Chapter 65: THE PENCIL
The world folded. Cool air on his face. The mark was where his right boot was. The chest caught once.
The proctor took a short pencil from his coat. He wrote one line on a separate page that did not leave his desk. He did not say what he had written. He put the pencil away.
The proctor did not look at the mark. He looked at the three meters of flagstone between the mark and where Aiden’s boots were. He looked at it the way a man looked at a thing he had only ever seen a beast do.
Then he looked at Aiden’s chest. He had seen the catch. He had seen the grey come and go. He was pricing the cost against the distance.
He timed it. He timed the recovery. He has the seconds now.
"Walk back."
Aiden walked back to the rail.
The proctor stood. He put his hands back on the rail, leaning on it now.
"You haven’t been in a Synergy class."
"No."
"You haven’t been in any class."
"No."
"What you ran on the posts is a senior-yard pattern. Not a thing they would teach an admit at first year. The formation has a name. I am not going to tell you what it is. If a panel hears the name, they ask where you learned it and who taught it. Without the name, the panel sees what you did. I have selected a panel that will see what you did."
He looked at Aiden once.
"The panel is at second bell. Three names. Master Tamer Iola Rensh: Silkveil Weaver lineage, reads the rules like a contract she wrote. Master Tamer Bren Halvic: Ashborn Stag lineage, reads them like a contract he was given. The third was selected by me at registry the day after your yard. You will not ask. I will not tell. Coade gave you a sentence."
"How did you know Coade gave me a sentence."
"Because I asked him to. Two days ago. I have known Coade thirty-one years, and Halvern Coade has not put his seal on the back of a slip in seven of them. Without his sentence about the lieutenant’s wax, the panel would have read the hold as valid, and you would have lost. He gave you the sentence. I did not know he would. He gave it to you for the same reason I selected the panel. He did not tell me what the reason was. The reason is his and stays his."
He had not moved his hands off the rail.
"I am going to tell you a thing. I am going to tell you because the panel is in an hour and a half. You will not say it again to me. You will not say it to a man in a corridor. You will not write it on a page a man could pick up if a coat opened on a wind."
"Sir."
"Your dark one. I have a guess about what it is. I am not going to say it. Not today. Not in nine years. I am not the man who names a thing on a guess. I do not name it."
"Sir."
"If your dark one is what I guess, one fact. The last man who carried a guess like mine walked out of his office into a chapel without telling his Hearthcat. He died before the cat reached the door. Eleven years ago. I have not said the guess out loud since. I am telling you a man died on a guess he did not say. The death is in a ledger I read. That is the whole of what I am telling you."
The lamp between them had burned low, and the wax at its collar had run and set in a thin grey skirt.
Aiden held still.
The proctor turned his head toward the apprentice with the slate.
"Bring the cat up."
The boy walked up. The unbonded Hearthcat trotted ahead of him, stopped two paces from Aiden, and sat down at his boot.
It looked up at him. The Hearthcat was the size of a kitten, the colour the lane called rust-and-snow, the ear forward, the heat coming off it small but steady.
It did not press against him. It did not climb. It sat at his boot and looked up at him with the patience of a thing that had picked a place and was content to be in it.
Miasma on his shoulder did not lower her spines. Nyx in the dark of his coat did not move. Neither of his beasts objected to the small rust-and-snow thing at his boot.
"It chose your boot," the proctor said.
"Yes."
"It chose your boot twelve days ago at the gate. The apprentice has put it back at his own twice. It comes back to yours."
The apprentice looked up at him.
He did not touch it. Street beasts had taught him that years ago. Most animals had been given too much of the wrong attention. The ones worth knowing trusted the man who stood near them and asked for nothing.
Poverty had been training for something after all. He filed that joke to tell no one.
The older Hearthcat was still on its feet.
At the gate the proctor spoke again.
"Lamplighter."
He turned his head.
"The day comes."
He nodded once. The proctor nodded back.
He walked the corridor back toward the lower yard.
His chest had not caught on the walk. A year ago the stairs alone would have caught him four times. Today it was none, after running both beasts and a blink across three meters of flagstone. The lung did not ask him to stop.
The figure moved before he reached the yard.
[ TOXIN FILTER — RESIDUAL DETOXIFICATION ]
Scarring: continued clearing.
Capacity: improving.
Lifespan Restored: +0.9 Years
[ CURRENT LIFESPAN: 8.8 Years ]
Eleven more months. He had nowhere to put a number like that except where he put the rest of them. Out of any desk’s reach.
The proctor had not told him what his guess was.
He had told him the day was coming.