The carriage stopped while I was trying to put my right glove on.
"Leave it a moment," the driver called. "They're opening the desk."
Through the window I could see a clock above an archway, its long hand approaching the top. People had already begun moving toward the doors. I pushed the glove into place, took the satchel and stepped down too fast.
The driver caught my elbow.
"There's another step."
I looked down. He was right. I thanked him only after my feet were on the ground, by which time he had gone to unstrap my case.
We had left the posting house before four. The capital had appeared gradually, first as lights among fields, then as walls passing close to the carriage, and finally as streets where the wheels could scarcely turn without someone moving a cart. I had been in the carriage, or waiting beside it, since the previous dawn.
The driver set my case on the pavement. He counted the pieces against his copy, then pointed me toward the archway.
"Passenger registration. You'll need the permit, not my docket."
I had taken out both. I put his back, gave him the signed road copy, and watched him return to the carriage. Another driver was already waving him out of the way. There was no one left who had seen me pack.
Inside, a clerk held out his hand for the wallet.
"Cedric Valdrake Arkhen," I said.
"Your papers, my lord."
I gave him those instead.
He checked the named booking, the estate endorsement and the luggage declaration. The clock above his shoulder struck seven while he was comparing the last two sheets. He wrote the time in a box, stamped beneath it and slid a narrow card across the desk.
"Remain within the cleared passenger area. Your release is at nineteen."
"Seven this evening."
"Yes." He pointed along the hall with the wooden end of his pen. "Luggage inspection first. Keep that card where we can see it."
Twelve hours. It was printed on the booking in my pocket, and I had known it yesterday. Hearing it here, with my legs still expecting the floor to move, made me look back toward the doors.
Outside there would be rooms with beds. I could see a sign for one across the street.
"Can I return before the departure?"
"If you leave the area, you'll need to register again." He pulled the next person's papers toward him. "The time starts from your entry."
I took the card.
The queue moved along a rail. My case knocked against my ankle whenever I set it down, and carrying it in my left hand left me to manage the satchel and papers with the right. I finally put the wallet away and held the card between two gloved fingers. It bent where I gripped it.
A porter pushed an empty trolley past the rail. I nearly called to him. Then I saw the tags fixed to its handle and the people waiting at the other end with opened trunks. He had somewhere specific to be.
I moved the case another yard.
At the inspection table a woman told me to open both pieces.
"The satchel as well?"
"Anything passing through."
Behind her, passengers from an earlier registration were collecting sealed bags. I looked toward a screened desk against the wall. A man in embroidered sleeves was there with two attendants and a great deal of luggage.
"Could I have mine examined over there?"
The woman followed my glance. "You can request a separate inspection. I can't tell you when the officer will be free."
"Would I keep my place?"
"You'd have to ask him."
The man behind me put his case down. One latch was held shut with string. I could feel him waiting for me to decide.
I opened the satchel.
My notebook lay beneath the food packet. I took it out before the woman could tip the contents into the tray, holding the front cover shut over the original transfer slip. The formal citation, protected between its stiff sheets, came out next.
She indicated a clear corner of the table. "Papers there. Flask uncapped, please."
I set the notebook down face down and reached for the flask with my left hand.
She counted clothing in the case against the declaration. The spare formal gloves lay with the stockings. When she reached the pair I had put in the satchel, she stopped.
"This pair is entered as worn."
I lifted my hands a little. The soft leather was creased and plain.
"I changed them on the road."
She looked from those to the folded black pair, then amended the location on the sheet. Nothing else happened.
The salve tin was opened and closed. She checked the pen and ordinary ink bottle, tested the cork with her thumb and put them back. I waited while she ran a hand around the empty case lining.
"These two pieces only?"
"Only those."
She tied a tag through each fastening. I repacked under her eye, slower now that the items had to fit around the parts I wanted to reach. The bread went on top. I put the notebook and citation back where they had been.
By the time she returned the declaration, the seam under my thumb was damp.
---
There were benches beyond the inspection rail. I chose one from which I could see both the clock and the numbered departure doors, set the case against my left leg and sat.
For the first hour I watched every official who entered.
After that I ate the bread.
A child two benches away kept asking whether the people coming back through the doors were the same people who had gone in. Her mother answered twice, then told her to watch the numbers. I watched them too. They were changed by hand, one board taken down and another hooked in its place.
By midday the seat had begun to hurt the backs of my legs. I got up, walked as far as the drinking-water tap and filled the flask, then returned before anyone took my place. The case had to come with me. I had not considered that part when I thought about spending the day here.
I read the academy booking. Lift and shuttle, two in the morning. Four hours to the receiving terrace. The earlier services were already fully booked; mine was the last one that would put me there before the morning registration. If I missed the gate this evening, the journey written so neatly on the page would stop making sense.
For a while I read the departure boards as though finding an earlier one would let me use it.
The windows dimmed. A different clerk took the chair by the passage, adjusting its height before he began. One of the porters brought him a cup, and he held up a finger until he had finished comparing two manifests.
Seven o'clock arrived without an announcement.
I stood anyway.
The clerk looked at my card, then at the clock. He checked the record beside him and stamped the release.
"Eastern Spires. Door four. Keep your bags with you until the loader takes them."
I had spent twelve hours waiting for him to say something this simple. I almost left the case beside the bench.
Door four led down a ramp into a hall large enough to hold the departure court at home. The gate stood at its far end, a stone ring taller than the houses I had passed that morning. Through its center I could see the back wall.
A woman in a gray operator's coat was walking along the ring, examining marks set into the floor. Another stood behind a waist-high screen. Neither looked toward us when the loader called for the next bags.
He took my case, matched its tag to my card and placed it with the others inside a low-sided rack. The rack was wheeled onto the marked floor. He signaled me to follow it.
"Stay inside the line. The satchel stays on you."
I tightened the strap.
The loader counted us, stopped at a pair near the entrance and checked their card again. An attendant closed the rail behind them. I heard the latch before the sound of the hall began to thin.
The back wall blurred inside the ring. Light filled the stone from its lowest joint upward, and my stomach tightened as though the carriage had started without me. Someone nearby caught a breath. The operator raised one hand and kept it raised.
I fixed my eyes on the corner of my case.
We stood there for several minutes. I counted the brass studs on my case, forgot the number and started again. Then a draught struck my face, cold enough to make my eyes water. Beyond the ring, the back wall was gone. In its place stood an open-sided platform under a dark sky.
The operator lowered her hand. We were led forward after the luggage rack. At the far side, another crew checked the tags as the loader rolled the case toward them. A clock on the receiving wall was only a few minutes ahead of the one I had left.
"Move through, please."
I had stopped in the doorway.
The Eastern Spires rose beyond the platform. I saw lit windows above me, then more windows higher still, linked by narrow stretches of light that I could not make into roads. Somewhere below, machinery took up a load with a slow knocking sound.
The woman repeating the instruction touched the edge of my sleeve.
I moved.
My case was waiting at a collection rail. I showed the matching card, took it in my left hand and followed the signs for academy connections. The first sign pointed up a staircase. Below it, a smaller one directed passengers with cases around the other side. I took that route.
At the connection desk I laid out the booking before giving my name.
"Two in the morning," the clerk said. "This is the departure hall. You can wait here."
"Four hours from here?"
"Including the lift. You'll be called before boarding."
She checked my baggage tags and marked me present against the reserved place. A porter was fastening a cord across one of the doors. On its other side, a lift cage rose slowly out of sight, carrying stacked crates and two men with their hands on the rail.
My shoulders had begun to shake with tiredness. I took the booking back and made sure it was inside the wallet before I moved away.
The waiting room had a long bench beneath a clock. I found a space at the end, put the case under my knees and worked my right hand out of the glove. The scar was still raised. I loosened the linen and held the hand open on my leg.
Then I shifted the satchel onto my lap, its strap still across my shoulder, and turned far enough to keep the departure doors in view.