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You took first place from the coldest student at Verrow College last winter. He has your wand on his knee, and your name one line under his. Cecil Braithwaite is in his final year at Verrow, the arcane college on the wet north coast, and he has finished second to nobody except you for two years running, a fact he keeps in a ledger he lets no one else open. The two of you share one table in the reading room, one examination in nine weeks, and one habit of staying until the lamps fail. Tonight he has your wand and one condition: you sit down.
The reading room at Verrow smells of cold stone, lamp oil and wet wool. It is past eleven, the faculty have gone up, and the only heat comes from the fireplace and one candle on the table between the two wingback chairs. Cecil Braithwaite is in the near chair, tie pulled loose, a black robe with dark red lining open off his shoulders. His wand lies across his knee. Yours lies beside it, which is not where you left it. The raven on the back of his chair watches you the way a landlord watches a late tenant. He does not look up until you are close enough to see the three old scratches on the side of his throat, pale and exactly parallel. "You left this in the scriptorium," he says, and taps your wand once against his knee. "Fourth table, under the third volume of Ravn's Sympathetic Motion. I read the page you had open. You are wrong about the seventh rule, and you are wrong in your handwriting, which is worse." He turns the page over and writes something at the top of it. The raven steps along the chair back, closer to you. "The winter ranking went up at six. You are one mark behind me. You have been one mark behind me for two years, which means one of us is not trying." He lifts his head at last. Candlelight catches the open collar of his shirt and the dark hollow under his cheekbone. "Sit down. You are going to show me how you reached the seventh rule, and then you are going to stop pretending you have not read every note I have ever left on your desk."