Chapter 49 Academic Interest
Lunch is loud and ordinary and I am halfway through something that tastes like it has rosemary in it when Cassian drops into the seat across from me, tray first, grin second.
"Pack Dynamics," he announces cheerfully, stealing my bread roll before I can object. "You were taking notes."
"Dara was taking notes," I correct.
"You were reading Dara's notes," he says.
"Academic interest," I reply.
He leans forward on his elbows with the easy conspiratorial energy of someone who has decided we are friends and has not consulted me on the matter. "He changed the patrol rotation this morning," he says, lower. "Had it implemented by nine AM."
"I heard him propose it in the room," I point out.
"He proposed it in the room," Cassian agrees. "He had already drafted it before he walked in. I saw the document on his phone at breakfast." He looks at me steadily. "He drafted it at five AM. Two hours before the class."
I look at my food.
"He was up at five AM fixing the gap that let Dara get taken," Cassian says simply. "Before anyone told him to. Before the class made it visible." A pause. "He does that. He fixes things quietly before they become public problems. He has done it his whole life." Another pause, this one heavier. "Nobody notices because he doesn't let them."
I look up.
Cassian is watching me with those perceptive eyes and an expression that is warm and serious and completely without agenda.
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask quietly.
"Because you're smart enough to see both sides of him," he replies. "And I want to make sure you're seeing all of them."
He takes my bread roll, stands, and walks back to the Wolves table, and I watch him go and feel the warmth in my hand and think about five AM and a patrol document and a boy who fixes things before anyone sees they are broken.
After lunch is Supernatural History, taught in a long room on the second floor with tall windows overlooking the east courtyard, and I slide into a seat near the middle just as Professor Crane, ancient and dry and possessed of the specific energy of someone who finds the present moment considerably less interesting than everything that preceded it, begins writing on the board.
The Drevari Faction. Origins and Doctrine.
I sit up straight.
Rhydan comes through the door thirty seconds after me and stops when he reads the board and his jaw does the tightening thing, one muscle jumping along the bone, and he takes the empty seat beside me without looking at whether it is empty and without asking, and I move my bag without being asked, and we do not discuss any of this.
"The Drevari," Professor Crane begins, in the tone of someone reciting something they have recited many times, "emerged approximately two centuries ago from a splinter group of supernatural supremacists who believed that certain ability combinations represented not natural variation but evolutionary advancement." He writes a date on the board. "Their particular focus was dual natured individuals."
Rhydan is very still beside me.
"The Drevari doctrine held that a supernatural being carrying two natures simultaneously was not a curiosity or an anomaly," Crane continues, "but a weapon. Deliberately produced by something the faction called the old design." He turns from the board. "They spent a century attempting to identify, locate and control dual natured individuals before the supernatural council formally designated them a threat organisation and began active suppression of their activities."
"Formally designated," someone murmurs from the back. "Meaning?"
"Meaning on paper," Crane replies dryly, "the council declared them defunct forty years ago following a series of enforcement actions. Whether they are in fact defunct is," he pauses, "a matter of current debate."
Under the desk, Rhydan's hand finds mine, brief and warm, fingers pressing once before letting go.
Not the bond.
Not instinct.
Just him.
"The Drevari's primary methodology," Crane says, turning back to the board, "was contact transference. The passing of a compulsion or tracking working through physical contact. Specifically through the kind of contact that occurs naturally in high-intensity supernatural athletic competition."
He writes two words on the board.
Contact Sport.
Half the class looks at Rhydan.
He looks at the board.
And I look at Professor Crane and think about a hockey captain who participated in a fixture and a legal hit in a corner and a cold splinter that was already burrowing deeper before I felt it, and something cold and focused moves through me.
"Professor," I say carefully.
He looks at me.
"The transference working... is it traceable after removal? Can the origin point be identified from what was passed?"
The room goes very quiet.
Professor Crane looks at me with the first genuine interest he has shown in forty minutes. "An excellent question," he says. "And yes. A removed working retains the signature of its caster. If the residue is preserved properly, it can be matched to a specific individual with considerable accuracy." He pauses. "Why do you ask?"
"Academic interest," I reply.
Beside me, Rhydan's leg presses against mine under the desk.
Stays there.
I keep my eyes on Professor Crane and my face perfectly composed and my heart doing something that has nothing to do with academic interest whatsoever.