"—then we will license the weather," Thibault said gravely, before sincerity could cause paperwork. He steered Thomas past with a polite nod that said I heard you and a pace that said I decline to be recruited.
Thomas looked back once and memorized the brass badges; the folder's edge worn where anxiety met paper; how institutional power wore a coat like everyone else.
They drifted on, practicing signals—two squeezes for stop, one for left, three for we're being followed by someone who thinks we don't know. Thomas learned the seriousness of not looking back when every animal part of him wanted to.
"Rule for corridors," Thibault said. "Walk like you own the end and rent the middle."
"What do we own?" Thomas asked.
"Exits," Thibault said. "Always the exits."
They paused at a café threshold without entering. That clean smell of coffee and yesterday's arguments. A man stirred too long; a woman read the same paragraph three times; a waiter poured as if saving lives. "Thresholds," Thibault murmured, "teach you who's leaving and who's pretending."
They moved again. Chalk had made quiet shapes on a column base: a ring, a three-bar mark, a small X like a kept promise. Thomas felt the marks the way you feel instructions without words.
"What do those ask?" he asked.
"Depends who reads," Thibault said. "To some, Deliveries after close. To others, We have friends in white who dislike bad manners."
"Dames?" Thomas said, letting the capital letter try on a posture.
Thibault's mouth wanted to be a grin and chose restraint. "You'll hear more when grown-ups stop being polite about pretending ghosts are stories."
A vendor called Relics! with the tone rain uses for people who can see clouds. Today he offered a saint's coin, a ribbon said to have been worn by a queen who disliked being told about knives, and a marble that promised to keep secrets for a reasonable fee. Michelle—ink on fingers, pamphlets under arm—materialized as if summoned by nonsense, corrected him kindly, and paid fairly for what the things actually were. Honest trade by accident.
"You look like you're measuring a room you haven't entered," she told Thomas.
"I am," he said.
"Good," she said. "Rooms behave better with supervision."
She peeled away with three pamphlets and a promise to revise a title that used too many capital letters. Patricia would have liked her; so would the river.
The rain changed jobs and stood around being useful. They cut back toward the exit where the passage met the world with a smudge of gutter water and the patience of a drain. A municipal clerk with a Syndic pin arranged pamphlets that said COOPÉRER POUR MIEUX VIVRE in fonts that wanted respect. He offered one to Thibault with the alms-giver's smile of a man terrified of being mistaken for needing alms himself.
"We prefer to help ourselves," Thibault said pleasantly, and kept moving—a kindness to both of them.
By the stair, a woman scolded a boy for running indoors. The boy accused the floor of moving under him. Thomas sympathized with both. Floors do move; boys do run. He filed moving floors under useful lies that turn true at night.
They took the long way home so Christian could pretend to remember a street that had changed its mind about existing. Patricia hummed a line that had been prayer once and was now a habit. Thibault pointed out the ungreased hinge's twin two alleys over—an exit for days when you needed a second plan that didn't look like one.
At the apartment, the workshop welcomed them with the heat of a room that had made the day its business. Christian coaxed a lamp into admitting dignity; Patricia forgave the weather on the condition it didn't wet her song. The kettle made the same sensible noises as yesterday.
Thomas let the passages he'd walked settle into his legs. The city liked to teach by repetition; he liked to pass tests without announcing them. He sketched the safe route in his head one more time—stair, hinge, café, drain—and attached each to a face (Patricia, Christian, Thibault, himself) in case a day required decisions no one wanted.
He received one more pane—the sort that pretends to be casual when it is really proud of its timing.
[SEQ] Lore — Passages & Syndics (whispers)
[SEQ] Tags: Licenses, After-hours, Dames Blanches
Evening softened. Neighbors arrived with small talks and big errands. Someone's pie escaped responsibility. Someone's violin obeyed sadness. The room translated noise into proof of life.
Thomas checked the chalk inside their own lintel. Someone—someone old, someone bored—had renewed the mark. He felt counted again and safer again and decided the city enjoyed keeping ledgers even when it pretended not to.
Patricia tapped the edge of his plate with a fork—her signal for enough when a day had tried to test boys past kindness. "Bed," she said, with the authority of gravity.
He washed his hands as if the passages could be set down like a coat. The passages came along anyway—iron ribs, glass breath, exits kept in pockets. He didn't mind. Good rooms travel.
The last pane of the day made the minimum number of promises.
[SEQ] Confluence — Umbral — Black (Grade I) [stable].
[SEQ] Next: Trial unlocks when mobile enough to cross three gaps in sequence.
He lay down and counted the gaps under his feet the way some count sheep. Three would be reasonable. Three was a number for people who didn't want to explain themselves.
He slept as if being small were a job with benefits, and the city kept his place for morning.