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from me, then?”
    Teos’s eyes shifted up the beach again, then they met Calder’s. He lowered his voice, despite the incessant crash of the Godsmaw waves a stride behind Calder’s heels. “Your skills, teach them to me. Teach me how to improve. Your skills ranked you in the top half of the duel den when you arrived. I’ve been here for fourteen years, but you have dashed right past me with your magical ability. The other duelists, they comment on it when you’re not around. We don’t know what to make of you.”
    “You don’t think of me the same way as the nobles do, though.”
    “No. We see you when you’re not dueling, too, and we understand what we see when you do duel.”
    A smirk pulled at the old flame scar on Calder’s cheek. “Any consensus? Pet theories?”
    “Hanna, she says that you just got topped out for political reasons, that you are actually a very strong avatar duelist, and you simply hadn’t reached your potential when you were booted off campus. She says, and many of us agree with her, that being in a duel den, continuing to practice with us, it has simply raised your ability to its top level. That if you had remained on campus, you would have reached this level in the same amount of time.”
    Calder shifted his weight and watched seawater seep into his footprint. Something in Teos’s voice told him that his fellow duelist didn’t subscribe to that theory. “You disagree.”
    A smile tugged at one corner of Teos’s mouth. “We’ve all heard the rumors about your brush with savantism—that the exile was trying to teach it to you. I know you passed the test that proved you didn’t have wild magic. But that test, it didn’t prove what everyone thought it did, did it? It only proved your magic wasn’t wild. It didn’t prove whether or not you are, in fact, a Duelist Savant. You are. Aren’t you?”
    Calm now, easy. There’s no way I trust him, but I think I can be willing to listen a little longer. Calder jerked his chin down in the affirmative. “Aye, and what’s it to you then?”
    Teos eased his shoulders back. “The exile, he taught you. He’s the natural savant, not you. That means he managed to show you how to be like him without killing yourself along the way. I want you to teach that to me. Teach me how to be a savant. It has to be possible.”
    A slice of Calder’s soul thrilled at Teos’s request. Isna this exactly what I’ve always wanted? To have someone else see the value in what we went through. To see how I once saw it: my salvation. “You don’t even know what it will take.”
    Teos gave a dismissive twitch of his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it. If you can do it while you’re still a student at the academy, I can do it in my duel den. Right?”
    Calder gave him a judicious, thoughtful frown. “It’s still winter. Muggenhem is practically deserted. If you train hard, train now, you’ll be ready by the summer crush, and you’ll have more invitation scrolls then you’ll know what to do with.”
    The full import of what Teos was about to get seemed to take him by surprise. Calder’s denmate stepped back, maintaining eye contact. Then after a long moment, he dipped his head and swung it to the side, like an oar slipping into a new current. Looking at the beach, he asked, “My first task, what is it?”
    Calder grinned. “First, the jetty, as fast as we can. Push it. Push yourself, and push your avatar. Then we’ll see where we stand.”
    Teos nodded, and Calder summoned Fogbreath once more, stepping onto its flat, bubbly surface and gliding out over the sea. Teos’s Wood avatar snatched boulder after boulder from the cliff, ripping them from the living rock even faster than before. Yet Calder was always ready for them. No matter how quickly Teos handed over the stones, Calder always had a water vortex ready to receive it. In addition to his speed, Calder began to hurl taunts at Teos, teasing him for being slow, unsteady, and even Akrestoi.