The lift bell woke me before the man shaking my shoulder did.
For a moment I was in the wrong place entirely. The bench edge pressed through my coat. My satchel was still across my lap, and the man was asking whether the case under my knees belonged to me.
"Yes. I'm coming."
I got the linen flat around my right index and eased the soft glove over it. Outside the waiting hall, the clock showed two. The station had become a place of moving luggage and lowered voices. A woman ahead of me carried a sleeping child against one shoulder while a porter tried to discover which of three identical bags was hers.
My case went onto the luggage rack with its gate tag intact. The loader gave me a numbered counter and waited until I had put it away. I kept the satchel. By the time I found a seat, every window had someone beside it.
Then the platform dropped away.
It was the lift rising, of course. Knowing that did very little for my stomach. Through the opposite window I watched the station roof slide below us, followed by the lights along the road we had taken from the gate. They dwindled until I could no longer tell where the road ended and the scattered houses began.
At the upper station we changed to the shuttle. The luggage moved across on a wheeled rack; I watched my case make the turn before following it aboard. This cabin had narrow benches facing one another and a roof low enough for a tall man to stoop. Someone shut the door behind us. The rattle beneath the floor continued after we had left the platform, although there were no wheels touching anything I could see.
I had spent hours moving a camera around Astral Zenith. I had flown through its bridges, enlarged the map, turned off the clouds because they made certain objects difficult to find.
There was no setting for that now. For most of the journey there wasn't even a view. Moisture gathered on the glass. The student opposite me wiped a circle clear with his sleeve and stared into the same gray nothing I could see.
I slept in pieces, waking whenever the cabin shifted. Once I woke with my right hand closed around the satchel strap and had to work the fingers free. The scar hurt afterward. I put the bag between my feet and rested my hands on my thighs.
Near the end, the cabin brightened.
A wall appeared outside, close enough that I flinched. We passed beneath its projecting stones and emerged into sunlight. The student opposite had stopped wiping the window. He leaned so far toward it that his knee pressed against mine.
Beyond him, a bridge crossed open air between two islands. There were people on it. Small ordinary people, one carrying a basket, another running with his coat open, all of them proceeding as though the clouds underneath were somebody else's concern.
The academy rose behind them in terraces. Roofs overlapped up the slope toward the Spire of Trials, which I recognized before I recognized anything else. In the game it had always stood at the center of the screen. From here, another building hid its lower half.
I moved toward the window despite myself.
Then the shuttle turned, giving me a brief clear view straight down, and I moved back.
---
At six, the cabin door opened onto the receiving terrace.
Cold air found the space above my collar. The terrace wall reached my waist. I kept to the other side of the path while a porter unloaded our cases, and tried not to resent the sleeping child, who had woken only to complain about breakfast.
My numbered counter got me my case. The satchel went back over my shoulder. I could have stood looking at the academy for an hour if standing had been easier.
The route I remembered led left, over a narrow stair bridge to the arrivals court. A workman was sitting on the first step, eating from a cloth bundle. Behind him lay a gap where three steps should have been.
He saw me looking and pointed with his bread.
"Covered way. Follow the hall roof."
A board nailed across the entrance said the same thing. I had walked that staircase hundreds of times without noticing it would need repairs.
The Great Hall's steep roof showed above the nearer buildings. I followed it along a covered passage, one hand trailing near the wall when the floor sloped. The passage ended at an arch opening onto the arrivals court. From there I could see both the hall doors and the way back to the terrace. That was enough map for the moment.
Registration occupied three long tables beneath an awning. A fourth was marked for household luggage. I took my case there first.
The porter checked its tag and tied on another, leaving the first in place. He tore a claim stub from his book and handed it to me.
"Day-reception store. Staffed until the last residence delivery. Keep that for collection."
"And this?" I touched the satchel.
"If you want it stored."
I shook my head. He lifted the case off the table and set it with several others inside the roped enclosure. I watched him put it on the lower shelf before joining the registration line.
It moved quickly enough to keep me on my feet. Two places ahead, a student had brought his sponsor's letter but left the admissions slip in a trunk. He kept explaining that the trunk had already gone to the store. The clerk kept agreeing with him.
"Then let him bring it back," said the boy behind him.
"That is what I've asked him to do."
"He thought you meant he'd lost his place."
The clerk looked up. "His place at the academy, or in this line?"
The boy hesitated. The student with the letter had already hurried away.
"Either," he said, quieter this time.
"Name?"
"Aiden Crest."
I had been reaching inside my coat for the wallet. My hand stopped against the lining.
He looked younger without a sword raised in front of him. Seventeen, like Cedric. There was a crushed fold at one side of his collar, and he kept touching it while the clerk found his entry. I knew that face. Hearing the name had put it back where it belonged.
In several routes, Aiden had killed Cedric. I remembered the winning strike more clearly than any conversation preceding it. From this angle I could see a patch of dried mud behind his ear.
The clerk gave him a card and told him to read the reverse. He stepped aside, lips moving faintly as he followed the directions.
"Next."
I put my papers down.
"Cedric Valdrake Arkhen," the clerk read aloud.
Aiden looked up. So did the man at the adjoining table. The clerk compared the seal on my transit papers with her register, then asked me to confirm the address for academy correspondence.
I gave the estate address. The Duke wanted official results; they would have no difficulty finding him.
"House reception rooms are across the court," she said. "This admits you today. The counter there will direct you after the ceremony. Great Hall at noon; your seat is on the front."
I turned the card over. There was a printed plan and a handwritten place number. Nothing about an examination result, nothing declaring what I could survive.
A gust lifted the top sheet from my wallet. Before I could press it down, Aiden caught the edge against the table with two fingers.
"Yours."
I took it from him with my left hand. He watched the glove, then my face.
"Thank you."
He withdrew his hand, but didn't move away. I wondered whether I was supposed to have insulted him already. The clerk reached for the next student's papers, obliging us both to step out of the way.
"You came on the shuttle?" he asked.
"Yes."
"I thought your house would have—" He glanced toward the terrace. "Never mind."
I could have asked what he thought my house had. I had slept badly enough to want the argument for a second.
Instead I fitted the loose paper back into the wallet.
"Where are the reception rooms?"
He pointed across the court. "Under that arch."
We both had the same plan on our cards. I thanked him again, which seemed excessive even to me, and went where he'd pointed. When I glanced back from the arch, he was still watching. Then the student with the missing admissions slip came running past him, and Aiden turned to clear a space at the table.