Ch. 005| Rendezvous at the Hour of the Rabbit

Crimson Ring Year 1218, Solstice Month, the twenty-first day, the Hour of the Rabbit.

Roen did not sleep the night through. Between the end of the Hour of the Ox and the Hour of the Rabbit he had a stretch of broken haze — not sleep, only his body shutting a section of itself down by force. That door next door, after the footsteps stopped at the Hour of the Rat, gave nothing further. It did not open, did not close, produced no new step.

But the density in the building — that sense of something holding its breath — did not lift.

Roen got up. He put the five things on the table back into the saddlebag — the brass clasp into the inner pocket, the manual and the recall writ folded together, the entry token against the side where the clasp lay. The shortsword he did not put in the bag. Using the old strap Raymond had left, he bound the sword at his own left hip. The position was not where Raymond had worn it — Raymond drew reversed with the left hand, Roen drew straight with the right. The angle of the scabbard differed by about twenty degrees.

He tried a draw. Easier to hand than the shortswords issued in the northern exile grounds — this was a sword Raymond had used for a dozen years, and the mouth of the scabbard had worn open.

Voices came up from below.

Not Old He alone. The other voice was a woman's, capital accent, without a house cadence.

---

Old He came up and knocked.

"Someone's here for you," Old He said.

Roen opened the door. Old He glanced at the sword at his hip and said nothing.

The two of them went down.

A woman in her early thirties stood in the yard. A dark grey scholar's robe, no house crest embroidered at the collar, a small silver plate hanging at her hip cut with six characters: Blacktower Academy · Guide. No headdress; her hair was tied back, exposing a very shallow old scar behind her ear, as though something had been laid against the skin and burned there once.

In eleven years in the Border Army Roen had seen all sorts — dynastic officials, house envoys, councillors inspecting Border Army establishments, honest clerks drawing discharge pay. This woman was like none of them. Her stance was relaxed, but not in the way the Border Army relaxes. When a Border Army man is at ease his shoulders come forward slightly and his hands hang at his hips, ready to move. She was not like that — her shoulders were level, her hands clasped in front of her, as though someone had taught her a fixed position. Nor was it the noble version — a noble's hands come higher, as though about to display something. Her hands were simply placed: not displaying, not guarding.

She saw Roen and did not go through the noble forms — no bow, no self-deprecating address to open with.

"My surname is Ge," she said. "Guide of Blacktower Academy. I'm taking you to the Academy today."

She said my surname is Ge, and that was all. No capital-style self-deprecation. And no given name.

Roen did not know how to answer. That section of Book Seven, the Eighth Branch, was blank — no one had ever taught him how a descendant of the Eighth Branch returns courtesy to a guide who does not perform the noble forms.

He nodded and said nothing.

Ge did not wait for his courtesy. She turned to Old He.

"The other one," Ge said.

Old He hesitated half a heartbeat, glanced at Roen, and answered: "The other one left last night."

Ge nodded and did not press.

Roen noted one thing — Ge knew there had been two people at the waystation. She did not only know she was collecting him; she also knew there had been two horses in the yard last night. But that phrase, the other one — the Border Army system does not speak that way, and the noble houses do not speak that way either. It was some third party's neutral term for the one travelling with him.

Roen did not ask which side Ge came from. If he asked now, Ge would answer in the same neutral tone: Blacktower Academy.

---

Two horses were left in the yard — the one Raymond had left him, and the nameless soldier's. But the nameless soldier was not there.

Roen raised his eyes to the upper floor.

That room next door — seen from outside — had its door pushed to, not shut.

Pushed to, not latched.

Pushed to means someone is inside, or someone has just been inside.

Ge did not look at the upper floor. She said: "The two horses stay. The Academy is in the east of the city; we'll take the public coach."

Old He nodded and did not give Roen a second look. He turned back to the small counting room of the waystation. He did not even turn to shut the door.

Roen and Ge went out through the wooden gate of the yard into that lane two carts wide.

Before leaving the lane he looked back once. The wooden gate of the yard stood half open, two horses left in the stable. The pushed-to door of that upstairs room could not be seen from the mouth of the lane.

But he remembered that it was there.

---

The Graycrown public-coach stop was two blocks north off South Gate Avenue, a small halt with a thin roof held up by four wooden posts.

The hour was early, and there were fewer people in the street than when he had entered the city the day before — still more than at any hour in the northern exile grounds. Lower servants in the colours of the various houses came and went at the corner, hawkers were just setting up, and the air held charcoal smoke and the smell of rice water from the morning congee.

Ge went in under the halt and looked up at the bronze hour-dial hanging beneath the thin roof. The face was cut with the twelve hours and, by dynastic custom, the Blacktower Shuttle Timetable — one coach each at the end of the Hour of the Rabbit, the Hour of the Dragon, and the Hour of the Snake. The pointer stood at the end of the Hour of the Rabbit.

"Next one is at the end of the Hour of the Rabbit," Ge said. "A quarter to wait."

Roen stood beside her and did not ask anything. He noticed that each of the four wooden posts of the halt was cut with a very small crest — not one of the Seven Great Houses, and not Blacktower Academy's, but a simple figure: a circle with a single horizontal stroke through it. Roen did not know the figure. Ge did not explain.

The coach arrived.

Blacktower Academy establishment: silver-edged wooden body, no house crest on the door — the Academy's neutral colour.

Ge boarded first, Roen after her.

Three other newcomers were already seated inside — two young men and a young woman, each in an under-layer of a different house colour. The house figures showing at the cuffs were the silver of House Starcrown and the double ring of House Vowkey. On the third cuff no house figure was visible — the thin, small one, who looked several years younger than the other two, hands gathered on the knees, eyes on the floor. None of the three looked at Roen, and none looked at Ge. Newcomers do not greet one another; that is old custom at Blacktower Academy.

Roen took inward note of the three — the two with house colours were plainly descendants of noble branches; the one without a house figure might be one of the few commoners admitted by examination, or might be another Eighth Branch. But there was no asking now. Since the Academy's custom laid down that newcomers do not greet, he did not greet either. Eleven years of Border Army training had taught him one thing: when you do not know the rules, follow the rules; do not probe.

Ge and Roen sat in the front row. The coach started and went north.

About a block on, Ge spoke.

"Do you know capital etiquette?"

"The basics," Roen said. "That section of Book Seven, the Eighth Branch, is blank."

Ge did not answer that. She looked at Roen once — not long, about a breath. Her eyes were dark brown, the pupils a little smaller than most.

"Blacktower does not divide by branch," Ge said. "Inside the Academy you are only a newcomer. Outside the Academy you go back to being the Eighth Branch."

Roen did not answer. He committed the sentence to memory — inside the Academy no branches; outside the Academy still the Eighth Branch. That was not consolation; it was a rule. Eleven years of Border Army exile had long since emptied the word equal of expectation for him.

Ge said it once and did not repeat it.

Ge said nothing further. The coach went on north.

---

Past the third block, Roen looked at Graycrown by daylight for the first time.

He had entered the city at the end of the Hour of the Dragon yesterday, his eyes tangled up with the sheen off the Crown, and had not taken in the streets. Today, by daylight, the streets were clear — buildings of four and five storeys on both sides, roofs uniformly grey tile, most signboards written in bronze ink with the names of trading houses — no house names, only firms.

By day this city was greyer than by night — nothing to do with the weather; it was the grey tile under the sun drawing the colour out of every roof. The whole of one's sight was as though covered with a very thin grey cloth.

The coach passed the fourth block, and Roen raised his head.

The Crimson Ring Crown at the tower's crown was far nearer from this angle than yesterday. Perhaps a li still, but the detail was entirely clear — the metal surface of the Crown, that very faint sheen, held as steadily as it had the day before.

The brass clasp at his chest — in the instant he raised his head to look at the Crown — grew warm.

The same warmth as when he had entered the city yesterday, with direction to it, against his ribs.

But this time it stayed longer.

Yesterday, about three or four breaths. Today — Roen counted breaths inwardly, and it was not until the fifth breath that the warmth of the clasp fell away.

One breath more than yesterday.

Ge sat beside Roen and did not look at him. But at one moment her gaze shifted slightly — a brief slant in Roen's direction, then away.

Roen noticed. But he could not be sure whether Ge had done it because of him or because of something outside the window.

He did not ask.

---

The coach went on north. Two more blocks, and the Crown at the tower's crown was blocked by a five-storey building; the line of sight broke.

The building that blocked it Roen took in quickly with both eyes — five storeys, grey tile roof, a row of narrow windows on the second floor, no windows on the third, fourth, or fifth. A guard stood at the ground-floor door — a uniform of a different pattern from the House Bloodflame guard at the South Gate yesterday. Roen had no time to make out the house colour before the coach was past.

The warmth of the clasp had already fallen back to residue.

That invisible line — that sense of direction — was still there. Clearer than yesterday. With the tower's crown out of sight, the pull of that line was in fact more definite — as though it had been drawn taut before and was now fixed in place by something in the way, no longer able to swing.

Roen looked at the grey tile roofs falling away outside the window. The source of that pull lay deeper than the metal surface of the Crown — behind it, below it, or inside it, he could not say. The direction overlapped with where the Crown was.

The coach went on.

Ge did not turn to look at him. And said nothing more.

The daytime noise of Graycrown went on coming in at the coach window. Hawkers calling, children shouting, the drivers' commands as noble carriages went by — all of it mixed together into one consistent, low-density floor of city sound.

Every empty place was filled by sound, people, smells, hooves, smoke, signboards, the small cloth-sound of dark-figured cloaks. Eleven years in the Border Army, what Roen was used to was the kind of quiet in which one hears hooves three li off; here there was no hearing three li — the sound at three li was covered by the sound at three paces.

He sat in the coach with his hands on his knees, in the posture of the thin, small newcomer with no house figure. Hands not displaying, not guarding, simply placed.

Ge sat beside him, eyes forward. The sound of the coach wheels over the flagstones was not the sound of yesterday's carriage — the wheels of an Academy establishment coach were wrapped in a layer of some soft material: damped, quiet. Another craft Roen had not seen before. He set it down in memory.

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【Ch. 005 End · the Southern Suburb Waystation → the public-coach stop → eastward through Graycrown】