Location:The Pavilion
Date/Time:7–8 Flamefade 9943 AZI, Kindleday and Hammerday (outside) — twenty days (inside)
Realm:Lower Realm
Day one.
There was no bell, because there was no Academy in here. No carts. No boots on the stair of the long shed, no runner with a slate, no knock. The Pavilion at first light made the sound it always made, which was water somewhere in the garden and something in the walls that was not quite a hum, and under that, nothing at all.
Jayde was awake, because she was always awake at that hour.
For a while she lay and listened to the nothing. Then she got up, and dressed, and went down the long hall, and it was only when her hand was on the frame of the workshop door that she noticed she was holding a slate.
She looked at it, and did not remember picking it up.
Eden was at the workshop bench with a book open in front of her and a lamp pulled close. She looked up with the expression of a woman who had been caught.
"I'm reading," Eden said.
