Hermes made his decision. He would run away tonight.
He had milked this situation for everything it was worth — and yet the nagging feeling that there was still more to extract wouldn't leave him alone. He raised his hand and waited. The professor noticed him almost immediately.
"Yes, Mr. Gaemond?"
"Would it be possible to get the advanced rune dictionaries? I'd like to learn as many runes as I can. That should be fine, shouldn't it?"
The professor looked at him for a moment with an expression that sat somewhere between concern and the particular weariness of someone watching a very gifted student say something very foolish.
"Mr. Gaemond. Were you not paying attention in the previous lessons?"
"I was, sir."
"Then you would know that the dictionary in your desk is the one you will use throughout all seven years at Chaldera."
Hermes stared at him.
"But it only has forty four runes."
The professor sighed in the manner of someone who had accepted that certain conversations were simply going to happen regardless of how much they didn't want to have them.
"Yes. Forty four runes. Each with three to four known interpretations — and those are only the interpretations we have managed to comprehend so far. They likely have more. And those forty four runes can be combined in countless configurations to produce countless spells. The complexity is not in the number of runes, Mr. Gaemond. It is in the depth of understanding."
He paused, seeming to decide that the moment warranted a fuller explanation.
"Runic sorcery is derived from true names. In ancient times, before Hope gifted humanity the art of writing, sorcerers invoked true names aloud to wield their power — but speaking a true name in its entirety was nigh impossible even then. A true name cannot be fully comprehended. Not by us. What we have encoded into these forty four runes are fragments — aspects — of something far larger and older than our understanding can reach." He glanced around the room. "There are mysteries in this that we will likely never fully know."
He straightened.
"Half an hour remaining. Everyone keep working." He turned back briefly. "And Mr. Gaemond — please do not attempt any unsupervised casting. If you wish to practice further, come and find me."
With that he moved back into the rows of students, leaving Hermes alone with forty four runes and the slowly settling weight of what he had just been told.
Forty four.
That's it. That's all there is.
And somehow that was supposed to be enough to do everything.
Hermes stared at his clay tablet for a long moment.
The cow, as it were, had been thoroughly milked. There was nothing left to extract from this classroom, this dictionary, or this professor that would make any meaningful difference to what was coming tomorrow. He had learned what he could learn in the time he had and it wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.
He was running away tonight.
The decision settled in him with a finality that was almost peaceful. No more deliberating. No more hoping the headmaster would change his mind or that some new piece of information would present itself. Tonight, when they returned to the dormitory, he would tell the prefect he needed the bathroom and he would not come back.
The only problem was that he had absolutely no idea how to get out of this castle.
He had memorised the path to the dormitory over the last two days — that much he could navigate without embarrassing himself. But the path out? The gates? He had arrived in a classroom and had been trailing his friends like a lost duckling ever since. The castle was a labyrinth and he had never once seen its exterior from the inside.
I'll figure it out, he told himself.
Probably.
The lesson ended. The professor gathered himself and left without ceremony. Around Hermes the class began its usual dissolution — tablets returned, desk lids closed, students filtering out in ones and twos or lingering in small clusters to talk.
His friends had settled into a loose group near the back, laughing about something he hadn't caught. He watched them for a moment, then drifted over and stood at the edge of their circle in his customary position of being technically present and socially invisible.
After a while they moved. He followed.
They were heading back toward the dormitories — a route he recognised now, the particular sequence of staircases and left turns that he had committed to memory through sheer repetition. He trailed behind them at a comfortable distance, thinking about exits.
Soon they reached the dormitory. His dormmates settled onto beds and fell into the easy rhythm of people who had known each other long enough to be comfortable — jokes exchanged, stories told, the kind of aimless friendly noise that fills a room when nobody needs anything from each other. They did this for an hour and a half with the practiced naturalness of people who had simply forgotten he existed.
Hermes sat on his bed and let them get on with it.
What a busy day, he thought, staring at the ceiling. And it's not even over.
Two lessons. Three hours each. A two hour break sandwiched between them. Divination next, which meant Professor Abano, which meant he was going to have to look her in the eye knowing he had already decided to abandon this place tonight.
He pushed that thought aside and stared at the ceiling some more.