The Trainee on the floor had the sense to go pale; he, at least, must have some inkling of what Alberich meant—which was to let the fight go on until they were both too exhausted, bruised, and battered to stand. There would be no winner, short of one of the two being knocked unconscious, which, with the bare hands of a pair of boys fundamentally unskilled in bare-hand fighting, was unlikely. This was, actually, why Alberich did not teach bare-hand fighting to anyone who had not passed into that third and final stage of development…

But the Blue was one of Alberich’s personal headaches. Arrogant, assertive and, unfortunately, skilled enough to have earned the right to a part of that arrogance. Alberich would have gladly rid himself of the boy—Kadhael Corbie—if he could have. Unfortunately, that was out of his hands. Kadhael was in the class unless and until he took himself out of it.

The boy looked him up and down, and sneered. “No,” he said.

Someone gasped.

Alberich did not move, and did not change his expression by so much as a hair. “I do not believe I heard you correctly,” he said evenly, trying to suppress the thrill of glee the boy’s insolent answer gave him. “What, precisely, did you say?”

“I said, no. No, I am not going outside. No, I am not fighting by your rules. Who are you to give me orders, old man?”

Alberich smiled—and Kadhael took one look at the smile and suddenly realized that he had made so fundamental a mistake that there was not going to be any evasion of the consequences.

“I,” he said quietly, and with the perfect and precise control of Valdemaran grammar that came upon him in moments of stress “am the Collegium Weaponsmaster. As such, when I choose to exercise my rank, within the four walls of my salle and on its grounds, I outrank, by Valdemaran law, every man, woman, and child in Valdemar save only the Monarch. And within these four walls, the Monarch is my equal, not my superior.”

And it was all perfectly true. How else could he properly teach the sons and daughters of the highborn? How else could he train high-ranking Guards? How could he drill the greatest warriors and nobles of the realm? How could he ever train the Heirs, if he did not outrank them? To properly train, there would be injuries. They might be serious. And the Weaponsmaster could not be held responsible for such injuries. To be trained, the Weaponsmaster must know his orders would be obeyed, and the only way to be sure of that was to see that his rank on these grounds was higher than anyone else’s in the land.

Which was why—though he had not learned this until after Dethor had retired—he had that special status within the salle and on the grounds.