The mage took him up three floors.
Pei Jin followed a half-step behind, memorising the corridors. Smell changed room by room — one door leaked something sharp and ferrous, another breathed out a sweetly rotten vapour that stuck at the back of the throat like bad honey. He noted each door's position and moved on.
The mage didn't explain anything.
He stopped at a door with two-layered seals. He pressed his palm against it; the ward-lines lit briefly and went dark, and the door opened.
A single room. Wider bunk than below. A small table. An oil lamp with a real flame, not bioluminescent ore. In the corner, a clay basin, clean.
"You're here for now," the mage said.
"Why."
"Because you're worth observing," he said from the doorway, "and the lower floor has too much interference. Too much noise in the readings." He paused. "You're not the first to be moved up here, and you won't be the last. Don't mistake this for special treatment."
He left. The lock turned from outside.
Pei Jin sat on the edge of the bunk and surveyed everything visible. Light seeped under the door from the corridor — the corridor was still lit. The left wall had a construction seam, narrow, which would carry sound. The lamp had well over half its oil remaining.
He sat in front of the flame for a long time.
He was somewhere he hadn't fully predicted: moved from communal captivity to a private room on the grounds that he was worth studying. That meant his calibrated answer during the interrogation hadn't fully deceived anyone. The mage knew he was managing what he revealed. He was choosing not to press — for now.
Good and bad in equal measure.
Good: he had private space. He could do things here that were impossible below. Bad: private space in a facility like this typically meant more precise surveillance — sensory wards, vibration arrays, recording crystals. He could think of at least three methods without trying.
He sat on the bunk without exploring the room, without testing anything.
He let the room adjust to his presence first.