The summons came at noon, when the yard was loud and boys mistook sweat for proof.
A page in black-and-gold livery found Elara at the pump and Seren at the bucket. He read from a scroll with a voice that tried to be older than it was.
"By order of the House, the Bastard Seren will answer a charge of theft and insolence before witnesses. Trial this bell in the outer court."
The word theft traveled faster than flies. Servants turned their faces without moving their feet. Guards smiled with their eyes. A trial meant spectacle. Spectacles meant permission.
Elara wiped her hands dry, then wiped them again though they were clean. "Breathe," she said, low. "Don't sharpen their knives for them."
"What did I steal?" Seren asked.
"Air," she said. "Attention. And a future someone else paid for."
She tightened the thong on his sleeve, fishing a strip of leather through the seam until it lay flat against his wrist where a garrote might try to bite. She slipped a leaf packet into his palm without looking. He did not look either. He breathed. Four in. Two held. Eight out.
The outer court sat like an amphitheater carved by austerity. A ring of pale sand. A crescent of stone benches. Above, the black banners drooped in the heat as if listening. The Patriarch's chair had been dragged out and set under a canvas awning that did not shade so much as designate. Zephyros stood behind it, still as a weather vane on a windless day.
Aurelius waited in the ring, helm under one arm, a practice blade balanced lightly in the other. Cassius lounged on a pillar with his grin on and his attention off, which is what he did when his attention was most on. Lyra stood by the cistern; a ribbon of water climbed her wrist like a pet and pretended not to notice the thirst in the air. Selene had chosen shadow; even in daylight she found places where light bought passage and did not get change.
The steward Merek hovered near the cask table, rings moved to his index finger, dragon-head flattened by years. A jug of water sweated on the plank. Cups glinted. A fly drowned and was fished out and flicked away.
The page announced: "Charge: theft of provisions and insolence toward a steward of the House."
Merek bowed, a small, pained thing. "He took a loaf unmarked for his ration," he said. "And when corrected, he spoke without courtesy."
Elara did not move. Eldrin stood three paces back with his hands in his sleeves like a monk who had run out of prayers and learned to read instead.
The Patriarch's voice cut the air to size. "We do not starve our own," he said. "We also do not allow rule to fray. Trial by correction. Circle. One minute standing in truth, or kneel in apology."
Truth here meant sand.
Aurelius tossed a staff into the ring. Not a staff. It had weight wrong and balance wrong. A sparring pole with the grain misaligned. Wood that would shear under side load. Seren rolled it in his palm once as if it were a courtesy to be admired.
Cassius's grin sharpened. "I like this game," he said to no one.
"Begin," Zephyros said, not loud and not soft.
The first advance came not from Aurelius but from the crowd. Noise pushes. Seren let it. He set his feet as the slim manual had taught. Knee over second toe. Spine long. Breath out to meet what comes.
Aurelius came like a door closing. No feints. Correct. The staff took the first blow high, bent, sang, did not yet snap. Seren let the shock go through frame into sand. He pivoted on the outside edge of his foot and bled the force away from bone.
Second strike swept low. He lifted, set, exhaled into contact. The cheap grain groaned.
"Stand," the Patriarch said, as if narrating weather.
A third cut. Aurelius turned his wrists and sent a thrum through the wood—an old yard trick to break bad poles. The staff split with a neat, satisfying sound.
Seren kept the longer half and let the shorter spin away. He did not look at it. Looking is how boys tell on themselves. He stepped into the next line and tapped Aurelius's forearm with the blunt tip. Not hard. Correct.
A murmur. Not approval. Recognition.
Aurelius smiled with no humor. "Again."
They circled. Sand remembered every footfall. Seren felt the ring learning him—the way the floor takes a mark from a new table and then, years later, all other tables sit inside that first indentation.
The next exchange was unfair on purpose.
Lyra's ribbon flashed, a breath of cold that kissed the sand near Seren's heel. It left a wetness there that sand hates. His footing would slide half a finger width if he put weight there. He catalogued the treachery and did not step where betrayal waited.
Cassius coughed. A guard laughed. The crowd discovered it had hands for betting.
Aurelius stepped, cut, pressed. Seren gave ground slowly until his back kissed the chalk marking the boundary. "Kneel and apologize," Aurelius said in a voice meant to be kind when heard later in retelling.
Seren breathed. Four. Two. Eight. He rotated his hips the width of a coin and turned what would have been a cornered animal's jerk into a long, clean line. The broken staff's butt bit sand, found traction where the wet patch wasn't, and raised him an inch. Aurelius's cut slid past.
"Time," Cassius called cheerfully, though no one had asked him to.
"One minute more," the Patriarch said.
Aurelius changed weapons without moving—he let the blade become intention. He pressed in. Seren's ribs earned a bruise that would bloom like poor wine tomorrow. He accepted it like tax.
On the next pass, he did something the room did not expect a child to do. He dropped his gaze not to feint fear but to see the ring of Aurelius's boot print from three blows ago and the way it made a small ridge. He set his broken staff against that ridge and let Aurelius give him weight. The pole held because leverage forgives wood and because breath forgives fear. The older boy stumbled a thumb's worth. Seren stepped through the gap and tapped him again. Not hard. Correct.
The Patriarch's finger twitched on the arm of the chair. Zephyros did not blink.
"Enough," the Patriarch said. "Correction served."
Aurelius stepped back, cheeks flush with more than exercise. He tipped his head a fraction—respect to craft, not person. "Theft?" he asked flatly, to Merek.
"Uncorrected insolence remains," Merek said, seizing the moment like a drowning man grabs a floating thing that is not a log.
Selene's voice sifted from her shade. "Then let insolence stand trial without a brother to hold his hand."
The Patriarch's gaze slid to her. "Name your correction."
"Two opponents," Selene said. "One staff." Her teeth flashed. "Courtesy is camouflage. Let us see what he wears with none left."
Cassius laughed softly. "I did say I liked this game."
Zephyros did not speak. Not speaking is a permission sometimes.
Two guards stepped into the ring. Not the ones from the smoke room—new men, with hunger in the shoulders and a coach's delight at being allowed to play with something fragile. One had a scar that bent his lip into a permanent sneer. The other had a twitch in his left wrist that said old break, badly set.
Seren's lungs wanted to hurry. He slowed them by stubbornness. Four. Two. Eight.
He looked once at Elara. She did not nod. She did not look away.
The first guard came like mudslide—heavy, committed, messy. The second waited to clean up mistakes. They were not artists. They were workers.
The first swing wanted to knock a child into a story. Seren stepped inside and laid the broken staff across the inside crook of the guard's elbow, turned his hips, exhaled, and let the man's own mass teach him about joints. The elbow bent the wrong way, then not quite. Pain stole half a heartbeat from the man's next intention.
The second's strike hissed for Seren's ear. He dropped his chin and let the wood rake hair and not skull. He felt the leather strip at his wrist catch when a loop of cord tried to make a lesson.
Selene's shadow did not change shape. Lyra's ribbon coiled and uncoiled.
"Drink," Cassius said lazily, and a cup rolled from somewhere to the ring's edge and tipped without spilling. A joke, or a threat for anyone without leaf in his cheek.
Seren tasted the memory of the smoke room and let his tongue find a bitterness it had saved for such jokes. He kept the pulp hidden where smiles go to die.
He could not win. He could refuse to lose inside the time allowed.
He made the ring small. He moved only when paid. He gave back only measured change. When the heavy guard overcommitted, Seren let him discover the wet spot Lyra had left and paid him with sand. When the twitch-wrist raised his stick high, Seren lifted the broken staff not to meet it but to occupy the space the blow needed to pass through. The collision exhausted itself. The guard blinked; Seren tapped his knuckles. Not hard. Correct.
A minute is long when it has math in it.
"Time," Zephyros said.
The guards stepped back, breathing like men who hate learning on public time.
The Patriarch leaned his jaw into his knuckles. "Kneel," he said to Seren, "and apologize to the steward."
Elara's fingers dug crescents into her palms. Eldrin's eyes narrowed.
Seren did not look at Merek. He looked at the Patriarch. Then he looked at sand. Then he knelt—smooth, controlled, not in supplication, but as a craftsman kneels to inspect a joint.
"I apologize," he said. His voice was level. "For taking bread without asking. Hunger does not make rule untrue."
He lifted his head just enough. "I will ask next time."
Merek breathed as if a rope had loosened. Selene's mouth turned a fraction. Cassius clicked his tongue, disappointed a scene had not broken in a more expensive way.
The Patriarch nodded once. "Correction complete," he said. "Rise."
Seren rose. He did not sway. He stood in the sand with a broken pole and a calm that annoyed men who needed boys to wobble.
The court began to uncoil. That was when the second correction arrived, the one no one announced because everyone had agreed to pretend.
A cup came to Seren's hand. Not from a servant— from a sibling. Lyra. Water pearled down the side like earrings.
"You fought prettily," she said. "Drink."
Courtesy is camouflage. He accepted the cup with the gratitude a child should have for nobles. He tilted it. He let water touch his lips, taste his leaf, change its mind. He lowered the cup.
"Thank you," he said.
She watched his throat not move. Her ribbon lifted, then coiled again. "Cute," she murmured. She turned and gave the same cup to a guard whose hunger was less complicated. He gulped. The swallow stuck. His eyes watered. He coughed until he remembered not to.
Aurelius saw and did not see. Selene smiled into her veil. Cassius caught Seren's eye and then looked at the sky all innocent.
Zephyros's gaze had moved a thumb toward interest and then returned to indifference. The Patriarch had not shifted at all, which is a kind of shift.
"Dismissed," he said.
The crowd bled away. Bets were settled. Stories sprouted.
Elara reached Seren at the edge of the ring and put her hand on his shoulder like a wedge that fit a door no one else noticed. "You knelt," she said.
"I chose where," he answered.
"Good," she said. "Choose again. Walk."
They walked. Behind them, Merek argued with a guard about cask keys. Ahead, a maid spilled a lamp and did not burn. On the wall above, a raven watched with tilt-head curiosity, as if all this were time well spent.
---
They cut through the library to avoid a knot of cousins. Eldrin shut the door on the corridor with his heel and pushed a bucket under a drip that had timed itself to the bell.
"You stood," he said. "And more importantly, you learned while standing."
He set a thin blade on the table. Not weapon. Tool. "For wood," he said. "And for rope. Do not confuse the two."
Seren tucked it beside the garrote in his sleeve. "Merek," he said.
Eldrin lifted a brow.
"His ring moved again," Seren said. "He takes the cask keys at dusk."
"Many men take keys," Eldrin said. "Few wash under them."
"His crease holds grit," Seren answered. "Gray. Two days."
Eldrin allowed himself the smallest grunt. "Good."
A shadow shifted at the end of the aisle. Not Selene's. Cassius leaned on the shelf with a treaty book upside down. "What a happy school," he said. "Lessons everywhere."
He tossed something. A small cork. Gray stained. "Lost this?" His grin was all courtesy.
Eldrin looked at the cork and then at the boy. "Treaty goes the other way," he said.
Cassius flipped it, not looking, and caught Seren's eyes again as if to say I'm not your friend, but I'm not your worst enemy if someone else is trying too hard to win that job. Then he left, whistling a tune soldiers use to walk in step without admitting music helps.
Elara had slipped in behind them, noiseless as a hand finding its own pocket. "Tonight," she said.
"South stair?" Seren asked.
"No," she said. "Wells." She handed him a strip of linen with a knot tied in the middle. "Taste the rope before the water. The rope remembers more."
He nodded. He did not ask how she knew. She had been alive longer than he had been a problem.
---
Night took the court's heat and left the metal. Seren moved with a bucket and a towel and the permission of being small. He leaned on the well's stone and pressed the knot to the rope. It told him: old hemp; tallow rubbed in; ash from a late fire; fingers with a ring that bites the index. He drew his hand back and let breath make a pocket for anger to sit in without burning the floorboards.
He found Merek near the cellars with a key-ring held like a priest's beads. The steward's face had the fixed interest of a man counting steps to avoid thinking about cliffs. He startled at seeing a child and then remembered his hierarchy.
"Not here," he snapped. "Kitchen's that way."
Seren blinked, obedient as a hymn. He stepped aside. He watched the man go. He smelled a hint of bitter lost under soap.
Behind him, the well breathed up cool and honest.
He returned to Elara's room by the circuit that avoids notice and collects maps. She sat with the spoon across her knees and the wedge like a tame animal in reach. He laid the blade and the garrote on the table beside the leather strip and the leaf packet and the knot of ruined boot-sole.
"A pretty altar," she said dryly.
"A record," he answered.
She poured water from the ugly jar and waited until he drank. When he set the cup down, she covered his hand with hers. "You chose where to kneel," she said softly. "Good. Remember the place. Houses fall on those who refuse to kneel and on those who forget how to stand."
He breathed. Four. Two. Eight.
Somewhere below, the mirror felt like a coin warming itself on a windowsill. Somewhere above, a brother decided which knife would feel most like justice. In a corridor, Selene's shadow laughed. Near the casks, Merek palmed a pinch of gray and told himself it was only work saving time.
Seren lay on the cot, eyes on the beams. The day filed itself in his head until it clicked shut and could be carried easily.
Just as sleep crept near, the wedge shivered. Not a push. A touch. A folded scrap slid under the door, neat as a bowing cat.
He sat, unfolded it, and read ink that did not shine.
The circle enjoyed its show. They will make another. Bring your breath to the river stairs. This time, they prefer deep water to shallow sand.
Below, a tiny rosette. Too many petals. Or too few.
He looked at Elara. She had already lit the lamp low.
"We choose our drink," she said.
"Yes," he said. He felt the coal under his ribs glow, not brighter, just steadier.
He put the leaf packet in his sleeve, the blade in his sash, the cord across his shoulder under his shirt where hands must work to find it. He moved the wedge, waited, replaced it. He lay down and slept because tomorrow would be harder and he would need all the breath he could afford.
The river stairs waited with their old damp. The house planned the next lesson. The Patriarch's eyes had not moved, which often meant the room had.