[center][img]https://i.ibb.co/zHLz90q2/portrait-hall.png[/img]

[color=#2E2C2C]─[/color][color=#302E2E]─[/color][color=#323030]─[/color][color=#343232]─[/color][color=#363434]─[/color][color=#383737]─[/color][color=#3A3939]─[/color][color=#3D3B3B]─[/color][color=#3F3D3D]─[/color][color=#413F3F]─[/color][color=#434242]─[/color][color=#454444]─[/color][color=#474646]─[/color][color=#4A4848]─[/color][color=#4C4A4A]─[/color][color=#4E4D4D]─[/color][color=#504F4F]─[/color][color=#525151]─[/color][color=#545353]─[/color][color=#575656]─[/color][color=#595858]─[/color][color=#5B5A5A]─[/color][color=#5D5C5C]─[/color][color=#5F5E5E]─[/color][color=#616161]─[/color][color=#636363]─[/color][color=#666565]─[/color][color=#686767]─[/color][color=#6A6969]─[/color][color=#6C6C6C]─[/color][color=#6E6E6E]─[/color][color=#707070]─[/color][color=#737272]•[/color][color=#757474]⋅[/color][color=#777777]⊰[/color][color=#797979]༻[/color][color=#7B7B7B]༒[/color][color=#7D7D7D]︎[/color][color=#808080]༺[/color][color=#7D7D7D]⊱[/color][color=#7B7B7B]⋅[/color][color=#797979]•[/color][color=#777777]─[/color][color=#757474]─[/color][color=#737272]─[/color][color=#707070]─[/color][color=#6E6E6E]─[/color][color=#6C6C6C]─[/color][color=#6A6969]─[/color][color=#686767]─[/color][color=#666565]─[/color][color=#636363]─[/color][color=#616161]─[/color][color=#5F5E5E]─[/color][color=#5D5C5C]─[/color][color=#5B5A5A]─[/color][color=#595858]─[/color][color=#575656]─[/color][color=#545353]─[/color][color=#525151]─[/color][color=#504F4F]─[/color][color=#4E4D4D]─[/color][color=#4C4A4A]─[/color][color=#4A4848]─[/color][color=#474646]─[/color][color=#454444]─[/color][color=#434242]─[/color][color=#413F3F]─[/color][color=#3F3D3D]─[/color][color=#3D3B3B]─[/color][color=#3A3939]─[/color][color=#383737]─[/color][color=#363434]─[/color][color=#343232]─[/color][color=#323030]─[/color][color=#302E2E]─[/color][/center][indent][indent][indent][indent][justify][color=bdbdbd][color=bdbdbd][h3][sup][sup][color=bdbdbd]𝕴n bygone days—in crueler days—Hladekný and the [i]Kuratorium[/i] and all the rest of them would have pressganged poor Herr Schöst to the very front of this preposterous little parade. "Who better?" they would wheedle, as if empty flatteries filled his belly; filled the lamps of his tenement; as if, swallowed like a spoonful of laudanum, they should calm the song strumming from the ruin of his leg—"indeed, who better? And besides, they who are the future of the Empire should meet their teacher sooner than late, do you not agree?" So away he'd go, compliantly dragging himself up one staircase and down the next, away to the furthest corners of the longest fields used for drilling and shooting and riding, up into the pigeon-eyries of the tallest mock-towers. The classroom the canteen the barracks the parlors the lecture halls. And behind him would march the halfscore, only some of them attentive and curious, only some asking him the same fatuous questions as the ten before them had once asked three years past, and the ten before them, and on, and on. Names, dates, small, vapid disparities in the paintings versus how their rich fathers and fancy tutors had once described the subjects thus depicted. And with every step the nerves would scream, the joints would pop, the ligaments would pluck, each of these a voice in a symphony of suffering. And click-click-drag, click-click-drag, the same demeaning tempo which accompanied him everywhere, the barber's, the opera. And in the end, wearied of his pace and spent of all their patience, their attentions wandering the ceiling as he trudged them to and fro, the ten would learn nothing anyway; arriving late to class the next day, bursting from the lips with excuses and apology, having retained none of his directions, none his warnings on how best to traverse the Academy's many labyrinths. Labyrinths whose shortcuts and beelines he himself had learned better than anyone (the briefness of his walks depending on it).

[i]Thank the Champions for tenure—[/i]Schöst remarked.

The last of his charge having said his piece, and made his noble exit—a commons boy by the name of Dauncey Heathhill, all brimming with fierce moxie from his silvery-blond head to his watery grey eyes down to his chore-hardened hands—Schöst had beaten a hasty retreat in short order behind the lad; as hasty as his faculties permitted, at the least. Through the immense, polished doors, beneath the benches. There he lingered for a time, haunting the shadows of that particular vomitorium, a glint from his cane the only intimation of his being there. He observed from afar as the others paid young Herr Heathhill little mind; and, of those who did, with no small dose of silent, seething contempt. Schöst watched as the boy feigned either ignorance or apathy, hoping to convince the others—as he had convinced himself—of his own vicious independence. Quite standard fare, in all, for a sheepdog nesting among wolves.

A good few of the professor's charge had managed already to surprise him, however. Einsbück: all the decency and airs he had come to expect from such a lovely little thing, and yet her haughtiness poisoning these virtues by less than half. They would all be flocking to her soon, sheltering under her graces: the girls for morale and assurance; the rest for affectations and flatteries. Schöst noted her well. He would have to place her where the others could not so comfortably fall in step with her whims.

The dark-haired girl with the porridgey-thick accent—the [i]Märzener[/i]—many such figures had traveled beneath the wrought-iron gates through the years, all manner of trembling, stuttering wrecks, reluctant and terrified. Schöst had seen them come and go by the dozens: pawns to the wills and wishes of others, most oft; not driven to water by some deep, innate thirst all their own but herded there like so many dutiful fillies. Most had flunked, the fires around them burning hotter than the fire within. But this—such an intense, severe Melancholy, always guarded and measured, always skirting and shrinking—such anomalies as this he had seldom encountered. Frankly, he wondered how such people as Frau du Guillarmes received acceptance letters at all. How had not one single member of the secretariat wondered whether a person who can hardly crush a beetle, hardly ask for another mug of beer at supper, might one day find it within herself to send a company of men downhill into flintlock and cannon fire? And how had Guillarmes herself not protested, absconded, tantrummed her way to freedom in the weeks it took to process her application? No matter, remarked the professor—she had arrived, and once she had arrived there were but three ways to leave, each less pleasant than the last.

Still, whence that sudden burst of courage atop the dais?

It accomplished fairly little, all told—the crowd, restless and squirming up there in the unpadded benches, had hardly stirred at the address—and it hardly diverted Guillarmes's fate, shouldst expulsion await therein—yet Schöst could not dislodge the feeling that he had misjudged this girl at first appraisal. That he'd beheld a dried-up riverbed and assumed it lifeless; that he'd mistaken the sluggish creep of a lava flow for hard, cold stone. There was an energy to this one; a potential Schöst hoped to measure, and galvanize, and drag from its dormancy. She might even prove to be the best pick for this year's—well. He paused a moment, cautioned himself against too eager a verdict. The first test had a way of banishing his predispositions.

Ahead the children continued to pat each other by the backs, hiss to each other their little assurances. Already they settled into the expected coteries: girls separating from young men, commoners and minor lordlings distancing themselves from certain family names, the ones which loomed over their own, their shadows long and broad and inescapable. Foam rising, lees sinking; precisely as the natural structure ordained. Dauncey Heathhill also watched young Hloþhilde, also intrigued—or perhaps perturbed—by the spectacle which had preceded his own; but he remained staunch in his solitude, and so did not care to confront it.

After affording the children one moment's repose, Frau Wiezlern—sweet, merciful Frau Wiezlern—offered them, the ten, a comfortable falsehood, and awayed them toward the first landmark of the tour. They obeyed with perfect graces, and good thing, too; the vomitorium reverberated with the last enunciations of the final speech, and the walls and ceiling and even the heel-smoothed flagstones began to rumble with the crash of one last applause, humming through the architecture. That was his cue; the time had arrived for Schöst to make his escape before the out-flooding throngs washed away with him. So for the first-and-thousandth time he click-click-dragged himself away from the amphitheatre, up the shallow slope of the vomitorium, toward the portrait hall. Click-click-drag. And he had very nearly slipped away behind the assembly which was to be his charge for the next three years, nearly eluded all scrutinies, when the Barbroeck boy crossed the threshold.

A moment's recognition glinted from the boy's winsome features: that the secretary had deceived him—had deceived all of them—yes—but powerless was this before the far-greater discomfort, that he was watched. Weighed and measured upon some scale he did not yet know how to tilt. For Herr Schöst's moody glower remained as impenetrable as fog, as unflinching as stone, and it had the most effervescent effect of annealing young Roelo likewise, drawing from the depths of him some vinegary recalcitrance.

Ere long something had devolved in the airs of this place; the encounter had alchemized from mere insipid happenstance into a kind of contest: a trial of wills—the raging strength of the sea crashing against the immensity of the shore, two beasts corded-necked and antler-locked, two blades seized and sparking. What proved two stubborn spirits by each refusing to retreat from this, a battle unspoken and yet most intimately understood, insignificant yet all-consuming? Schöst had his suspicions—about the both of them. But the rumbling of the crowd grew louder; the humming of the flagstones all the more unignorable; deferring to his powers of authority, Herr Professor (still not diverting his gaze—not for a moment) nodded his head once aside, urging the boy in the direction of his peers. And only after lingering one moment more—proving, in that insolent way, that no one told Roelo of House Barbroeck what to do—no one save for Roelo himself—he stalked away to catch the others.

Hobbling into the portrait hall proper, Schöst took a moment to survey. But the amphitheatre by then was ejecting the first of the crowds in coursing rivers down the vomitoria, and as for the northern passage, of Roelo—the speedy thing—only spectres and shadows remained. So the good professor, sensing the coming of the tides, rucked himself to the stair. Braced himself against the wall, careful not to disturb the sacred dust lain across the paintings and busts and cameos in sheets. And towed himself, grimacingly, to the next floor, away to the nearest skybridge.

His march would not see him returned to Classroom E until the Academy's great belltower had chimed the hour's end; it, and the dozens and hundreds of lesser clocks scattered across the grounds, all in diffuse, discordant harmony. Classroom corners and coat pockets. (Nearly three hours of speeches, and ritual, and pomp. Brennicus's beard.) But acting remarkably unconcerned with the dew-sweat beaded at his neck, the clamminess at his brow, the great many throes shocking up into his hip and down into his sorry, screaming knee, Schöst allowed himself only the single repose, done discreetly and with some hurry: a rummaging down into his doctor's-bag, a retrieval of glass and bottle thereof, a generous pour, a toss down his gullet. And with the brandy sugarcoating his tongue, and singeing his throat, and sending warmth creeping out from the pit of his stomach, conditions had improved; he could set himself to his task.

He settled at his desk (he and his chair creaking in solidarity), gathered the [i]dossiers,[/i] scraped out the clots from the nib of his pen. Unrolled, uncorked, trimmed, dipped. Outside the birch trees wavered in a breeze which did not quite reach the innards of the stodgy classroom through the windows; a few finches flitted among the branches, chasing each other.

When Schöst, at ritual's end, had written every name, and scattered over them a three-fingered pinch of pounce, he took to them his pen-knife, slicing them out from the page, having them, then, in a tidy little pile of ribbons. Into two columns he arranged these names across his desk (the wood already crisscrossed with dozens of such cuts). He already had some idea of who should lead each team, at the least.

It was only then, of course, consumed by this esoteric exercise—peering down at one column ever-so-slightly longer than the other—that he noticed the unevenness. The discrepancy. The [i]mistake.[/i]

"Eleven?" he murmured aloud. Not once in its hundred years had Ansbourg Imperial Command Academy admitted more than the allotted share of freshmen. That was fifty students a year—ten to a class—no more and no fewer. Not only mere tradition hinged on this arrangement but an air of exclusivity; the school's very prestige as the finest and most rigorous in all Laachtalia. A paltry fifty per year out of sixty million subjects; hundreds of thousands of whom were young, fit, and eligible.

Schöst paused. Who had Hladekný, the most conservative man he knew, ignored tradition to hurry past the bursars?

Unless...

Which of these eleven students had somehow cheated his way in?[/color][/sup][/sup][/h3][/color][/color][/justify][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][center][color=#2E2C2C]─[/color][color=#302E2E]─[/color][color=#323030]─[/color][color=#343232]─[/color][color=#363434]─[/color][color=#383737]─[/color][color=#3A3939]─[/color][color=#3D3B3B]─[/color][color=#3F3D3D]─[/color][color=#413F3F]─[/color][color=#434242]─[/color][color=#454444]─[/color][color=#474646]─[/color][color=#4A4848]─[/color][color=#4C4A4A]─[/color][color=#4E4D4D]─[/color][color=#504F4F]─[/color][color=#525151]─[/color][color=#545353]─[/color][color=#575656]─[/color][color=#595858]─[/color][color=#5B5A5A]─[/color][color=#5D5C5C]─[/color][color=#5F5E5E]─[/color][color=#616161]─[/color][color=#636363]─[/color][color=#666565]─[/color][color=#686767]─[/color][color=#6A6969]─[/color][color=#6C6C6C]─[/color][color=#6E6E6E]─[/color][color=#707070]─[/color][color=#737272]•[/color][color=#757474]⋅[/color][color=#777777]⊰[/color][color=#797979]༻[/color][color=#7B7B7B]༒[/color][color=#7D7D7D]︎[/color][color=#808080]༺[/color][color=#7D7D7D]⊱[/color][color=#7B7B7B]⋅[/color][color=#797979]•[/color][color=#777777]─[/color][color=#757474]─[/color][color=#737272]─[/color][color=#707070]─[/color][color=#6E6E6E]─[/color][color=#6C6C6C]─[/color][color=#6A6969]─[/color][color=#686767]─[/color][color=#666565]─[/color][color=#636363]─[/color][color=#616161]─[/color][color=#5F5E5E]─[/color][color=#5D5C5C]─[/color][color=#5B5A5A]─[/color][color=#595858]─[/color][color=#575656]─[/color][color=#545353]─[/color][color=#525151]─[/color][color=#504F4F]─[/color][color=#4E4D4D]─[/color][color=#4C4A4A]─[/color][color=#4A4848]─[/color][color=#474646]─[/color][color=#454444]─[/color][color=#434242]─[/color][color=#413F3F]─[/color][color=#3F3D3D]─[/color][color=#3D3B3B]─[/color][color=#3A3939]─[/color][color=#383737]─[/color][color=#363434]─[/color][color=#343232]─[/color][color=#323030]─[/color][color=#302E2E]─[/color]

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