Captain Hoff had laid the six blades out on the cobbles before Calen reached the yard. Hilts to the left. Points to the right. He stood over them with his bad knee locked, the way a man looks at a horse he has already decided not to buy.
Every blade had been sawn through just above the grip. The steel lay apart from the wood, pale and clean at the break. Somebody had taken their time over it.
“Ansel’s lot,” Hoff said. “Tell me I am wrong.”
Kade stood at the front of the group with his chin up and his collar buttoned to the throat. He had not eaten since yesterday. He held his shoulders as if he had decided not to notice the cold.
“You are wrong, Captain,” Kade said. “Duke Kade Ansel does not saw wood for a jailer.”
“Captain Hoff.”
“Captain Hoff.” Kade’s jaw worked. “We did not touch the rack.”
“We did not touch the rack,” Liss said, a beat behind him. She said it to the cobbles.
Hoff tapped the nearest hilt with the toe of his boot. “Your copy is gone. Your pairings with it. Now six blades. Which do you think I mind more?”
“The copy,” Kade said at once. He winced the moment it left his mouth.
Calen crouched beside the nearest blade. He did not touch it. He looked at the cut the way he would look at a student’s grip, for the place where the work went wrong. The saw had been fine-toothed. The stroke had been straight. Whoever held it had not been shaking.
“The rack hangs in pairing order,” he said. “These six are the first six bouts.”
Hoff looked down at him. “Are they.”
“Yes.”
“And who knows the pairing order, Orrin?”
“Everyone who read it,” Calen said.
He did not look at Kade. He did not look at Ysra, who stood at the end of the line with her notebook under her arm and had read the pairings twice without a word. He had seen nobody take anything. He had only counted the cuts, and counting was all he could prove.
Six cuts. Six bouts. Someone wanted the first day to go wrong.
“The lock was whole this morning,” Hoff said. “My key. My guard. Nobody else’s hand on it.”
“Then your guard should count who was near it,” Calen said.
Hoff’s eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me how to run my yard?”
“No, Captain.”
“Good.” Hoff straightened and looked along the line of students. “Then you will make it right. Harrow. Fix them. Every blade, by midday, or Ansel’s lot eats nothing until the Trial. The rest of you can watch them go hungry.”
“Rule two, Captain,” Calen said. “No one touches a training blade unless your guard is watching.”
Hoff’s gaze went to the arch. A guard with a scarred ear leaned there with his arms folded, bored. “Then my guard watches,” Hoff said. “Ear. Watch the girl.”
“Yes, Captain,” the guard said.
While the guard looked toward the arch, Kade leaned toward Calen with his voice low. “Say it, Instructor. Say I did not cut them.”
“I did not see you cut them.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” Calen said. “It is not.”
Kade’s face went tight. “Then I will say it myself. Duke Kade Ansel did not cut them.”
“Then say it to Captain Hoff.”
“Captain Hoff does not ask,” Kade said. “He tells.”
Liss had been listening with her head tilted. She opened her mouth to repeat Kade’s last words. Then Calen saw her stop. She looked at the six cut blades on the cobbles. Then she looked at Calen, the way she had looked at the jailer.
“Did we?” she asked.
It was not a copy. It was a question, and she waited for the answer.
“No,” Calen said.
“No,” Liss said slowly. “Then who?”
“Someone who could count,” Calen said.
Nell stepped out of the group. She had been standing by the wall with her hands folded, the way she stood when she was trying not to be seen. She looked at Calen first. He nodded once.
“May I?” she asked the guard.
“Get on with it.”
She knelt by the first blade and set the two halves side by side. She did not lift the steel until she had looked at the cut for a full count. Then she asked again, quietly. “May I lift it?”
“Lift it,” the guard said. “The bell will ring before you finish.”
Tobin came and knelt beside her without being asked. He did not touch the wire. He named it instead. “Copper. Thin as a hair. Three turns, then tape.”
“Three turns,” Nell said.
“Three,” Tobin agreed. “Then tape. Four layers. I counted it on the rack.”
After that they worked without talking. Nell wound the copper tight around the join and bound it with tape from the guard’s box.
She tied off each wind with a knot Calen had never taught her. It was a dock knot, quick and hard to slip. The Salt Docks had taught her that, not the Ministry.
Each blade she held up by the grip and took three slow swings through the cold air. Then she pressed her thumb hard against the join and counted ten before she moved on. The guard watched all of it. He did not yawn once.
The fourth blade passed. The fifth passed. On the sixth, the copper slipped under her thumb and the tape came loose at one end.
Nell’s breath caught. Calen saw her shoulders rise toward her ears.
“Breathe out,” he said quietly. “Then unwind it.”
She breathed out. She unwound the whole join, all the way back to the bare steel, and started again.
Kade watched from the group with his arms crossed. “It will not hold,” he said. “Wire never holds.”
“It will hold,” Nell said, without looking up.
“It will hold,” Liss said, and then looked as if she wished she had not.
Nell finished the knot, pressed her thumb to it, and counted ten. Then she swung the blade three times through the air. It did not wobble. She handed it up to the guard, and the guard, to his own surprise, grunted.
Kade stared at the blade for a long time after that. When the midday bell rang, he came to stand near Nell. He did not come close.
“The knot is good,” he said in a stiff voice.
“Thank you,” Nell said.
“Do not thank me. I only said it was good.”
Calen sent the others out when the bell stopped.
“Yard,” he said. “All of you. Now.”
Dorran was already on his feet. “Sorry, sir. Is this the stress test?”
“Yard, Dorran.”
Hesper did not move. She looked at the rack of repaired blades, then at Calen, and said, “Will the door stay open, sir?”
“It will stay open.”
“Then I will watch it,” Hesper said, and went out.
Tobin went last. He stopped in the doorway and counted the stones of the frame under his breath. Then he went.
Calen fetched the Hask Book from the guardroom cupboard. It was bound in grey cloth, and its pages had gone soft at the corners from other hands. He opened it to a blank page and set it on the bench beside the candle. He did not write yet.
“Three runs,” he said. “I say what each one is. You do not ask me for a fourth.”
“Three,” Nell said. “May I ask what they are?”
“Yes.”
“Then what are they?”
“Shouting. A pan beside you. A blade at your side.” Calen struck a match and lit the candle, slowly. “Breathe out. Then in.”
Nell breathed out. She breathed in, low, into the place under her ribs where his two fingers had been that morning. Her hands settled on the edge of the bench.
“Nell Harrow!” Calen shouted. “Wrong! Wrong! Start again!”
The flame jumped and went flat, as if a hand had pushed it. Nell’s eyes went wide, then narrowed. Her lips moved. There were no numbers in it, only breath.
“Wrong!” Calen shouted again, from a step closer.
The flame stood up. It stood straight for ten counts, then twelve, then fourteen. On fifteen it trembled. On sixteen it stopped.
“Clean,” Calen said. He kept his voice flat, so the word would not turn into praise.
For the second run he took the iron pan from the jailers’ hatch in the passage. The jailer on the other side did not ask what it was for. Calen held the pan beside her left ear and struck it with a wooden spoon.
The noise filled the small room. It hit the stone walls and came back twice.
Nell’s breath stopped for half a count. Her hands went tight on the bench. Calen did not stop. He struck again, and again, and waited.
Then she breathed in from the low place under her ribs, and the flame stood up through the ringing. Eight counts. Eleven. Fourteen.
“Clean,” Calen said.
For the third run, he went to the rack by the window. The scarred-eared guard had followed them to the doorway, and he watched with his arms folded and did not say no. Calen took the first repaired blade down by the grip. He let the point fall toward the floor and held it at his side, a hand’s width from Nell’s hip.
“May I look at it?” Nell asked.
“Yes.”
She did not look at the edge. She looked at the copper join, at the knot she had tied. Her breath went low. The flame stood straight. Ten counts. Twenty. Twenty-two.
The blade did not move in Calen’s hand. Neither did he.
Do not praise her. Not yet. Praise is a door. She walks through it and does not come back.
“Clean,” Calen said. He hung the blade on its hook. Only then did he let his shoulders drop, and only once the guard at the doorway had nodded.
“Three,” Nell said. She sounded unsure whether she was allowed to say it.
“Three,” Calen said.
He opened the Hask Book and wrote with the Ministry’s ink. The name first, in square letters. Then the skill. Then the three runs, one word each. Shout. Pan. Blade. At the end he wrote the number the Ministry would read.
Nell Harrow. Stillness. Shout. Pan. Blade. One hundred.
[Nell Harrow: Stillness Mark, 100 PP. Apprentice at 250.]
A hundred was a small number to carry out of the Salt Docks. It was the only one he could prove.
“May I look?” Nell asked.
“Yes.”
She leaned in until her nose was nearly on the page. Her lips moved as she read. She stopped at her name and read it twice.
“You wrote it right,” she said. “The Ministry wrote Salt Docks wrong.”
“Yes.”
“Salt Docks has one L.”
“It does,” Calen said.
She looked at the number for a long time. “Is that the number for me?”
“Yes.”
“May I keep it?”
“It is written,” Calen said. “No one takes it from the book.”
Nell nodded slowly, as if that were a better answer than she had expected.
“The Trial is tomorrow,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Sixty seconds?”
“Sixty seconds,” Calen said. “Count the breath. Let the clock count the rest.”
“May I use the first blade? The one I did first?”
“Yes. It is yours for tomorrow.”
Nell looked at the rack. She did not smile. She only looked at the copper join for a moment, as if she were checking that it was still there.
Tomorrow she fights a guard with a blade she mended herself. The Ministry will write down what it sees.
Then boots sounded in the passage.
Four steps from the door to the bench. Calen counted them without meaning to. He was afraid, and fear always made him count.
Captain Hoff came through the doorway with the scarred-eared guard behind him. He did not look at the candle or the book. He walked straight to the rack and ran his thumb along the copper on the first blade, then the second. He did not look at Calen.
He looked at Nell.
Then he turned and walked back out, and left the door open behind him.
“Your teacher has six days,” he said from the passage.