Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 15 of 42

Kevintor left Astella's hall with the lacquered tube under his arm and the sun already low. He needed walls before he needed answers. His own room on the grounds was no use. Students passed the door. Servants walked the halls. One glance at the scroll's painted vines and gold seal would put his name on a new list before dawn. He had to read it somewhere no eye he did not know could find him. He cut down through the lantern district on foot, hood up, the tube wrapped in a rice sack against his ribs. Twice he stopped and waited. Once a shape moved in the green wall of a hedge across the lane, a figure cloaked dark with only the eyes showing through the leaves. Kevintor stood until the eyes blinked and slid away. He did not chase. He marked the spot and moved on. Word was already out. Whoever had paid the courier had paid others. He went to the dance bar at the end of the row, the one with the painted sign and the red lamps in the eaves. He had heard the name from Ronda once, a place where patrons paid for silence as much as for the floor show. He paid the woman at the door twice the asked price and asked for a back room with a lock. She took the coin without counting and pointed him up a narrow stair. The room was small. A low table. A single lamp. A paper screen between him and the music below. A dancer was already there, kneeling beside the table in a red and purple kimono, hair pinned with a flower. She did not stand when he entered. "You wanted the room," she said. "The room comes with me. House rule." Kevintor set the sack on the table. "I need the door closed and your eyes on the floor. Not on what I read." She studied him a moment. "Scarlet Violet," she said. "I keep what I see. Ask anyone who comes here." He believed her because he had to. He slid the bolt himself. He drew the scroll from the tube. The paper glowed faintly under the lamp, vines running its length in red ink, a sunburst seal at its middle. He broke the seal. He read. Scarlet Violet sat with her face turned to the screen and did not move. Outside, a drum kept the beat for the dancers below. Kevintor read the first column, then the second. His hand on the table went still. His breath slowed to match the drum. By the time he reached the third column he understood what the old man had meant. The Threnody did not teach a new art. It taught how to unmake the six he already owned, one by one, inside himself, and use the ashes. He rolled the scroll closed before he finished. He had a place to read now, and he had a first lesson he could not yet survive. He paid Scarlet Violet for a week of nights and told her to hold the room. Then he sat in the lamplight with the tube in his lap and began again from the top, slower, while the drum kept time below.