Chapter 70: SERVICE ENTRANCE

Nobody moved for the length of one very small sneeze.

The fox did it again, which was somehow worse than the silence. Kael stood in the corridor outside Aldris’s office with a pack full of other people’s belongings, and a coat pocket that now held, in order of importance, a Stone that ran his life, a gold medal he’d never asked for, a button, a hairpin, and the dented soup spoon. It was, he thought, a very honest summary of the season.

"It’s a funnel," Sable said.

Everyone turned. She was leaning against the wall beside the door with her bag at her feet, the only person in the corridor who hadn’t been staring at the paper.

"Seal the Academy, leave one door, put the key in the hands of the one man who’d use it." She shrugged one shoulder. "Whoever wrote that wants us in the gallery. I hate funnels."

"You’ve said that twice," said Torven.

"I’m saying it so it’s on the record."

"The record’s Lira."

"Noted," said Lira, who had a pencil behind each ear. The fox had returned the first-best one during the packing, and she had decided to call it a truce. "Funnel. Yes. And whoever it is knew about the fox. That means a source inside these walls, or some way of knowing things that I would very much like to understand and also never meet." She took a breath. "I’m objectively terrified. I’d like that filed."

"Filed," said Eiran.

"So we’re caught between the sword and the deep sea," said Sera Val.

"Devil," said Sable.

"What?"

"The devil and the deep sea."

"Why would a devil be involved?" Sera Val frowned. "That’s an entirely different problem."

Kael felt the laugh rising. Underneath it was something cold and steady, like a hand resting on the back of his neck. He opened the panel without quite deciding to.

───────────────────────────

[System — Status]

Decision: not calculable

Unspent Growth: 2

Hold: This is the first thing I can’t help with. I’m told that’s what makes it yours.

───────────────────────────

He closed it. His thumb was shaking a little, so he put the hand in his pocket where the spoon could keep it company.

"I told you the choice had been cancelled," Aldris said. He had come out into the corridor and stood very straight, the iron key in his fist. "I was wrong about one thing. It was cancelled for me." He looked at Kael. "Not for you."

Everyone looked at Kael. The fox looked at him too, from his shoulder, with the round amber seriousness of a creature who had no idea what was being asked and fully intended to have an opinion.

"Okay," Kael said. "Okay. So."

He rubbed his face. Park Jiwoo would have made a spreadsheet, with columns and risks and a color for each, and the thought was so absurd that it loosened something in his chest.

"Somebody wants us north. I don’t love that. But the lanterns turned before anyone opened that case. The Stone stopped before. The thread’s been pulling since the pond, and nobody forged that." He looked at the floor, then up. "So two voices are pointing the same way. One of them is lying about everything else. One of them has been patient for longer than this school’s been standing. I don’t have to trust the first to listen to the second."

"That’s not nothing, as an argument," said Kallow.

"It’s also a terrible one."

"Both can be true," said Eiran.

"And if I stay, I’m steered anyway, by the seal instead." His voice steadied as he said it, which surprised him. "Somebody else drew up the choices. Fine. I’m still the one choosing. I’d rather do it with my eyes open than because I was scared of being used." He looked at each of them. "I’m going. I’d like you with me. But it’s yours to say, all of it, and I won’t — "

"Five," said Torven.

Kael blinked. "What?"

"Five. I’m in." Torven hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. "You were going to say it nicely for a long time."

"I was packed before you were," said Sable, "so I’m not sure why this is a vote."

"It’s a ceremonial vote," said Sera Val. "I’m in. My mother arranged half of this, and I intend to be annoyed at her from the inside of whatever’s down there. It’s a much better view."

"Yes," said Lira. "And I’ll sleep when it’s over. I promise. I have never meant anything less."

Eiran was last of the five. He looked at the case in Kallow’s hand and didn’t reach for it. "Either my mother sent that and wants me north, or someone’s wearing her name and wants me north," he said. "Either way I’m going, which is irritating, because it’s what both of them want." He gave a small, crooked shrug. "I’d like to find out which without being a child about it."

Everyone turned, as if on one string, to Kallow.

"The order instructs me to take custody of all persons named in Instructor Aldris’s file," she said, smoothing the sheet against her ribs. "Custody means they are where I am. I intend to be extremely thorough."

"You’re coming north," said Sable.

"I’m being thorough."

"That’s a loophole."

"It’s a procedure " said Kallow. Her face did something Kael had never seen it do, and it took him a moment to recognize it as joy.

Aldris hadn’t moved. "I can’t go past the gallery door," he said. "I have an expected outcome. I told you." He turned the key over in his fingers. "And someone has to be on the fifth floor when the Committee’s real riders arrive. If I’m gone, this place is a hostage. If I’m here, it’s a school."

"And Vareth?" said Lira.

"Is currently interviewing a horse."

That did it. Sera Val made a sound like a kettle, and then everyone was laughing at once, helplessly, in a stone corridor with packs on their backs, as if the fear had needed somewhere to go.

The fox, apparently feeling the moment had run long enough, launched itself off Kael’s shoulder. It plucked the key out of Aldris’s fingers with the delicacy of a pickpocket and bounded away down the stairs.

"It voted," said Torven.

"It doesn’t get a vote," said Kael. Then, as the sound of claws faded: "It’s already voted, hasn’t it?"

"It’s the ninth," said Sera Val. "It absolutely gets a vote."

Before they left, Torven walked back into the office and set a cup on Aldris’s desk. It was steaming. Nobody had seen him make it.

"Honey," Aldris said, looking at it.

"Try not to die before breakfast," said Torven.

"I’ll make an effort."

They went down through a sealed Academy that had never looked so full.

Faces crowded the dormitory windows, pale in the lamplight. Vareth met them on the main stairs with a tray in one hand and the ledger in the other. He didn’t slow down. "The horse has given three opinions," he murmured. "It disapproves of oats. I have forty more to elicit. Go."

At the glass of the first-year wing, a girl with a cowlick that defied several laws pressed her forehead to the window. When she saw Kael looking, she held up a pastry in both hands, like an offering at a shrine. He lifted a hand. She turned the color of a tomato and ducked out of sight.

The north pond was still hung with lanterns. They hadn’t moved since the festival, hundreds of paper lights holding the same bearing over black water. As the group passed beneath, Kael felt them watching, in whatever way paper can.

The iron door sat low in the base of the north wall, half buried among relay stones the size of loaves. The fox was waiting beside it. The key lay at its feet.

Aldris stopped at the edge of the light.

"Lira," he said.

"I filed all of it," Lira said at once, quickly. Her eyes were very bright. "Everything you ever said. Goodbye’s the only thing I haven’t filed."

"Then leave it open."

She nodded hard, and then she hugged him, quickly and fiercely, like someone trying to do it before she lost her nerve. Aldris looked down at her with an expression Kael would remember for a long time.

Sable stepped forward and held out her silver medallion. "Hold this."

Aldris took it. "I’m told it’s a medal."

"I’ll want it back. It’s silver."

"Understood."

Sera Val had her sleeve pressed to her nose and was refusing to admit to it. Eiran stood very straight, saying nothing. Torven simply inclined his head.

Kael came last. He didn’t have a speech, which was the one mercy of the evening.

"I’m not finishing it for her anymore," Aldris said, very low. "I’m doing it because it needs doing."

"I know."

"Listen, down there."

"I don’t know yet what I’ll hear."

"Good." Something moved in that old face, brief and unguarded. "Come back and tell me."

Kael nodded, because his throat had stopped working. He bent, took the key from the stones, and turned to the door.

He never had to turn it.

His hand touched the iron and the door swung inward on its own weight, easy and silent. The hinges had been oiled. No dust lay on the sill. The air that breathed out was cool and dry, and it smelled of old stone and something faintly, impossibly clean.

Behind him, Aldris went completely still.

"I have carried the only key," he said, "since before that lock was last cleaned."

Nobody spoke. Kallow had gone very quiet, one hand flat against her coat where the order lay.

Ahead, the gallery ran away into darkness, a long low tunnel of fitted stone. As Kael stepped across the sill, the first relay stone woke. It was a soft blue glow, like a coal remembering it had been a fire. Then the next one woke, and the next, and the next, stretching north in a long bright line. It was a road, laid down for somebody who had been expected.

In the dust of the floor, a trail of footprints ran into the dark. They were narrow and light. They were fresh enough that the dust had not yet settled back into them.

───────────────────────────

[System — Alert]

Gallery: relay stones active, far ahead

Dust: disturbed. Prints: recent. Direction: in.

Network Perception: thread taut

Hold: It’s lit the way for someone. I’d love to tell you it’s you.

───────────────────────────

The fox’s tail had gone white again. It wasn’t looking at the lights. It was staring at the prints, with every hair standing out, the way it had stared at Kallow’s coat.

Kael took one breath, and then he stepped through.

— ◆ —

— End of Chapter 70 —