The Other Schools

The first master offered Mali breakfast and refused to sign anything.

Her house stood beside the eastern market, where porters leaned long poles against the wall before going inside to exercise. They were not disciples. A few wore the house cord around one wrist, but most came in work clothes, paid a copper or a favour and left by the service gate in time for the morning loads.

Iven of Hollow Cedar was a heavy woman with one clouded thumbnail and a whistle she used only to summon the cook. She read Sel's warning standing up. She read the gate receipt twice.

“Caren always did enjoy a clean desk,” she said.

“Will you support a suspension?” Mali asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't know which parts you've made larger by being angry.”

Mali had asked Sori to come. Now she regretted it. The notebook on Sori's knee looked suddenly like another set of eyes waiting for her to mishandle the answer.

Iven sat, pushing two breakfast bowls toward them.

“Eat. Then show me what you have that isn't a conclusion.”

They laid out the papers. Mali kept the carrier box in the coal cupboard and did not regret it, despite the absence of a thing she could point to. The maintenance entry from the weir helped more than the account of the correction. Iven knew the installer's company. She had paid it to replace a valve on her own house's line.

“When?” Sori asked.

“Three weeks ago.”

“With new glass?”

“A balance piece, they called it.”

Iven put down her spoon. She summoned her deputy, told him to stop the morning tube lesson and asked the porters to wait in the market. Then she led them to the practice hall.

The exercise here had no cuts. People stepped over low poles, lifted weighted baskets, learned to move a load without wrenching the back. A man with a missing foot sat on a broad bench, showing a younger worker how to distribute weight through his hips. Mali could see the school's doctrine in the placement of objects. Their forms had grown around things people actually had to carry.

Above the hall door lay a brass grille.

The copper loop darkened near it.

Iven said something unkind about the installer's ancestors and told her deputy to fetch the house mechanic. She did not wait for Mali to finish explaining what the loop could not establish. When she returned to the breakfast room, she had made two decisions.

“I'll suspend lessons from the shared feed. I'll sign a request for inspection. I won't sign that all comparison work is corrupt.”

“That isn't what Sel wrote,” Mali said.

“It's what you're asking me to fear.”

Sori drew a clean sheet from her folder. “Then write what you can support.”

Iven looked at her with approval Mali found difficult to bear. Together they composed three sentences requesting an independent inspection of active fittings and a delay to the demonstration until affected patients could be consulted. Iven signed. Her deputy added his name beneath hers.

“Don't call those two houses,” Iven said. “He's mine.”

They went next to White Reed.

Its courtyard was white gravel with a smooth strip down the centre for formal exchanges. Students carried long, narrow swords wrapped in pale cloth. Nobody practised beside a cooking pot or a load-bearing pole. Mali could have called it vanity if she had not seen how patiently an older student helped a younger one unwrap a damaged hand.

The master was away. His secretary met them with an expression of cultivated alarm.

“Deren's pupil,” he said. “An unfortunate business.”

“Which one?” Mali asked.

“The morning correction.”

“Yesterday.”

“Of course.”

He had heard of it before she arrived. She had expected that and was still unprepared for the smoothness with which her failure had become public property.

White Reed would gladly host an independent demonstration, the secretary said. A smaller one, avoiding the contested materials. Its master had concerns about Red Eave's custodianship of the comparative project and the unusual standing recently given to Bell House. If Mali wished to make a formal statement about Deren's fitness to chair, White Reed could ensure a wide hearing.

“Patients first,” Sori said.

“Certainly. Their safety is our principal concern.”

“Then sign the inspection request.”

He read it, made several suggestions that transformed the request into an indictment of Red Eave, and smiled when Sori restored the original wording.

“We should not rush a matter this serious.”

Outside, Mali sat on the low step long enough to get her breath. The short walk had done nothing to her ribs. The room had.

Sori waited.

“He could have got us heard,” Mali said.

“Yes.”

“If I said what he wanted.”

“Would it be true?”

“Some.”

Sori turned the folder in her hands. “Then decide where to put the rest before you let him borrow it.”

They went on.

At the House of the Open Palm, the blue Shardbreak notices hung between two carved pillars. Mali recognised the false portrait before she saw Gorrath's name. She went cold, then hot. Hesh should have been there, but someone had to remain with Gorrath, and they had agreed to gather information before making a demand in her name.

The registrar gave them a catalogue.

“Concession rates for former service families,” he said. “Demonstration places are nearly full.”

Mali turned the pages. Breathing, balance, release of traumatic holding. Near the end, under a programme labelled Ironlung Preparatory Work, stood an instruction to complete every cycle once begun.

“What if someone wants to stop?” she asked.

“An instructor judges readiness.”

“What if they want to stop after they begin?”

The registrar's face lost its welcoming brightness. “Interrupted practice can be distressing. We provide support.”

“Does support include letting them leave?”

“We have never detained anyone.”

She thought of Ned's sleeve. “Where do you keep the attendance records?”

“Those are confidential.”

“So is a person's refusal.”

Sori moved beside her. Not to draw her away, only to be visible. Mali heard herself breathing and slowed it without turning it into a count.

“We have a statement from Gorrath's household,” she said. “She has not authorised instruction in the Shardbreak. Whom should we give it to?”

The registrar stood.

“An accredited household representative may apply through the licensing office.”

“Hesh is her daughter.”

“Then she should come herself.”

“She has.”

“Excellent. We'll look forward to receiving her.”

He had already begun closing the catalogue.

They left with a printed copy of the application requirements. There were seven, including two witnesses to the claimant's identity, a fee and an undertaking not to disrupt teaching while the application was considered. Sori read the last condition while Mali looked back at the false portrait.

“What will Hesh say?”

“Something precise,” Sori said. “And probably loud.”

By noon they had one signed inspection request, two evasions and a new debt for a bowl of noodles Mali had been too hungry to decline. The fourth house offered to sign if they could bring a patient prepared to describe current difficulties. Iven's report about a piece of glass was not enough. Nor was a former student's quarrel with a master.

“Ardel,” Mali said outside.

“A day away,” Sori reminded her.

“Teren.”

“Farther.”

“Ned. He's at Bell House.”

Sori did not answer. Mali knew why before she looked up. A boy asked whether his lessons would be taken away. A woman she had injured. A man whose fingers she had broken. She had come looking for someone else to pay the price of making her warning persuasive.

“There are patients here who know us,” Sori said. “We can ask. Once. They can refuse.”

They returned through the west ward. Mae was sitting beside the man who had dictated the letter. His name was Leth. His daughter had sent a reply through a neighbour already travelling north. It contained a sketch of the borrowed saw and a promise to make the neighbour carry it home if he found it.

Leth wanted Mali to read it. She did before asking about the petition.

He listened with his hands folded on the blanket.

“Will this stop the afternoon exercise?”

“Possibly.”

“It hurts worse without it.”

“I know.”

“No,” he said. “You know that I say it does.”

She looked down. “Yes.”

Mae sat very still beside the bed. She was not helping. Mali understood that as a kind of help too.

“I don't want you to say the exercise never worked,” Mali told him. “Only whether you can choose to end it.”

Leth looked at the window. Below it, someone was repairing a trolley wheel. The blows had no regular rhythm because the hammer kept slipping.

“I've never asked.”

“Would you like to?”

He turned back. “Would you like me to?”

The question found the place she had been trying to protect.

“Yes.”

“Then give me until tomorrow to decide.”

She did. Walking away from the bed without an answer felt harder than any of the morning's refusals.

They found Anet in the passage outside.

Mali stopped. Sori took one look between them and said she would wait at the stair.

Anet held a basket of practice bindings. She had not come to apologise. That was plain in the way she stood, one foot slightly behind the other, ready to continue with her day.

“He shouldn't have struck again,” she said.

“No.”

“You shouldn't have asked for a correction with your side like that.”

“No.”

The agreement made Anet frown. “Have you learned to say anything else?”

“I've been practising.”

For a moment they almost smiled. Then the two years returned.

“I wrote,” Mali said.

“I know.”

“You didn't answer.”

“My sister died that winter.”

The basket handle creaked beneath Anet's hand. Mali remembered saying you don't have to stay. She remembered what an easy sentence it had been.

“I didn't know.”

“No.”

“How?”

“Fever. Before the starfall. Nothing for a hero to fix.”

The words were not cruel, only flat. Mali could not turn them into an argument about the school. She stood with the petition folder under her arm and felt how little an account of her own hurt had contained.

“I'm sorry.”

“Of course.”

“I wanted you to come out yesterday.”

“I know that too.”

Anet shifted the basket. “I'm not his hand. I can't make it stop from a balcony.”

“You could have said something.”

“Yes,” she said. “I could have.”

They looked at each other. The admission gave Mali none of the pleasure she had expected from hearing someone else say it.

“Will you sign?” she asked, showing the petition.

Anet read it. She lingered over consultation with the patients, then over independent inspection.

“He's being asked to turn away the people who trust him,” she said.

“I'm asking him to tell them what happened.”

“He thinks you'll make them afraid.”

“They're already afraid. That's why they came.”

Anet handed back the paper unsigned.

“I need to see the junction.”

Mali nearly demanded why her word was insufficient. She thought of Ferra's swollen knee and stopped.

“Tomorrow?”

“Early. Before practice.”

She went on with the basket. Sori came down from the stair when she was gone.

“An ally?” she asked.

“Someone I knew.”

“Those can be harder.”

In the rooming house, Hesh read the application requirements without swearing. That frightened Mali more than the expected anger.

“They want to decide whether I'm her daughter,” she said.

“They want you to go through the office.”

“They want me to promise not to tell the people they've already sold her to.”

Gorrath took the paper. She read it slowly, set it down and wrote on her slate.

WE GO TOGETHER.

Hesh looked at the bed, the shawl, the hands holding the slate. For once she did not argue immediately.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

The elder nodded. Not a victory. An appointment.

Sori copied the petition while Mali rested her arm. Names, houses, evidence requested. At the bottom she left space for witnesses who chose to add their own account. Mae returned before dusk with two names, given willingly: Leth wanted to see how the exercise could be stopped, and a woman named Bela wanted to know why her son had been moved to a stricter recovery class after asking to leave.

Mali wrote both on the consultation request.

She asked whether they understood it would go into the house office.

“Yes,” Mae said. “I told them.”

Mali put down the pen.

“Then tomorrow we take it in.”

She could feel the relief of having names. She did not yet know how much those names would cost.