Alan woke on Sunday morning with a wet cloth on his forehead and the strong impression that he had been carried a long way by someone who had complained about it the whole time.

-- You fainted, -- said Tobias.

He was sitting on the edge of his own bed with a chipped mug in his hands and a look of such profound, sleepless worry that Alan felt guilty before he had even opened his mouth. The curtains were drawn. Sunlight made a pale stripe across the floorboards. On the nightstand sat a plate with two slices of toast, a boiled egg, and, with a sort of desperate tenderness, three honey cakes.

-- I found you in the alley, -- Tobias continued. -- Against the wall. You were grey. I thought you were dead. I carried you here, and a very large woman from the bakery helped me up the stairs. I said you had skipped breakfast. She said, quote, that is what they all say. -- He took a breath. -- You have not eaten properly in a week. You are always sneaking out. You do not sleep. And yesterday you did something with a wagon, and I do not know what, but I know it was not normal.

-- It was adrenaline, -- said Alan, hoarsely.

-- It was not adrenaline.

-- It is a recognized, ah, physiological...

-- Alan. -- Tobias put the mug down. His round face was very serious, and for the first time since Alan had met him, there was nothing soft in it at all. -- I am not going to ask. I am not going to pry. If you tell me it is none of my business, I will believe you, and I will keep eating pastries and say nothing. But I want you to know that if you need help, you can ask. I do not know how to do much. I can carry people up stairs. I can buy cakes. But I will.

Alan lay still and looked at the ceiling. His throat felt tight.

-- Thank you, -- he said. It came out plainer than he had intended. -- That is, ah, that is very kind.

-- It is only pastry, -- said Tobias, going pink. -- Eat the egg.

He ate the egg. It was the best egg he had ever tasted.

When Tobias had gone down to the dining hall, Alan lay for a while in the quiet, listening to the leak tick in the pit of his stomach. His reserve had refilled slowly overnight. He judged it at perhaps seventy. His body felt like a house that had been in a flood. And the inside of his head was strange and silent, like a room after a party, full of people who were being very careful not to make a sound.

-- You may speak, -- he said at last, quietly. -- The request for quiet is lifted.

Nobody did.

It was the longest silence he had endured since the Rite, and it was not peaceful at all. It had a shape. It had a weight. It was five people holding a very large thing between them and not knowing who should put it down.

-- I will begin, -- said Valeria.

Her voice was calm, crisp, and entirely without ornament, and it was the most frightening thing he had ever heard.

-- I will say this once. Yesterday, you saved a child. That was well done. I do not retract it. -- A pause. -- But you borrowed five skills at once, with no protection, no practice, and no plan. You drained your reserve to three. You collapsed in an alley. If it had been any other day, in any other place, you would have died. Do you understand that? Not been injured. Died.

-- Yes, Senior.

-- You did not say halt.

-- It was not a training session.

-- That is exactly why you should have. -- Her voice had not risen, but something in it had gone as hard as a drawn blade. -- I have stood on a battlefield and watched a boy bleed out while telling me he was fine. I will not do it again. Not with you. Not ever. If you do that again, Frost, I will not forgive it.

It was, he understood slowly, not a threat. It was a plea, delivered in the only form she knew.

-- I am sorry, -- said Alan. -- I will not do it again.

-- You will, -- said Valeria. -- The next time somebody is in danger. That is the sort of person you are. -- She let out a very short, harsh breath. -- So we are going to make a rule.

They made it. It took the better part of an hour. Valeria drafted. Priscilla supplied the technical language, and then argued with herself about the definition of a skill. Helga contributed one practical clause, which was that nobody was allowed to borrow her grip unless there was an actual wagon. Nyx offered a clause involving the word idiot, which was rejected. And Seraphina, who had been silent the entire time, said at last, in a voice that was almost inaudible, -- Please. Add that he must tell us first. Even if there is no time. Even if it is only one word. -- And nobody argued.

When it was finished, Alan wrote it out on a fresh sheet of paper, in his small clear hand, and read it aloud.

-- Article Six, -- he said. -- Soul Sync, or the borrowing of skills, shall be limited to one skill at a time. Stacking is prohibited. In the event of emergency, the borrower shall name the skill aloud before the sync begins. A halt called by any party ends the sync immediately and without argument.

-- Agreed, -- said Valeria.

-- Agreed, -- said Priscilla, reluctantly. -- It is conservative. But sound.

-- Agreed, -- said Helga.

-- Agreed, -- said Nyx, quietly. She had not said much all morning.

-- Agreed, -- said Seraphina, in a very small voice. -- Agreed, dear. Thank you.

And Alan understood, with a clear dull ache, that he had not seen what yesterday had done to them. He had been too busy being tired.

-- I am sorry, -- he said again, more quietly. -- I did not realize that I had frightened you.

-- You did not frighten me, -- said Valeria stiffly.

-- You frightened me, -- said Priscilla, in a voice with no drawl in it at all. -- A little. That is a rare experience. I would like it not to be repeated.

-- You gave me heart trouble, kid, -- said Nyx. She paused, and her voice dropped. -- And I still have a question I would like answered.

-- Not today, -- said Alan, very softly.

-- ... Not today, -- Nyx agreed, after a moment. There was no teasing in it. -- Then not today.

It was a small thing, and it hung there in the quiet, and he was grateful for it more than he could say.

-- Right, -- said Alan, and cleared his throat. -- There is one more matter. I would like to ask for a favor.

He sat up slowly. He folded his hands in his lap, and straightened the cuffs of his sleeves, and then made himself stop.

-- Tonight, I would like to go to the library. To the restricted archive. I need to look for the, ah, the unbinding rite. I told you on the first night that I would search for it. I have been putting it off. But I think it is time.

The silence that followed was a different one.

-- Alone? -- said Seraphina, carefully.

-- I would like to go alone. -- He took a breath. -- That is the favor. I would like to ask for some privacy.

-- You will be seen, -- said Valeria. -- The archive has a night keeper. There are guards.

-- I am aware. I do not mean from the building. I mean from, ah, from you. -- He felt his ears heating, and pressed on. -- I know that you can all see what I see. I know that you cannot help it. But I will be reading a book about how to send you away. And I do not think it is proper to read that with all of you looking over my shoulder. It feels, ah, disrespectful. I would prefer to do it privately, and then to tell you what I found, in my own words, when I know what it means.

Nobody spoke.

-- Is there a way, -- said Alan, uncertainly, -- that you could, perhaps, look away?

-- Technically, -- said Priscilla, slowly, -- yes.

-- Priscilla, -- said Valeria warningly.

-- It is a feature of the covenant, I did not design it, I merely observed it. -- A rustle, like papers being shifted. -- The sensory link is a two-way channel. We receive. You do not transmit. Which means that it is, in principle, possible for any one of us to close our own side voluntarily. It costs nothing. It requires no mana. It is simply a matter of, hm, will. And, I suppose, trust. There would be no way to enforce it. You would only know that it had happened if we told you.

-- I would not ask you to tell me.

-- You would not need to. You would feel the difference. A sort of, a change in pressure.

-- ... Like a window closing, -- said Alan, slowly.

-- Precisely.

It took a long time for anyone to speak.

-- I will do it, -- said Valeria at last.

-- Senior...

-- I will do it. -- She cleared her throat roughly. -- I will close my eyes. I will not look. You have my word as a soldier. When you return, you may tell us what you wish, and I will not ask what you do not tell. It is a matter of honor.

-- Thank you, Senior Valeria.

-- Do not thank me. It is a very small thing. -- A sniff. -- I would simply not like to be the sort of person who needs to be told.

-- I will do it, -- said Helga gruffly. -- I will go to sleep. I do snore. It will be convincing.

-- I will wait outside, -- said Nyx, and her voice was grave. -- I will not look. But I will not leave. If anything comes, a guard, a keeper, anything that wants you, I will knock. One word. You will hear it. All right?

-- That would be a great comfort.

-- It is the only way I know how to do it.

-- I shall close my eyes, -- said Priscilla, with great dignity. -- Mostly.

-- Mostly? -- said Alan.

-- It is a technical qualification.

-- Priscilla...

-- I am an inquisitive person. I do not guarantee that I will be perfectly blind. I will make an effort. That is the best I can do. It is a very honest answer.

-- It is an honest answer, -- Alan agreed, and could not help smiling a little. -- Thank you.

That left one voice. It had not spoken. It had been silent for a long time, so long that he had almost forgotten it. He waited.

-- Dear, -- said Seraphina.

-- Senior.

-- I would like to ask a small thing. -- Her voice was gentle, and very quiet, and each word was set down with great care. -- I understand why you ask. I do. It is perfectly reasonable. I would not wish to intrude. But I wonder, if it would not be too much trouble, whether I might be permitted to leave a very small crack. Only a little one. Only to be sure that you are, that nothing is, that you are safe.

-- Senior Seraphina.

-- Only a crack.

-- I would prefer it if you did not.

-- ... Of course, -- said Seraphina. Her voice did not change. -- Of course, dear. I understand.

It was very quiet.

-- It is hard for you, -- said Alan, slowly. -- Isn't it?

-- It is not hard at all.

-- Senior.

-- It is only that I have not, in a long while, been asked to look away. -- It was almost inaudible. -- I did not know how it would feel.

Alan sat with his hands in his lap. He did not know what to say. He knew that she was not saying it all. He knew that if he pushed, she would smile, and tell him it was nothing, and close the door entirely.

-- I would be very grateful, -- he said at last, carefully, -- if you could try. And I would like to say that it is not because I do not trust you. It is that I would like to find out whether I can ask. That is all.

-- You are asking me to learn to be trusted, -- said Seraphina. There was something odd in her voice. -- Very well. I will try.

It was the most honest thing she had said to him since the Rite, and he was not at all sure that she knew it.

That night, at ten o'clock, Alan slipped out of Hollowbrook House through a kitchen window, crossed the dark gardens in the cold, and stood before the dark Gothic bulk of the Lumina Library.

He took a breath. He put his palm to the stone.

-- Please, -- he said, very quietly. -- Whenever you are ready.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then he felt it. It was exactly as Priscilla had said, a change in pressure, as though a hundred small windows were closing one by one inside his head. The warm hum of attention that had accompanied him every moment for nine days thinned and softened and drew back. Something dropped away. Something went quiet. It was like stepping out of a crowded room into a cold hallway, and shutting the door behind him.

He was alone.

He had not been alone in nine days. He stood in the dark with his hand on the cold stone, and he was astonished at how enormous it felt, how bright and clean and cold. He was aware, abruptly, of the sound of his own breath. He was aware of the beating of his own heart. He was aware that somewhere behind him, on the other side of a very thin and very deliberate silence, five women were sitting with their eyes closed, trusting him.

He did not know why it made his eyes sting.

The archive was on the third floor, behind a plain oak door marked in faded gold letters, RESTRICTED. The night keeper was an elderly woman in a grey shawl, asleep at her desk with a ledger open under her cheek and a cat curled on her knee. Alan took off his boots. He crept past her in his socks, and the cat opened one yellow eye, regarded him for three full seconds, and closed it again.

Rows of tall iron shelves stood in the dark like the ribs of a great animal. The air smelled of leather and dust and cold. A single lamp burned at the far end of the room, throwing long shadows across the floor. He stood at the entrance, looking down the aisles, and did not know where to begin.

-- Tier three, -- said a faint, careful voice, very close, almost inaudible, like a whisper through a keyhole. -- Shelf seven. Fourth from the left.

Alan stopped dead.

-- Senior Priscilla, -- he whispered. -- You were closed.

-- I am closed, -- said Priscilla, in a tiny, anxious voice. -- Very nearly. It is only that I have been, ah. Leaking. A little. I could not help it. I have been reading your library catalog through your eyes for a week.

-- That is a violation of the covenant.

-- It is a very small leak. -- A pause. -- Fourth from the left. I promise I will not say anything else. -- Another, smaller pause. -- Mostly.

He did not scold her. He found, to his own surprise, that he did not want to. He walked the length of the aisle, counted the shelves, and stopped at the seventh. He ran his finger along the spines.

The fourth book from the left was bound in dull green cloth, its title stamped in worn gilt: On the Unbinding of Spirit Covenants, by an author whose name had been scratched out.

He carried it to the lamp, and sat down on the cold floor, and opened it.

It had been censored. Every other page bore wide black bars of ink, laid across paragraphs in a heavy hand. Whole lines had been obliterated. Whole diagrams had been pasted over with blank paper. He turned the pages slowly. What was left was a thin skeleton of text, scraps of grammar, half a table of contents, a single intact paragraph about the theory of reciprocal severance that told him nothing at all.

He turned another page, and then another. He felt his heart sinking.

And then he saw the margin.

It was on page forty-one, in the narrow white border at the edge of a blacked-out passage. Someone had written there, in pencil, in a small neat slanting hand. The pencil had been pressed so lightly that the lines were almost invisible. He had to tilt the page to the lamp to read it.

DO NOT TRUST THE TITLE, said the note. And beneath it, smaller: Ask what holds the door open.

Beside the words, in the same faint grey pencil, a small drawing. It was a single curve. A ring, drawn in one stroke, with a darkness at its center.

Alan did not move.

He did not breathe. He sat on the floor of the archive with the book open in his hands, and stared at the handwriting, at the neat slant of the letters, at the way the sevens were crossed with a small bar through the stem. He had seen it before. He had seen it on a birthday card, a long time ago, tucked into a shoe box he had never been able to throw away. He had seen it on the cover of a small black ledger on a desk in a room that smelled of ink and cold tea.

It was his father's hand.

He put his palm over the margin. His fingers were shaking, and the ring on his left hand had begun, very faintly, to hum.

-- Alan? -- said a voice.

It was soft. It was careful. It came from the very edge of his awareness, so slight that he might have imagined it, and it was a very gentle voice, with a kind of tremor in it, as of someone standing outside a door with her hand raised to knock.

-- Alan. Dear. I am sorry. I know that I should not. But I felt your heartbeat change. -- A breath. -- What are you reading?

He looked down at the small pencil curve. He looked at the words.

He thought of his father, kneeling in a study that smelled of ink, with a warm light between his fingers. He thought of a promise. He did not know why he did what he did next. It was a reflex, older than thought, the oldest one he had, the one that had kept him alive through eight years of other people's houses.

He closed the book over his thumb.

-- An index, -- he said. -- It is only an index, Senior. There is nothing here yet. The text has been censored.

-- Oh, -- said Seraphina. -- I see.

-- I am sorry I disturbed you.

-- You did not. -- She did not say anything for a long moment. -- I will close it again. Forgive me. I did not mean to look.

-- It is all right.

-- I will close it now.

He felt the window shut. It closed softly, like a hand being drawn back, and the quiet descended again. He sat for a long time with the book on his knees and his hand over his mouth.

It was the first time he had lied to one of them.

It had not been difficult. That was what frightened him.

When he had copied what he could, and replaced the book on the shelf, and crept out past the sleeping keeper and the one-eyed cat, he stood in the cold stone corridor outside the archive for a long time with his back against the wall. Then he laid his palm flat against the stone and said, very quietly, -- Thank you. You may open.

It came back all at once. Five presences rushed in together like water into a drained basin, warm and loud and crowded, and the sheer relief of it nearly buckled his knees.

-- Welcome back, -- said Nyx, from very near. -- Nothing came. I stood on the door the whole time. It is very boring, being a doorstop.

-- I did not look, -- said Valeria, a little too quickly. -- I did not look at anything. I looked at the inside of my own eyelids.

-- I was asleep, -- said Helga. -- I snored. It was very good. Did you find anything?

-- I would like to know, -- said Seraphina, and stopped. -- I would like to know whether you are well.

-- I am well, -- said Alan. -- I am only tired.

There was a pause. He noticed, without knowing why, that there was one voice that had not spoken. It was not usually like her. In twenty minutes of listening, Priscilla had not said a single word, not one remark, not one aside, not one chart. Her silence was heavier than any of the others. It had a texture, like a held breath.

-- Priscilla? -- he said.

-- I saw nothing, -- said Priscilla. It was very quiet. There was no drawl in it at all. -- I looked at the ceiling. I am a very honest person. I looked at the ceiling.

-- That is, ah, very good.

-- Yes. -- A faint dry sound, almost a laugh. -- I did.

He did not ask. He was too tired, and it was too cold, and he could not have borne a conversation that began with a question about margins. He pushed off from the wall and began to walk slowly down the long dim corridor, past the glass cases and the marble busts and the portraits of dead chancellors, toward the great front stair.

He was halfway down it when the lamp at the bottom was shaded by a figure.

It stood at the foot of the stair, tall and slim, hands clasped loosely behind its back. A long grey coat hung from narrow shoulders. A silver pen glinted in the lamplight. And in the shadows beneath the stair, a pair of pale clear eyes were looking up at him with an expression of mild and perfectly courteous curiosity.

-- Mr. Frost, -- said Inquisitor Corvin, gently, and smiled. -- Rather late to be at the library, is it not?