"At least watch where you're going! I think that's just basic etiquette."
I looked across at the girl in her fine uniform. She was also on the ground, the dirt covering her clothes. Her nose had a slight upwards tilt, as if she were trying to look down on me even now.
"You should watch yourself, human," I said. "I was watching for other people who ran. I was not watching for idle pebbles along my path." The girl's nostrils flared. I ignored her as I tried to rise to my feet. Almost, I made it up. I landed on my knees again. I would have tried again immediately, if I'd thought the result would be different.
"You-!" The girl pointed one finger at me. "You're the half-demon who broke the Arbiter!" The girl had proper indignity to her voice. It was the indignity of a Queen. The effect was marred by her uniform being dark with sweat. The girl tried to rise herself. Her legs shook. She did not make it as far as I, before she stumbled.
I did not answer her. Footsteps found me from behind, before they came to my side. A group of three students eyed us as they passed. Their gazes flicked over me, and then at the girl next to me. A boy in the group laughed. The two girls next to him smirked. Only when their backs were to us did I find enough energy to rise.
I took a deep breath and forced myself up. My legs protested. My back ached. Still, I made it back up to my feet. I swayed, and corrected myself as soon as I did. There was dust on my uniform. I wiped it away with my arm.
"I did expect more from the half-demon who broke the Arbiter. Have to say, I'm a little disappointed."
It was a petty jab, from a diminutive girl. It should not have bothered me as it did. The sound of my own harsh breathing was difficult to ignore. "The Inker called you remarkable, if I recall correctly." I looked at the girl. "Perhaps he meant unremarkable instead."
I started to run again, or as close to it as I could manage. I heard the blonde girl spluttering behind me. A moment later, there were footsteps behind me, and on my right. Followed by the sound of labored breathing. The girl was next to me now. In a few strides, the girl was ahead of me, if only just.
I forced my legs forward, forced my stride to lengthen. I did not pull ahead of her. I only kept pace. The indignity of it burned the tiredness away. We marched in silence for a time, though I tried to do much more than march. Sweat ran down my temples, ran down inside the uniform, left in a small trail in my wake. Each time I would pull ahead, even by a stride, the girl would match me. Each time she got ahead a step, I would find a reserve of strength I hadn't known was there.
More and more students passed us. Sometimes a lone boy or girl, but often it was a small group of two or three. I ignored them. "Stop following me," Alisa said.
"I am not following you. We happen to be on the same track. Perhaps you would prefer to stop and let me pass."
"Let you pass?" She almost laughed. There was no breath behind it. "You can barely stand. A mild breeze would do you in. You won’t get up a second time, will you?"
"And yet I am ahead of you." I was not ahead of her. We were perfectly level, and had been for some time. I saw Alisa's jaw tighten. She pushed forward by half a stride. I matched her before the stride was finished.
"Your form is terrible," she said. "Who taught you to run? A crippled horse? Perhaps a trollkin on its last legs?"
"Nobody taught me. It appears nobody taught you either, given that you can only barely keep pace with me."
The girl's neck reddened. I should not have been wasting breath on insults. It was the strangest thing. I had commanded armies and silenced courts with a single word, and now I was trading barbs with a girl who could not lift her own feet.
Two boys passed us, their strides long and even. One of them was whistling. I had never wanted to kill a whistler before. “I thought the Earl’s daughter was supposed ta be faster!” One of them said as they moved past us.
Earl. I knew little of human titles. I knew only the ones that were worth remembering, and even they were hardly worth that. King. Queen. Emperor. Duke. Those were hardly comparable to my own, but I knew them, or had bothered to remember them. This ‘Earl’ was a title I had not heard before, but it could only be a title. There was a weight to titles that no simple words held, even those said in mockery.
"You're the Earl's daughter." I said between breaths. The word sounded strange. I wondered how this Earl compared to an Archon.
"I am glad you remember." The words came out strained. I had not remembered. Her chest heaved beneath the Essence Weight, and strands of blonde clung to her temples. "You though- you are the half-demon with the ridiculous name."
The word ridiculous almost made me break stride. "It is- a name fit for royalty. What would you know of such a thing, girl?"
"It’s a name used to frighten g-gullible children, at best. And do not call me ‘girl’, we are the same age. Perhaps your eyes are older than the rest of you?"
That was perhaps the most accurate assessment anyone in this Academy had made of me. I did not tell her so. We walked. Or shuffled. The motion made my mind wander. I could not stop moving because I was a Queen, and because that foolish Inker had thought something like this was above me. I did not know why this girl hadn’t.
"This is your first class?" I asked. The question was between breaths. I did not know why I asked it.
"Been coming here- for almost a week." Alisa said. "Since I came here."
Almost a week. I had been here for days. "And it is still this difficult for you?"
The girl's chin rose. Even with her legs barely holding her upright, the chin rose. "I do not see how that is any of your concern."
"It isn't. I am merely observing."
"Then observe in silence."
“You should heed your own words, girl.”
We did not observe in silence. I had always liked silence. The moments where none of my Generals hounded me. Or at least, hounded me with more restraint. They had been corrupted lately. Corrupted by the humming of the Ember Core, and now this weight on my chest that would not move.
"You run like a newborn fawn," Alisa said after a time. “No, I-I am certain they would be surer on their feet.”
"At least I don’t run like you. Poorly, and with little ambition."
"With little ambi-" She almost stumbled. Her right foot caught the sand and she lurched forward, and for one moment I thought she would go down. She caught herself. Her face had gone from red to a deeper red. "You take that back."
"A Queen does not take things back."
"You are not a Queen! I can call myself Egwene. Doesn’t make it so!"
Egwene had been one of the three rulers of the human nations during my reign near the end. She had been the greatest of them. It seemed her legend remained still.
"Believe what you will. A small mind…can only accept small things."
The sentences between us grew shorter. There was simply less air for each word. Full thoughts became fragments. Fragments became clipped exchanges that cost one breath each, and then half a breath. Perhaps this was my punishment from the Pantheon, delivered at last.
Footsteps found me from behind, faster and far surer than mine. Faster than anyone's who had passed us before. I knew those footsteps. Strange, that I knew her just by the sound of them.
Ash passed on my left. Her stride was long and even. The weight sat on her frame the way a pack might sit on a mule's back. Heroes really were good packmules, if nothing else. Though Ash was far more besides.
As she passed, her hand found my shoulder.. The touch lasted less than a second. Then she was past me, her golden hair catching the strange light of the chamber, her stride never breaking.
I watched her pull ahead. Fifteen paces, then twenty. She joined the nearest group of students and moved through them without slowing. The light from above caught her blonde hair. Hers was a different shade than the girl next to me -it was brighter by far. There was an ache in my chest that had nothing to do with the Ember Core.
"That...that is your companion, correct? She is impressive," Alisa said. It was perhaps the first thing the girl had said that was not an insult. “Far more than you.” That was an insult.
"She is not my companion, girl. She is my retainer." I paused. "And yes. She is."
The girl did not say anything to this. We shuffled forward. The track stretched ahead of us, and the students who had passed us once, were slowly and surely starting to pass us again. They were louder the second time. I ignored them. So did she.
The sound came from behind us. Two sets of voices, and I recognized them both.
"Hey! Alisa!" A nasal voice said. This one had settled into my mind without permission. The freckled girl who had accosted me before. Her name had not settled, thankfully. The broad one was half a step behind her. I could tell from their footsteps. They slowed their pace until they flanked us. One on either side.
"Lady Wulfram," the broad one corrected slowly. She turned to Alisa and her expression was nothing like it had been for me. This one was respectful. "We just wanted to say, your result at the Arbiter was really something. Everyone's been talking about it."
"Thank you," Alisa said. She did not look at either of them.
"You know, Lena was saying she'd love to meet you properly," The thinner girl said. Her voice had turned sweet. "She's got a group. Just about everyone is a Sigil. There’s even a Crest. Come on. You’ve only been humoring the half-demon, haven’t ya? Let’s get you where you deserve to be." Her gaze drifted to me, then back to Alisa.
"What she said!" The broad one said loudly. She was the more dim witted of the two then.
Alisa's stride never faltered. "You came to invite me," she said. Her voice was flat. "On Lena's behalf."
"She's really-"
"So...so you are not Lena." Alisa said. The freckled girl's mouth hung open. "You introduced yourselves as her friends, not as yourselves." Alisa's chin did its rising again. "If- If you cannot so much as stand on your own names, then do not speak to those who can. Fools."
The broad one's face had gone through several shades darker. The freckled girl had stopped walking entirely. "You don't know who you're-" the freckled one started.
"I do not. Because you never said. And now- now I don’t care," Alisa said. "Leave."
They left, picking up their stride until they passed us. The freckled one muttered something as she went. The broad one shot me a look as if this were somehow my doing.
I said nothing. I had planned to say something cutting, or perhaps something that acknowledged the dismissal as adequate. It had been adequate.
This girl had another’s name she could stand on too, even if I did not know its weight. It seemed she did not want to. Even now, the girl’s chin hadn’t come down, though the two minions were already long past. This girl would have survived my court. Perhaps not for long. But she would have walked in on her own feet, and walked out on them too.
There was only silence now, broken by the sound of our steps, and the harshness of our breathing. The sand dragged at every step. The track curved ahead of us, and more students passed. There was no telling of time in this place. The light from above never wavered. I wished it did.
As we rounded the turn, the Ember Core flared. It drove itself between my ribs like a blade of ice. My stride broke. One foot caught the other and I lurched sideways, and for a moment the sand tilted beneath me. I caught myself, straightened and kept walking. The girl glanced across at me. I could see her mouth open to say something. It closed. She looked away, and she kept walking. Perhaps she was not entirely a fool.
The quiet stretched. My mind wandered again, to my right. The girl's hands were shaking. Perhaps they had been shaking for some time, and I had only now noticed. The girl still ran. Her frail frame was made even less for this than my own, but she still ran. Whatever weight an Earl had, surely his daughter’s choice of running had to be her own.
Alisa pulled ahead by half a step. It was so small a distance that it might have been nothing. It was not nothing. My legs burned. My lungs burned. The Ember Core hummed its endless hum, and I matched her. The half step vanished. Alisa pushed again, and my body screamed at me, and I pushed back.
The world had narrowed to this. One stride and then the next. The girl beside me. The heat and the sand. This weight on my frame that would not lift.
I fell first. My knee hit the sand and the weight on my chest drove me forward until my hands were beneath me. The sand was hot against my palms. My arms trembled, and they would not straighten. My vision swam with light and dark and the shapes in between.
For a moment, I considered getting up. I tried. My arms refused. The Ember Core groaned beneath my ribs, and for once, its hum was the quietest thing inside me. The loudest was my breathing. I had never heard myself breathe this loudly.
I heard footsteps behind me. I counted them. There was a sound as knees hit the sand next to me. Then a body, falling beside me. Alisa lay in the sand two paces to my right. She was on her back. Her hair was ruined. Her uniform was dark with sweat and pale with sand. Her chest heaved beneath the Essence Weight, and the sound of her breathing was as loud as my own.
Neither of us spoke. We stared at the false sky above us, and for a time the only sound was our breathing. I did not know how long we lay there for. Long enough that my breathing started to settle. It settled before hers did. I did not know why I had catalogued that, but I had. Long enough that a shadow fell over us -the Inker’s shadow.
He stood above us with his arms folded. He did not offer a hand to either of us. I would not have taken it. I suspected the girl beside me would not have either.
"Alisa Wulfram." He said her name first. "You've been coming to this class for days. Your best time was fifteen minutes. I had been considering a gentle suggestion that you redirect your energies elsewhere." Oddly, his voice now was actually quiet.
The Inker's gaze moved to me next. "And you. It’s your first day and I wouldn’t have bet you last ten minutes even."
My voice came out as something between a rasp and a wheeze. "How long?"
The Inker looked at something. "You both lasted about forty minutes," he said. "Alisa, you lasted forty three. They weren’t good minutes, but you lasted," He uncrossed his arms. "Not bad." He held out his right hand in front of us, his thumb facing the sky. It was an enthusiastic gesture, would that I knew what it was supposed to mean.
Then, he moved his hand in the air over us. The weights disappeared entirely, sashes and all. I took in the first unlabored breath I had in some time. I took a deep breath. One almost as deep as I had on that first day, staring up at a blue sky.
Forty minutes. He had been confident I could not run anywhere close to that, at the start. To reach forty was a suitable result for a Queen. And this girl had run thrice what she had ever run before, if that man was to be believed.
I closed my eyes. The sand was warm beneath me. My legs would not move, and my arms had forgotten what they were for.
"Half-demon."
I opened my eyes. Alisa was still on her back. She had turned her head just enough to face me. Her hair was plastered to her cheek. There was sand on her brow, and in the creases of her ears. "You are now my rival," she said. As she did, she pointed a finger across at me. "I want you to know that."
I stared at her. Of all of the humans I had ever encountered, this girl might have been the strangest. Stranger even than Ash. "I do not accept rivals," I said. "Rivals imply equals and I have none of those."
Alisa met my gaze."Then I will make you accept one."
A hundred cutting responses came and died on my lips. “Those are bold words, girl.”
“Don’t call me girl! We are the same age, or about it, remember!” She said, her composure apparently cracking.
I laughed. The sound escaped me before I had considered allowing it. It was too late now. I did not know how many times I had laughed, since I had woken up nine hundred and eighty seven years in the future. Perhaps that was a good thing.