CHAPTER 42: SILENT HALL

Proctor Pierce liked to hang rules where everyone could see them, then wait for people to slap their own faces on them. He stood at the end of a long, narrow chamber lined with dangling chimes and metal plates. Sand dusted the floor in a mean, thin layer. The far door had a bell rope that looked too easy.

"Silent Hall," he said. "You move from this door to that rope. If a chime sounds, the counter ticks. If a plate scrapes, the counter ticks. If your spell hum exceeds one breath, the counter howls. Lowest ticks wins. Try not to breathe like you’re running from a cat."

Students laughed. They always did before they learned.

Teams were small. Mine: Gareth with his reliable hands, Lyra with her brass badge and chord coil, Pelham looking like a man who had put on the wrong coat and was trying to pretend it fit. A rune-tech named Ilya stood behind us with a slate and a calm face. She would count. She loved counting.

Across the hall, Aldric flexed his fingers so sparks ran like stage confetti. His boys smirked in ways they had practiced in mirrors. Seraphine watched from the back with her hands folded, mouth polite, eyes taking notes. Marcus stood two lanes over, quiet and composed, his partner murmuring while he tuned a shadow along the floor with two fingers.

"Valcrey," Pierce said. "Your lane first."

I set my palm to the door. The wood didn’t creak. Good sign. "We move on my count," I said. "No heroics. Lyra, set chord posts when I tap the frame. Gareth, hands stay low. Pelham, watch your boots. Don’t drag."

Pelham bristled, then saw the sand and nodded, tight.

I took the first step. Anchor. Heel down with the smallest pulse, just enough to make the floor tell me if it planned to lie. The pulse stayed in my heel. It didn’t scatter. The rope inside my chest didn’t lift or hum; it just was.

Lyra hummed a note under her breath. Not music. Pressure. She touched her coil to the jamb and left a thin line of ward that would catch sound and roll it up like water hitting an unseen lip. She set another ten feet in. Subtle. Efficient.

I slid a bone sapper from my sleeve and let it tap ahead, soft, like a cricket playing polite. It told me where the sand was thicker and where a plate was waiting to kiss my toe.

We moved in rhythm. Step. Place. Breathe. Tap. Lyra set a post where the chimes hung low. She kept her line so faint that most people in the gallery didn’t notice anything but the way the air felt less sharp by her hand. Gareth built a tiny ridge of packed grit with his boot heel and a thumb so a rolling plate would hit it and stop before it sang. Pelham watched his feet with the kind of attention I wanted from him in all things.

Halfway down, a horn rang two lanes over. Aldric had popped his light to show off. The chimes over his head went mad. Pierce didn’t look up from his slate. He ticked numbers. The gallery laughed the wrong way—nervous, not pleased. Face-slaps are quieter when they land right.

A step later, one of Aldric’s boys tried to recover by sliding his blade under a hanging disk to steady it. The edge kissed metal. The chime cried out again.

"Soft hands," I said under my breath.

We eased around a cluster of chimes made of glass. I tapped with the sapper. Lyra set a barely visible post, then another, building a shallow curve so our bodies passed where the sound wouldn’t echo. I matched her shape with my step. For a few strides we didn’t speak, and we didn’t need to. When she lifted her coil, I knew she was two beats from placing. When I dropped a hand, she had already moved to catch the air I was about to disturb.

Marcus’s lane came parallel for four paces. He laid a soft shadow along the floor like a story told in a whisper. It didn’t hide us. It just let the light stop being rude. He caught my eye. I tipped two fingers to my brow. Credit matters. Allies more.

Three plates ahead, a narrow section waited to trap boots and pride. I pointed with two fingers, then set my heel on the left seam where the tile gave me back a quiet "yes." Gareth followed. Pelham misjudged his stride by a thumb and caught the edge. The plate quivered. I caught it with a palm and a pulse in the heel of my hand exactly when skin met metal. No scrape. No song.

Pelham looked at me. I didn’t glare. "Look one step sooner," I whispered. "You have time."

He nodded, jaw tight, shame turned into attention.

Near the end, a string of chimes hung so low even a breath would move them. I slid the Lantern’s shade a finger-width. Not light—just darker dark. We saw the strings better for what they were. Lyra set a last chord post so light it didn’t feel like anything at all until air moved the wrong way and didn’t go far. We stepped under without a sound.

At the rope, I didn’t yank. I touched and let it decide to ring once like a polite knock on a civilized door.

Pierce lifted his slate. "Three ticks," he said. "Acceptable."

Aldric’s lane jangled like a cutlery drawer dropped down stairs. Pierce didn’t look at him. He marked the count without commentary. The faces in the gallery did the talking—eyebrows up, shoulders easing down when someone else’s noise stops.

We exited to the side yard for the cool-down ritual. Ilya logged our ticks and signed our names on a board. Marcus drifted over with a small nod.

"The shadow lanes were clean," I said. "We matched to them twice."

"You set the curve to match my fade," he answered. "Appreciated."

Aldric decided to find air in the same yard. He threw his hands up. "Chimes are a child’s game," he said to the crowd instead of to us. "In a real fight—"

Pierce, who had somehow appeared behind him without making a single sound, held up a hand. "This is a discipline test," he said. "Not a flex. You can file your complaint with the wall."

The laugh that followed wasn’t cruel. It was relieved. Aldric flushed; the color looked bad on him.

On cleanup, Gareth and I lifted a dangling plate that had twisted. When I set it back on its hook, my fingers came away sticky. Resin. Iron-pine again, thin like a finger dragged through sap.

"Lyra," I said quietly.

She checked the hook with me. Her mouth pressed flat. "Not maintenance," she said. "We don’t use resin in here. Rope tar, sometimes. Not this."

Ilya stepped over without being asked. She bagged the hook and wrote the lane number on the tag. "Ops," she said. "Plain language."

We walked the length of the hall one more time with eyes set to "pattern." A small panel under the fourth chime hung a thumb open. I pried it with a nail. A narrow chute ran down into the wall. Old dust clung to the lip. New dust held a print where someone had lifted and set the panel recently. The edge of the chute wore a faint smear that caught the light the way resin catches it.

"Smuggling chute?" Gareth said softly.

"Or service drop that someone decided was theirs," I said.

Lyra didn’t touch it. She looked at the edge, then at the nearest joint in the wall. "The chute bypasses the bell cable," she said. "You could run line through without rattling a single thing."

"Noted," Ilya said, already writing.

We turned the evidence in. Liora met us halfway. She didn’t say "good work." She didn’t say anything about power or progress. She looked at the bag, then at the wall, then at me for a quiet second like she had heard a change in the way my breath landed and was filing it under "useful."

"Eat," she said. "Then class. Then come back and write what you saw. Don’t decorate it."

"Yes," I said.

On the steps out, I realized the leash hum had been steady the whole time and I hadn’t been babysitting it. Marrow stayed in Shade without asking to be a spectacle. Hollow sat quiet under the eave like a line in a diagram that didn’t need a label.

A soft, almost-not chime moved under my ribs. The Compass didn’t show a screen. It didn’t need to.

’Closer,’ I thought, and let the thought pass without grabbing it.

In the yard, Seraphine watched from a patch of shade. White hair neat. Amethyst eyes bright. When Aldric stalked by, jaw tight, she tilted her head and smiled at him the way people smile when they are already writing a new plan. When her gaze slid to me, she had the same smile. It didn’t reach her eyes.

I looked away and checked the rope on the shade hood of my Lantern. The knot held clean. The simple things are the ones that keep people breathing.

On the notice board at the end of the path, a new line had been added under "Upcoming Practicals."

Night Sweep — Storm Towers — after curfew. Rope required. No capes.

Pierce had a sense of humor after all.