Gabriel described a two-week routine at San Michon: mucking stables each morning, hard training during the day, and clandestine nightly study sessions with Sisternovice Astrid Rennier in the Great Library. He felt uncertain of Greyhand’s stance toward him after the Skyefall mission but noted that he had been spared execution and that Greyhand had praised him to the Foundry seraph.

With several initiates back from Hunts, the Gauntlet was busy. Under the eyes of Greyhand and Frère Alonso, a scarred, booming Nordish brother, Gabriel trained alongside Fincher. Alonso, impressed but needling, questioned Gabriel’s prowess as a “frailblood,” prompting Gabriel to boast that he could beat Fincher and any initiate present.

Alonso proposed an impromptu tourney with a gold royale prize. Gabriel faced Fincher first, disarming him twice and splitting his lip with an elbow, forcing Fincher to yield. Alonso then sent de Séverin, a powerful Dyvok paleblood who fought with two massive blades. Gabriel evaded the brute force, stepped inside de Séverin’s reach, and dropped him with a pommel strike to the jaw; de Séverin yielded.

Alonso called for Aaron de Coste next, but Greyhand intervened, refusing to let the rivals fight. Tension flared when Gabriel called Aaron a coward for a previous “dog punch.” Aaron attacked in rage, and they devolved into a fistfight until Greyhand wrenched them apart. Greyhand rebuked them for forgetting their brotherhood in the Ordo Argent and ordered them to make their pax; they obeyed grudgingly, hatred unresolved.

As punishment, Greyhand drilled Gabriel and Aaron far past dusk, then again after duskmass, trying to sweat out their enmity. Gabriel collapsed into a corpse-like sleep from exhaustion.

He woke in the dark, seized by dread: he had overslept and was late for his secret rendezvous with Astrid.