The oral assignments went up on the notice board at the eighth hour, and the whole corridor felt it arrive — a dozen wristbands catching the same pulse of blue light within the same three seconds, students slowing mid-stride to read their own names off glass they hadn't looked at yet.
Vane found his before he'd fully stopped walking. Sael Varro — Tactical Doctrine and Command Philosophy. Beneath it, a second line in smaller script: a senior archive scholar's name, unfamiliar, attached to Pre-Consolidation History and Doctrine.
Ashe read it over his shoulder before he'd finished reading it himself, close enough that he felt the cold still clinging to her sleeve from the walk up the hill.
"Sael's going to ask about Day Two," she said.
"I know."
"Do you know what you're going to say?"
"The truth."
"The truth isn't a tactical framework. She'll want both."
"Then I'll give her both."
"In that order?"
"Probably not."
