Chapter 3
Null Result
The labor ward smelled like chalk dust and old ambition.
It was a large room — larger than Cyan expected — with long tables and
Crown officials at each one, processing the unranked with the same tired
efficiency as everything else the kingdom ran. Forms to fill. Details to
confirm. A registration number stamped in black ink on a small card that
Cyan was told to keep on his person during any work engagement within
city limits.
He sat down at the assigned table and answered the questions.
Name: Cyan. Age: sixteen. Prior work: errand and carrying labor, guild
district. Rank: pending retest.
The official wrote it all down without any particular interest. The card
was produced. The number was stamped.
'Labor ward assignments post daily at the seventh bell,' the official
said. 'Unskilled carrying, cleaning, material transport. Payment is
day-rate, settled at the end of each shift. No contract, no commitment,
work available as capacity allows.'
'Is there —' Cyan started.
'Next,' said the official, and the person behind Cyan stepped forward.
He stood up and moved away from the table.
The walk back to the guild district took twenty minutes. He spent most
of it not thinking about the Runestone, which meant he spent most of it
thinking about it constantly. The crack. The darkness. The official's
face doing that thing faces did when they were trying not to show that
something had gone wrong.
Failed reading. That was the official story and it was almost certainly
the story that would follow him until the next annual testing, when it
would happen again or not happen again and either way nothing about his
life right now would be different.
He was sixteen. He had a labor card. He did not have a rank.
He'd known this was possible. He hadn't let himself believe it until the
needle went in, and now he believed it completely, and the believing
felt like standing in a room that was slightly smaller than he
remembered.
He told himself it didn't matter.
The thing about telling yourself something didn't matter was that the
telling was evidence that it did.
He filed it away. Deep. Under a lot of other things.
The Dustwalker Guild's head of ground operations was a broad woman named
Seff who ran the loading dock and the errand roster with the same
attitude she probably brought to everything: efficient, unsentimental,
and faintly annoyed by anyone who needed explanations. She'd given Cyan
two days of work a week for the last two months based on nothing more
than him showing up on time and not breaking things.
He found her at the dock doing inventory.
'Labor card,' he said, and held it out.
She glanced at it, glanced at him, went back to her inventory clipboard.
'Null result?'
'Failed reading. Retest next cycle.'
'Same thing,' she said, but not unkindly. 'I can give you four days a
week. Not five — you're not guild-registered and there's a cap on
unranked hours during active contract season. Four days, standard
carrying rate, you know the routes.'
'Four days,' Cyan said.
'Starting tomorrow. Seventh bell.' She made a mark on her clipboard.
'Don't be late.'
He wasn't late.
He was never late. It was one of about three things he had full control
over, so he protected it carefully.
Four days a week of carrying crates. Labor card in his pocket. A bunk in
a shared boarding house three streets from the dock that cost him
exactly what four days of carrying crates paid, minus food.
He lay on his bunk that first night and looked at the ceiling and
thought: this is what it is.
And then, because thinking it once wasn't enough: this is fine.
And then, because he was sixteen and not entirely able to lie to himself
no matter how good his filing system was: you felt something on that
stone. You know you did.
The ceiling had no answer for him.
He went to sleep.