I went back to my room, skimmed the rules, and didn’t see anything indicating I couldn’t take an additional elective. That solidified my plan: I’d take the Art of Artifice and make magical items focused on dueling, while attending the dueling class at the same time.
I’d have to hope I could afford the materials for the items, and that I didn’t have to fight anyone until I had some magic items ready. Gambling on multiple factors made me nervous, but that just meant that I’d have to work harder to minimize the risks.
I knew I’d be hurting for free time if I took an extra class, but that was a problem for future me.
I had a few options on when I could take the classes, but my schedule for the rest of the day was open, so I decided to go to the next dueling class that was available. That ended up being just a few hours later. I used that time to look up the relevant books for the class — it turned out there weren’t any — and to pick up some lunch.
There weren’t any classrooms at the spot on the map where the class was listed. Instead, I found an outdoor stage with stands to seat at least a couple hundred people. It was clearly designed for theater performances, but when I took a seat in the stands, I figured I already had a pretty good idea of what we’d end up seeing on the stage.
I was a bit early, so I watched other students trickling in, trying to size up my competition. At least half the students had a glove on their right hands.
It was traditional for nobles to wear a glove until they had trusted retainers to protect them. The “passing of the glove” was a symbolic release of the wearer’s well-being into the hands of another, and often one of the most significant ceremonies in a noble’s life.
Usually, the glove would be passed to a single retainer who had served the owner for many years. It was a daring formalization of their connection, and some nobles — my father included — never offered their glove to anyone.
I’d always pictured giving my glove to Sera when we were old enough to be attuned. Now, she’d never be a simple retainer to me; she was family.
I’ll probably never find someone else to be my retainer.
It was a disappointing realization. I’d grown up on stories of the legendary bonds of loyalty between nobles and their retainers, and they’d settled in somewhere deep in my psyche. While many childhood ideals had eroded with the passage of time, the idea of having a retainer was rooted deeply enough in reality that it had dug in deep.
This way, at least, I’ll have to earn a retainer rather than being handed one. Maybe that’s for the best.
It felt a little better to think in those terms, and it helped to brush the line of thought from my mind. I turned back to observing the class.
Most of the prospective duelists had the same few attunements: Elementalists; Guardians; and Shapers. I noted a couple Summoners as well.
Summoners are going to be serious trouble until I can make some items... and probably even after that. An Elementalist might be able to handle two against one, but I don’t have any kind of battlefield control capabilities.
Sera must have come to the same conclusion. She arrived shortly after the other Summoners, two familiar figures trailing behind her. The first was Patrick, the same childhood friend I’d seen in my magic theory class. The second was Roland Royce, a son of two of my mother’s retainers.
Patrick had grown broad in the last few years. Not fat, just... thick, like a bear. With a build like his, I would have expected a Guardian attunement or something physically-focused, but he proudly wore an Elementalist mark on his exposed right hand.
Roland was as short as I remembered, and wearing his usual cold and determined expression. At a glance, I didn’t see his attunement mark, but I did see two dueling canes on his belt, one sitting on each side of his hips.
With each use of a cane painfully drawing mana from the wielder’s hands, it would require prodigious focus to use two of them accurately. I expected most people to laugh at Roland when they saw his setup.
Instead, I mentally added him to the top of my threats list. Anyone who underestimated him was going to be sorely disappointed.
If I had been born a few months earlier, Roland would have been one of my own retainers. It was traditional for the children of house retainers to become the retainers for the children of the succeeding line of the house. Since Roland was born before I was, though, he was assigned to Tristan’s service.
When Tristan disappeared, some families would have chosen to move Roland into the service of the next child in line... but my parents had never officially written Tristan off as dead.
Much like Sera, Roland’s parents served my mother, not my father. When my mother left, he too went along with them.
He was currently following Sera, just a couple feet behind and to the right.
That was how a retainer walked.
Either one of my parents had formally transferred Roland into Sera’s service — which would be a huge insult to me, as I was older than her — or he was making a statement of his own. Regardless, it certainly brought home my distinct lack of retainers.
They didn’t sit near me, which was... good. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to handle them just yet.
The starting time for the class came and went with no sign of the teacher. I heard murmuring amongst the students, some speculation that Lord Teft might not arrive at all.
It was a full fifteen minutes into the class when one of the students, a tall girl I didn’t recognize, let out a gasp and pointed at the stage.
“He’s ‘ere! Just watching what we do!”
I narrowed my eyes, looking at the spot she was indicating. It was almost imperceptible — a rippling distortion in the air, like a wave of heat. It was only with fierce concentration that I was able to discern the human shape.
The sound of slow applause from the stage accompanied Lord Teft’s appearance.