Felix could maintain two separate qi circuits.
The shoulder clasp remained beyond him.
He stood beside his bed on the eighty-fifth morning with one sleeve on, one sleeve arguing and a narrow cord attached to something it apparently needed to pass underneath before he fastened it.
The loan instructions called this simple ceremonial wear.
Its little drawing showed a person whose arms were conveniently absent. Felix had both of his and found them obstructing the advertised simplicity. When he lowered one, the loose sleeve turned inside out. When he raised it again, a decorative flap covered the pocket he actually needed.
He put the identification papers on the bed and began from the apparent bottom of the problem.
The bottom contained another tie.
On Earth, formal clothing had usually defeated him only by requiring ironing. He felt almost nostalgic for an enemy that declared its terms.
He disliked the adjective on principle.
Fifteen ordinary days had passed since the bridge opened. People had used it. Tamsin had continued paid work. Felix had practiced Foundation control, given his agreed practical instruction and enjoyed several mornings in which nobody needed him to find a lost component beneath a wreck.
During the preparation fortnight, one of his paying learners had asked whether a rest circuit could be operated while hurrying to work. Felix had shown the difference between gathering under prepared conditions and trying to concentrate through a crowded market road. The lesson ended on time. The learner went away with a usable, tested small pattern; Felix took a real break afterward. It had been an agreeable arrangement, and he hoped competition would eventually discover something equally sensible.
Today the academy wanted him dressed.
He tried the lower tie through the upper loop. The shoulder panel pulled across his neck.
He stopped before his qi could become an extremely expensive solution to borrowed cloth.
“Lyra?”
She appeared outside the open door in her own registration clothes, carrying the papers for the adaptive assessment she’d requested.
“What do you need?”
Felix indicated himself.
“A broad question.”
“The fastening order. Please.”
She looked at the offending panel.
“You’ve closed the second one before the first.”
“The instructions begin with the second.”
“They assume the first is already open.”
“An exciting design philosophy.”
She showed him the proper order once. The narrow cord passed beneath the loosened shoulder panel. The lower tie settled after the side adjustment, not before it. Nothing needed to be pulled hard enough to damage the loan pool’s property.
“No automatic robe setting?” she asked.
“A glaring omission.”
He completed the remaining clasps himself, irritated that learning had solved the problem faster than inventing something would have done.
Barnaby read the return conditions from the loan slip.
Clean. Complete. Undamaged fastenings. The deposit stood against Felix’s private event account, not the district’s public repairs.
“Does quiet posture cost extra?” Felix asked.
“Only if you damage something while refusing it.”
Jian arrived wearing clothes he understood and carrying his own invitation.
He looked at Felix, looked at the clock and chose not to make the obvious comment.
Felix appreciated this rare restraint.
Jian handed him the remaining document cover.
“You’re putting that in the decorative pocket.”
Felix examined the opening. It had a beautifully finished seam and no depth.
“A lie in cloth.”
“A trim panel.”
“A lie with an institutional name.”
Jian showed him the real pocket, then checked his own timetable rather than waiting to see whether Felix intended to accuse the sleeve of further misconduct. Lyra went back to arranging her own satchel. He finished dressing with the uncomfortable awareness that everyone else could be useful without making his robe their morning.
They checked the practical load. Identification where it could be reached. The AetherDeck in its declared case. Bag straps clear of the formal layer. No sword belt sawing patiently through borrowed embroidery.
Lyra kept the estate evidence in its protected satchel and the medical papers in a separate accessible cover. Dressing for an event did not make her old injury disappear or require her to present the image her family would have preferred.
Tamsin stayed with a booked client job. She wanted the actual event requirements before anyone asked for technical work. Pell requested a blank public scoring card, then returned to the small task he had agreed to finish before noon.
“Not a judge’s private sheet,” his mother said.
“I know.”
Felix promised to ask for a public one.
They left over the reopened bridge.
That remained enjoyable enough for him to notice it every morning: ordinary walking, a sound rail, no basket operator deciding how many separate journeys his tiredness required.
Beyond the district, the central academy grounds had become a different world.
Banners marked entrances. Entrants searched for assessment desks. Crew carried formation materials past teams already arguing about roles. Spectators followed bright signs toward seats they hoped would be better than last year’s.
A woman balanced three practice rods on her shoulder while reading the equipment conditions. Two men compared the endurance diagram without agreeing which section looked hardest. A healer in an entrant’s sash inspected a carrying frame and asked its maker to show the release rather than describe it.
Felix had expected several desks.
People had prepared for this for months.
He found that more interesting than he wanted to admit before breakfast.
At a public practice beam, an entrant carried a shallow bowl while maintaining a small marked current through the handle. The beam stood over a thick mat, high enough to test balance and low enough that a mistake produced embarrassment rather than a rescue.
The entrant reached the turn, corrected his foot and spilled water down his own sleeve.
He stopped, looked at the wet cloth and laughed before asking the attendant to reset the bowl. The next competitor watched the foot placement rather than enjoying the failure too long.
Nearby, a formation student had filled half a sheet with calculations, crossed them out and begun a simpler layout on the back. A pair of combat entrants practiced the withdrawal signal until they could both see it at speed.
Felix slowed beside the railing. He liked a place where the interesting part wasn’t always who could produce the largest noise.
He joined a promising queue beneath a large arrow.
The attendant looked at his empty hands.
“Supplier deliveries?”
“Entrant.”
She pointed across the court.
“Other queue.”
“The robe hasn’t helped.”
“It never does with directions.”
He thanked her and moved before a cart made his mistake physically expensive.
At the proper desk, he asked which event involved the least standing.
The clerk turned the general guide toward him.
“Endurance depends on what you’re maintaining. Rescue includes movement. Formation work has preparation and timed conditions. Adjudication has a seated portion.”
Felix brightened.
“With oral examination,” the clerk added.
“You nearly had me.”
The clerk smiled as if he’d heard worse ambitions that morning and accepted Felix’s identification.
Initial entrant credentials came with a visible access schedule. General preparation rooms. Public rules. Assigned assessments. Event fields at the appropriate times.
Technical galleries required qualification and supervision. Historical appendices had their own accredited access. Lyra checked the references against the copied Seventeen C schedule entry rather than letting the badge become a promise the clerk hadn’t made.
“The formal retrieval petition remains active?” she asked.
He checked its acknowledgment.
“This entry doesn’t replace it.”
“Good.”
The clerk showed him the different colors on the access strip. Public material here, assigned field there, supervised preparation through the appropriate qualification. She had explained it several times already and still waited while he matched the marks to his schedule.
“That one isn’t a prize?” he asked.
“A permission category.”
“Less decorative than I’d hoped.”
“More useful if you read it.”
Lyra took her own copy. Felix stopped studying the color long enough to read the words beneath it, which did indeed improve its usefulness.
Felix put his badge beside the timetable.
A first place to try. Not every shelf opened in gratitude for showing up.
The instrument clerk asked to see his declared equipment.
Felix set the AetherDeck in its case on the inspection rest.
“Functions?”
“Qi measurement. Managing tested circulation patterns. Storing the records of those patterns. Assisting the ambient intake I’ve declared.”
The clerk wrote them down individually.
“Any maintained connection to an external power source during field use?”
“None in the configuration I’m submitting. The old separate restoration feed is disabled and isolated. The operating records distinguish it.”
He supplied the relevant current configuration without spreading every private record across a public counter.
“Patient assessment?”
“Not a medical diagnosis. It can give a reading I know how to take. I’d still ask a qualified healer what that means for a patient.”
The clerk nodded and entered measurement and pattern storage as the declared functions. Particular event use would depend on the equipment review and published conditions.
“You receive the review copy,” she said. “This declaration isn’t permission for every later use.”
Felix read the form before accepting it. The case returned to him under the recorded preliminary conditions. Inspection wasn’t a claim that the academy now owned everything he’d ever written on the glass.
He disliked the time it took.
He liked knowing what the review actually covered.
From the permitted public walkway, they could see the rescue platform being prepared. A route turned through steps and narrow openings before reaching its receiving area. Beside it, attendants sorted the supplied formation components into identical sets.
Felix began imagining his restraint at one of the turns.
Then he read the condition about patient handling and looked toward the practice volunteer speaking with an examiner. A person could dislike a perfectly stable carrier. He had met one before.
The formation set had fewer parts than his workshop. Its rule sheet explained which substitutions counted. The paired-combat information named a draw system rather than inviting entrants to bring whichever friend made their own life easiest.
Annoying conditions.
Interesting problems.
Jian found the assessment area named in his invitation and checked the time.
“I go this way.”
“We’ll compare schedules after,” Lyra said.
He nodded and left with his own purpose, not as a guard reassigned whenever somebody else’s document needed a witness.
Lyra’s adaptive appointment lay beyond the medical desk. She took the initial credential and her actual medical account toward it. Felix started after her, then looked at the remaining questions on his own registration slip.
She pointed at them.
“Those are yours.”
“A hostile level of independence.”
“Try it.”
He returned to the clerk and answered the ordinary contact question without negotiating a rescue from Lyra.
A paper slipped from his accessible pocket as he bent to place the instrument case down.
The last shoulder clasp came open.
Felix froze with the expression of a man whose mortal enemy had survived the first exchange.
The clerk waited while he retrieved the paper.
Then he loosened the side adjustment, seated the lower tie and closed the panel in the order Lyra had shown him.
The clasp held.
“Research completed?” the clerk asked.
“Replicated under field conditions.”
She stamped the remaining entry.
He asked for a blank public scoring card for Pell. The clerk gave him one from the spectator-information stack and told him it conferred no official authority whatsoever.
“I’ll explain that twice,” he said.
Outside, the crowd had grown. Someone cheered a practice throw. Someone complained about an early start and received no special sympathy from the person beside him, who appeared to have started complaining earlier.
Felix read his actual schedule.
The first event time sat offensively close to dawn.
His robe remained fastened. His credentials described a legitimate entrant with equipment still subject to its proper review. His friends had separate appointments. Home had a working bridge and people continuing their own paid tasks.
He could give this strange, crowded competition some attention without pretending it existed for his convenience.
Then he found a permitted seat and began with the rules.