His brain did not start working properly again until he reached the safety of the barracks. He’d agreed to dancing lessons the next day. Khana had almost insisted on them. He wanted to be upset that he was being shortchanged mental enhancement training. That was a simple, clean emotion that he knew how to handle.

  The other implications of the situation only confused him. He liked Khana a lot. That much was obvious, judging by how often he fantasized about the two of them doing inappropriate things in the cssroom. Some of those fantasies were about where he expected his mind to wander, but others were painfully simple – just a casual statement that if she were a commoner the two of them would be a good match. What kind of fantasy was that to have? ‘If I was a loser like you, I might date you’ was not an acceptable dream for a self-respecting person to have.

  The way she kept staring at him, though…. And her insistence on teaching him dancing….

  He remembered how she danced with him after the Head Scribe made him practice in the cottage with Hazen. That was the start of his crush. He hardly noticed Khana’s existence prior to the competition trip. She tried to dance with Hazen in the cottage as well back then. And monopolized Ulysses on the dance floor before reading a decration of love to the powerful boy the next day.

  The girl was not subtle when she liked someone, Volithur reflected. And she loved to dance. With anyone and everyone. A certain tension drained out of him. In its pce rose the familiar ache. Volithur sought to revive the pride that had filled him before Khana sent his mind into a spin, but found it elusive.

  The Barracks Clerk, Sergeant, and Marshal were at the reception desk looking at the chalkboard holding the duty roster when he entered the barracks. The Marshal held out an arm to block Volithur’s path without looking away from the board. “Pce Jay on delivery escort. He has respectful manners. Then put Devin on septic duty. Tell him that he will receive a free day next month for understanding the necessity. The rest of it should fall into pce.”

  The Marshal turned to look at Volithur then, eyes scanning him from head to toes over the course of a long two minutes. Finally, the Marshal issued a solemn nod. “You continue to impress, Ward Harridan. Skip training tomorrow morning and meet me in the library after breakfast.”

  Volithur blinked. “The library, Master Marshal?”

  “Yes, Ward Harridan. I wish to educate you on the circutory system before you receive your next elixir.

  The Sergeant smacked Volithur on the back. “Congratutions, Ward Harridan. You are shaping up to be a passable footman.”

  He stumbled back to his room in a daze. Between skipping two meals, concentrating obsessively for most of the day, and having his emotions yanked in multiple directions in quick succession, he was done.

  Volithur slept deeply and was up early the next morning to devour several bowls of rice porridge with thin slices of pork belly, a heap of bean sprouts, and a handful of roasted peanuts. He then went to the library to wait on the Marshal. He looked over the manual from the day before as he passed the time, pnning the completion of his final tendons.

  “Excellent, you are already here, Ward Harridan.” The Marshal pulled a book off an upper shelf and pced it down in front of him. “Stay seated, boy. These are important matters and the only courtesy I want is for you to heed the lesson you are about to receive.

  “Once you complete your tendons, your next task is the circutory system. This is a much more delicate matter than what you have done so far. You must be cautious and meticulous. The proper order to saturate is heart first, arteries second, and veins third. A comprehensive pn for the exact order of individual arteries and veins can be adopted from one of the manuals in this room.

  “What I am concerned about is the first step. You will not survive a serious mistake during heart saturation. Many people opt to use an inferior method of enhancing the heart by slowly raising the level of energy in it over a period of weeks or even months. This is not only slow, it is a deviation from the cold forged method. You will be forging your heart instead.

  “This requires a knowledge of anatomy to do safely.” The Marshal flipped open the book and pointed to the first image. “The outer envelope of the heart is saved for st. If you enhance it first, its increased stiffness can cause the heart dangerous strain. But you also cannot enhance the muscles before the valves, or you could damage them with the increased force. And you cannot enhance the valves before these structures that anchor them – it is a fibrous skeleton within the heart. So we begin with the anchors and then the valves of the upper chambers of the heart.”

  The Marshal continued to expin heart anatomy and the exact order to enhance individual components. The process was more complex than Volithur would have expected, and the seriousness of the exercise was impressed upon him by the Marshal taking so much of his valuable time to expin these things to him.

  When the lesson ended, the Marshal insisted that they switch roles and Volithur give detailed instruction on the order of events. They went through the entire process twice more before the Marshal grunted in approval and pulled out a vial.

  “Ward Harridan, I was extremely impressed with the speed you demonstrated with your bones and your tendons. For this next phase, I would consider rushing your heart enhancement to be reckless. I do not say this often, but in this circumstance you should not be an efficient steward of your resources. Go slow, do it right, and do it safely.

  “I will offer you one final incentive. If you can impress me by completing your tendons and doing a thorough enhancement of your heart, I will increase your allotment of tea powder elixirs from two a month to one every week. Do not let me return to discover you have almost completed your arteries but were sloppy with your heart, Ward Harridan. Slow and steady.”

  When the Marshal had gone, Volithur downed the elixir and began to do push-ups, sit-ups, squat jumps, and run in pce until he felt the blood boiling elixir take effect like a hot fsh. He dove for the seat and pulled the ‘sinew strengthening pn’ manual in front of him.

  For the next hour, he finished the tendons and ligaments of his hands, then he moved on to his face. There was far more connective tissue there than he thought reasonable, but after another hour he could say that he had completed the tendons.

  Then came the delicate work. Volithur began with the upper chambers of the heart, reinforcing the fibrous skeleton and then the valves. Then came the internal surface. Then he partially saturated the muscles there until they were about halfway done.

  He moved on to the lower chambers at that point, moving in the same order. Fibrous skeleton, valves, interior, then muscles to half-way. Then came the walls between the heart chambers. Then the portions of arteries directly connected to the heart. After that, Volithur returned to fully saturate all the muscles of the heart before finishing with the outer membrane.

  Throughout the lengthy process, his pulse had destabilized in disturbing fashion. At times, his heart bored for all it was worth, causing chest pains that worried him greatly. At other times, each pulse felt like a giant beating on his chest. There were strange losses of rhythm, feelings of exhaustion pguing his entire body even though the elixir should have been flooding him with strength, and a couple of times his heart locked up like it was having a seizure.

  In the end, though, he managed it. Volithur took the time to run his senses over the entire organ and ensure there was no part less than fully saturated. He was able to squeeze a few extra dribbles of power into it here and there, but the job was thorough.

  The power of the elixir had mostly been exhausted by that point, but Volithur decided to press ahead with the arteries. He pulled down a manual on the circutory system, skipped its surprisingly small section on the heart, and began to trace out the major blood vessels leaving the heart.

  He ran low on cosmic energy and chose to draw the remnants of the elixir into his soul instead of pushing on with his body enhancement. Volithur put away the books and returned to the barracks just in time to grab a loaf of bread and then return to the pace for css.

  The vial of cosmic water went into his pocket for ter use as he could not scrounge up the least bit of interest in continuing his body enhancement practice. He had done plenty of it already that day and there were dance lessons to stress about.