Fashions changed in Sailor's Rise as rapidly as the seasons, though Elias had always feigned ignorance and practiced apathy. Clothing, he reasoned, was a practical tool for practical purposes: a jacket warm enough for the biting winds of the United North, the right suit for the right occasion. And so why, dressed in his new gold and green vest, did he suddenly feel strangely severed from himself? Elias had imagined his wardrobe of mostly tan breeches and white shirts, his two jackets and his one nice suit, as somehow invisible, but one does not appreciate one's own skin until it is turned another color.

He assumed the feeling would dissipate in the days to come, though he was determined not to lose any part of himself along with it.

Elias wasn't the only thing cast in a new light on this particular evening. The sun had fully set, and the Millard Fullmore Common Room was dimly aglow in a starry sea of candlelight, a fire burning like the full moon in the stone hearth they'd seated themselves in front of that afternoon. They gathered on higher ground tonight, at a darkly stained oak table long enough to comfortably seat fourteen. The high collectors would not be joining them. They were meant to mingle.

Harriet caught Elias casting out with his eyes, but it was she who reeled him over to the seat opposite her own. He was happy to bite. The leather-backed chair screeched on the solid floor as he adjusted himself into it.

"I was hoping to catch you," she said. "Nice to see you again, Elias."

"And you, Harriet," Elias replied. "How have you been?"

"Keeping busy—or trying to."

"Oh? What bores you so?"

She hemmed and hawed before answering. "My assignment in the Southlands wrapped up a few months ago, and I've been stationed at the academy since our little sparring match, waiting for this gathering to start, practicing, reading, growing restless. High Collector Grimsby says I should learn how to relax. He didn't say it like that, of course. Something about an eggplant—" She shook her head.

Elias grinned. "I cannot help you there. I'm about as restless as a leaf in the wind."

"High Collector Dawnlight has been generous with his time," Harriet added, "but time ticks by rather slowly out here."

"I don't know Lucas as well as you, but he doesn't strike me as the relaxed type himself."

Harriet squinted for a second at the mention of her mentor's first name. Was it improper, Elias wondered? To him, Lucas was Lucas, Constance was Constance, and the old man was Mr. Grimsby. Calling them by other names would have felt like his new waistcoat. "Are you looking forward to your next adventure?" he asked.

She nodded a single nod as doors clamored open and food arrived. Those still milling about the table hastily secured seats, including Caius, who once again sat down next to Elias. Dinner was presented on brass serving trays as two elderly women made several trips back and forth from the kitchen, each time removing their domed covers, steam escaping like a hot spring. Everything was plated to perfection: an assortment of jams and cheeses, biscuits and soft yellow butter, steamed vegetables and fresh salads to balance out the glistening chicken and sliced beef—relatively uncomplicated food that was all the better for it.

It was a feast fit for the Fairweathers.

A woman sitting beside Harriet nearly knocked over a candelabra, too excited for the biscuits. Harriet, quick as ever, caught the candleholder and positioned it back upright. She introduced her friend to Elias. "This is Maria."

"Hello, Maria." Elias waved. "Elias."

Maria peered up from her biscuit and stared at him like a foreign piece of food, which is to say with both fascination and apprehension in equal, competing parts. Whereas Harriet's eyes were large and wide-set, hers were small and narrow—and growing narrower. Maria was also larger than her petite friend, her long head rising a few inches above Harriet's even when seated.

"Nice to meet you." She still had a bit of biscuit in her mouth.

Caius was clearly already acquainted with both women, but then everyone here seemed to know everyone else. Everyone except Elias. Caius was evidently determined to change that. "Fun fact, everyone," he said to the whole table. "Elias here ascended at the tender age of nineteen."

Silence. Shock mixed with awe mixed with disbelief.

"That can't be true," said a man Elias could not quite see.

"Wait, how old are you now?" Maria turned to him.

"I'm twenty-two," Elias said—to her and then to everyone else. "It was… a desperate situation. I consumed a lot of relics over a short period of time. My crew and I would have been stuck in the Void Sea had I not."

"What do you mean you would have been stuck in the Void Sea?" another stranger inquired.

"He has the sight." Caius slapped his shoulder as if they were friends. "I think Elias may be our only recently ascended Serpent Moon collector." He seemed to be counting them, confirming his claim.

"That's why they're being so lenient with you, I wager," Maria inserted. "They wouldn't want someone with your unique talent to… refuse cooperation."

For his part, Elias hadn't considered that perhaps he had even more leverage than he previously believed.

"I bet Redcaller would have you locked away if it were up to her," said a ginger-haired man beside Caius. He had the face of a sixteen-year-old and the hairline of someone pushing fifty. "Caius says you have Grimsby, Dawnlight, and Eve on your side."

At the mention of this, Caius looked a little embarrassed. He was trading on Elias's social capital.

"I'm not close with any of them, merely acquainted," Elias said, setting the record straight. "But while we're all on the subject, I've heard Lucas—I mean Dawnlight—and Grimsby aren't on the friendliest of terms. What's the story there?"

Some looked as baffled as he was, while others clearly had opinions they could hardly contain. The red-headed man (who Elias would later learn was named Dion) spoke first: "High Collector Dawnlight is many things, clever and undeniably quick, but he can be—please no one quote me on this—somewhat rash," he explained. "He's, what, thirty? The man is young for his position, really not that much older than we are. It takes a certain kind of personality to rise through the ranks the way he did. Before High Collector Widrow passed away three years ago, he recommended Dawnlight for his seat. It was a surprise to many, and a close vote, though no one questions his talent."

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"What is rashness to one person is boldness to another," Harriet chimed in. "Lucas is a disrupter. High collectors hold their stations for life, and he was rightly judged on his inherent qualities. Now, Grimsby is wise and… set in his ways. We are a young civilization, once fractured and only recently whole. I recognize Grimsby's role in that, but a single man cannot see the full picture of a people. Dawnlight is the next generation."

Dion did not look entirely convinced.

"Who are we kidding? The divine Mr. Grimsby will outlive us all." Caius's words were a swift saber through a tightening knot of tension. Cradling his goblet of red wine, he savored their laughter. Elias also noted his clever play on words: the divine Mr. Grimsby. Is that what they all thought? That Mr. Grimsby was the rumored divine, the most powerful collector on the continent?

Smirking, Elias was not certain whose side he took—both sounded eminently reasonable—though he had a well-recorded softness for boldness himself and, in this case, a preference for its messenger. He knew Harriet was close to Lucas and, like her mentor, would have been a member of the Silver Sanctum School had such schools still existed. Increasingly, Elias was not so sure they didn't.

Maria turned back toward Elias, eyes hungry. Refilling her goblet as Harriet took a first sip of hers, she began peppering him with question after question, pausing intermittently as she gulped back wine like water.

"Where was it you came from?" she asked.

"Sailor's Rise," he answered.

"I know that. Where were you born?"

"Sapphire's Reach. In a small town."

"Called what?"

"Can you name any small towns in Sapphire's Reach?"

"Don't suppose I can," Maria admitted unashamedly. "And you run a business now? What kind of business?"

"We're traders," Elias replied. "We have clients all across the Great Continent."

"You come from money, then?"

"Small town, remember. I'm a self-made man—well, along with my friends who also founded the business."

"Are you married? Betrothed? A bachelor?"

"Let him eat his bloody dinner." Harriet slapped and squeezed her friend's soft wrist as if stemming blood from gushing out an open wound.

Elias did not entirely mind answering that one, though he never had the chance.

For Caius had an idea. "Everyone, I have an idea," he said. "Who wants to head to the sparring ring after dinner? No. Let me ask it this way: who doesn't want to head to the sparring ring after dinner?"

No one objected to the notion, though Maria wondered whether they could bring the wine, which earned her many nods. This was an important question.

Caius, who was no more an authority on the matter than any of them, shrugged. "Redcaller never said no wine, just no steel."

* * *

Blue moonlight illuminated the stone sparring ring like a lunar imprint on the grass. Below a nearby bluff, the ocean was calm and quiet, while the ground's once yellowing maples had turned into bare-branched claws against the starry sky. Elias stared up at them, as many stars as there were in Sapphire's Reach—the Wandering Stag shining sharply, the Diving Eagle etching its place in the sky.

It was winter, which is to say the gardens should have been freezing, but the grounds of the Gray Academy were a greenhouse without glass—another mystery that eluded Elias—and their wine burned inside them. Still, it was cooler than the common room, and Harriet was hugging herself shut or perhaps just crossing her arms. Elias had been trying to read her all night: her quiet intensity, her dedication to—was it Lucas, her own betterment, or something else? Even as they had laughed and drank (her less than most), and even when she partook in the merriment, Harriet's gaze never quite settled, always seeing something somewhere beyond the common room, beyond her peers, beyond even Elias.

He liked this about Harriet. He did not yet understand it, but he liked it.

Wooden swords were retrieved from the oak chest as the first duel commenced, though not everyone paid it much attention. Elias, however, analyzed their closely contested match, then the next one and the one after that. He was carefully evaluating his classmates and increasingly concluding that he was, in fact, a much better fighter than most of them, though maybe they were not at their best.

Harriet, who had sparred with Elias and had some sense of his skill, seemed to read or perhaps just share his thoughts. "Poor form, both of them. You're better than almost everyone here, you know."

"You too," Elias replied.

She smiled a pencil-thin smile. "I know."

As if her whispered words had been a challenge, someone called her name, beckoning her into the ring. Harriet did not hesitate. She defeated the young man in twenty seconds, and when he complained and asked for a rematch, she beat him again in ten. If he had meant to impress her, as Elias suspected, his tactic had failed.

Elias congratulated Harriet as Dion, the youthful ginger, stepped forward and turned his attention—all of their attention—to the man whose qualities were, in present company, an utter mystery. Had Harriet told them anything about their sparring match from a month ago? Elias doubted it. She wasn't like Caius. Harriet did not divulge information needlessly, or so he suspected.

Elias accepted the challenge. He liked challenges, after all, and it probably showed on his face. They would now know that much about him, if little else.

"What type of collector are you, Dion?" Elias wondered aloud, wondered what he was getting himself into. "You already know the answer in my case."

"There are no schools," Dion replied, balancing his stick on the palm of his hand, "and there are no types of collectors. Those old distinctions were arbitrary categories, tools meant to tribalize us. We are a unified people now."

"He's a pompous intellectual," Maria interjected from the edge of the ring, "and a Valshynar."

"We are all Valshynar," Dion shot back.

"Fuck off. You know what I mean."

Elias picked up the second wooden sword from the stone ground, erected his guard, and said, "Ready when you are."

He could tell Dion was analyzing him, testing Elias with a few early swings, as if he could solve their duel like a puzzle only once he gathered enough information. Elias supposed he was reading his opponent too, though he had long ago learned that fights could not be won inside a fighter's head.

Eventually, Elias swung back, harder and faster than Dion, who successfully deflected his attacks if only barely, redirecting his whole body and sword against each blow—exerting too much effort for an easy parry.

He was nowhere near Harriet's level, nowhere near Elias's. The only question on the latter man's mind was whether he wanted to embarrass Dion or spare his new peer a humiliating defeat. In the end, Elias split the difference, needlessly extending their fight while nonetheless never relenting, never allowing Dion to gain control.

A more seasoned fighter would have seen through his mercy, but Elias was largely underwhelmed by what he had witnessed thus far. They were not untrained, not entirely untalented, and they were, as ascendant collectors, inherently more powerful than appearances would suggest. And still, he wasn't sure how they would fare in Azir's colosseum, or pitted against pirates, or even sparring against Briley on a good day.

As he closed the distance between them—batting Dion's weapon out of his hand, wood clattering on stone—Elias slowed his swing an inch from his opponent's exposed neck. "Good fight," he said.

Dion sighed, nodded, and did not ask for a rematch.

As Elias exited the stone circle, rejoining Harriet, he could tell they were impressed. Caius even clapped a slow clap as he took Elias's wooden sword and place in the ring.

"You went easy on him" was Harriet's version of a congratulations.

"I'm here to make friends, not enemies," Elias said.

Bertrand would have been proud.

As for Harriet, she was still an enticing mystery.

Caius's fighting style was unlike anyone else's, unlike any Elias had seen before. Indeed, his casual demeanor betrayed his real discipline. In contrast with the rest of them, he fought with a high guard, his weapon held over his head. His reach was long, his swings often catching his opponent—a Southlander named Keo—by surprise, landing with precise intention and considerable force.

Keo was not bad either, better than most of them anyway, though Caius never appeared at risk of losing. It took him a minute, but he eventually poked his adversary in the abdomen, Keo staring down in surprise, mouth agape as if real blood might pour out his fake wound.

"Is that how Four Winds collectors fight?" Elias asked Harriet.

"That is how this one does," she said. "Caius has two sides to him, and now you've glimpsed both. His whole family is Terra Magma. I think he has something to prove."

"He mentioned that to me on the way over."

"Did he mention his brother?"

Elias shook his head.

"Caius had an older brother who went missing a few years back. They found him washed up on a beach, stabbed to death. I don't think he's been the same ever since. But then who would be?"

"That is… awful," Elias said, though it was not remorse that he felt flooding through his bloodstream. He asked the question whose answer he was terrified to hear: "What was his brother's name?"

It took her a second to remember. "Orin."

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