37. Astra
Astra
Caspian returned from the lower dock with splinters in his palms and a fear I had not felt when he left.
I felt him enter the residential wing before I heard the stewards unlock the junction. Caspian’s line at my wrist cooled, then steadied. Whatever had happened below, he had brought it back under control before they returned him to us.
Marrow searched him at the end of the corridor.
Caspian stood with his arms raised while Marrow went through his coat, turned out both pockets, and ran a hand along the seams of his trousers.
A second steward examined the soles of his boots.
They found a snapped length of crate rope, two wood splinters, and a smear of inventory chalk across one cuff.
“Productive afternoon?” Kieran asked from the bench beneath the false window.
Marrow looked at him. “Do you require something?”
“A chair with a back. Better bread. An explanation for why Ashford smells like onions.”
“The dock stores provisions.”
“There it is. One mystery solved.”
Marrow returned Caspian’s coat and ordered him into his room.
Caspian obeyed without looking at me.
The fear under my wrist did not ease.
I waited through the evening meal and the healer’s examination of Kieran. The stewards changed at the western junction shortly afterward. The new pair began sending us through the washroom before the night locks were set.
Caspian went first.
I waited until the sound of the water told me he had reached the washroom.
When the steward called my name, Caspian was still at the long stone trough, rinsing dust from his hands. Water rushed from four narrow spouts and disappeared through a channel in the floor. The sound filled the chamber.
The steward remained outside the open door.
I took the place beside Caspian and reached for the soap.
He kept his eyes on his hands. “Lior kept every letter Delphine sent him.”
The soap slipped against my palm.
Caspian caught it before it struck the stone and set it between us.
“He remembers what they said,” he continued, barely audible beneath the water. “He still has the letter warning him to stay away from Zenith Hall.”
I put both hands beneath the nearest stream. The water was cold enough to hurt.
“Does he know she’s alive?”
“He knew she entered the Tower. I told the courier she survived it.”
I looked at him then.
A shallow cut crossed the base of his thumb. Dock grit remained in the creases of his knuckles, dark against skin reddened by cold water.
“Who was the courier?”
“A man who warned me not to trust him. I listened anyway.” Caspian shifted closer, his shoulder blocking the steward’s view of our hands. “Rev and Cosima are free. Juno is delaying Council orders from inside the Hall. They’re building a record for a hearing, but they need evidence from the Tower.”
“And Lior?”
“He wants Delphine home.”
The cold water kept running over my fingers.
I remembered Delphine in the west antechamber at Zenith Hall, slipping half her breakfast onto my plate because I had been too frightened to eat in front of anyone.
I remembered the letter the school had held in the gate office after it took her through the west door.
Rev had lifted it from the drawer, carried it out beneath her shirt, and sent it with the flour wagon.
Ask after me loudly. Ask what this school does with the girls it subtracts.
Lior had received it. He had done exactly what she asked.
Then I remembered the sealed room beneath the Tower and Delphine asking me not to forget her while I was being careful.
“I need to tell her.”
“The Council denied your request this morning.”
I reached past him and shut off my water. I would find another reason to ask.
The steward struck the doorframe with his knuckles. “Time.”
Caspian shut off the water. His hand closed briefly around mine, wet and cold.
“Don’t mention the courier where Marrow can hear.”
I nodded. His thumb moved once over my knuckles before he let me go.
We returned to separate rooms.
I spent half the night deciding which rule might still contain enough room to use.
Delphine found one before I did.
Marrow came for me after breakfast with a written request folded in his hand.
“Moreau has refused her scheduled statement unless you attend as a witness.”
I pushed away from the edge of the bed. “What statement?”
“She submitted a complaint regarding the classification of her case. The administrator ordered it entered before Council review of her status, with one copy lodged in her office. I agreed to let Moreau speak. You are there to confirm what you witnessed at Zenith Hall, and you will not touch her.”
His gaze moved to the three completed lines at my wrist. I pulled my sleeve down over them before standing.
Two stewards escorted us to Delphine’s room.
Marrow opened the door but did not enter.
A clerk sat at the small table with two stacks of paper, ink, and a Council ledger arranged in front of her.
Delphine waited on the bed, fully dressed, her dark hair combed back from a face that had recovered some of its color.
The blanket was folded beside her.
“Astra will sit beside the clerk,” Marrow said. “The door remains open. Any physical contact ends the interview.”
Delphine looked at me. “He has explained that already.”
I sat across from her. The clerk dipped her pen and waited.
“You asked for me.”
“I asked for someone who saw what happened at Zenith Hall. They sent a reader. I told her I would wait for you.”
The clerk looked between us. “May we begin?”
“In a moment.” I kept my hands folded in my lap. “I have news from outside.”
Delphine’s attention sharpened.
I could not tell her how the message reached us. Marrow stood close enough to hear every word, and the clerk had already placed her pen against the page.
“Lior kept your letters.”
Delphine did not move.
“All of them?”
“That’s what I was told. He remembers what you wrote. He still has the one warning him not to come to Zenith Hall.”
Her breath left slowly. One hand tightened in the blanket beside her, gathering the fabric into her fist.
“How did he know where I was?”
“He knew you crossed into the Tower. He has people helping him.”
“Is he safe?”
“For now.”
Delphine closed her eyes.
I wanted to cross the small distance between us. I kept my hands folded where Marrow could see them.
“There’s more,” I said. “Lior wants you home.”
The cloth slipped from Delphine’s grip.
She turned her face toward the wall and pressed the heel of her hand beneath one eye.
“Did he say that?”
“Those were the words sent to us.”
“He was twelve when they took me.” Her voice had roughened. “He believed everything would work out, even after the same Oracle who misread me said his Mark would settle by thirteen.” She looked at me. “Did anyone say whether it did?”
“No. I’ll ask if we can send another message.”
The clerk lowered her pen. Delphine waited until she had set it down before continuing.
Delphine pressed both palms against her knees. “Does Lior know what happened to me?”
“Not all of it.”
“Good.”
I had expected relief. What I heard was resolve.
“I don’t want him brought here,” she said. “Not for a hearing, not to identify me, not for any reason the Council invents. If they need his letters, they use copies. The originals stay somewhere the Council cannot reach.”
Marrow shifted outside the door.
“This interview concerns your treatment at the Tower,” he said.
“My letters concern what happened before the Tower.” Delphine turned to the clerk.
“Write that I warned my brother away from Zenith Hall before the school recorded my case as resolved. Write that I did not withdraw. I was taken through the sealed door after a reader said my Mark was fading. Astra Verita witnessed it.”
The clerk looked at me.
“I did,” I said. “Delphine was frightened. She did not agree to leave the Hall, and nobody told the students where the door led.”
The pen began moving again.
Delphine uncovered her wrist.
The broken line looked darker in the room’s pale light, its jagged edges disappearing beneath skin that had healed around the damage instead of repairing it. A faint tremor passed through her fingers.
Marrow stepped into the doorway. “Cover it.”
“No.” Delphine held her arm toward the clerk. “Record what you see before anyone touches it. The fracture and the scarring. Then write down the pain in my hand and the gaps in my memory that I can identify.”
The clerk stared at the Mark. “Why before?”
Delphine looked at my covered wrist, and I understood what she was protecting.
“Because if Astra attempts a repair,” she said, “the Council will claim anything I remember afterward was placed there by her. I want my statement taken first. I want the record to show what I knew before she came near me.”
Marrow reminded the clerk that the Council had forbidden contact.
“Put that beside my request,” Delphine said. Her hand shook harder, but she did not lower it. “Write that I asked Astra to examine the damage after her third bond completed. Write that she made no promise to heal me. Write that either of us may stop.”
The clerk looked toward Marrow.
He stood with one hand on the doorframe, his face giving away nothing.
“Record both,” he said at last. “Her request and the Council’s denial. No one will be able to claim the restriction was unclear.”
The clerk bent over the page.
I watched the words appear in dark, even lines. The clerk did not soften Delphine’s account or replace her language with the Tower’s. When Delphine paused to find a word, the clerk waited.
“I don’t know what home will feel like,” Delphine said quietly while the pen moved. “Lior may remember a sister I can’t be anymore.”
“He kept the letters,” I said. “He knows something happened after you wrote them.”
“Knowing isn’t the same as seeing it.”
“No.”
I did not tell her it would be easy. I did not tell her Lior would understand every silence or recognize the person who came back to him. The Tower had taken too much from her for comfort built on guesses.
“What should we tell him?” I asked.
Delphine looked down at the broken Mark.
“Tell him I remember what I asked him to do.” Her next breath caught. “Tell him he was loud enough. Tell him I want to come home. I just don’t know when they’ll let me.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Marrow ended the interview when the clerk filled the third page. We waited while she copied the statement onto the second set of paper.
Delphine signed each sheet in both sets. The tremor made the first signature uneven. Before signing the duplicate, she flexed her hand until the fingers answered her again and wrote her name more clearly.
The clerk sanded the original pages and tied them together with gray thread.
“Where do they go?” Delphine asked.
“The original enters your case file. The duplicate goes to the administrator under her order.”
The clerk sanded the duplicate and tied it with blue thread.
Marrow escorted me back through the east corridor. He carried Delphine’s original statement beneath one arm. I watched the gray thread at its edge with every step.
“You knew she intended to ask for the repair,” he said.
“She asked before Hale and I bonded. I told her I would examine the fracture if the third bond completed and if she still wanted me to.”
His grip tightened on the pages.
“Her consent does not change what you are capable of doing to her.”
“It changes whether she is being forced.” I looked at the statement beneath his arm. “The Tower left that fracture untreated while it recorded her as resolved. She wants me to look at it. You can stop calling those facts the same thing.”
He stopped at my door without reaching for the latch.
“The restriction will hold,” he said.
I did not answer. Arguing at my locked door would change nothing, and he knew it.
Marrow unlocked the door and waited until I stepped inside.
Before he closed it, I looked once more at the statement beneath his arm. Blue thread showed beneath the gray where the duplicate rested behind it.
Delphine’s signatures would reach two different rooms.