SLOWLY I DEVOUR THE SKY
Chapter 4: Assignments
The mentorship postings went up on the fifth day, pinned to the board outside the amphitheater in neat columns of ink, and Wren spent a solid minute searching for his name in the wrong section before he found it tucked at the very bottom, paired with an instructor he didn't recognize and, beside that, a second name he did.
Calder, W. — paired training group: Duskthorn, S.
"That can't be right," he said, to no one, and a voice behind him confirmed, with considerable displeasure, that it was.
"It's right." Sable Duskthorn stood a few feet back from the board, arms crossed, studying her own name in the list with the expression of someone reading a diagnosis she didn't like. She was taller than Wren remembered from the ceremony, sharp-featured, dressed in Duskthorn colors even for an ordinary training day, like the house crest was armor she never took off. "I already asked Vosh to change it. She said no."
"Great. Good talk."
"I'm not thrilled either, Calder." She finally looked at him properly, gaze flicking once, briefly, to the satchel at his side. "But apparently the instructors think pairing the district's most famous joke with its most disappointing prodigy builds character."
Wren blinked. "Disappointing prodigy?"
Something flickered across her face, gone before he could name it. "Training's at the fourth bell. Don't be late. I don't repeat instructions."
She walked off before he could ask what she meant, leaving Wren standing in front of the board with the distinct, uncomfortable feeling that he'd just been handed half of a story with no way to find the other half.
"Interesting," Kael said, from the satchel.
"You could've mentioned that before she walked away."
"I could have. I chose the more entertaining option."
***
Training grounds sat on the Spire's western terrace, a long stretch of packed earth and low stone obstacles overlooking the drop toward the Lowmarch foothills, and Wren arrived to find Sable already there, her phoenix-line tame perched on a raised post beside her like a small, disdainful sun. The bird's feathers shifted between orange and gold depending on the angle of the light, and it watched Wren approach with an expression that managed to be somehow more condescending than its owner's.
"This is Ember," Sable said, not quite an introduction, more a statement of fact she expected him to absorb quickly. "She doesn't like slow things."
"She's going to have a rough afternoon, then."
To Wren's genuine surprise, something that might have been the beginning of a smile crossed Sable's face before she visibly decided against it. "Instructor Renn wants us running paired drills. Coordination exercises, mostly. Building trust between tames who wouldn't naturally work together."
"So the instructors picked the two tames least likely to naturally work together on purpose."
"Apparently that's the point." She said it flatly, like she'd already had this exact argument with herself and lost. "Something about growth requiring friction. I didn't design the curriculum."
They spent the first hour failing at nearly everything Instructor Renn asked of them. Ember was fast, aggressive, used to leading and being followed instantly; Kael did not follow anything instantly, on principle, and the resulting drills looked less like coordinated training and more like two creatures having a prolonged disagreement about whose patience would break first.
By the third failed attempt, Sable's jaw had gone tight enough that Wren could see the muscle working beneath her cheek, and by the fifth, she'd stopped bothering to hide her frustration at all.
"This is pointless," she snapped, after Ember overshot a marked circle for the fifth time waiting on a signal Kael simply never gave. "Your tame doesn't even try."
"He tries at his own pace."
"His pace is going to get someone killed someday. Not everything waits, Calder. Some things move whether you're ready or not."
There was an edge in her voice that didn't fit the drill, sharper and older than anything about a training exercise deserved, and Wren found himself watching her more closely than he had all afternoon.
"Is this about the drill," he asked carefully, "or about your brother?"
Sable went very still. Ember's feathers flared once, sharp orange, a mirror of whatever had just moved through her tamer.
"Where did you hear that."
"I didn't. You just told me." Wren held up both hands, half apology, half surrender. "I'm not trying to start anything. You said something moves whether you're ready or not. That's not a training-drill sentence."
For a long moment she said nothing, staring out over the terrace's edge toward the Lowmarch foothills going gold in the afternoon light, and when she finally spoke, her voice had lost its earlier sharpness, gone quiet instead.
"My brother's tame is weakening. Has been for months. The house has kept it quiet because a weakening bond looks like weakness in the bloodline, and weakness in the bloodline is the kind of thing rival houses start circling like they can smell it." She didn't look at him. "I'm supposed to be next in line if it doesn't recover. I never wanted that. I wanted to be good at this because I was good at it, not because someone else stopped being able to."
Kael, from the satchel, said nothing, but his horns tilted very slightly toward her, an attention Wren had learned by now was not nothing.
"I'm sorry," Wren said, and meant it.
"I don't need pity, Calder."
"It's not pity. It's just—" He searched for the right shape of it. "It's the same thing, isn't it. Being handed a legacy you didn't build and told to either match it or replace it. I've got the exact same problem. Mine just laughs at me instead of taking me seriously."
Something in Sable's expression shifted, not quite warmth, but the beginning of something less guarded than the sharpness she'd led with all afternoon. "That's a low bar for common ground."
"It's the only bar I've got."
She almost smiled again, and this time didn't stop herself entirely. "Again," she said, turning back toward the drill circle, though her voice had lost its earlier edge. "Slower this time. Since apparently that's the only pace your tame respects."
"He respects plenty. He's just particular about what's worth the effort."
"Then let's find out what he thinks is worth the effort," Sable said, and for the first time that afternoon, it didn't sound like an order.
They ran the drill twice more before the bell rang, and neither attempt was clean, but the second was better than the first, Ember and Kael finding some small, grudging rhythm neither of them seemed to enjoy but both seemed willing to tolerate. Walking back toward the dormitories afterward, satchel heavy against his side, Wren caught himself thinking that the mentorship board's cruelty might have, by accident, done something useful after all.
"She's carrying more than she's saying," Kael observed, quiet enough that only Wren could hear.
"Most people are."
"You noticed anyway."
"I've had practice."
Kael's horns swayed, something almost approving in the gesture. "Slowly," he said, "you're learning to see what's worth the effort too."