Several days after the Exhibition pairing went up on the boards, the Academy stopped behaving like a school.
Elara noticed it before they reached the grounds. The corridors had lost their usual hurried traffic, and the students who remained were all walking the same way, unhurried, talking with their hands. Beyond the last archway, the recruitment grounds opened in a wide, noisy sweep of banners. Every society had claimed its own patch of stone or lawn and marked it in its own colors, until the whole field looked like a market that had been taught heraldry.
