CHAPTER 99: 99: THE ACADEMY TEST IX

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The noble student stopped as if a rope had been pulled on his neck to choke him. His mouth snapped open. His eyes narrowed fast. He turned his head down and to the left to find the source. He did not look at the people around him. He did not look at the rope rail. He looked straight at Fizz, who hovered a hand above shoulder height like a small lamp you could never quite reach.

"Watch where you float, spirit scrap," the young man said in a low, sharp voice. He spoke like someone who was used to hearing boot licking words after he spoke.

Fizz leveled, paws hovering at his sides. "Pardon," he said. And that would have been that if the next words had not been born.

The noble student curled his lip. "Things that buzz should be swatted," he said. "Not saying pardon like men."

Fizz’s ears tipped back. He took a slow breath. He remembered Elara’s and the gate keepers’ warning. He remembered John’s rules. He felt the old jokes get up and run laps inside his head. He put his paws together for one small clap that made no sound.

"I said pardon," Fizz said. "You might say it back. The world would not crack."

The student blinked once. "You are a pet. Pets do not ask for manners."

Fizz’s paws opened. The jokes came. "And you are a nose," he said sweetly. "Noses point at things but do not think. We are both learning."

A few heads near them turned. A few whispers started, the way small fires start when dry grass learns what a spark is. Fartray’s two friends smirked and stepped back half a step, which is what boys do when a pack smell changes.

"What is your master’s name," the noble asked. "He will pay for your mouth. I will punish him for not teaching you how to talk to a noble man."

Fizz made a show of thinking. "Hmm. His name is John. His title is... let me check... ah yes: the person who is not here right now to save you from my wit."

"Wit," the tall boy said, and he made the word a kind of spit. "You are a bright bug. I will put you out of your life."

He lifted two fingers with a little flick, casual and cruel. Water answered. It pulled from the thin air, from the wet hedge, from the skin of his own breath, and spun into a narrow twist in front of his hand. It hung there like a string of glass.

Fizz slid left and up without seeming to move, easy and small. The water twist snapped through the air where he had been. It kissed open space and broke on nothing. A drop touched a boy’s shoe and made him jump like a frog. The boy’s friend kicked his ankle and told him to stand still.

"Ah," Fizz said softly. "So the clown jokes get wet now."

Two yards away, John listened to Master Venn explain how the tokens would be checked at each step. Timing, lines, gates. John took it in. He did not turn. The noise behind him was not loud yet.

Fartray’s eyes cooled further, if that was possible. "Down," he said to Fizz, and flicked his fingers again. A thin ribbon of water snapped like a whip. It cut the air. Fizz dropped, turned, and the ribbon missed by two hands. It struck the ground near the hedge and made the dirt splotch.

Fizz floated backward, small and precise. His paws made a little forward push. It was not a spell. It was intent.

He looked at the narrow wet line the water attack had made. He looked at the dark soil where water had soaked. He moved his left paw in a short arc and said in a voice low enough to be called polite, "Mud slap!"

Water listened to him too, in a different way, because nearly everything in the world likes to be told what to do by something that means it. The wet dirt folded into itself. It made a soft, sticky pool the size of a small plate. Fizz’s right paw flicked up.

The mud leapt.

It did not fly fast. It did not fly hard. It flew true. It met Fartray’s pale cheek and smooth jaw with a flat sound that was not loud and was not quiet. It stuck. It slid. It left a brown streak down a face that had not, by all signs, ever met a field or a day’s labor or any honest earth in its life.

The yard heard the smallest possible gasp, and then it heard Fartray’s breath break.

It was not pain. It was disgust! It was the kind of panic that happens when a life built on clean edges meets a thing that does not ask if edges mind. Fartray’s eyes went wide in a way that made him look young. His mouth pulled back. His hands flew up to his face. His fingers met the mud. He made a sound like a torn note.

"My face," Fartray said, and the words came in a noble tone that had not learned how to say "mud." "You... you threw filth at my face."

Fizz hung in the air, round and small and smug. "It is called ’earth,’" he said. "You live on it. You are welcome for the knowledge."

Fartray swallowed and found rage. He dragged himself up tall again like a curtain caught the wind. He shook his hands once and flung the mud to the ground as if it were fire. Two tiny drops hit his clean coat. One fell to his shoulder. One tried to touch his lapel and failed. He stared at them like a man staring at a new language he refused to learn.

He drew a breath and held himself even. When he spoke next, it was slow, like a knife pulled out of a cloth.