Once In a Blue Moon by Simon R. Green

their seats on the dais at the rear of the Audition Hall, so they could watch the place filling up. Long experience had taught them that if they didn’t, potential students would look in, see the empty chairs, and go away again. Because if Hawk and Fisher weren’t there, it meant the Auditions weren’t anywhere near getting started, so there was no point in showing their faces. Besides, Hawk and Fisher liked to sit back and watch the students gather, study their hopeful faces, and make quiet side bets on which ones would faint or wet themselves, or have a fit of the vapours, the moment they were called on to perform.
    Some tutors turned up to watch and some didn’t. Because some were people persons and some most definitely weren’t. Some weren’t even people, strictly speaking. You didn’t get on staff at the Hawk and Fisher Memorial Academy by having a pleasant manner; you secured your place by demonstrating extraordinary skills and sheer force of will. Roland the Headless Axeman turned up for every Audition, standing beside Hawk, disdaining anything as soft and comfortable as a chair. He stood unnaturally still, his back perfectly straight, seeming to observe absolutely everything. Even though he didn’t have any eyes. Or ears.
    He doesn’t miss anything, Hawk said once.
    Oh, he must do, said Fisher. It was a very old joke, even then.
    I heard that, said Roland. I’m not deaf.
    Then what are you? said Hawk.
    Complicated, said Roland.
    Fisher then said something extremely rude, and everyone present pretended not to have heard.
    The Alchemist would slouch in whenever he felt like it, glaring around at everyone else as though they’d kept him waiting. He wore a grubby white lab robe, with many colourful stains and scorch marks. He’d been wearing it for years, and on bad days you could smell it coming long before you ever saw the Alchemist. He could have had it cleaned, or even bought a nice new one, but apparently he considered the various signs of hard use as battle scars or marks of honour. It made a statement, he liked to say, though of what exactly, no one was too sure. Survival against the odds, probably. And it did help to put his students into a suitably cautious state of mind.
    The Alchemist himself was painfully thin, jumpy, and a decidedly testy sort, with a number of nervous twitches that chased one another round his body. He had an ascetic scholar’s face, with a haunted, preoccupied look. There were always a great many bets among his students as to whether he’d actually make it to the end of term. But somehow he always did. Even if his laboratory sometimes didn’t. There was no doubt he knew his stuff, and a whole bunch of other stuff that nobody else knew; and he was an excellent teacher, as long as you paid careful attention, and hit the floor when he told you to. He might not be able to turn lead into gold, yet, but he could blow shit up with great skill and never-ending enthusiasm. Many a battle had been won with one of the Alchemist’s little helpers. It was just that his extensive knowledge was accompanied by a wide-ranging curiosity and a complete lack of self-preservation instincts. At all of his lectures, there was always a scuffle between those who were going to sit up close, where they could see everything, and those who just wanted to stay safely at the back, near the door. And it was standard practice that if the Alchemist should say “Oops,” it was every student for himself.
    Jonas Crane the Bladesmaster, head tutor in all the soldiering skills, sauntered into the hall at the very last moment and stood at parade rest next to Fisher. He was the Academy’s only Bladesmaster, now that Anton la Vern was gone. He didn’t say anything, as he stood glaring out over the Audition hopefuls; he didn’t have to. His whole stance, wrapped in gleaming chain mail armour, spoke volumes. Fisher sighed, heavily.
    “You’re not happy, are you, Jonas? I say this on the grounds that your stance