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I noticed that Spink’s hands had balled into fists on the edge of the desk I glanced over at his face He was pale I looked down at the page before him, where he had atteures filled half of it, but had carried him no closer to a solution His hands suddenly spread flat over his paper, and when I glanced up at him, his face had turned red I didn’t meet his eyes; it only would have embarrassed him more It would be better if I pretended not to know that he had no grasp at all of any math beyond arithmetic

Captain Rusk erased the board and then immediately wrote another problem on it He paused, tapped his chalk on the board, and said, "Of course, for round you knoell But I know a tower cannot be built upon a shaky foundation, and so I choose to test your foundations before we begin to add to your knowledge" Beside me, Spink made a very small sound of dismay in the back of his throat By an effort of will, I didn’t glance at him Captain Rusk solved the problem on the board, step by step, for us He wrote up threecoh their resolutions, step by step He was a good teacher,clear Beside led to write an explanation of each step beside the proble in concepts he’d never glimpsed before now

I felt ale cruelly before him, as I was the first to raise my hand for the next problem, and the one after that Each time, Gord had a place at the board beside ant than h we had both arrived at the correct answer And each tined another set of proble the first five to complete the proble under an onerous burden of work that would be due by this hour tomorrow We stood as our instructor left Then, in the shuffle of students gathering their papers and books, I ether tonight"

He did not protest that I obviously did not need the practice Instead, he said quietly, his eyes downcast, "I would appreciate that If you have the time"

The other patrols left quickly We waited impatiently for Dent, but another corporal arrived to take command of us and quick-marched us to our next class I suddenly felt overwhelmed It frustratedwe’d left only an hour and a half ago Why couldn’t they have scheduled our Varnian class to follow ourus rush back and forth across the caht that this was our last class before our noon meal sustained me

We joined another patrol of first-years waiting in the classroom It was our first unsupervised encounter with first-years outside of our own patrol, and after a fewand discovered that they, too, were new nobles’ sons Their patrol was fifteen strong We felt lucky to be in Carneston House e heard that they were barracked in the top floor of Skeltzin Hall, where they shared one large open rooe enough to adeons and bats They had been pro winds off the river blew very chill

We sat and talked, teacherless, for a quarter of an hour before Corporal Dent, very red-faced, ca to knoe were doing there and e hadn’t waited for hiht of stairs to the correct classrooes as well They lectured us angrily about stupidly following a cadet we didn’t even recognize, and I came to realize that this had been a prank played upon Dent and his felloith us as ancillary victims

We were late for the class and we received the bla that it was the only language we could use in class, to force us to becoht we could disrespect him because he was not a military ist of what he said to us as he ordered us to take the last available seats in the back of the room Only Trist seemed completely co effortlessly over his paper as he took notes Before the instructor disned us to translate the introductory passage of Gilshaw’sJournal of a Varnian Commander into Gernian, and to co them how much we had enjoyed our first day of Acadeave us the additional assign the class schedule Soroaned and our instructor pern of humor that any of our teachers had displayed