Astra
The steward locked me in my room with the administrator’s map still hidden inside my sleeve.
I drew it out and spread it across the bed.
The paper had softened along the folds since the night we used it to reach Kieran.
A dark smear crossed the passage behind the records wall where my bloody thumb had pressed against the ink.
The administrator’s route ended at the residential wing.
Beyond it, escape depended on Caspian’s memory of the service levels leading toward the dock.
It was not an imagined escape. That made the choice worse.
I traced the hidden passage with one finger. My hand had begun to wake in burning patches, and the softened edge of the paper felt sharp enough to cut.
Beyond the door, a steward tested the lock and moved on.
The silver line waited at my wrist, cold and taut.
Caspian had meant what he said in the consultation.
He wanted us out before Walkin could place any of the men between me and the result they wanted.
His fear carried no accusation through the bond.
It did not become agreement simply because I could feel it.
Green-gold burned farther away. Kieran was moving, or being made to move. The rhythm came unevenly through the line, then steadied as Hale reached for both of us.
Through the bonds, I knew they were alive. Nothing in that knowledge told me what to do.
I left the map open on the bed and went to the washbowl.
The water had gone cold. I lowered my hands into it and watched the blood from Delphine’s Mark loosen beneath my nails. Pale threads drifted over my knuckles and clouded the bottom of the bowl.
Her repaired lines had been silver when I left her.
They had belonged to her before I touched them, while I held them open, and after I let them close.
Walkin would call what I had done an alteration because the word made ownership uncertain.
If we disappeared into the mountain before the hearing, they would call Delphine injured and coerced.
They would say I had taken her to keep her from testifying, and her absence would do the rest.
Delphine had spent long enough absent from the account of what was done to her.
I lifted my hands from the bowl. Water ran from my wrists into my sleeves. Sensation returned sharply enough that I had to grip the stone rim until the pain passed.
Running would keep Walkin from testing my reach today. It would not make that reach disappear.
With all three bonds complete, my reach no longer ended with Caspian, Kieran, and Hale. Delphine had proved that I could alter any Mark I touched. Leaving the Tower would not stop the Council from hunting a power it could neither reproduce nor control.
My mother had answered that danger by hiding me from it.
For nineteen years, her choice worked. Then Linden arrived, and I learned the cost of being protected by a silence I had never chosen.
A scrape sounded at the bottom of the door.
A folded page slid beneath it, the black wax already broken so it could pass through the narrow gap.
I dried my hands on my skirt before picking it up.
By order of Council Enforcer Walkin, Astra Verita will present herself at the east hearing chamber upon first bell.
Associated residents and entered witnesses will be conveyed under separate guard.
Failure to appear will be entered as refusal of review and evidence of instability requiring immediate containment.
There it was. Walkin had written flight into the record before giving me the chance to choose it.
I read the order again, searching for Delphine’s name. None of us were named beyond me. Associated residents. Entered witnesses. Kieran, Caspian, Hale, and Delphine reduced to their usefulness in my proceeding before Walkin had entered the room.
I carried the page to the bed and set it beside the map.
I could not find freedom on either side of the map. I saw different dangers, and a fight over who would describe what happened next.
I dressed without knowing which way I would leave the room.
My boots were still damp from the water I had spilled.
I pulled them on anyway and tightened the laces until my returning fingers objected.
I exchanged my torn oversleeve for the heavier one Caspian had found among the Tower clothes.
The wool would drag if we reached the wet passage, but the air beyond the dock would be cold. I pinned my hair close.
I washed the blood from my cuffs. I fastened the high collar and left my sleeves loose enough to draw back without assistance. I folded Walkin’s order and placed it against my wrist, where the paper rested over all three completed lines.
Whatever I chose, the same clothes would have to serve.
A quiet pressure gathered through the silver line.
Caspian was close.
The lock turned before I could move toward it. The door opened only far enough for the administrator to enter. A steward remained beyond her shoulder with a block of black wax and Walkin’s seal already warming in his hand.
“You’re early,” I said.
“For the escort, yes.”
She closed the door without locking it. Her gaze went to the map on the bed, the loosened hem of my skirt, and the hearing order beside them. She did not pretend not to understand.
“The route remains open until the first bell,” she said.
I looked at the map. “You put us at the western junction on purpose.”
“I arranged for the hearing parties to be held at the western junction before transfer. Walkin cannot stop me from putting you there while I still hold authority. What follows will belong to them.”
She had given us a chance to run without ordering us to take it.
She crossed to the bed and touched the edge of Walkin’s order.
“If you leave, the record outside this mountain may be enough to force an inquiry. It may also give the Council time to discredit every page before anyone can compel testimony. If you stay, Walkin may close the hearing before Delphine speaks.”
“Hale thinks we use the route if they do.”
“The route will not remain open simply because you still need it.”
I looked at the map. “What would you choose?”
The administrator was quiet long enough that I thought she might refuse.
“Years ago, I chose to remain inside the process because I believed I could keep it from doing its worst. Some people left this Tower alive because I stayed. Others disappeared while I was still learning which forms I had to sign to reach them.” Her hand fell from the order.
“I no longer trust myself to answer that question for anyone else.”
“Will you testify even if Walkin tries to stop you?”
“I will try. If they refuse to hear me, that refusal becomes part of what happens next.”
The steward struck the outer face of the door.
The administrator folded the map along its worn creases and held it out to me. “Keep this hidden. Bring the order.”
I slipped the map inside my coat.
She left without asking what I intended.
The administrator resealed the door behind her. Walkin’s steward remained outside with the black wax ready in his hand.
The bond warmed as Caspian passed on the other side of the wall. His steps slowed near my room. The steward ordered him onward.
I went to the false window and rested my palm against the black glass.
Caspian had chosen escape because he understood exactly what staying offered Walkin.
He had watched his father turn procedure into a weapon for most of his life.
He knew a hearing could be arranged to produce a conclusion already written.
Asking him to enter that room with me meant asking him to place his body inside a mechanism he had spent years learning to refuse.
The thought stopped me.
I could not use their willingness to follow as proof that staying was brave. Walkin would reduce them to evidence of what I could do; I would not do the same.
I opened the bond instead of trying to look resolved. Fear moved through it with the ache of wanting the route, the bridge, and one breath of air that had not passed through stone. Caspian could not know every thought beneath it. He could feel what the choice cost me.
The bond answered with grief and anger. The pressure did not sharpen into a signal.
He had heard me.
Keys entered locks all along the corridor.
The administrator’s seal broke across my door. The steward opened it and ordered me into the passage.
Blocks of black wax waited in the stewards’ hands beside the broken blue seals. The Tower looked unchanged beneath them. Water-light crossed the floor in pale, moving bars. The same channels ran inside the walls. Only the people preparing to hold the keys had changed.
Caspian waited across the corridor under guard. He had corrected the fastening of his coat. His hands were empty, but the line at his wrist had darkened.
Delphine stood near the western junction with a steward at either side. She had refused to cover her repaired Mark. Hale was farther along the wall, watching the open service door beyond the records alcove.
Cold air moved through that door.
The route was open.
Kieran appeared from the opposite passage. The black ribbon remained around his folio, now carried under the arm of the senior steward walking behind him. Kieran’s right leg dragged on the turn. Hale shifted before the stumble became visible, then stopped himself from crossing the guarded space.
Every bond tightened.
The synchronized pressure waited at my wrist. Caspian looked from the service door to me.
He did not move.
The first bell sounded.
“Transfer parties east,” the senior steward ordered.
The service door began to swing inward on its own weight.
If I gave the signal, Hale would reach it before it closed. Caspian would take the steward nearest Delphine. I would have to get Kieran across the corridor before the senior steward sounded the alarm. The map pressed against my ribs.
We might make it.
I looked at Delphine’s silver Mark, Kieran’s folio in the steward’s possession, and the black wax ready to cover the administrator’s seal.
Walkin had already begun rewriting the room.
I covered all three bonds with my hand and held them steady.
“I’m attending the hearing,” I said.
Caspian’s face did not change. Through the bond, the hurt came cleanly. He did not try to change my mind.
He turned east.
Hale let the service door close.
The steward carrying Kieran’s folio moved first. Kieran followed without looking back. Delphine fell into step beside me, her uncovered hand brushing mine once before the guards forced space between us.
Walkin’s stewards opened the doors.