44. Astra
Astra
The administrator came for me before the feeling returned to my fingertips.
I had been sitting on the edge of my bed with both hands wrapped around a cup I could not feel.
Delphine’s Mark still lingered behind my eyes: the torn crossings, the buried line, the terrible ease with which I might have destroyed what remained instead of repairing it.
Whenever I closed my hand, the joints answered a moment late.
“Kieran is being transferred at first bell,” the administrator said. “Walkin saw the repaired Mark in the reading room tonight. The order followed within the hour.”
The cup struck the floor. It did not break, but water ran over my shoes and disappeared between the stones.
“Where?”
“East review. Walkin’s order prohibits further contact with his Mark before direct examination.”
I reached for the green-gold bond. Kieran was there, awake and furious. Beneath that came a deliberate pressure from all three lines, held long enough for me to recognize it, then released.
Stop. Think.
The bond carried no words, but I knew the shape now.
“They felt what happened in the infirmary,” I said.
“The readers measured a simultaneous response.” The administrator looked at my wet shoes, then at the hand I had closed over my wrist. “I have authorized an evidentiary consultation before my authority expires. All named subjects and witnesses may prepare for the hearing together.”
“How generous of the evidence to let us speak.”
“It was the only designation Marrow could not overturn without delaying the transfer order.”
She led me west instead of toward the review rooms. A steward waited outside a narrow chamber with his back to a door sealed in blue wax. The administrator’s signet had been pressed repeatedly along the jamb. The seal would show if anyone entered. It would not stop the stone from carrying sound.
“You have until the warning bell,” she said. “The steward will remain outside. Assume the walls are not private, and do not speak any name or route you cannot afford to lose.”
“Will you be listening?”
“No. That does not mean you’re safe from anyone else.”
She broke the wax and opened the door.
Once I crossed the threshold, she shut us in and sealed the jamb again from the corridor.
The room held a scarred table with chairs crowded close around it, and a high slit through which the water-light entered in restless bands.
Caspian rose when he saw me. His coat was still fastened wrong from the review.
Hale stood near the wall, burns visible above one cuff.
Kieran had been given his record folio back, though a black ribbon had been tied around it to show that he was forbidden to open it.
Delphine sat beside him with her healed hand uncovered on the table.
For a moment I could only look at her.
The skin around her Mark remained swollen from my touch. The lines were clean but not restored to what they had once been; too much had been cut away for that. I had joined them where they had been forced apart. Her fingers lay flat instead of curling inward against the old pain.
“Still mine,” she said. “You look as though you need reminding.”
I sat beside her. Caspian took my numb hand under the table and turned it palm-up, his thumb moving over the center as if warmth might persuade the nerves to wake. The bond eased at his touch. Kieran and Hale let the other two lines settle around it, present without pressing.
Kieran watched me sit. “Did the signal reach you?”
“Enough to stop me. I couldn’t tell why.”
Some of the strain left his face, though his hand remained over the line.
Hale drew out the chair across from me. “That’s all the signal can do. It can interrupt you. It can’t tell you why.”
“And if one of you is the reason I need to stop?”
“The others hold it steady,” Caspian said. “We tried separately before they brought me in. You barely noticed. Together, you answered.”
I flexed my fingers. A faint sting moved through them and vanished.
“Walkin will have the measurements.”
“They’ll know the bonds responded at the same time,” Hale said. “Not what we were doing.”
“Unless this room tells them.” Delphine glanced at the water channel running beneath the wall.
No one said more about it. Caspian kept hold of my hand, but his attention moved to the sealed door.
“The administrator gave us until the warning bell,” he said. “That leaves two choices.”
“Leave before first bell,” Kieran said. “Or let them put me in the east room and hope procedure remains fashionable after Walkin arrives.”
“You will not be alone in that room,” I said.
“According to the order, I very much will.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
Green-gold tightened between us. He looked away first.
Hale placed both hands on the table. “If we leave, it has to be tonight. The first bell changes command. It will also change the watches, the locks, and any arrangement made under the administrator’s seal.”
“Can we get out?” Delphine asked.
Caspian answered with care. “The opening we discussed still exists. We would not be alone once we reached the other side.”
He did not mention the concealed passage, the delivery cart, or the man who had carried Lior’s message beneath a false crate bottom.
“All five of us?” she asked.
“That is the only version I’ve considered.”
“You should consider the other versions,” Hale said. “Kieran cannot run far. Astra’s hands are compromised. Delphine was in the infirmary less than an hour ago. Five people make more noise than two.”
“You’re recommending we split up?”
“I’m telling you what the route will demand. I haven’t recommended anything yet.”
Kieran leaned back, one hand resting over the black ribbon on his folio. “How much distance can you buy if someone notices before we reach the opening?”
“Not enough.”
“Then there’s no useful version where I come with you.”
“No,” I said.
His gaze returned to me. “You can’t carry me through the whole mountain.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not volunteering to be noble. I’m pointing out that I’m the part of this plan most likely to fail on a staircase.”
“And I’m pointing out that we have already carried you up one.”
“That went beautifully.”
The edge in his voice made the words hurt more than the joke deserved. Hale’s eyes moved between us.
“No one is staying behind to improve the odds for the rest,” he said. “That decision would not survive the first landing anyway. Astra would turn around. So would I.”
Kieran pressed his mouth shut.
“If we leave,” Hale continued, “we leave together and accept what that costs. If we stay, we decide what remaining in the Tower is meant to accomplish. Waiting for Walkin is not a plan.”
Delphine lifted her marked hand. Water-light passed over the repaired lines and flashed silver at the edges.
“This is a plan.”
Caspian looked at her. “Walkin will call it an unauthorized alteration and use it to justify taking control of Astra.”
“Then they can say that while I’m there to answer.” Delphine’s voice remained level. “I asked Astra to do it, and I consented. The Mark belongs to me. The administrator witnessed everything.”
I turned toward her. “You don’t owe them testimony because I touched you.”
“I owed them nothing before you touched me. That hasn’t changed.”
“Lior wants you home.”
The words left me too quickly. Delphine went still.
Shame rose hot beneath my collar. I tried to pull my hand from Caspian’s, but he held it without tightening his grip.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was not mine to use.”
“No.” Delphine studied the new crossings on her skin. “It wasn’t.”
The others waited while I sat with what I had done.
“I want to go home,” she said at last. “I want to see whether I know him when he laughs. I want to find out which room he kept my letters in and whether he still hates boiled pears. I want things I can’t remember wanting.
” Her thumb passed gently over one repaired line.
“But if I leave before this goes into the record, they will say you injured me and fled. They will turn my body into their proof because I was not there to speak for it. I have been absent from my own story long enough.”
The water-light moved across her face, catching the wetness she refused to wipe from one eye.
“So yes,” she said. “I am frightened I will lose my way home again. I am more frightened they will decide what happened to me after I am gone.”
I wanted to argue. Every answer I found required choosing which of her fears ought to matter more, and I had forfeited the right to do that when I spoke Lior’s name for her.
Caspian unfolded a sheet the administrator had given him. It bore a list of exhibits in her precise hand.
“Delphine’s statement is already entered,” he said. “So is the infirmary report. The annex names Sadie’s sealed transfer, the removed receiving signature, and the ordered comparison with Selene’s case. My father sent copies of the full filing to two other Council seats before he left the mountain.”
“Then the evidence survives if we run,” Kieran said.
“The copies survive,” Caspian said. “No one outside this room can testify to what Walkin does after taking command.”
“Why does the hearing matter if Walkin controls it?”
“Because control has to appear in the record.” Caspian tapped the exhibit sheet.
“If Walkin excludes Delphine, refuses an independent reading, or invokes emergency severance after seeing a consensual repair, my father’s copies prove they did it with notice.
They cannot call the evidence undiscovered later. ”
None of that would stop them calling us dangerous. They already had.
I looked down at my hands. “Hurting her would have been easier.”
The table fell quiet.
“I found the damaged places, and every one of them wanted to give way. I had to hold the rest of her Mark apart from me while I worked. If I had stopped caring where she ended...”
I could still feel that ease. A small turn of intention. A clean pull through the lines. The power had offered destruction without resistance and made precision hurt.
Hale considered that without looking away.