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“You’re lying.”
“Am not!”
“You are.”
“I’m not, I swear!”
“I’m not an idiot,” Felix snapped. “This is all some bullshit you made up to make a fool of the first person who’d listen to you.”
Sylvain looked wounded and slouched onto the nearest bench, bracing himself with his hands behind him. “I’m just trying to help. Why do you always have to be so suspicious of literally everything I say?”
“Nothing you ever said has ever worked out for me.” Felix paced back and forth across the cobblestones of the training courtyard. “The time you said drinking milk made your bones get stronger—”
“It does!”
“—and your voice deeper, which was a blatant lie—”
“We were twelve,” Sylvain protested, “that barely counts—”
“And the time you said squatting for an hour every day on top of the city fountain was supposed to help me get over some made-up fear of public ridicule—”
“Which it would have if you’d actually done it.”
“How? All it did was make people point and laugh!”
“Yeah, and if you’d done it every day, you’d never have been afraid of people pointing and laughing at you for anything again.”
Felix did not look as though he appreciated this logic. “And that time when we were five and you told me to eat a worm because all the best swordsmen had to learn to live on whatever they could get in the wild. You said it was a test.”
Sylvain snickered. “Saints, I’d forgotten. Still can’t believe you actually did it.”
“So give me one reason,” Felix said. “One good reason I should ever believe you about anything. Especially when you’re trying to convince me—” He paused and turned to him with a frown. “… What is it you were trying to convince me of?”
“That dancing,” Sylvain said patiently, recovering his straight face, “will make you a better swordsman. So you should sign up to be the Blue Lions dancer for the contest.”
“Yeah,” Felix said, clearly disgusted. “That.”
“One reason?”
“Yes.”
“One awesome, indisputable, totally valid reason?”
“If it exists.”
“Well, there is one,” Sylvain said, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his thighs. “Others have done it before you, and there’s research to back it up. You can even check with the school training-master if you want—I bet he’d corroborate what I’m saying.”
Felix frowned. “What others?”
“An order of fencers who called themselves water-dancers,” Sylvain said. “There’s records of them in every Almyran story about lone bravos who go out and fight for justice, or hire themselves out as mercenaries to hide their broken hearts, or whatever. They studied every form of dance that ever existed—solo dances, partner dances, circle dances. They even stopped random passerby on the street to ask them what dances they knew, and if there was a dance the bravo hadn’t learned before, he’d learn it right then and there.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Felix said. “When did they train with, oh, I don’t know, actual swords?”
“Aha!” Sylvain held up a finger. “That’s just it. All the time they spent on learning to dance was complementary to their swordsmanship. They trained with swords, sure, but the grace, precision and strength they got from dancing made them advance, like, a thousand times faster than if they’d stuck to just the one thing.”
“That is not a real thing.”
“The professor’s offering to help the house dancer prepare for the ball.” Sylvain raised his eyebrows. “Are they good with a sword?”
Felix was still frowning, but with his hesitating face, not his I’ve-made-up-my-mind face. “I don’t dance. I can’t just start now and expect to be good by the end of the month.”
“Skill issue,” Sylvain said.
“Shut up,” Felix said. “Give me the paper.”
Sylvain, smothering a grin, handed him the sign-up sheet he’d stolen from the school notice board half an hour ago. “That’s the spirit. You’ve never refused to learn a new skill that could help you get stronger.”
Felix hesitated, paper in hand, and looked up at him. “You sure it’s a thing? Dancing to get better at fighting?”
Sylvain spread his hands. “Don’t take my word for it. Ask the professor. Or better yet, try it yourself. What have you got to lose?”
“My dignity,” Felix said darkly, and left the training grounds.
Sylvain grinned. If he pulled this off, Ingrid was going to owe him chores until they graduated.
…