Page 105 of Zenith Tower

Her breathing slowed against me.

I put my hand over hers where it rested on the Mark.

For tonight, I let the copper light remain.

Caspian

The third man on the unloading line carried a message from Zenith Hall.

I knew before he spoke. The dock crew handled each crate with the weary efficiency of people who had repeated the same labor for years. This man watched the stewards in the polished brass fittings of the delivery cart without once turning his head.

I recognized the habit.

The supply dock occupied the lowest level of the Tower we had been permitted to see. One side opened beneath a narrow shaft cut through the mountain. Gray daylight fell through sheets of silver water and reached the platform broken into shifting bands. Cold air carried damp stone, onions, lamp oil, and the distant resin of pine.

It was the nearest I had come to weather since the bridge.

Marrow had put me on the unloading line after the Council’s answer arrived.

They had allowed the administrator’s order returning Kieran to the residential wing to stand pending review. Everyother action she had taken was now subject to Council examination. Her seal remained valid, but any order involving the four of us now required a Council countersignature.

The assault charges remained open.

Hale was confined to his room while the burns healed. Kieran could not cross the corridor without the healer. Astra had been forbidden to touch the Mark of any person outside her completed bonds.

The restriction arrived before she could return to Delphine.

The order called that last restriction temporary. Marrow read the word with satisfaction.

My punishment was labor under direct watch. Marrow intended it to keep me away from Astra and too tired to damage anything else. I accepted every additional dock shift he offered. Carrying crates gave me an hour beyond the residential wing and placed tools, doors, schedules, and unfamiliar faces in front of me.

The new man took the opposite handle of a crate marked DRIED BEANS. His hands were rough, the nails dark with soil that had not come from the Tower.

“You’re new,” I said.

“Started this week.”

We lifted together.

The nearest steward stood beside the inventory desk, watching the clerk argue over a broken wax seal. Another patrolled the open edge of the platform. His route took him past us, around the empty delivery cart, then behind a stack of flour sacks before returning.

The man beside me waited until the patrol disappeared behind the flour.

“Lior Moreau says he remembers everything.”

The crate shifted in my hands.

I tightened my grip before the movement became visible.

Lior. Delphine’s younger brother. Astra had told us aboutthe letters Delphine wrote from Zenith Hall and the boy who remembered the words, the order, the names, and the doors.

The courier had not offered a greeting. He had given me proof.

“How did he find you?”

“He found Rev. Rev found the rest of us.”

We set the crate on the weighing platform. The clerk cut it open, plunged one hand into the beans, and complained about the dust. I recorded the weight on the slate while the courier brought the next crate into place.