The bed gave beneath Jack's weight with a dry complaint from its ropes. He sat listening until he was certain the sound belonged to the bed and not to someone about to open the door.
No one did. South Wing continued on the other side of the thick wood without him. Feet passed along the gallery. A door shut two rooms away, followed by a boy calling through it that he had left his wraps in the yard again. Another voice advised him to grow a second head and keep the wraps on that. Their argument moved toward the stairs and became part of the building's general murmur.
Jack put both hands on the mattress. The ticking was coarse and densely packed beneath the linen. The bed frame had been repaired at the near corner with a new peg driven through old wood, its end pared flush by someone who knew how to make the repair disappear beneath varnish. The desk had not received the same care. One leg stood on a folded square of leather to keep it from rocking, and three generations of students had cut initials into the edge.
He ran one finger through the nearest set of marks. They meant no more to him than the schedule waiting beside the key.
The room was not luxurious, whatever the emeralds implied. It was simply private. The narrow bed stood against one wall. The desk and chair occupied the other, leaving a clear strip of floor between them. A wardrobe had been built into a shallow recess beside the door, its lower hinge dark with fresh oil. High on the outer wall, the window opened beneath a deep stone arch and looked across a tumble of Briartown roofs. Beyond the last tiles, the Thornwood rose like weather made solid.
Jack searched for Mrs. Gowrie's bakery until the roofs blurred together. Somewhere down there, Caleo had gone on with his day. He would be carrying something for someone, or turning up in a doorway where he was needed, or standing barefoot in the road with his cloak moving behind him while people called him Mayor as if the joke had become an office through long use.
Saturday was not far away. Four nights, if Jack had understood the morning correctly. He could manage four nights. The folded schedule on the desk made the claim less convincing.
Jack opened the sheet and spread it flat. The page had been ruled into narrow blocks. Numbers appeared along one edge, recognizable even where the inked forms differed slightly from those he knew. Everything beside them remained a disciplined field of hooks, stems, and loops. Several marks repeated. One might mean a class. Another might be a room. He could not tell which, and staring only made the headache behind his eyes gather itself again.
He stopped before pain could become panic. The page was not going to surrender because he glared at it. Someone in the building could read it. The danger lay in how he asked.
The Academy parcel resisted his first attempt at the knot. The clerk had pulled the twine tight enough to sink it into the paper, so Jack worked one thumbnail beneath the crossing and worried the cord loose instead of tearing it. He set the wooden chain case aside and arranged the folded clothes in the wardrobe. A flat cloth kit hidden inside the rain cape supplied a comb, needle, thread, and three spare hooks for the vest. A towel and square of harsh-smelling soap waited on the lower shelf as part of the room issue.
It was a competent issue. Whoever had assembled it expected clothes to tear, rain to come sideways, and students to wash without being reminded to bring a towel. Jack appreciated the thought until he remembered that none of it had been chosen for him. The measurements, account, and emeralds belonged to the name in the registrar's book.
He took off Caleo's cloak and folded it before it could touch the floor. Mrs. Gowrie's shorts followed. The hip wound pulled when he bent, not sharply, but enough to make him straighten with one hand against the bedpost.
Jack dressed in the gray trousers and one of the vests. The waist ties made sense after the fitting at the store, though he had to redo the knot when the overlap shifted too far left. The vest hung open until he took the wooden case from the desk.
Gold lay against the black lining with tiny emeralds spaced through it. He lifted the chain by one end. It moved with more weight than something so fine ought to possess, the paired links slipping over one another without catching. The chain was not merely decoration; without it, the vest had no buttons or overlap to hold its front together. One hook fastened near his left breast. He stretched the chain across and caught the other beneath his right collarbone, then studied the result.
It was worse without the store mirror. The green stones sat directly against his skin, bright enough to draw the eye to every bare part of him the vest did not cover. Caleo's cloak had made his near-nakedness look improvised. The uniform made exposure official.
Jack considered taking the chain off. The vest would hang loose, and every person who knew the rules would see that he had chosen not to wear the required piece. He considered covering it with Caleo's cloak and disliked that more. The registrar had already treated the mended wool as evidence against them both. Jack would not carry it through the Academy until someone spilled stew on it or decided poverty made it theirs to insult.
He left the emeralds where they were. If Eomer had bought him a target, Jack could at least learn what people did when they saw it.
The sandals fit. That surprised him more than the clothes. He stood, tested the straps, and crossed the room twice. The sole bent in the right place beneath the ball of his foot. No rubbing at the heel, no loose edge waiting to blister him. Whoever had written down the dead boy's measurements had known his feet too.
A bell rang while Jack was putting the second uniform back into the paper. The sound entered through the window and the stone together, deep enough that the water in the basin trembled. Doors opened along the gallery. Conversation swelled, and footsteps turned toward the stairs. Jack took the key and followed them.
The boy ahead of him wore his brass chain slightly off center and carried two rolled practice mats beneath one arm. Jack kept him in sight down the first flight, then nearly lost him when three other students joined from the landing. At the second floor, the flow divided. Half continued down. The rest crossed toward a covered bridge leading into another wing.
Jack caught up before the boy with the mats chose a direction. "Excuse me. What bell was that?"
The boy shifted both mats higher. His attention dropped to Jack's emeralds before he answered. "First supper. Second rings in half an hour. Kitchens close after third."
"Where is the dining hall? I missed induction."
The explanation settled something in the other boy's face. He pointed down the stairs. "Main square, north gallery. Follow anyone who looks hungry."
"Thank you."
The boy went across the bridge. Jack continued down with the larger stream, repeating north gallery once in his head before the directions could slide out of place.
Evening had softened the Academy without cooling it. The old stone still returned the day's heat through Jack's sandal soles. Under the covered walks, glass globes were beginning to shine inside bronze cages, each giving off the steady amber of a well-trimmed lamp without smoke or visible flame. A woman in a work apron passed beneath one and touched two fingers to its cage. The light strengthened behind her and then continued brightening from globe to globe along the gallery, as though her hand had sent fire running through the wall. No one stopped to watch. Jack nearly walked into the student in front of him.
The dining hall occupied what must once have been the fortress's great hall. The ceiling climbed through two levels of dark beams, high enough for heat to gather above the long tables. An old hearth large enough to roast an ox had been bricked into three smaller ovens along the northern wall, and generations of smoke remained in the stone above them. Shutters stood open between pillars on both sides. Evening air moved through carrying wet leaves, cooked onions, and the mineral smell of rain that had fallen somewhere beyond the town but not yet reached the hill.
Students took shallow wooden trays from a stack inside the entrance. Jack copied them. The ordinary meal occupied three counters: stew thick with beans and torn meat, flat rounds of bread, greens cooked down with yellow spice, and bowls of sliced fruit sitting over pale tiles that breathed a faint mist. A fourth counter offered glazed cuts of meat and bright pastries beneath a painted sign. Coins changed hands there. Jack kept moving.
At the stew counter, a server set a bowl into a shallow ring carved in the stone. Orange lines woke beneath it. Steam lifted from the surface before she passed it to Jack.
He received bread, greens, and fruit the same way. No one asked for money. The food belonged to the board Eomer had already paid, and Jack hated how much relief that gave him.
The tables had organized themselves without signs. Students in stained aprons crowded one end near the service doors. A group wearing practice guards had spread bandaged wrists and elbows across half a table while they argued about someone named Master Draek. Gold gathered with gold in several places, though not everywhere. Brass occupied most of the hall. Silver moved between both as if it had learned the useful art of belonging wherever it sat.
Jack saw open spaces. None were invitations. Bags rested on benches, elbows guarded room, and conversations bent inward around histories he did not share. He chose a place near the end of a table where no one would have to move for him.
The stew was too hot to eat. He broke the bread, dipped one edge, and watched the room while it cooled. Nobody stared continuously, but the emeralds drew glances that arrived in pairs: first at the chain, then at his face. A few students looked at the cut on his cheek. One boy in gold said something behind his cup and made the girl beside him turn. Jack could not hear the words. He kept eating.
Hunger made the meal better than it was. The beans were soft, the meat stringy, the greens bitter beneath their spice. He finished every scrap and used the last bread to gather what remained at the bottom of the bowl. The sliced fruit tasted faintly of pear and strongly of pepper. He ate that too.
People returned their trays through an opening beside the kitchens. Jack waited until he had seen three students do it, then carried his own there. A gray-haired worker scraped the bowl into a pail and stacked it without looking up.
Near the doors, two South Wing students were complaining about the showers.
"Use the fourth stall," one said. "Third runs cold whenever the laundry heats its vats."
"Fourth smells like somebody died in the drain."
"Then bathe cold and complain quietly."
Jack crossed the square behind them, then turned aside while they continued toward South Wing. The route now had landmarks: the clock arch, the blue mosaic visible through the lower hall, the stair whose second newel had been replaced with wood a shade too pale. Repairs turned the buildings into something other than fields of identical stone.
Room twelve remained locked. Caleo's cloak lay where Jack had left it, folded beside Mrs. Gowrie's shorts. Nothing else had moved. Jack set down the schedule, took the towel and soap, and went to find the showers before fatigue could persuade him that road dirt was acceptable for one more night.
Steam had gathered beneath the lintel of the washroom. Inside, a central aisle divided two rows of private stalls. Each had three tiled walls, a curtain, a drain, a narrow shelf, and a dark stone plate set at shoulder height. Pale marks had been cut into the plate and filled with something that caught the room's light.
Jack chose the fourth stall. It smelled of wet stone and strong soap, not death, and he was willing to call that a victory.
He undressed, folded the uniform on the driest end of the bench, and hung the towel from its peg. The plate had no handle or spout. Above him, the ceiling tiles met without any visible opening for water.
Jack pressed the center mark. Nothing happened. He pressed harder, then tried the upper mark and received a brief pulse of warmth beneath his fingertip. The ring answered with a smaller pulse around the base of his cock. He removed his hand from the plate.
Water began hammering against stone in the next stall. Someone swore at the temperature, then gave a satisfied grunt when it changed.
Jack rested one forearm against the partition. "Sorry. These controls are different from the ones at home. How do you start the water?"
The answer came through the tile with the mild impatience of a person already washing. "Draw up the middle for flow. Circle left for heat, right for cold. Tap twice when you're done."
"Thank you."
Jack put two fingers at the bottom of the middle mark and drew them upward. Water dropped from the ceiling in a solid cold sheet.
He lurched backward into the curtain. Its rings shrieked along the rod while his breath left him in a sound too high to preserve any dignity. Laughter broke out in the neighboring stall.
"Circle left," the boy reminded him.
"I heard you."
Jack found the left mark with a wet hand and traced it. The water warmed so quickly that steam rose around his wrist. He adjusted it back before it could scald him, then stepped beneath the fall.
The water came from hairline seams in nine ceiling tiles, each stream joining the others before it reached him. No pipe knocked behind the wall. No tank labored above. The plate held a low, sunlike warmth beneath his fingertips while the stone around it remained cool.
Jack decided he preferred the soup.
The soap bit at the cut on his cheek. He worked more carefully there, washing dried sweat from the fine hair near his temple and the last forest grit from behind one ear. The water still found dirt along his ankles and beneath his nails.
When he reached the hip wound, he slowed. The blade had entered low on the left side. What had been a sealed ridge that morning was now a raised pink line no longer than the first joint of his finger. He pressed around it, then directly across it. Tender, but solid. His body had spent food and rest closing flesh that should have taken stitches and weeks.
The cut on his cheek remained visible because it had been laid open wider. He followed it with one fingertip from beside his mouth toward the cheekbone. Beneath his wet hair, the back of his skull held a sore place the size of his palm. No skin had broken there. The bone beneath felt whole.
Someone had cut this body, stabbed it, struck its head hard enough to end the life inside it, stripped it, and left it beside the road. Thornfield had a ledger ready to receive the same boy two days later.
Jack lowered his hand. He did not know whether the people who had done it lived behind him, below him, or nowhere near Briartown. Until he did, the road attack remained the only story anyone else was getting.
He washed the rest of himself without hurry. The ring did not come free when he tested its edge with soapy fingers. It fitted too closely to pinch and too loosely to hurt, dark metal encircling the base of his soft cock. The carved symbols held no soap when he rinsed them. Water slipped away as though the metal refused even that much evidence.
Jack tapped the plate twice. The shower stopped at once, leaving water to patter from his hair and elbows into the drain. In the sudden quiet, the neighboring boy began humming tunelessly.
The washroom mirror ran along the wall above a row of basins. Jack waited until two students had left before standing in front of it with the towel around his waist.
Wet hair made the boy in the mirror look younger. The emerald uniform folded under Jack's arm made him look expensive. Neither impression told him what the dead boy had done with eighteen years.
He combed the knots from his hair because it needed doing. He did not search the reflection for himself. There was no reason his old face should appear simply because he wanted it.
Back in room twelve, Jack hung the towel over the chair and spread the uniform where the moving air from the window could reach it. He put on the spare underthings and sat at the desk with the schedule once more.
The numbers divided the day. That much he could use. A repeated mark appeared beside the first block on several lines. Another occupied the final block before the page ended. Room marks, class names, instructor names: any answer was a guess.
He could knock on a stranger's door and ask the stranger to read it. He could take it to Housing and give the assistant another chance to laugh. He could leave it folded and follow whichever group looked most certain in the morning until somebody noticed he did not belong.
None of those choices appealed to him. The first was merely uncomfortable.
Jack folded the schedule small enough to fit inside the hidden pocket sewn into the gray trousers. Tomorrow he would take it to breakfast. He would find one person who did not look eager to turn ignorance into entertainment and ask which room came first. A late student asking for directions was ordinary. He would keep the rest to himself.
The plan did not solve the language. It got him through one door. For tonight, one door was enough.
He placed the key beside the folded trousers and touched the wall globe near the desk. The glass brightened beneath his fingers, flooding the room with amber light. A second touch dimmed it. By the fourth, Jack understood the sequence well enough to leave it at a low glow.
That small success pleased him more than it should have. He lay down wearing only the underthings and listened to South Wing settle around him. Water moved through stone without pipes he could hear. Doors opened and shut. Someone laughed until another student struck the wall and told him to save it for daylight. Rain reached the Academy sometime after dark, whispering first against leaves below the window and then drumming across the deep eaves.
Jack turned toward the desk. The key caught what little light remained. Beyond it, Caleo's cloak rested on the wardrobe shelf above Mrs. Gowrie's folded shorts, both waiting to be returned by the person who had promised he would come back. Jack slept before the rain stopped.
The first bell woke him into gray morning. For an instant he reached toward where his phone should have been. His hand found cool linen and an empty strip of mattress.
South Wing answered the bell with doors, feet, and voices. Jack rose before he could lie there and listen to everybody else begin without him. He washed at the basin, dressed, and fastened the gold chain across his bare chest. Then he put on the sandals, slid the room key and folded schedule into the hidden pocket, and checked both by touch. Caleo's cloak remained on the shelf. He closed the wardrobe door over it and left.
This time Jack did not need to follow one particular student. The whole wing was going to breakfast. He joined the current down the stairs, through the clock arch, and across a square washed clean by the night's rain. The enchanted globes faded as daylight gathered beneath the galleries.
At the dining-hall entrance, conversations divided and traveled toward tables already claimed by habit. Jack stopped long enough to find the tray stack and no longer. The schedule pressed against his thigh inside the pocket. Somewhere in this room was one person he could ask. He took a tray and crossed the threshold.
