Ch. 008| The Rite of Investiture

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

Roen woke of himself.

Not woken by sound; something inside his body woke him. A faculty left by eleven years of Border Army training — in an unfamiliar place the body's clock draws the hour forward by a quarter. Today in Lodge 247 he woke half a cup of tea's time earlier than usual.

He sat up, and the first thing he did was look at the sheet on the table.

The sheet was where it had been, the glaze of the ink a shade thicker than yesterday afternoon. No one had moved it.

Roen got up, put the cloak back on, and bound the shortsword Raymond had left at his left hip again. The temporary entry token was still in the cloak's inner pocket, together with the brass clasp, the sheepskin roll, and the newly issued bronze key to Lodge 247.

The brass clasp at his chest — that line went on pulling toward the centre of the city. Steady.

After that swing yesterday it had gone back to an entirely settled state. The pull at the Hour of the Rabbit today was the same strength as the pull at the Hour of the Horse yesterday. As though the single swing at the Hour of the Rat had been an illusion.

But Roen knew it had not been.

---

At the end of the Hour of the Rabbit, someone knocked.

Breakfast came from the scholar's robe — not the kitchen man of last night, but a woman scholar in her thirties. The small plate at her collar, Academy · Kitchen, was the same pattern as his — the Academy's duty ran on rotation.

She set the wooden tray on the table, avoided the sheet, and left about two inches between the tray and it.

She did not look at the sheet on the table.

Roen noted it — last night's man had given the sheet one look. This woman today did not.

Either she did not know the sheet was there. Or she knew, and deliberately did not look.

She said the two words breakfast, turned, went out, and shut the door.

Roen understood: there were two kinds of people in the Academy's kitchen. Those who look at the sheet, and those who do not. Which is to say, those with leave to look, and those without.

The Academy divided things finely.

---

At the Hour of the Dragon, someone knocked again.

He opened the door — Ge.

Ge stood in the doorway, hands gathered in front as yesterday, grey scholar's robe, no house crest at the collar.

"The Rite of Investiture is at the Hour of the Snake. We go early," Ge said. "Come."

Roen did not ask why early. He locked the door of Lodge 247 and put the bronze key away in the cloak's inner pocket. The sheet on the table stayed in the room; there was no bronze key beside it now.

Ge took him north through the outer court, past three colonnades, into the Academy's inner court. The flagstone paths of the inner court were broader than in the outer, with trees planted along both sides — very fine leaves, very white trunks; Roen had not seen the kind in eleven years in the Border Army.

At the fourth colonnade Ge stopped and raised a hand to point ahead.

"The plaza before the South Hall."

Roen looked.

---

The plaza was enormous.

The ground was a pattern laid in large hexagonal flagstones — each stone about the width of a man, pale grey, the edges worn round. The whole plaza was pieced together from those hexagons, and at the centre was one hexagonal stone slightly larger than the rest. Roen reckoned roughly by eye — the plaza was about thirty zhang across.

On the north side of the plaza was the entrance to the South Hall — a two-storey stone hall with two spires at the top. The spire tops, like the Black Tower's, were flat, with no crown. The wall of the South Hall was deep grey, a shade darker than the Academy's other buildings.

Some thirty-odd newcomers had already gathered on the plaza — Academy grey over under-layers of different house colours. Roen swept over them quickly — all seven house colours were there, three to six from each. The silver of House Starcrown and the double ring of House Vowkey were the most conspicuous and the most numerous; the deep red of House Bloodflame and the bronze hourglass figure of House Hourshift came next; House Duskcandle's black with the inverted-candle figure was only two, and House Mirrorcourt's mirror figure was few as well. House Whitescript's silver-sand figure was scattered among the others and hard to pick out at first glance.

Around the edge of the plaza stood a ring of older people — not in scholars' robes but in the dress of the houses. They had come to see their own heirs receive their registers. Roen could not make out individual faces, but he could tell house colours.

On the steps of the South Hall at the north side stood three people. The one in the middle was an old man past fifty, in a pure black scholar's robe, with a very small figure embroidered at his collar — like none of the seven houses'; Roen had not seen it before. On either side was an assistant, younger — one holding a stack of thin bronze registers, one holding a bronze bell.

The newcomers at the centre were pressed into a knot, not greeting one another, though their eyes were busy enough, stealing over the colours of other houses' under-layers. The ring of house elders outside stood far looser: some with heads together, some with arms folded watching the show, as though in their own back gardens. The three at the rites on the steps barely moved. Roen swept over it once — the nearer to the centre of the plaza, the tighter people were strung.

Ge did not take Roen to any house's group of newcomers. She took him to the very end of the line — behind all the newcomers, a position of his own.

"Special branch," Ge said, in a low voice, as though for Roen alone.

She stepped back and stood three paces behind him, and said nothing further.

---

The Hour of the Snake.

On the steps of the South Hall, the old man in the black robe — the Academy's master of rites — raised a hand.

The assistant with the bronze bell struck it three times.

The plaza went quiet.

"The Rite of Investiture begins," the master of rites said.

He began to call the names. The order was: House Starcrown, House Whitescript, House Vowkey, House Hourshift, House Duskcandle, House Mirrorcourt, House Bloodflame.

As each house was called, that house's newcomers went forward to the foot of the steps. The master of rites called out the newcomer's name and branch, and an assistant handed across the matching bronze register. The newcomer took the register and performed the Academy's standard courtesy — the register held in both hands, the head lowered once — and withdrew to the line.

Roen watched the process from the end of the line.

Every house register was bronze, about the size of a palm, with an inscription on it. As the master of rites called, Roen heard what he called — house, branch, standing in the Academy (cadet line, main line, secondary line, and so on), and the allowances due within the Academy. Allowances covered lodge number, training hours, dining area, and right of attendance in the hall.

That was the whole system of Blacktower Academy, written on each newcomer's register, and it followed them for life.

When the seven houses had been called through, the master of rites paused a beat, then called: "Recommended commoners."

The thin, small newcomer surnamed Xun went forward. The master of rites called: "Xun. No branch. Blacktower-recommended commoner. Lodge 91. Training hours by the auditor system. Dining area: east wing. No right of attendance in the hall."

The assistant handed him a bronze register. Xun lowered his head, took it, and withdrew.

The master of rites paused another beat.

"Special branch."

Every eye on the plaza turned toward Roen.

Ge, three paces behind him, did not move.

The master of rites called: "Roen. Nameless. The Eighth Branch. No register."

Those two words, no register, the master of rites called as evenly as he had called any newcomer's lodge number, with no deliberate weight. But Roen heard it — several dozen people on the plaza, and every eye on him.

He went forward.

---

It took Roen three breaths to reach the foot of the steps.

At every step he felt those eyes on the plaza looking at him from different angles. The heirs of the Seven Great Houses were looking. The house elders around the edge were looking. The master of rites and his assistants on the steps were looking. The two scholars standing at the door of the South Hall on the north side were looking as well.

He reached the foot of the steps and halted.

The master of rites looked down at him. The master of rites' eyes were grey, the same grey as every building in the Academy.

"Roen. Nameless," the master of rites repeated.

"Yes," Roen said.

The master of rites did not turn a register. He nodded and put out a hand — an assistant passed him a bronze plate.

The plate was the same size and the same colour of bronze as the other house registers, but it carried no inscription of any kind. Everything the other registers should have had — house, branch, standing in the Academy, allowances — the blank bronze plate had none of it. The whole plate was blank, ground down, smooth: only a piece of bronze.

The master of rites handed the blank bronze plate to Roen.

"The Eighth Branch presently has no register; by old custom, a blank register is conferred," the master of rites said, his voice level. "The holder of a blank register: lodge number at the guide's discretion; training hours pending assignment; dining area pending deliberation; no right of attendance in the hall."

Roen took the blank bronze plate in both hands. The weight was the same as the other registers — the density of bronze had not changed. But the feel of it in the hand was entirely different. The other registers had the relief of an inscription; the blank register was pure flat surface.

The brass clasp in the inner pocket at his chest — in the instant he took hold of the blank bronze plate — was as though tapped once.

Not the steady warmth of before, and not a slow warming; a brief pulse — as though something far off had given a single push, and then withdrawn.

Roen did not move, and did not let his face change. Eleven years of Border Army exile had taught him to control his face.

But he noticed one thing — in the instant the clasp went warm, at some position on the plaza, one gaze abruptly sharpened.

Not all the eyes on him changed; one of them did. The position was in the group of house elders at the northeast corner of the plaza, about twenty zhang from Roen. He could not see who — neither age nor sex was clear, only a figure.

That gaze and the pulse of the clasp were roughly simultaneous.

The moment they began, and the moment they ended, were both the same.

Roen walked back to the end of the line, and Ge still stood three paces behind him.

The several dozen eyes on the plaza drew back, slowly.

That gaze at the northeast corner drew back a little later than the rest. But it drew back.

Roen stood in the line, the blank bronze plate held in his hands, and did not look toward the northeast corner again. Among the eleven years of Border Army training was a rule he had worked out himself — when you know someone is watching you, do not turn to see who. Turn once and the other party knows you have noticed. That piece of information can never be used again.

---

The master of rites struck the bronze bell three times.

"The Rite of Investiture is ended."

All the newcomers on the plaza scattered after their own guides in scholars' robes, and the house elders began to leave the plaza too.

Ge came back to Roen's side, made no comment on the blank bronze plate he had just received, and none on the matter of the clasp — Ge, of course, knew nothing about the clasp.

"Back to the lodge," Ge said.

The two of them went back the way they had come. Through the four colonnades of the inner court, out through the outer court, to the door of Lodge 247.

Ge stood before the door, as yesterday.

"Tomorrow at the Hour of the Snake, the Preliminary Instruction," she said. "Third-floor south hall of the Black Tower."

She did not wave. She turned and went.

Roen watched her pass the third colonnade and disappear.

He opened the door and went into Lodge 247.

The sheet was still on the table.

Roen went to the table and set the blank bronze plate down — beside the sheet, not on top of it. One sheet of paper, one blank bronze plate, side by side on the table. The two things in this room that were his, and neither of them had anything written on it.

He went to the bed, sat down, and took off the cloak. The brass clasp in the inner pocket at his chest, its pull steady toward the centre of the city. That pulse of a while ago might never have happened; the clasp had gone back to complete calm.

But Roen was keeping hold of something else.

In the instant he took the blank bronze plate, someone on the plaza had moved with it. The northeast corner, the figure whose face he could not make out — the moment it sharpened was the same moment as the clasp's pulse; the moment it withdrew was a little later than everyone else's. Twenty zhang away, someone's attention had risen and fallen on the same beat as that piece of brass at his chest.

Roen did not look that way a second time. He only set the position down in memory.

From the Border Army to Blacktower, the clasp had been a thing only he knew of. Today, at the Hour of the Snake, on that plaza, another person had felt it in the same moment for the first time.

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【Ch. 008 End · Lodge 247, Blacktower Academy → the plaza before the South Hall → Lodge 247】