assassins, and whoever is hiring like that can be guaranteed to have plenty of resources and to care a lot about not being associated with assassins. So, you see the problem."

  "Getting killed by their own employers?"

  "Right. So the fact that your spear-slinger did not follow up and try to finish the job means that they were already on the run. The sensible thing for them to do would be to close in and continue to engage, because taking risks to kill you is less risky than leaving the job unfinished. If they did not do that, they were already high-tailing it, and probably leaving the city. Someone that can hire a magical assassin can probably find that same person anywhere in the city- only distance can save you from someone like that."

  "So if I check every inn that is almost exactly four hours' flight from Hearstcliff, I'll probably find the assassin?"

  Quarl looked surprised. "Huh. That's some good thinking on your part."

  "Good tradecraft?" I suggested.

  "Not really how that word's used. Where did you learn it? Never mind. If the assassin is hasty enough to flee the city and get as far as he or she can but then to stop at seventeenth bell exactly, then maybe. Or if they did not stop early just to throw off that sort of investigation. Or travel all through the night. If they hit you from a mile away they've probably got enhanced senses and can travel easily in the dark-"

  "Crap."

  "-and besides, while I'm not anyone's expert on sorcery, my understanding is that flying speed can vary wildly."

  "Yeah," I grumbled. "It really can."

  "I'll commend you thinking about unconventional answers, but in this case it's too many variables," Quarl said. "Sorry. Now then, this is all assuming that the job is inexpertly planned by amateurs. Most are. If there were professionals involved this would either be much simpler or much more complicated, and in either case I would already know about it because someone would have asked me to prepare a dossier on you and that has not happened."

  But wait, if he had been asked to prepare a dossier, would he tell me about it?.. I could try to feel this out. "Or you did and you're just-"

  "I'm going to stop you there," Quarl said gently. "Trying to out-think this scenario by just doubting my word will only demean us both. For a hundred reasons, I am not lying to you about a dossier being prepared by me for the Duskare family's killers. As I was saying, most hits are extremely amateur- someone who needs the money takes a job to kill someone, and they do not care about the complications and risks that come with that. Human life is a buyer's market, my lady, and bargain-basement discounters control the majority of the market. Bespoke artisans are a smaller community, and they all tend to know each others' business."

  "So odds are I just got attacked by someone that needed the money, and had never done anything like this, who then panicked and ran away and is probably tear-assing across the landscape all night long to get as far away from their employer as possible?"

  "Well, that's the second-most likely scenario," Quarl acknowledged, folding his hands.

  "And the most likely?"

  "This was personal."

  I gotta say this for Quarl Billiams: sometimes he really knows exactly what to say to give me no comfort whatsoever.