Astra
The first room held a low stone desk, four hard chairs nobody had offered us, and no windows.
I was beginning to think the lack of windows was deliberate.
Water-light moved over every wall, the room’s only illumination.
The man behind the desk looked thoroughly bored. He didn’t look up when we filed in.
They took our names first, which surprised me. I’d expected the Marks. Instead the man asked each of us to state our full name for the record, and wrote nothing down while we spoke, which made me wonder what the point was.
“Mother’s name,” he said.
“You already know it.”
“I need you to say it.” He still hadn’t looked up.
“Selene Verita.” The name came out steadier than I felt.
Only then did he make a small mark on the page and slide it into the stack with the others. He had been listening after all.
Caspian gave his name next, including his father’s name, without hesitation. Kieran’s voice was thinner than usual, though he still managed a trace of charm. Hale gave his name and his mother’s line, then fell silent. The clerk marked each page and moved on.
A woman came for Kieran next and took his elbow before he could object.
His knees nearly gave when she steered him toward a side door.
Hale went to follow. A broad man beside the woman put a hand flat against Hale’s chest, blocking the doorway.
Gray threaded his hair at the temples, and a Council pin caught the water-light at his collar.
“One at a time,” he said. “It goes faster.”
“He can’t stand on his own,” Hale said.
“Then she’ll help him.” The man didn’t move his hand. “Steward Marrow,” he added. “You’ll be dealing with me while you’re here.”
None of us answered. Marrow looked over the rest of us. He was older than Caswell and broader through the shoulders. There was nothing hurried in the way he moved.
He turned to Caspian and guided him toward a second door, one hand at his shoulder blade. Caspian stiffened but went. I knew the set of his jaw. He was telling himself it was a choice.
That left Hale and me in the stone room with the man who’d taken our names. Once the two doors shut, neither of us spoke. The clerk didn’t look up from his stack. Somewhere beyond the walls, water moved through channels I couldn’t see, constant enough that I stopped noticing it.
“They’re waiting to see if we’ll object,” Hale said finally.
“Are we going to?”
“When it matters.”
“And you’ll know?”
“Yes.”
They came for me a few minutes later: a different woman, younger, with a soldier’s stillness.
She led me down a corridor, its walls damp like the tunnel’s, and into a round room with a basin at its center and no chairs.
The basin’s water sat black and motionless, nothing like the moving channels outside.
“Sleeve up,” she said.
I pushed it to the elbow. The three lines looked dry and unremarkable without water. I studied them instead of her: silver, green-gold, and rain-dark. One bond complete. Two still open.
She didn’t touch me. She read the Mark as Juno used to, eyes moving along each line without her hands ever coming close. A second woman stood by the door with a ledger and pen while the reader murmured to her. I caught only fragments that sounded like measurements.
“How long has the third line been present?” the reader asked, still not looking at me.
“You have that information already,” I said. “You’ve had it since before I got here.”
“We have a record,” she said. “I asked you.”
She wanted to compare my answer with whatever was in her file. I wasn’t going to make it easy.
“Ask Quill,” I said. “He was there for most of it.”
At Quill’s name, the second woman looked up. A moment later she bent over the ledger again, but she didn’t write anything.
They put us back together in a corridor about an hour later.
By then my legs ached from standing, and the air in the small room had gone stale.
Kieran was upright, barely, with Hale supporting most of his weight.
Caspian’s jaw was set. I’d seen that look outside Quill’s office the night everything started.
He was angry enough that speaking would make it worse.
“Well,” Kieran said when he saw me. “You’re still you. That’s promising.”
“Define still me.”
“You’re annoyed and suspicious.” He managed a weak grin. “I’m relieved.”
“You look awful.”
“I feel worse.”
“How was yours?”
“Uninteresting. They asked whether anything about my Mark had changed.” He made it sound trivial. Hale’s arm tightened around him, and none of us asked more while we were still in the corridor.
Marrow appeared at the end of the corridor before anyone said more and walked toward us.
“Rooms are assigned,” he said. “One block. Adjoining. The four of you together.”
“How generous,” I said.
“It’s easier to watch you together.”
He turned and walked off. We stayed where we were until Marrow looked back. Then we followed.