7. Chapter 7 Study Hall #2
"That's what I thought. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, though." Tesslyn's finger traced the line of notation, and the motion brought her hand closer to his. "But look at the junction term. The way he defines the threshold condition. If you applied that to a split-function ward framework..."
Her hand had settled next to his on the open page. She stopped talking.
The distance between their faces had closed to almost nothing. Her green eyes were close and still, and the look held a moment longer than the conversation required. There was something in the air between them.
Then she caught herself. Straightened, slid the book back between them, and picked up her quill from where it had fallen. She turned a page in her notebook, motions controlled and too careful.
She cleared her throat. "The junction term is interesting," she said, her voice back in the academic register where it seemed most at home.
Lucien leaned back in his chair.
"The junction term is the best thing in the whole paper," he said. "Everything else is ego."
"You just described most academic writing. Smart people have big egos. Look at the professors here at the academy."
"I described Aldessi. Most academic writing at least pretends to be humble."
"Hestwick doesn't pretend. Humility is a subject that Hestwick is unfamiliar with."
"Hestwick is a snotty buffoon."
She smiled and shook her head. “He is a buffoon. Good description. I’m not sure how snotty he is, though.”
The door to the Study Hall creaked open.
Corvath walked in like the room had been waiting for him and was relieved he'd finally arrived.
His fur lay flat and glossy, his tail up, curved at the tip.
He paused at the threshold and surveyed the room with gold eyes, taking in the scattered students, the afternoon light, and the tables in their loose arrangement.
The survey had the air of an inspection conducted by someone who owned the property and was checking that the tenants hadn't damaged anything since his last visit.
He walked to Lucien's table at a pace that said urgency was a concept for lesser beings, jumped up in a single clean motion, and sat.
"I see you've started without me," he said.
Aloud, his voice filling the space between the three of them.
No strangers who mattered, no need for the bond.
"The audacity. I was having the best nap of my institutional career on a third-floor windowsill that gets direct sun from 1:15 to 2:40, and you couldn't wait. "
"We managed," Lucien said with a smirk.
"I can see that. Notebooks open, textbooks deployed, quills in states of structural failure." He looked at Tesslyn's hair, where the quill was already listing fifteen degrees off vertical. "Your pin appears to be staging an escape from your blonde beauty."
Tesslyn's hand went to her hair. She pressed the quill back into place with another blush. It stayed for approximately two seconds before beginning its inevitable slide.
"It does that. The pen, I mean," she said awkwardly.
"It does that with commitment,” Corvath said with an imperious sniff. “I've been watching it for weeks. The longest it's ever held was eleven minutes, during the Gallen demonstration when you were too focused to notice it falling. I timed it."
"You timed it. You notice stuff like that?"
"I'm a cat. I notice things that move. I decide whether the things that move deserve chasing or swatting my paw at."
Tesslyn glanced at Lucien with an endearing smile. Tesslyn was becoming a big fan of Corvath.
"He's like this all the time," Lucien said, shrugging.
"I am like this," Corvath said. "I am also hungry, but that's a separate conversation that I'll be having with whoever runs the kitchen once I identify the appropriate chain of command."
He settled into a loaf, paws tucked, tail hanging over the edge in the same position he'd claimed every Study Hall he chose to attend.
His gold eyes moved to Tesslyn.
"You drew me," he said.
Tesslyn blinked. "What?"
"In your notebook. Week 2. Study Hall. You drew me in the margins while you were talking to Lucien about the Hestwick essay. Quick lines, proportions exact. You didn't look at me once while you did it."
She stared at him. Her mouth opened and closed once, and a faint color rose beneath the fine elven skin. "You saw that."
"I see everything in this room. It's a small room." He blinked, slow and certain. "It was a good drawing. A creature as handsome as me has to be difficult to illustrate."
"It was just a sketch. Between paragraphs. I wasn't trying to..."
"It was accurate. I’m very handsome," he said, in a tone that suggested accuracy was the highest compliment he knew how to give.
"The proportions were correct. The curve of the tail was right.
Most people draw cats as circles with triangles on top and call it portraiture.
You drew a cat—and a very handsome one at that. "
Tesslyn's fingers pressed flat against her notebook cover.
"Thank you," she said. "I think."
"The uncertainty is unnecessary. It was a compliment. I don't give many." He turned to Lucien. "Tell her I don't give many."
"He doesn't give many. I think this is the nicest he has ever been to someone. You should feel special."
"See. Corroborated." Corvath's tail swung once off the table's edge. "You also asked the right question in the corridor yesterday."
Tesslyn didn't ask which question.
"You asked about me," Corvath said. "Before you processed the eyes or the brand or any of the rest of it.
Lucien was standing in a hallway with crimson eyes and a snake's body in his hand, and thirty students were staring at him, and your first question was whether the cat was all right.
" He looked at her with gold eyes that had seen the fall of civilizations and the rise of others and the slow deterioration of every warm spot on this campus since his arrival.
"People don't ask about the cat first. You did. I wasn’t just a furry creature. I was worth your time and care."
Tesslyn's hand stayed flat on her notebook. She swallowed once. "You were on the floor. The snake was coiled around you. The rest of it could wait."
"The rest of it could wait," Corvath repeated, and the repetition carried more weight in his dry voice than any original statement could have. "Yes. I thought so too."
He settled deeper into the loaf. His ears rotated forward and held there, pointed at Tesslyn, the full-attention position he reserved for things that mattered.
"I'm told I was very brave about the whole experience," he said. "Stoic, even. A lesser familiar would have panicked. I was being slain by a most ugly reptile."
"You froze," Lucien said.
"I was assessing the tactical situation from a low vantage point. The assessment happened to take longer than expected due to the presence of scales, which I find disagreeable."
"Your fur was standing up," Lucien added.
"A thermoregulatory response."
"In a heated corridor."
"The heating in this building is inconsistent at best. I've filed complaints.
" His tail flicked. "But the experience was, let's say, less than ideal.
The snake situation is a thing I do not enjoy and will never enjoy.
It was ugly, and he managed to get me when I was cornered.
I was not at my best. I would prefer to have been at my best, but there it is.
Next time I will be ready and my claws will be out. "
"Next time? Gods, I hope not," Tesslyn said.
“For Ashavir’s sake I hope you are right. The scaled bastard from hell,” Corvath hissed with a claw motion.
Corvath's ears flicked once. He turned his head toward the window and studied the light on the sill with enormous concentration, as if the sun's angle had become the most fascinating subject in the room.
"The windowsill in here gets the best light from three o'clock onward," he said. "In case anyone was wondering. Which you weren't. But now you know. It is my spot."
Lucien and Tesslyn exchanged a bemused look over the table.
"He's remarkable," she said.
Lucien raised a brow. "Don't tell him that. He is already quite full of himself. His head may pop if it gets any bigger."
"I heard her compliment," Corvath said, still facing the window. "I'm choosing to neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of the observation. However, I’m leaning toward accuracy."
Tesslyn asked Corvath about the third-floor windowsill, and Corvath delivered a comprehensive review of the academy's solar geometry that covered exposure angles, stone types ranked by heat retention, and a critique of the groundskeeping staff.
"The hedge serves no functional purpose," he said. "It's decorative. Decoration that obstructs warmth is vandalism."
"Maybe it's pretty. I think it’s pretty," Tesslyn said.
"Many things are pretty. That doesn't make them useful."
"You're pretty," Lucien said to the cat.
"I prefer to be called handsome. However, both terms apply equally. Thank you. When you’ve eaten and aren’t so damned pale, you are pretty handsome yourself."
Tesslyn laughed. The laugh was quick and sharp and she caught it behind her hand, the sound escaping before she could pull it back. Corvath's tail swung once in acknowledgment.