While the base students filed toward the cookhouse shed talking quietly about the doorway drill and Miri’s eighth-count loop, Seyun sat on the low timber step of the outer porch with Elder Hesh and Joren. Bel Sar brought three wooden bowls of hot barley and turnip soup from the kettle. It set them on the floorboards without ceremony before taking a seat on the corner of the weapon rack. Up on the high terrace, the crimson silk banners of the Red Reed Pavilion had finally been taken down by the attendants. Tor Ves was no longer on the stone railing.
Seyun knew better than to mistake the quiet moment between Hesh and fourteen-year-old Miri for a permanent transformation of Ash Reed Sect. It was a small, honest moment. Fragile in the way all new habits are fragile when an institution has spent decades rewarding conformity. The excitement of the northern battle faded and the winter promotion tallies came due again. Then, the pressure on Hesh and Joren to produce neat, uniform rows of outward-projecting students would return with the cold weather.
He reached into his grey hemp coat, drew out three stitched sheets copied in Archivist Vel’s neat hand, and laid them on the porch step beside Hesh’s wax slate.
