Page 14 of Zenith Court

Eight. The number held the whole way down the valley.

I’d believe it at the crossroads.

8

Astra

The mill stood half a mile off the valley road, its wheel seized in a dry race. We reached it in the dark from two directions, following the routes Aldric had traced on the farmhouse table. Cosima’s ledger had logged traffic past the mill all summer. Disused, she had written beside it. Tonight, disused meant safe.

Jonah came out of the alder scrub before we crossed the race. Behind him, the mill door stood open a hand’s width, lamplight showing Rev’s face. Kieran laughed somewhere inside, quietly but unmistakably. Aldric was alive.

The mill smelled was mice-infested and damp. The millstones stood apart beneath the unused machinery. Aldric was propped on grain sacks against the far wall with one trouser leg cut open and black stitches high on his thigh. He was supervising Delphine’s bandaging.

“Looser on the third pass,” he said. “You’re wrapping a thigh, not lashing a fence post. I’ve failed first-years for less.”

“I’m pretty sure they expelled me when they sent me to the Tower.” Delphine drew the fourth pass snug enough to make him grunt and tied it off close to the lamp, her hands quick and sure. When she straightened, one hand went briefly to her own bruised ribs. Her eyes met mine.

I picked up the remaining strip of linen. “Let me fix yours.” After a moment, Delphine lifted her shirt and raised her arm. The wrap had slipped during the climb. I tightened it until she said, “There,” and tied it off. A bruise darkened above the cloth. The current had done that. I kept my hands steady.

“Better,” she said. She lowered her shirt and turned back toward Aldric.

“He’s been grading her since the needle went in,” Rev said, holding the light for them. “Blood in his boot and the man’s conducting performance assessments.”

“The third pass was too tight,” Aldric said.

No one answered.

At the farm, after someone was hurt, there would have been work: wash the cloths, carry water, check the goat, set bread for morning. The mill offered no next task. I sat with my hands empty while Rev cleaned the needle and Delphine checked Aldric’s wrap again.

Cosima sat across from me beside the small fire and took the watch ledger from her coat. Smoke had entered the cover, but the pages were untouched. She had carried it out without thinking, just as I had carried the wren.

“Five weeks,” I said. “We had it for five weeks.” Before that farm, the longest I had belonged anywhere was a numbered room whose key was never mine.

“The goat?” Kieran asked from the millstone he’d claimed as a seat.

“I cut the pen going past,” Delphine said.

He nodded.

Caspian fed the fire a stick. “They tracked my father. He brought the summons, and every road he takes is watched. He was careful.” He looked into the coals. “Careful isn’t invisible.”

“Which means they’ll expect him at the Court,” I said. “The same watching that found the farm can take us through the front doors.” I turned my wrist over, the three lines quiet against my skin. “The plan still works.”

Nobody argued. Magnus was already days ahead of us on the open roads, traveling toward the Conclave as holder of the Ashford seat, with eleven generations of reasons for the Council to admit him.

Aldric’s rider had reached the mill first with grain for the horses and a satchel of papers. Among them was a copy of the Council’s newest proclamation, three days old and cut from a crossroads post. Cosima unfolded it against the ledger and read aloud.

“‘By authority of the Council in session and in the name of the record: the woman Astra Verita, heir to the Court’s oldest debt, is to be located and delivered whole, for reconciliation of the record. Prior instruction stands.’”

“Heir,” Kieran said. “Congratulations. First time anybody’s left you an inheritance.”

“And it’s a debt.”

“Family money usually is.”

Cosima read the line again with one finger beneath it. “This isn’t decree language. Decrees give orders. This points to something already on file. ‘The Court’s oldest debt’ may be a heading.” She looked up. “Whoever drafted this had the archive open.”

“Walkin’s seal is on it,” Caspian said.