imp

— CARRIED —

• dagger (1d4)
• spell book, two pages used
• prompt book
• chalk ×6
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— SPELLS —

MEMORISED Sleep

KNOWN Read Magic, Sleep

— WHO THEY ARE —

Ilve Danneth is alive, blind, sixty-eight, and lives in two rooms behind the Vigil house. Her spell book is not in those rooms. It is in the Vigil's keeping, in a case, and it holds forty-one spells, and Tace has been permitted to copy two. One of the two had to be Read Magic, because without it the other thirty-nine are decoration for the rest of her life. So Tace has made exactly one choice about her own trade, at seventeen, in a room with two Vigil officers watching, and she chose Sleep. The reason is on the record and is not a good one: Fight Four in the Field ends with Ilve putting the barrow hall down, and Tace had watched herself do that eleven hundred times and could not make herself pick anything else. She sees Ilve on Thursdays. Everyone does; it is a public thing, a queue in a corridor. Ilve has never asked Tace which two she took. Tace has decided this is kindness and is not sure. She has two hit points and knows what that number is. She worked it out at fifteen against the Vigil's own casualty tables, which the Vigil keeps because forty-one years ago it lost eleven people getting four out, and which are hung in the Field where the understudies can see them. Nobody has ever thought to take them down. What she wants out of the shrine is not the duke's money and not Kelmarch's parade. Ilve Danneth wrote thirty-nine spells into that book over fifty years and every one of them came from somewhere — a body, a shelf, a ruin. Tace has never once been anywhere a spell comes from. She would like to come back with a third, by herself, off a wall, and put it on page three in her own hand. She asks what round it is. Constantly, and it makes no sense outside the Field, where an instructor calls the round and the rehearsal has an end. Petra has started answering her with a number rather than telling her to stop, which the other two think is a bad habit to encourage and which Tace has not yet noticed she needs.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 12 events understudies-b1
• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 14 events understudies-2
• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 22 events understudies-1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · understudies-1 First blood, mine. A brass hand at the ruined great door — the one that bit Petra — put down with the dagger, two inches into a wrist-seam. It did not feel like Fight Four. It felt smaller and louder. Sleep is still in my head, unspent. Nobody has died.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-1 The great door is ours. Both brass hands are down and both died at the wrist-seam — mine first, then Petra's sword finishing what my dagger named. Odo filed the seam away like marginalia in the prompt book, and that is the only thanks this trade gives: being copied. Petra carries the party's only wound, 1 of 7. I am unmarked, which for two hit points is luck wearing my face. Sleep sits in my head unspent, whole, and I am glad and sorry about it in equal parts. Past the threshold it is dark and old, and spells have come from places like that. Nobody has died. Page three is still empty.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-2 The great door is ours again — a strange sentence to get to write twice. The brass hands stood whole on their posts when we came up the steps, though my own journal, in my own hand, says I broke them once; Petra remembered them broken too, and called it a matter for later. So the shrine runs retakes, or we do. I grew up on retakes. This take ran cleaner: nobody bled, and Wilha never had to spend her turn. Odo called the count — two hands, Wilha left, me back two — and dropped the first at the wrist-seam, three deep. Petra set herself between the second and Wilha, opened the same seam on it, and called me inside its reach; I went, and the dagger finished it — four on a four-sided die, the best the little blade can do. First blood was Odo's this time, mine the last; either way, the wrist-seam is where they give, twice proven. Sleep is still unspent, whole in my head. Nobody has died.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-2 Second watch, same door: both brass hands down again, unmarked party — Petra 7, Odo 5, Wilha 3, me 2. The hands stood whole when we came up the steps, though my journal and Petra's memory both say we broke them once. The shrine retakes its fights, or we do; the door does not seem to care which. Odo counted us out — two hands, Wilha left, me back two — and Odo cut hand one down at the wrist-seam. Petra split hand two's seam and called me inside its reach, and the dagger finished it: four on a four-sided die, the best the little blade can do. First blood Odo's this take, mine the last. The wrist-seam is where they give, twice proven. Nobody has died. Nobody is close. Sleep is still unspent, and I cannot tell if I am saving it or hoarding it.
• 2026-08-30 · understudies-b1 Third telling at the ruined great door. The shrine set both brass hands whole again, though my own hand has already written their deaths twice. This time one sprang for me and closed on air; Odo crushed it at the remembered wrist-seam, and Petra pinned the other there with one stroke. Nobody bled. Odo asked whether we remember the first two, and Petra said yes — every telling. So memory has witnesses now, which is not the same as an explanation. The rubble still glints with salvage beyond the quiet hands. Sleep remains whole in my head; page three remains empty. Round one, and the fight was over before my turn.