He held until the room settled as if nothing had left.
The lamp hissed once, exhaled a long, contented thread, and held. The floorboard, flattered, kept its peace. The spoon converted to stillness.
Patricia drifted past and set a palm on his head, not to check him so much as to anchor herself to a day that had done nothing wrong. "Mon chéri," she said, soft as lampglass. "Tu penses toujours."
He didn't nod. Furniture doesn't nod.
The pane relented.
[SEQ] Orientation II — Motion 3/3
[SEQ] (Stillness): Success.
He allowed himself one blink that meant victory in a dialect only he spoke.
Patricia's hand lifted; Thibault's page, impoverished, asked for another turn—and got it. Christian, at the workbench, performed the sacrament of adjusting something that did not require adjustment.
The pane wrapped its promises and signed for delivery.
[SEQ] Orientation II — Complete.
[SEQ] Reward: +5 XP; Title Seed progressed — Night Veil (2/3).
Night Veil. He liked the name. It did not brag. It stated a duty.
He drifted back onto the rug as if he'd always been part of it. The warning chill receded down through the stone, unhurt pride returning back to wherever the city kept its penalties.
He listened to the pipes mention rain to one another. He listened to a neighbor's lock be both too careful and not careful enough. He listened to his own heart discover that going slow was as useful as going fast.
Thibault shut his book with the relief of a page that had decided it would not have to perform any more tonight. He pried himself out of the chair and squinted at Thomas with a seriousness that would have looked silly on someone who hadn't earned it.
"New rule," Thibault said. "Don't be where grown-ups expect you to be unless they need you. Or there is cake."
"Cake," Thomas repeated, because he considered words diplomatic.
"Also cake," Christian agreed, utterly out of context and therefore correct. He tapped the lamp's glass with the back of a knuckle. The filament settled into a kindly glow. "This one will do."
One final stitch; Patricia bit the thread—clean as she liked it. She glanced around, pleased by the rightness. "Bed," she pronounced, as if gravity were hers.Thomas obeyed, in full agreement.
—
He woke later to the very particular sound of a room worrying about its own edges. The chalk line on the threshold had thinned—only a hair, only the way chalk does when someone's shadow leans the wrong way. He did not cross it. He respected contracts he hadn't signed.
He did practice Breath again, this time in the doorway's mouth, until the hall forgot to notice him. He practiced Step with a heel that trusted the board without flattering it. He practiced Stillness under the watchman's lantern ribs, then darkness. The room tallied him among its things.
The pane stayed silent. Silent was praise.
Morning found the house with its courage already on. Patricia held the kettle like a woman who had made peace with boiling; Christian wore a screw behind his ear because it made his brain feel threaded; Thibault stretched in a doorway like a door that had learned to be a person.
Thomas fed the river a sentence it would pretend not to like: I did not hurry.
Sequana answered without a pane, in pressure. Good. Brinks punish haste.
Outside, a procession murmured two streets away—voices stitching stone. The window breathed on the room; the room breathed back. The day clocked in, countersigned by bells.
Patricia wrapped a scarf around Thomas's neck and then around Thibault's arm because little brothers make orbits. "Errands" she said, which meant passages, which meant practice.
Thomas glanced at the spoon. The spoon was fine. He glanced at the floorboard. The floorboard was smug. He glanced at the lamp. The lamp forgave them all.
The pane, at last, added its small financial flourish.
[SEQ] Ledger — Noisy impulses resisted: +1 Credit (minor).
"Ready?" Thibault asked.
Thomas nodded. Passages were thresholds, and thresholds favored boys who arrived without making the room adjust.
He took the door like a promise he intended to keep.