Page 46 of Zenith Court

“Your mother was the only real conversation I ever had. I’ve been doing paperwork ever since.” She let the signature dry before blotting it. “Most people bring the chair petitions, reports, or recitals. Your mother argued as if the chair were a person and might be wrong. Thousands have obeyed me. Many have feared me. Only she argued.”

I nearly spoke twice. Once at the bees, because the picture was absurd enough to tempt me. Once at my mother, who sounded for a moment like a person rather than a name in a file. Both times I counted the First Chair’s signatures instead. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. Silence had never felt so much like work.

For the length of her visit, I believed her. The wish to stop was real; I had watched enough exhausted people across enough counters to recognize it. She had brought the Court’s work into my cell and allowed me to see its weight. It changed nothing. I believed her and gave her nothing.

She finished the stack and closed the lap desk. At the door, she looked once around the room—lamp, grate, shelf, bed, me. “The linen changes in four days,” she said. “You’ll be here for it.” Then, more quietly, “Thank you for the conversation.” The bolt closed behind her.

The supper tray came on time. I ate because Jonah had told me to. The bread was good; it was always good. I kept hearing the First Chair’s thank-you and refused to decide what it meant.

The two knocks arrived at the usual hour. I knocked twice in answer but did not speak. The channel carried a voice clearly, and I had nothing I trusted myself to send. The lamp dimmed from working yellow to ember.

I lay down as the cedar scent faded from the linen, four days before it would be taken and returned fresh. My thumb went to my wrist. Warm skin, an ordinary pulse. I let it check, then check again. I stopped counting how many times.

30

Astra

The First Chair had said the linen would change in four days. That night, after the lamp dimmed, I asked Marrow for everything he knew about getting out.

“Rounds first. The under-warden walks four before midnight and two more before morning bell. After dimming, the floor goes uncovered for a quarter-hour. I complained in writing. No one cared.”

He said it without bitterness. Since Tower, he had spent every week two floors deeper being questioned by courteous people who took notes. Whatever anger he had once felt had worn down to fact.

“Treat the water like a corridor. A whisper carries four rooms. A full voice reaches the record floors. Never send enough at once for a clerk to understand.”

We passed the plan along the channels in fragments, no one voice holding enough to betray its shape.

“Your door is old-pattern. So are the advocate’s and Hale’s. They were linen closets before the Court made them cells, and the locks turn from either side.”

“The sluice beneath your grate runs west. It pulls hardest after dimming, when the kitchens empty their wash water. The lights follow a clock in the warden’s office. Nobody has reset it since my tenure.”

I memorized each detail.

I did not trust the man giving them to me. At Tower, Marrow had hunted us through a building he knew better than anyone. Jonah had finally put him down in a stairwell and bound him without hurting him. None of that history made Marrow safe now.

“I don’t trust you,” I told the grate.

“You shouldn’t. I hunted you, and I was good at it. Hale took me down without breaking anything and tied the cord so it wouldn’t chafe.” His voice remained even. “Distrust me. Then check my facts.”

I spent the next two days doing exactly that. I counted the under-warden’s steps, timed the stronger pull of the sluice after dimming, and waited through the uncovered quarter-hour. Every detail matched. By the seventh night, I trusted the information, if not the man.

The channel joined four rooms: Caspian two doors up, Jonah near the corridor’s turn, Marrow below and behind, and me with my mouth to the grate. My knees grew sore from the stone.

“The Tower wanted the power that’s holding my lines down,” I said.

“The Tower begged for it. I drafted the petitions. Every request came back refused in the First Chair’s ink.”

For a moment, only the water moved between us.

“We called the refusals mercy,” Marrow said. “They weren’t. She would not give the provinces a weapon that could be turned back on her.”

I rested my thumb on the quiet skin. The only device capable of flattening my lines stood somewhere above us, kept here because the First Chair would not share it.

I sent the information up-channel. Caspian answered first. “Then get names, dates, and the exact wording. Facts another clerk can verify.”

“And one device means one place to watch,” Jonah said. “That shortens my list.”

Marrow’s scheduled questioning sessions continued while we planned. He had studied those too.