He had two of these classes (not three!) for now, both of which entailed an enormous amount of reading. In the interests of preserving his authority as Dethor’s Second, however, he was not having his classes, his lessons, with the rest of the Trainees. That idea had been suggested and discarded within two days of being officially appointed and functioning as the Weaponsmaster’s Second—four days after actually accepting the job. Dethor had been the one insisting on some alternate form of tutoring, though; Alberich hadn’t had anything to do with that particular decision. Not that he’d been particularly enamored of squeezing himself into a desk beside a lot of children. It wasn’t just that it was undignified, it was that he needed to impress those same children with his authority, and he wasn’t going to do that if he was bumbling through classes as one of their “peers.” Evidently Dethor felt exactly the same, and had gotten rather testy about it.

In fact, he hadn’t even seen the Collegium yet. All of his time had been spent in or around the salle; when he wasn’t kicking youngsters into shape, he was catching up on the thousand and one little things that Dethor hadn’t been able to get to for the past few years since the bone-aches got into his hands. He tried, Sunlord knew, but he had to do things slowly and the work built up faster than he could do it. And often enough, he couldn’t do it at all.

There was a shed full of practice armor and real armor discarded by the Guard and Heralds that needed only a bit of mending to be useful again. Shoulder plates and elbow and knee protection just needed broken leather straps or the padding replaced, the bit of chain lying about could be repaired with a few new rings and some patient weaving. Practice armor of leather and canvas generally had to have the same treatment, or tears mended. It took a little bit of skill and strong fingers, nothing more.

Then there were practice weapons in need of mending, and archery targets to be salvaged. The things that got mended soonest tended to be in the sizes that everyone could use, which left children who were smaller, taller, or thinner than the usual struggling with poorly fitting armor. He was fixing the odd-sized items first, and had the satisfaction of seeing at least two of his smallest pupils looking comfortable in practice.