The Villain Who Seeks Joy

Team lists went up at noon on a board outside the east yard. Names written in neat hand, captains in bold. The Wind Spire Relay would run in three days. No lights allowed. Gust lanes shifting every minute. Points for safe speed and method, not drama.

My team: Gareth Blackwater, Lyra Faewyn, Pelham Gray, and a runesmith apprentice named Mira Holst. Solid mix. Dirt, wards, rope, and someone who could draw sigils that didn't fail at the first sneeze.

Aldric read the list, then looked over at Pelham with the ease of a man who never wondered if an offer was welcome. "Gray," he said, smiling like the answer was a formality. "You've got family in my father's ledger. Walk with me. We'll organize something more befitting your level."

Pelham hesitated. He glanced at my name, then at Aldric's crest ring. He wore good boots but stood like a man who always checked the floor first.

I didn't pitch. I didn't promise. "Our lane will be windy," I said. "It needs clean holds and a man who can ignore noise. If you want work, we have it."

Aldric's smile thinned. "He needs opportunity, not rope burns."

Pelham looked at the spire diagram, not at either of us. "Opportunity looks a lot like rope," he said, and signed under my team.

Aldric's jaw moved once, small, as if he'd bitten a seed. "Enjoy your knots," he said, and walked away with his pair of blues pretending they'd wanted to leave first.

"Thanks," Pelham said to no one in particular. "I'm not a showpiece."

"Good," I said. "We're not a show."

Mira arrived with a kit satchel and ink-stained fingers. Small, dark hair cropped short, quick eyes. "If someone hands me a stake that hums at the wrong frequency, I'm throwing it back," she said by way of greeting.

"You'll get to do that," I said.

Lyra joined last, brass badge tucked away, ledger replaced by a coil of white rope and a small tuning fork. She nodded once to each of us, clean and professional. If she had opinions about my leadership, she kept them to herself. That was a kind of respect, too.

We took the lower practice field because the upper was a circus. Three wooden spires stood like stripped trees. The red lane stretched between them, cut by a gulch where wind tunneled and did its meanest work. The rules pinned to a stake said no light after the horn, time penalties for dropped tools, and a full fail for any "civilian" model that hit the ward net below.

Gareth sank his hands into soil at the anchors and hummed under his breath. He wasn't flashy; his earth moved like good advice—felt more than seen. Small lips of dirt rose to cup stakes so a sudden gust wouldn't turn a tight line into a loose one.

"Step, set, slip," I said for the team, tapping my heel, ball, toes on a plank to show the cadence. "No big strides. Move on contact. If the wind takes a piece of you, let it be a coat, not a leg."

Mira chalked tiny sigils along the first span—simple load watchers that would glow dull if a knot was trying to chew through itself. "If it hums, stop and fix," she said. "Points for method."

Pelham checked the carabiners, not trusting first looks. Good habit. He didn't talk much. Also good.

Lyra stepped to the line and touched the fork to the rope. A soft tone rose, almost too low to hear, then steadied. "I can stretch a chord wall across the red," she said. "Not a full stop, just a turn. Like cupping wind and telling it to go that way."

"Do it," I said. "We'll angle into it, not against."

We ran a first slow pass without wagons. Just bodies across moving planks while the instructor on the spire twisted baffles to make our lives interesting. I kept my steps honest, pulsing weight only when wood met boot. The wind caught my jacket twice and found nothing to take.

Halfway across, I let Hollow out for a count of ten. He rose like a small, pale leaf and rode the gust line, then clicked and settled back when I told him. The leash stayed clean. No fuzz, no drag. People on the rail murmured, not because bones flew, but because I let them fly and put them away like tools, not trophies.

Cael watched one run from the far spire. He didn't wave. He didn't have to. When I hit the last anchor and scanned the knots, he lifted two fingers in a small, precise nod. "Cadence is clean," he said when I passed near enough to hear.

"I'm learning," I said.

He didn't smile. "Good," he said, and moved on.

We reset for a second round with mock wagons—low frames on wheels full of sandbags that stood in for people. Pelham took the first hold at the red span, hands steady on the line while Lyra hummed the chord wall into place. The wind tried to buck the wagon sideways. Gareth grew a lip of packed earth under the wheels at the break, just enough to catch the slide without trapping it.

"Walk it," I said, and we did—slow, then faster, but never sloppy. The plank flexed under weight. Mira's watchers glowed once, a dull orange. "Stop," she said, and we did. She flipped a knot, chalked a bite, and the glow fell away.

It felt like work done right. The kind that makes a crowd mutter not "wow," but "oh."

We broke for water along the fence. Mira set her kit down, then frowned at the coil she'd just set aside. "Hold," she said, throat tight.

She laid the rope out along the grass and ran two fingers along a span near the tail. The fibers opened under her touch in a clean, inch-long line. Not fray. Cut. Very sharp. Very deliberate.

"Not practice," she said.

"Where was it?" I asked.

"On the third wagon," she said. "I pulled it off when the watcher glowed funny."

Lyra walked to the stake at the last anchor and wiped a finger along the metal head. A smear of something clung to the rag. She held it to her nose and grimaced. "Iron-pine. Thin."

Gareth swore under his breath and looked at the children on the far side of the field drawing in the dirt with sticks, unaware of any of it.

"Switch ropes," I said. "And we log it now, not later."

We walked the coil to the board by the yard, wrote it plain: found a cut, found residue, swapped gear, continued practice. Pierce read it as he passed from the upper field to ours, jaw tight. "Good," he said. "Keep the note bare. I'll pull the stake myself."

He did, with a warden watching.

We ran two more passes without drama. Pelham didn't grandstand. He held lines the way men hold doors so others can pass. Mira found two more knots she didn't like, fixed them, and taught Pelham her method without making it a lecture. Gareth kept the anchors honest. Lyra shifted the chord wall to catch a sudden gust that might have rolled a wagon. She didn't look at me for approval. She had a job; she did it.

On the last run, I tested a heavier rotation for a heartbeat—Warden braced at the near anchor, Lantern open for a count of three to read a shadowed gap, Sapper tapping a plank joint, and Hollow out for wind. It felt wrong immediately—leash too taut, my hands speaking too many languages at once. I closed the Lantern, stowed the Sapper, called Hollow back, and breathed until the thread eased.

"Not ready for four," I said to myself, and felt the Compass agree by staying silent.

The horn ended the session. We rolled wagons to the shed and coiled ropes in the shade. Mira chalked a small X on the cut coil and tied it off so no one would use it by accident. Lyra wiped her tuning fork clean and slid it into the small pocket sewn inside her cuff. Pelham stretched his hands and shook them once, as if telling his fingers they'd done fine.

Across the yard, Aldric put on a noisy show with a lightning lash that cracked like a whip and made three first-years flinch. An instructor walked over and spoke to him very quietly. He didn't use the lash again.

Marcus drifted by and lifted a card deck. "Tomorrow night," he said to whoever heard, which turned out to be us. "No stakes a man can't afford."

"I'll come," Gareth said.

"Me too," Mira said, then pointed at me. "Only if he doesn't talk about knots the whole time."

"I can talk about something else," I said.

"We'll see," she said.

I swung by House Admin to log Ariadne's requested audit—the strap used at the clinic, the solvent amount, the length of time we held the line. The clerk stamped it without looking up. I didn't mind. Paper likes being boring.

When I stepped back outside, the sun had dropped behind the west tower. The air cooled enough that the grass smelled green again. Cael crossed the quad on a diagonal. He gave me the same small nod and kept going. That was almost friendship, in his language.

I ate at the kitchen window, not the noble hall. The cook slid me a roll without comment. "For not making a mess," she said. "And because you always bring the bowl back."

"Thank you," I said. Small things stacked faster than men liked to admit.

Dusk laid soft gray across the stones. I went to my room, checked the Lantern, fed the Sapper another chalk chip, tightened the boar frame's straps, and oiled the sabre's guard. Marrow sat in the corner, still as a promise. Hollow perched on the chair back and clicked once, impatient in a way only I felt through the line.

The hall outside settled into the quiet that comes after dinner, before nonsense. I pulled on a dark coat and left my badge in the drawer. No crest. No noise.

Liora and Dorian waited by a service door behind the east tower. No escort. No lamps. Liora's hair caught the last of the light and turned it silver-white. Dorian looked like a shadow that had opinions.

"Gate Four," Liora said. "No one else needs to know we looked. If there's nothing, we're home in twenty minutes."

"If there's something?" I asked.

"We don't chase it," she said. "We mark it clean enough to bring others back."

I nodded. "Lantern, Sapper, Warden," I said, lifting the satchel strap across my shoulder.

"Good," she said. "Marrow stays in Shade unless I say otherwise."

"Understood."

Dorian eased the door. Cold air rolled over us, carrying the thin, sharp smell of iron-pine resin.

Fresh.

We didn't speak. We stepped into the dark.