By the time that class was over—more to the point, by the time he broke up the melee that the “game” had turned into and sent them all back to their other classes—it didn’t appear that the lesson had sunk in yet.

But he was relatively certain that eventually it would, as they thought back over the chaos on the ice. Certainly they were, one and all, winded, weary, aching in every limb, and there wasn’t one of them that wasn’t sporting some sort of injury. There were a hefty number of black eyes, and lots of bruises in places that didn’t show. And a strain or two, and lumps on the skull. And he would have laid money on the fact that not one of them was going to give the other instructors any trouble for the rest of the day.

But most of all, for the sake of the lesson in teamwork, it was painfully clear that no one had any idea who had won.

So when the next class showed the early symptoms of the same “disease,” he administered the same “cure.” It was only when he got the final-year students that he got any signs of sense and steadiness out of them, and managed to run a normal class.

He didn’t have the option of thinking much past the fact that at least he’d gotten some work out of them, and a lesson of sorts into them. After classes were over, some of the Guard appeared for a little training, and he was able to work out some of his own frustration in a satisfying series of bouts. When the last of the adults had gone, and the last of the daylight faded, leaving the salle in blue gloom, he was more concerned with a hot shower than anything else.

He went back into his quarters and got himself cleaned up, coming out of his bathing room to find that the servants had come and gone from the Collegium, leaving behind both his dinner and a visitor.

“What in the bloody blue blazes did you infect your students with today?” Myste demanded, peering at him through her thick glass lenses, pausing in the midst of laying out plates, cups, and cutlery. “They look like they’ve been through the Wars, and they’re chattering like magpies about some ice exercise you invented.”

He stared at her for a moment, bemused both by her presence and by the question. He hadn’t thought much beyond exhausting the worst offenders; it hadn’t occurred to him that they’d actually take to the exercise. Well, not really, anyway. Maybe some of the Blues, the courtiers’ children, who hadn’t anything better to do with their time. “They would not settle,” he replied after a moment. “So, to exhaust them, I decided. And to show them, organization is needed, a battle to win.”