Finn Jota
The youngest student in the cohort by a fair margin, and the loudest person in any courtyard he is standing in.
The introduction
Ch. 258. He is on top of an overturned crate, surrounded by older students, winning an argument.
FNN: THAT'S NOT FAIR, THE RULES CLEARLY SAY YOU CAN'T USE YOUR ABILITY DURING A REGULATION MATCH.
He wins it the way he apparently wins all of them:
The dispute [...] resolved itself the way most schoolyard disputes eventually did, with an older student conceding the point simply to end the noise, and Finn hopped down from the crate with the particular triumphant energy of someone who had never once lost an argument by attrition and did not intend to start now.
Briar supplies the file:
BRR: That's Finn. [...] He skipped ahead a year. Youngest student in our cohort by a fair margin. What he lacks in size he makes up for in volume.
He is from Corvane, the same province as Briar, and they did not know each other before Solmere. His grip is "considerably stronger than his slight frame suggested".
On the parry
FNN: You should [keep hearing that]. It's genuinely the most interesting thing that's happened here in months. I heard it three different ways from three different people and none of them agreed on the details, which honestly makes it better, if you ask me.
That is the saga's own drift-of-legend theme, said out loud by a fifteen year old about an event six years old.
With Briar
They bicker "with the particular easy rhythm of two people who had clearly settled into this exact dynamic within days of meeting".
FNN: Not everyone finds mineral compositions of Corvane bedrock interesting, you know. BRR: My conversations are educational. FNN: Your conversations are a cure for insomnia.
BRR: It's a school kitchen, Finn, not a conspiracy. FNN: That's exactly what a conspiracy would want you to think.
What he does for Mira
Without appearing to try. He asks Mira a direct question about Eskandar's coastline, gets an answer, and moves straight on.
which seemed, Arthur thought, to be exactly what Mira needed, someone who asked and received and did not make her presence in the conversation feel like a spotlight she hadn't consented to.
His ability is a gamble
Ch. 313. He activates it by clapping once, and what happens next is not his to choose. He calls each activation a roll.
The clap was not loud. That was the strange part. It was an ordinary sound, two hands meeting once [...] Everyone heard it.
He had never used it more than once in his life before this match. He uses it four times in about ninety seconds.
| Roll | What it gave |
|---|---|
| 1 | Both weapons removed. The proctor announces it as a condition rather than a ruling: "Combatants are restricted to unarmed engagement." |
| 2 | Thirty years of unarmed mastery, in his own hands, for twenty-two seconds. "the work of someone who had spent thirty years in a discipline and had arrived, at the end of them, somewhere very few people ever reached." |
| 3 | Total darkness, for both of them. |
| 4 | He cannot move at all. |
He does not know what a roll will do before he makes it:
ART: Finn. What did you do. FNN: I honestly don't know yet.
And on the second roll, mid-fight:
FNN: Oh, that's what it did! Arthur, I know how to do this! I've never known how to do this in my LIFE-
The third roll is the one he blames himself for, and correctly:
FNN: OH NO. [...] OH, THAT'S BAD. THAT'S GENUINELY BAD, ARTHUR, THAT'S BAD FOR ME SPECIFICALLY-
Because his entire method is evasion, and evasion requires knowing where the other person is. Arthur, who trained for years in the hour before dawn, finds him by sound.
ART: You've made a mistake. FNN: I'M AWARE. [...] FNN: HOW. ART: You're very loud. FNN: I'M ALWAYS VERY LOUD, THAT'S NEVER BEEN A PROBLEM BEFORE-
The fourth roll he makes with Arthur's fist already in his collar.
FNN: I can't move, Arthur. At all. That's the roll. That's what it gave me.
FNN: I'm blind, I can't hold a weapon, I don't know how to fight anymore, and now I can't move.
The terms he accepts
ART: I'm sorry. FNN: It's fine. [...] That's what it does. I knew that when I used it. Everybody knows that's what it does, it's the whole point of the thing, you don't get to keep rolling and only ever like the answers.
Arthur pushes him out of bounds with as much care as the situation allows.
FNN: Four rolls. I have never used it more than once. [...] and the fourth one told me to stop. [...] That's genuinely the funniest possible ending. I should have quit after the second one.
Why he entered, finally said out loud
FNN: It was the thing you said at dinner, about how you stopped hesitating when you were eight. ART: I don't remember saying that. FNN: I KNOW. That's exactly the problem, Arthur, that's the entire problem with you, you say something like that and then you don't remember it, and meanwhile it's been sitting in my chest for two days making me sign a roster I had absolutely no business signing.
FNN: I won three matches. I've never won anything. I gambled four times in front of the entire academy and the last one ruined me completely, and I'd do all of it again.
Later, from the author's notes
Marked as planning rather than text. He enters the Trial of Power "because of something Arthur said", which Arthur does not know, and faces Arthur in a quarterfinal. His round two is deliberately left off the page. See ../volumes/09-the-scholar.md.
Ch. 262
The other half of ch. 262's misunderstanding. See briar-colton.md.
FNN: We watched you all week and we said to each other, Briar, we said, we need him. Whatever he's got, we need it, and we need it soon.
FNN: We want you to notice us the way you've somehow got them noticing you.
And, being carried to the infirmary, still concussed:
FNN: ...still want to know the secret, though.
Ch. 270
He overhears Corin crying through a dormitory window and goes completely still, which the chapter marks as unprecedented for him.
his usual restless energy gone completely, entirely still for perhaps the first time since arriving at Solmere.
FNN: ...oh.
He walks the rest of the way "with none of his usual noise", already working on "exactly what, if anything, a person was supposed to do with a piece of someone else's grief they'd never been meant to overhear".
Ch. 271 is "The Cupcake Conspiracy".
Ch. 271
He organises the whole group into a bakery outing without saying why, and Arthur notices the change in register immediately.
ART: Is there a reason for this specifically? [...] FNN: I just think it'd be nice. That's all. Sometimes people need nice things happening around them, even if they don't ask for it. Especially if they don't ask for it.
He gets Corin to come with one word:
FNN: Please.
Then hands him a cupcake, unprompted, and asks nothing.
COR: I didn't ask for this. FNN: I know. That's rather the point of gifts, or so I'm told.
On the walk back, Corin asks, and Finn tells him the truth without asking for anything:
FNN: I heard something. Not everything. Not the details. I'm not asking you to tell me the details, either, I want that understood clearly. I just heard enough to know things have been hard lately, and I didn't know what else to do about it, so I did the only thing I actually know how to do well, which is organize an unnecessarily large group outing and force people to eat pastries together.
COR: I don't want to discuss it. FNN: I know. You don't have to. I just wanted you to have a good afternoon regardless.
COR: Thank you.
That is the only thanks Corin has given anybody so far. He did not give one to Elsie for the same gesture in ch. 264.
The schemes
Ch. 298. Five of them, in order, after the betting sheet cost him his term's money.
- Laundry. Collapses on day five when he washes burgundy dress robes with everything else. "IN MY DEFENSE, I didn't know that mattered."
- Tutoring, with Briar conscripted. Collapses when the students demand partial refunds for having received one tutor rather than two. "FNN: I provided ADMINISTRATIVE support. STU: You sat at a desk. FNN: ADMINISTRATIVELY."
- Alchemically enhanced study aids, refused flatly by Yseult, who points out that manufacturing Alchemical goods for sale without a licence is province-level illegal. He spends two days researching exactly how illegal.
- Chess lessons from Mira, refused with total clarity: "MRA: Because I'd have to talk to strangers for extended periods, repeatedly, about something I enjoy, and I'd like to keep enjoying it."
- A paid dueling demonstration by Corin, sold to eleven students before Corin is told it exists. "COR: I made no sound whatsoever. Silence is not agreement. FNN: In certain contexts, it absolutely is."
The fifth one works. He loses the proceeds the same week on a wager about rain.
ELS: How much money do you have, in your possession, at this exact moment. FNN: Four coppers and a button I'm fairly confident isn't mine.
He refuses to be given money on principle:
FNN: THOSE WERE ASSETS. Selling assets is entrepreneurship. Accepting money for nothing is charity. The distinction is fundamental and I refuse to let it collapse simply because I'm currently experiencing a temporary liquidity crisis. YSE: You've been experiencing a temporary liquidity crisis for six weeks. FNN: TEMPORARY IS A FLEXIBLE TERM.
So Briar starts quietly paying for his meals and neither of them ever mentions it.