Page 147 of Zenith Tower

“Years ago, I chose to remain inside the process because I believed I could keep it from doing its worst. Some people left this Tower alive because I stayed. Others disappeared while I was still learning which forms I had to sign to reach them.” Her hand fell from the order. “I no longer trust myself to answer that question for anyone else.”

“Will you testify even if Walkin tries to stop you?”

“I will try. If they refuse to hear me, that refusal becomes part of what happens next.”

The steward struck the outer face of the door.

The administrator folded the map along its worn creases and held it out to me. “Keep this hidden. Bring the order.”

I slipped the map inside my coat.

She left without asking what I intended.

The administrator resealed the door behind her. Walkin’s steward remained outside with the black wax ready in his hand.

The bond warmed as Caspian passed on the other side of the wall. His steps slowed near my room. The steward ordered him onward.

I went to the false window and rested my palm against the black glass.

Caspian had chosen escape because he understood exactly what staying offered Walkin. He had watched his father turn procedure into a weapon for most of his life. He knew a hearing could be arranged to produce a conclusion already written. Asking him to enter that room with me meant asking him to place his body inside a mechanism he had spent years learning to refuse.

The thought stopped me.

I could not use their willingness to follow as proof that staying was brave. Walkin would reduce them to evidence of what I could do; I would not do the same.

I opened the bond instead of trying to look resolved. Fear moved through it with the ache of wanting the route, thebridge, and one breath of air that had not passed through stone. Caspian could not know every thought beneath it. He could feel what the choice cost me.

The bond answered with grief and anger. The pressure did not sharpen into a signal.

He had heard me.

Keys entered locks all along the corridor.

The administrator’s seal broke across my door. The steward opened it and ordered me into the passage.

Blocks of black wax waited in the stewards’ hands beside the broken blue seals. The Tower looked unchanged beneath them. Water-light crossed the floor in pale, moving bars. The same channels ran inside the walls. Only the people preparing to hold the keys had changed.

Caspian waited across the corridor under guard. He had corrected the fastening of his coat. His hands were empty, but the line at his wrist had darkened.

Delphine stood near the western junction with a steward at either side. She had refused to cover her repaired Mark. Hale was farther along the wall, watching the open service door beyond the records alcove.

Cold air moved through that door.

The route was open.

Kieran appeared from the opposite passage. The black ribbon remained around his folio, now carried under the arm of the senior steward walking behind him. Kieran’s right leg dragged on the turn. Hale shifted before the stumble became visible, then stopped himself from crossing the guarded space.

Every bond tightened.

The synchronized pressure waited at my wrist. Caspian looked from the service door to me.

He did not move.

The first bell sounded.

“Transfer parties east,” the senior steward ordered.

The service door began to swing inward on its own weight.