Chapter 31: The Measure

The Royal Knights arrived at the Academy on Monday morning.

There were only six of them, in white and gold armor with the King’s crest on their shields, and they didn’t ride in through the great gate the way the Hawk Knights had. They walked in very quietly at dawn, while most of the students were still asleep, and took up positions around the Great Hall: two at the front doors, two at the side doors, and two inside, on either side of the spot where the Measure would stand.

Nobody bothered to explain why. The Headmaster’s clerks said it was an honor for the three hundredth Festival, and the students mostly believed it, though a few of the older ones exchanged uneasy looks and said nothing.

Aren carried a stack of ledgers past the front doors that morning, and Street Fighter’s Instinct told him what the two knights there were before he even looked closely. Rank B, both of them, calm and motionless as a pair of statues that could kill a hundred men.

’Six Royal Knights don’t show up at a school because someone wants to honor a festival. So she read it! Good. That’s a start.’

Rook’s man was called Tiller, small and grey and extremely boring to look at, which Rook said was the most important skill in his trade. He spent four nights on the cathedral steps with a bag of roasted nuts, and on the fifth he came to the warehouse and reported.

"Your treasury clerk goes out every evening after the last prayer. Same path every time: down Gilded Row, across the market, into a house in the merchant quarter. Big place, fresh paint. He stays an hour and comes out without the box he went in with."

"Whose house?"

"Man called Corbin Lisle. Wool merchant, supposedly, except nobody I asked ever bought wool from him." Tiller cracked a nut noisily between his teeth. "He bought something else this month, though. The whole fish market. Every burned stall, every plot the Rift touched. Half price, cash, the week after the Night of Bells."

Aren went completely motionless.

On the narrow bed in the back room, Rook didn’t even look up from his book. "Who got richer this week?" "I seem to be making all the right guesses lately."

On Tuesday, Crane sent Aren to carry crates for the Church delegation.

"They need hands." Crane didn’t look up from his scroll. "Deacons don’t lift things. You do." A pause. "Try not to drop anything holy, Servant."

The Great Hall had been completely transformed. The long benches were shoved back against the walls, white and gold banners hung from the high beams, and unlit candles stood waiting in iron racks along both sides. At the front, where the Awakening Crystal had stood on its pillar of black stone two months ago, there was a new platform of pale wood, and on it stood the Measure.

It was a mirror taller than a door and wider than two men, in a heavy frame of dark silver worked into twisting vines. The glass itself was black, the same black as Nell’s mark, and it didn’t reflect the banners or the candles or the people moving in front of it. It didn’t reflect anything at all.

Aren carried crates for six hours, candles and incense and white cloth, up the aisle to wherever the deacons pointed and back for more. Nobody looked at him even once. Two Royal Knights stood beside the Measure the whole time, watching the deacons, the clerks, everything except the boy with the crates.

And while he carried, he quietly watched the base of the Measure.

Four deacons knelt there all afternoon, one at each corner of the platform, with tiny brushes and pots of gold paint. They were painting blessings on the wood, they said, holy words to honor the Light at the three hundredth Festival, and the Royal Knights watched them do it and saw holy words.

Aren set down a crate two paces from the nearest deacon and casually looked at what he was painting. The marks were tiny and packed close together, like scales.

He had seen them before, on a stake of black iron at the bottom of a flooded Rift, humming like something breathing in its sleep.

He picked up the empty crate and walked back down the aisle at a servant’s pace with steady hands and a heart that was anything but steady.

’Seven nails in a ring, the merchant said. When the ring is complete and the right song is sung, the seven small wounds pull open together into one great one, in the center.’

The ring was broken, because Aren had broken it when he pulled that nail out of the dye house floor. But the Choir wasn’t giving up. They were building a center instead, right here in the Great Hall of the Academy, under the eyes of six Royal Knights, in gold paint, and calling it a blessing.

’That’s actually clever. I hate how clever that is!’

She came in at the very end of the day, when the deacons had gone and the Hall was empty except for the two knights by the platform, the boy with the last crate, and the tall black mirror that reflected nothing.

Vivienne Ashgrave walked up the aisle alone in the white Academy uniform rather than her armor, and her silver hair was loose over her shoulders, which he had never seen before. She passed him without a glance and stopped at the edge of the platform to look up at the Measure.

Aren set down his crate slowly. He should have left, and he didn’t.

"Dropped any more books, Servant?" She didn’t turn around.

"Not today, my lady."

"Pity." She kept looking steadily at the black glass. "They say it shows you what you are. Six lines of light: strength, agility, endurance, perception, essence, will." Her voice was very quiet. "Six numbers, the whole Academy watching, and you can’t lie to it."

"You’re not Rank D yet, my lady. You won’t have to stand in front of it."

"No. Not yet."

She raised her hand and laid her palm flat against the glass.

Nothing happened. The deacons had said the Measure needed the Archdeacon’s blessing and the first light of Festival morning to wake, and for now it was only a very dark mirror. But Vivienne’s shoulders locked. Her fingertips went white against the glass, and for one long second she didn’t breathe at all. In the polished silver of the frame, Aren saw her face turn the color of paper, her eyes wide and fixed on something in the black glass that he couldn’t see.

Then she snatched her hand back as if it had burned her.

She stood there breathing hard and fast. One of the Royal Knights took a step toward her, and she lifted two fingers without looking at him, and he stopped.

"My lady?" Aren said.

She turned around and looked at him, and for once there was no contempt in her face, only something cold and frightened and very far away.

"The sky." It was barely a whisper, almost to herself. "It was black."

Then her face closed like a door, the way it always did, and she walked past him down the aisle and out through the great doors without another word.

[Vivienne Ashgrave. Hostility: 96% → 97%.]

Aren stood alone in front of the mirror and looked into the black glass, the same as she had. He saw nothing at all, no sky, no reflection, not even his own face. He picked up his empty crate and left quickly.

The window opened that night while he lay awake.

[Primary Anchor progressed.][Vivienne Ashgrave. Rank E: Level 9 → Level 10.][Anchor has reached the threshold of Rank D.][Anchor’s Trial revealed.]

He sat up slowly in the dark. The System had never shown him an Anchor’s Trial before, and he honestly hadn’t known it could.

[Silver Moon Empress, Trial of Rank D:][Before the eyes of ten thousand, stand alone against the one who would end you.]

Ten thousand eyes. The great arena below the Academy hill held ten thousand people, and on the last evening of the Founders’ Festival, Vivienne would fight there alone, in front of the whole city.

And somewhere in the High Cathedral, a man with grey eyes had bet five hundred crowns in Valdris gold that she wouldn’t finish that fight.