Hoff let them up onto the north wall on Day twenty-eight, for air. “Ten minutes,” he said at the foot of the stair. “Nobody leans on the parapet. Nobody sits on it.”
Calen had asked for the wall at first bread. Hoff had said no, and then he had said yes, without explaining why. Calen thought he knew. The north wall was the one place in the Keep where the road could see them, and they could see the road.
Seven students and one teacher climbed the stair in a line. Calen came last.
The north wall was older than the yard wall and higher. Generations of guards had leaned on its top stones, and the stones had worn smooth. The wind came over it cold and steady. From the parapet you could see down through the hedges to the Ostrivane road, and beyond that to the long grey line of the city under its smoke.
Tobin went straight to the stone and put both hands flat on it. Then he took them away again, remembering Hoff’s rule.
“It is cold,” he said. “I will name it cold.”
“Name it quietly,” Calen said.
Liss stood at Tobin’s elbow and copied the way he held his hands, flat and then lifted. Dorran stayed two steps down the stair, where the wind did not reach him. Hesper walked the length of the wall and back again, slowly, and did not look down at the road once.
Ysra stood still with her hands in her coat. Kade stood at the far end, alone, with his chin up, as if the whole north wall had been arranged for his benefit.
Nell stood beside Calen. She did not step away from him, and she did not move closer. She watched the road.
“Sir,” she said. “There are horses.”
Three riders were coming up the Ostrivane road at a walk. The one in front rode a tall black horse and wore a short coat with bright silver buttons. Two riders followed him, both in grey cloaks, both on plainer horses.
“Calloway,” Ear said quietly from the stair. He had come up behind them without a sound. “Silverspire’s golden boy.”
“Who is he?” Nell asked.
“A rider who wants to be seen,” Ear said. “Watch him, girl. Not his horse.”
The black horse stopped below the wall, where the road bent. Its rider tipped his head back and looked up at the parapet. He smiled as if he had been waiting all morning for the view.
“Seven students,” he called up. His voice carried easily. It had been trained to fill a sand ring. “Two jailers. And a teacher with no name.”
Nobody answered him. Calen did not answer him either.
My name is in Crown ink, Calen thought. He has read the Record, or someone has read it to him.
Nell’s hand came up to her side and stayed there. “Sir,” she said, very quietly. “He is looking at you. Not at us.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I am the one without a name,” Calen said. “Watch the horses, Nell.”
Kade stepped to the parapet, put one hand on the stone, and took it away again. He drew himself up to the full height of his fifteen years.
“Duke Kade Ansel, Iron Duke of the Yard!” he shouted down. “Keep your teeth in your mouth, Silverspire!”
Calloway laughed. It was a clean, open laugh, and it went up the wall like a bell. He lifted one gloved hand to the Duke, slowly, with two fingers. It was a mocking salute, and he meant it to be seen.
“Iron Duke,” he said. “Good. I will remember the title. Write it on your gate.”
He had not finished with the wall, and he wanted the wall to know it. He turned his black horse in the road.
“Rule one,” Calen said.
The students turned to him. Even Kade did.
“Every drill starts with the count said aloud,” Calen said. “Count the horses.”
“Three,” Liss said at once, and she said it loudly. “Three horses. Black. Grey. Bay.”
“Black, grey, bay,” Tobin said, nodding. He had seen them too, and he liked the names.
“Four,” said Kade.
“Three,” Calen said.
“The Duke has counted four.” Kade did not look at Calen.
He kept his eyes on the road. “A fourth horse stands behind the bend, Instructor. The Duke sees it with great clarity.”
“There is no fourth horse,” Ysra said. Her voice was flat and exact. “A count said aloud is a record, Ansel. It is not an opinion. You have said four, and four is not what is on the road.”
“The Duke’s opinion is also a record.”
“Then it is a false one,” Ysra said. “I will write that down.”
“Four,” Dorran said softly from the stair. Then he stopped, and his face went red. “Sorry. I mean three, Duke.”
Hesper looked over the parapet. “Why does the black horse not move?” she asked. “Is it waiting for us to be wrong?”
“It is waiting for him,” Calen said.
The black horse was not waiting for them to be wrong. It was waiting for the teacher to speak, so that Silverspire could hear his voice carry up the wall and write it down.
On the road, Calloway had heard all of it. He tipped his head toward the wall as if he were pleased with the lesson.
“Three,” he called up. “Even the Duke’s count is honest, Instructor. He only had the wrong horse in mind.”
Kade’s jaw went tight. He said nothing at all. It was the first time since the cart that Calen had seen him beaten by a word, and he did not think the boy had noticed it yet.
The two grey cloaks rode forward to the Keep’s gatepost, outside the arch, where the road met the stone. One of them leaned from his saddle and knotted a length of silver cloth to the iron ring on the post. It was a pennant, long and narrow, with a point at the end that caught the sun.
It moved in the wind and then lay still.
“Good day, seven,” Calloway called. He gathered his reins. “Good day, Iron Duke. I am sure the candle girl has her hands back by now.”
Nell did not look at the road. She looked at Calen. “Sir. It was not a candle.”
“No.”
“It was a flame.”
“Yes,” Calen said. “Tell him that when he is close enough to hear.”
He did not wait for an answer. The grey cloaks wheeled after him, and they went back down the road at the same unhurried walk they had come up with.
Liss lifted two fingers to the wall, the way Calloway had. Nobody had told her to. She looked at Calen, and then she put her hand down.
“Write it on your gate,” Liss said quietly, to nobody.
Kade turned his head. “Corran.”
“Yes, Duke.”
“Do not.”
“Yes, Duke,” Liss said, and she did not write anything on anything.
Calen watched until the hedges hid them. A crow landed on the gatepost below the silver cloth, looked at it for a while, and flew off again without a sound.
Then Calen looked at the pennant.
It hung from the gatepost in the sun. The silver was bright enough to see from the wall, and it did not look like anything the Keep owned.
“A pennant on the gatepost is a claim,” Ysra said, to nobody in particular. “Silverspire has claimed the gate.”
“Does he know our names?” Hesper asked. “Or only the count?”
“He knows the count,” Calen said.
“Is that the same?”
“No.”
“Then what does he want with the count?”
“He wants us to say it back to him,” Ysra said. “I will not, Dray. The count is mine to keep.”
“Silverspire has claimed nothing,” Hoff said. He had come up the stair behind Ear, and he stood at the top with his hand on the rail. He had not raised his voice, and he had not needed to.
“The gate belongs to the Ministry.”
“Then the pennant is a lie, Captain.”
“Then leave it to lie,” Hoff said. “Nobody touches it.”
“Is a lie a message, or a decoration?” Hesper asked.
“Leave it,” Hoff said again, and that ended it.
“We walk under it on the way to the bread,” Calen said.
“Then walk under it,” Hoff said. “Straight. Count your steps if you need to. Do not stop.”
Tobin looked down at the silver cloth for a long time. “It is a rag on a stick,” he said. “I will name it a rag.”
“Name it quietly.”
“It is a rag,” Tobin said, quietly.
Dorran had come up beside Calen without anyone seeing him move. He did not look at the pennant. He looked at his bandaged palm, and then at Calen.
“Sorry, sir,” he said. “I counted four too, at first. The black horse has a grey patch on the leg. I thought it was a horse behind it.”
“Did you look again?”
“Yes, sir. Sorry.”
“Good,” Calen said. “Look again every time.”
Tobin counted the horses again, aloud, very quietly, and he got three. He did not say anything about it. He only nodded to himself, once, and went back to looking at the rag on the stick.
“Ten minutes is up, Orrin,” Hoff said.
Calen did not move yet. He was still watching the road.
“How often will he come back?” he asked Ear.
“Every few days, the way they go.” Ear spat over the parapet, carefully, away from the students. “He’ll ride up and make faces until Day thirty-one. Then only the grey ones come, and they just watch.”
“Why thirty-one?”
“Ask the Ministry. They know the days.”
“The Ministry does not tell me the days.”
“No,” Ear said. “It tells you the count.” He looked at the pennant then, for the first time. “That’s what I’ve seen. I don’t know why it’s thirty-one.”
Calen said nothing to that. He noticed that Ear had said I don’t know as if it cost him nothing. He noticed, too, that he himself could not say it at all.
Sixty-two days to the Trial, he thought. He counted them once, and he did not like the sum.
Sixty-two days, a silver cloth on the gate, and seven names on a board in the hall, with one of them last. He put them in order in his head. He did not like that order either.
They went down the stair in a line. Calen came last.
Kade stopped on the step above him and did not turn around. “Instructor. Did you know he would come?”
“No.”
“Then why stand where he can see us?”
“So he can see us count,” Calen said.
Kade was quiet for three steps. Then he went on down, and he said nothing else. At the bottom Calen counted the steps without meaning to, and then he stopped counting. He did not like that he had started.
Hoff went out through the arch with a folded paper in one hand and a tack hammer in the other. He walked to the gatepost without looking at the pennant. He pinned the paper to the stone beside the silver cloth, three strong taps, and then he stood back and read it out, flat and clear, with no pause for anyone to answer.
“Teams of three,” Hoff read. “The Stone Post road. Starting Day forty. Teams report at the gate before the bread.”
He tapped the last nail flat and did not look at the pennant again.
Calen could read the notice’s first line for himself from the arch. It was printed, not written. It had the Ministry’s wax seal in the corner, and the wax was already dry.
Teams of three. Stone Post road. From Day forty.
“Who writes the notice?” Calen asked.
“The Ministry.”
“Who signs it?”
“The Ministry signs things, Orrin.” Hoff turned around. “Count them. You’ll want the number for the gate book.”
“Who goes alone?”
“Whoever is left over,” Hoff said. “Same as always.”
Calen looked at the paper, and at the silver cloth beside it, moving very slightly in the wind. He counted seven students in his head, the way he always did. Then he counted three to a team.
Two teams, and one left over. The notice had a space for the names, and the space was still blank.