Page 36 of Zenith Court

At the inn in spring, taking off the cuffs had been the point: his last claim removed piece by piece. Tonight they came off like any other hardware. This time, I felt no part of myself leave with them.

“Just hardware tonight,” she said, already drowsy. “Remember that.”

I lay awake with her weight against me and the cuffs cooling on the stone. Walkin waited upstairs for the Court to do its work. Here, Astra slept against my chest, and for the first time all day nothing of my father remained between us.

21

Astra

Someone had pinned a new notice between the meal rotations and fire ordinances: Reconciliation of the Rolls. The Court would begin checking sworn-party staff by basin against their seat sureties the next morning. It called the audit routine and seasonal. Batches would run in reverse order of entry, latest seats first. The Ashford party stood second on the list.

I read it twice while balancing the hamper and noted when our batch would be called. At the gate, the Court had verified the lineage seat and let its surety stand for everyone beneath it. Staff papers received a glance and a line in the roll. Four days had been enough for Walkin to find the gap. Now every servant would be tested against the promise made by the seat that brought them inside.

The administrator walked past the notice without slowing, a schedule beneath her arm. At the supper bell, she crossed behind me in the gallery. “The linen room off the cistern stairs. When the house sleeps.”

The Conclave kept late hours, so it was past midnight when the five of us gathered in the whitewashed linen room. The cistern thudded through the wall. Jonah had brought the water in two trips along the service gallery and borrowed the linen-room key from the warden’s board. The administrator placed a scoured wash-copper on the table, filled it to a hand’s depth, and rolled back her cuffs.

“Watch the water.” She submerged her wrists. Lamplight shifted across the copper in thin bands of shine and shadow. “A basin doesn’t show the reader your lines directly. It shows a pattern of the person standing in the water. Right now, it sees a steward: keys, schedules, a bad knee, the same breakfast for nine years.” Three Tether-lines lay hidden beneath her skin. The water showed none of them.

“For nine years, I hid one line behind the two I declared. Since spring, I’ve hidden three. The method is the same.”

Kieran leaned closer to the copper. “So we make it show nothing?”

“No. Readers know what an ordinary person looks like in the water. Show them nothing, and they start searching for what you’re hiding.” She tapped the copper. “Give them what they expect instead: sore feet, missing linens, the pressing iron in your hair. Use true things. Give the water enough detail that the reader has no reason to look further.”

She dried her wrists. “Don’t check whether it’s working. The moment you check, you step outside the disguise. Keep your mind on what she feels and what she will do next until the reader signs.”

I tried first. I built the laundress as I had built her at the gate and put my wrists into the copper. The disguise held for one breath. Then the cold reached my lines. Green-gold appeared in the water, then rain-dark, then the third color I had never named. I pulled out my hands. The water went dark again.

“You built her face,” the administrator said. “Water doesn’t care about her face. Build her feet. Her shoulders under the hamper. The pressing iron in her hair. The supper she missed.”

On the second try, I gave the water my real sore heels, the ache across my shoulders, and the linen count I still owed. I set aside the urge to look at the others and the need to know whether the disguise held. Green-gold sank. Rain-dark followed. The third line remained, faint as a hair across the shine.

“That’s the one you’re afraid to lose,” she said, watching the water. “I won’t ask its color. But the fear is bringing it to the surface. Stop guarding it.” The third line surfaced once more. On the next attempt, I kept my attention on the sore heels and missing sheets instead of checking for it. The thread disappeared. The basin showed only a tired laundress, and my hands shook beneath the water from the effort of keeping her there.

Kieran and Jonah had an easier task. Their papers identified them as bonded household men with a single household line, so each wrist could show one Mark and still match the record. “For once, honesty serves me,” Kieran said. “I dislike the feeling.” Jonah refilled the copper without comment.

Delphine went last. When she submerged her wrists, one thin gray thread appeared, then nearly vanished. The Council’s instruments had done most of the hiding years ago. Her fingers curled once against the bottom of the copper, then opened. She studied the faint line without changing expression. “That should pass,” she said. The administrator nodded and reached for the towel.

They took us by seat and list at midday. The reading room off the second gallery was long and low, with channel-light moving across the ceiling. Three tables ran down its length. Each held a copper basin, and beside every reader stood a bucket of Court water and a ladle. Clerks waited with the rolls open to the surety pages. A guard at the door wore more armor than the work required. Kieran and Jonah had passed in the morning batch, their wrists matching their papers.

We queued along the wall in groups of six. I watched two batches to learn the sequence: paper, name, wrists, fresh water, the reader’s nod, the clerk’s mark. A girl from the wheatsheaf seat cried from nerves and passed anyway.

My reader was old, stooped by years at the table, with ink staining his fingers to the second knuckle. He read my paper, then looked up and waited until I met his eyes. “Wrists, please,” he said, as though apologizing for the cold. I had prepared for suspicion, not gentleness.

I had been the laundress since the second bell. I placed her sore hands in the basin. Cold climbed toward the lines. Sore heels. The hamper’s weight. Six sheets missing from the third gallery and the steward who would blame her for them. The water caught the lamplight and settled into the ordinary pattern we had practiced. I kept my attention on the missing sheets and did not check the disguise.

The far door opened. I kept my eyes down, but the clerks straightened and a ladle stopped at the next table. Gray entered the edge of my sight. Walkin crossed behind the readers at an unhurried pace. Fear struck hard enough to bring metal to the back of my tongue, and the current rose beneath the water. I returned to the laundress’s count: six sheets, four cases, two of the good cloths. The water trembled. A thread of shine nearly became color within arm’s reach of the old reader.

“Tired?” he asked.

“On my feet since the second bell, sir.”

He watched the water. Behind me, Walkin answered a clerk’s question and continued out. The thread thinned and vanished. “Long day for everyone,” the reader said. He signed, and the clerk entered my false name beneath the Ashford surety.

I dried my wrists, folded the cloth before setting it down, and walked past the guard at the pace of a woman with linens waiting. His gaze dropped to the damp cuffs of my sleeves, then returned to my face. He did not stop me.

Once the reading-room door closed behind me, I sat on a cold step in the service stair and let my hands shake. Above me, the next group entered the reading room. My three lines ached beneath my dry sleeves.